A native man asks democrats

[Kire]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[cleanheart.396]

1. Treaty Rights

   I am a Black woman. I, unlike many of my people, do not
aspire to programs, funding, or inclusion into the
mainstream. But I know you will not be able to make any
headway unless you join with others in a massive, rank and
file movement of all people to wards a lifestyle which is the
antithesis of capitalism, etc. Obviously, this is not going to
be possible from a party perspective because most democrats
still have faith in the present system.  I, like you, do not.
But it does have a few advantages. One is that it insists on a
whole cross-section of people to fight for something before it
is won. But will there be a place for me in a Native American
country any more than it is country ruled by the descendants
of Europeans?
   I ask this, because you may not realize it, but you sound
like you believe land is something which can really be owned,
and it's not. You don't believe you've assimilated because you
don't want funding, hand-outs, etc., just your property rights
returned. But you have assimilated in the sense that you are
now mimicking the people who took your home from you. Those
treaties were a farce. I say this because they took the land
by brute force, because there is no legal way to take a home
from someone else, no matter how many contracts, treaties, or
deeds you own. The fact that you really think they will really
give them back to you by way of vote or lobby is a delusion.
Not to mention the fact that before they convinced you,
contrary to your own belief, that land could be owned, you
had no problem with sharing it. Just because someone abuses
you doesn't mean that you take into yourself the very beliefs
that caused the abuse in the first place. Instead, it becomes
your responsibility to find a better way. Why? Because based
on the beliefs which created your lifestyle, you are better
equipped to find a better way than anyone else at that time
in history.
   Being of African ancestry, I realized long ago that I
would never get my home back, not in the way it was when my
ancestors were snatched from it. But letting go of this gave
me a greater vision, a vision of a different world, a world
I'd have to fashion with others based on the good that each
nation of the world has discovered in themselves, their
culture, their spiritual and practical philosophies, and the
lessons learned from their grossest errors. No one culture
can possibly design the best kind of world. It takes people
from all cultures to achieve the best possible solutions to
human problems, based on the lessons of ALL histories. This
is why cultures fail, because they are singular in nature. We
must take the good from all cultures and leave the rest. 
   At first, I didn't want to face this because working for a
world where what happened to Native Americans, Blacks, and
every single race in the world, could never happen again, was
a great deal more difficult than making demands on a political
system who had absolutely no intention of doing what was
right. But if I kept demanding, kept getting angry because
either they ignored me, or gave me something (like
integration) just to take it right back after they felt I was
pacified, then I could keep blaming them. I would never have
to see them the way they truly are, and as long as I didn't,
I'd never be able to figure out how myself and others could
design a new theory based on what we had learned DID NOT
work, along with a program which could help people to deal
with the character defects that grow out of suffering.  It is
that suffering which causes disasters like the Slave Trade;
the Slaughter, robbery, and literal incarceration of Native
Americans; The Jewish Holocaust, etc. The list is endless.
   The people who took from you came here determined never to
be on the bottom again, and racism allowed them to feel it was
alright if we were on the bottom.  But suffering was the
primary cause, and it has caused every major catastrophe in
human history. Politics, racism, classism, are just policies
people hide behind to justify the terror and rage which makes
them commit atrocities against others.
   This will not be easy for you to digest, if you digest it
at all. Because designing a better world, one better than the
one of your ancestors (it wasn't perfect or what happened
couldn't have happened)requires constructive criticism of
one's self and one's culture; and more importantly it
requires a new vision, one honed from everything you've
learned about yourself and everything else, in every lifetime
you've lived. Sadly, most of us don't have that kind of
courage. I didn't either until I saw that I had no choice;
that my destiny was perhaps not to "melt" into the
melting pot, but to create another kind of "pot"
with different ingredients, one that is not forged in all
kinds of conflicts, internal and external, which creates
hatred, rage, and the compulsion to "win" at all
costs. A compulsion that translated into religious, racial,
and cultural elitism, giving one culture the right to murder
whomever they chose. So that, the American constitution,
became the American KKKonstitution.
   A new vision on which you work with other like-minded
people of all races to achieve, has the power to restore the
land to your people in a way they never had it before. You
may not see that day in your present consciousness, but your
descendants will, and someday, so will you. You are right.
You don't need their "table." No sane, thinking
person, dedicated to caring for themselves, others, and the
earth, could even stomach trying to substitute what we have
now for real life systems created by people who are willing
to change themselves, and the faulty aspects of old
perspectives before they would even assume they could create
something better than what exists now.
   I took the time to tell you this because I feel that among
Native Americans exists the most progressive perspective in
terms of just knowing that it is absolutely suicidal for
anyone, not just Native Americans and Blacks, to mainstream
themselves into the toxic American mainstream. I hear you.

[Iktomiwicasa]

2. Check your PM's eom