Brooke Leigh Howard
Fri, October 14, 2022 at 5:31 PM·6 min read
An assembly meeting in Alaska turned into a racial debacle when a community member used the public comments portion to espouse his racist views that Indigenous Americans should go “home,” prompting a local lawmaker to call out the man’s bigoted “nonsense.”
On Oct. 11, the Anchorage assembly held a regular meeting to discuss everyday issues, like proposed ordinances and licenses in the city. More than four-and-a-half hours in, however, a white man in a collared shirt stood up to casually argue for Alaskan Natives to be kicked out of Anchorage.
The man, who identified himself as David Lazer, started by complaining about the area’s homeless problem.
“Like, 80 percent are the Natives. I have to call them ‘Indians,’” he said, grumbling that Indigenous Americans are considered Native but his white children born in Alaska are not. “My children were born here, and they’re not Native. This is not a white-Black problem. This is an Indian problem.”
“I say send them home to their native village. A Native Corporation is the problem, not a white problem,” Lazer continued, using the term for partnerships of organizations formed in Alaska to protect Native culture in the area. “Why should we be paying for a Native problem? Send them home. They would be happy there, and we would be happy. They could drink, smoke, do dope, and whatever they do in the villages with their own people and they would be happy.”
R&I – TxPAT
