What are the legal/economic advantages of being Native American?

A classmate of mine was telling me that US citizens recognized as a descendant or member by Native American tribes have certain legal or economic advantages. Is this true? If so, what are they?

What govt assistance?

The benefit is being able to state that you descend from the original people of this continent, an awesome thing. We DO NOT get money from the government. NO 'reparations.' We DO NOT get any other 'economic advantages.' Anything we get was "prepaid" (as another Yahoo! Answers contributor put it) with the water, minerals and land of this place now called America. Still, there are NO CHECKS! Reservations are just that, 'reserved lands,' places we kept for ourselves. Reservations weren't 'given' to us. Reservations are land we kept from greedy, land grubbing Americans. Our health care services were 'prepaid'...our land for health care in perpetuity. Being an enrolled tribal member means less about 'benefits' and more about belonging to and being a PROUD citizen of your tribal nation.

free college and other government assistance

All people who can prove they have at least a minimum percentage of "Native American" blood in them or ancestry (the percentage varies with each state), can apply to get a monthly "reparations" check. They can also live in government-owned housing on reservations; apply for food stamps; welfare; tuition assistance; "free" (actually paid for by people who actually pay taxes) programs to help them cope with tobacco and alchohol addiction, diabeties (many Native Americans have it because they live on cheap, high calorie food but their genetics developed under centuries of high protein, low carb diets so their bodies are even worse at handling swings in blood sugar than Europeans are), etc. They also can pull the race card when they apply for jobs and admittance to schools just like blacks, asians and latinos can.

The advantages that "Native Americans" get are awful, especially the reparations checks and should be outlawed. Every person has ancestors who were oppressed or somehow treated badly by some other group at some time in their past, but we don't all get checks from the decendants of those groups. I'm part Irish, so I should get checks from England for all the terrible things my Irish ancestors went through when the English tried to take over their island many times in the past. Heck, maybe I should get a check from the U.S. government too since I'm also part German and both Irish and German immigrants were treated pretty poorly in the 1800's. Maybe U.S. citizens should get reparations checks from England if they can prove their ancestors were killed during the Revolutionary War. See what nonsense it is? I mean, where does it stop?