You have driven away our game and our means of livelihood out of the country, until now we have nothing left that is valuable except the hills that you ask us to give up... The earth is full of minerals of all kinds, and on the earth the ground is covered with forests of heavy pine, and when we give these up to the Great Father we know that
we give up the last thing that is valuable either to us or the white people."
~ White Ghost ~
* Incorrectly re-telling HISTORY to benefit the white, "courageous" and "patriotic" invaders is an effective method of propaganda and brainwashing. The United States consistently lied about the Native
peoples character, actions and intentions - all the while building themselves up and justifying their atrocious acts. Painting them as uncivilized, godless wildmen was an prevailing theme throughout most history books, textbooks, movies, and newspaper accounts. Yellow Wolf, Nez Perce, said "The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told."
"I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian."
~ President Theodore Roosevelt ~ (1858-1919)
* DEHUMANIZING Indians - Are Indians really people? Are they truly worthy of the same laws and respect given to other human beings? In 1879 this issues was debated until US District Court Judge Elmer
Dundy ruled that Indians were indeed "persons within the meaning of the law" and therefore had legal rights such as protection from unjust custody and removal from property. Though the ruling was on
the lawbooks, most communities continued to deny Indians their rights and liberties and oppose the ruling. Earlier, on July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment of the US
Constitution gave equal rights to all NON-INDIAN men, women, and children. According to the United States, Indians are inferior to other ethnic races.
"Our treatment of Indians... still affects the national consciousness... It seems a basic requirement to study the history of Indian people. Only through this study can we as a nation do what must be done if our
treatment of the American Indian is not to be marked down for all time as a national disgrace."
- John F. Kennedy ~
* FALSE IMPRISONMENT - Hundreds of thousands of Native people were rounded up, herded thousands of miles westward and placed in
makeshift camps for months and even years. For most, the camps were unsanitary and offering little to know shelter, food, medicine, or fuel for heat and for cooking whatever was given - or found. The POW's were often dispensed rotted meat and vegetables for food, and died from starvation, exposure, disease and untreated medical emergencies.
* ENSLAVEMENT - Christopher Columbus alone is thought to have enslaved over 5,000 indigenous people. The Pilgrims and Puritans
owned thousands of Native slaves also.
"We speak of Christopher Columbus being the
discoverer of America, although
millions of human beings had occupied the
continent for untold ages."
~T.W. Davenport~, Indian Agent in Oregon, 1850
* TAXES - Christopher Columbus demanded work from the indigenous people he invaded. If the people refused, or if they brought in less than they were supposed to, Columbus and his mofia men would cut off their noses, ears or fingers and send the Natives back to their people to serve as an example of what would happen if their quota wasn't met.
* RESERVATION PROPERTY - Most reservation land is owned by the United States and held in "trust" for the Native people. Unlike
property privately owned by other US citizens, reservation land is not theirs
to do with as they please. The US can - and does - mine the ground underneath for such things as uranium (and have consequently polluted lakes, rivers and personal water) and, for most, the land cannot be used as collateral to buy a new home or a car. Since the property is held in trust (though it was promised in treaty after treaty that the
Native people would have their own land - to do with as they please) the US acts as guardians of the reservations and people living upon the property must jump through red tape any time they need to do something on the "tribal" land.
* GLORIFYING the INVADERS and CONQUERORS - Christopher Columbus was a tyrant slave trading extortionist who caused the death of one-third of the Indian population that he invaded. The Spanish later committed
horrendous acts against the indigenous people that included roasting them on spits, using mutilated pieces of children as dog food, hanging people for no reason, using them as target practice, and giving the Native people diseases infected with smallpox. Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish missionary described a day when the Spanish raped, beheaded and mutilated nearly 3000
people: "The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed
dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment. They used nursing infants for dog food."
"When the Spaniards had collected a great deal of gold from the Indians, they shut them up in three big houses, crowding in as many as they could, then set fire to the houses, burning alive all that were in them, yet those Indians had given no cause nor made any resistance."
~ Bartolome' de Casas ~ Destruction of the Indies
While the Spanish thought of Native Americans as disposable slaves, the English considered them savage devil-worshipers who
required converting, civilizing, conquering and/or exterminating. Native people were hunted down with dogs, kidnapped or starved
to death after Englishmen destroyed food and villages. Even President Andrew Jackson, in 1814, "supervised the mutilation of 800 or more Creek Indian corpses �?the bodies of
men, women and children that [his troops] had massacred �?cutting off their noses to count and preserve a record of the dead, slicing long strips of flesh from their bodies to tan and turn into bridle reins."
Across the country, and especially during the 1800's, newspapers ran with headlines exclaiming "Exterminate Them," and even
Frank L. Baum, the eventual beloved author of the Wizard of Oz, published an editorial calling for the extermination of the Indians.
* CELEBRATING the ATROCITIES: The United States has two national holidays on the federal books that directly relate to the Native people: the first: Columbus Day and the other in honor of the first "friendly" union between the Pilgrims and the Indians, which, in reality, was not a friendly feast of thanks, but a meeting over land.
Both "holidays" are celebrations of genocide - not patriotic brotherhood or peace.
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