Columnist Tim Giago specifically applies this lament about the Veterans Administration to Native American veterans in his column, here:

For too many Indian veterans it strikes close to the bone. They are so entangled in bureaucratic red tape they are all but suffocating. Many have been reduced to living lives well below the poverty level set by the very government they fought for and nearly died defending.

Giago goes on to describe the cases of individual Native veterans living in Rapid cCity, S.D., who appear to have fallen between the cracks of VA care. One Oglala Lakota man, Andres Torres, got a call from South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds after Giago wrote about him earlier.

Torres tells him that “I am so proud to have served my country in the regular United States Army and in the South Dakota National Guard and no one can take that away from me, but sometimes I am so ashamed of the Veteran’s Administration for what they have done to me and to thousands of my fellow veterans.”

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Gwen Florio, Native American news, Native American veterans, Oglala Lakota, Tim Giago, Veterans Administration