I'm sad about the American Indians.

[amitten]

America was rotten from the start. We're living on stolen land.

Manifest destiny, my ass.

[file83]

1. You wouldn't happen to be reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History"?

[amitten]

3. No. I was just thinking about the Indians today, for no reason.

Everyone acts so surprised when our military behaves unjustly--like in Iraq. But our country was founded on just such unjust acts.

Part of why I could never be a true patriot. I can't justify the acts committed in the name of "Manifest Destiny". What a bullshit excuse for taking over a country and ruining several existing cultures.

[NMMNG]

7. I began to get depressed from the start of that book

Just seeing what bastards Columbus and his crew were, then what the original settlers did, and so on. It's enough to make an empathetic person's heart implode.

[file83]

15. The thing that I learned was how from the very beginning and

throughout the entire "development" of our country, there was a financial "elite" dividing us, manipulating us, and exploiting us (not to mentioned plotting genocide on the native American population). What really pisses me off about the ignorance of many people today is that so many people laugh and scoff at me when I talk about how the modern day global financial "elite" are still doing the same things to us today: dividing, manipulating, exploiting. People seem to think that "democracy" has suddendly figured out how to make everything "right" and that the "elite" have little influence on global/domestic policy. To make the suggestion of an "elite" today people call that the rantings of a "conspiracy theorist". WTF? Strange how the concept is acceptable in the study of history but unacceptable for current events.

[BikeWriter]

2. The American Holocaust.

[amitten]

4. Yep. Nothing to be 'proud' of, that's for sure. n/t

[BikeWriter]

5. The eyewitness accounts of Bartolome de Las Casas...

a Spanish priest, are proof of that!

[amitten]

6. God, I don't even want to know.

So freaking depressing.

[Richardo]

21. .

self delete.

[Beware the Beast Man]

17. But....but...Paul Harvey said

that giving smallpox-infected blankets to native American's is what made this country great!


I'm so confused... :cry:





:sarcasm:

[MrSlayer]

8. I thought they had the right idea.

Spend maybe 20 hours a week securing food and shelter and the rest of the time you get to dance and smoke the peace pipe and tell stories. Who were the real savages?

[pokerfan]

9. Where did the white man go wrong?

"When white man found the land, Indians were running it. No taxes, no debt, plenty buffalo, plenty beaver, women did all the work, medicine man free, Indian man spent all day hunting and fishing, all night having sex."

"Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve system like that!"

[Heidi]

13. Do you really believe that's how it was?

Stompdance is a sacred and ceremonial event, not an everyday thing. Storytelling is part of the oral tradition of many groups that have (or had) no written language, and not a "let the good times roll" sort of thing. I hope you haven't bought into the whole Kevin Costner-esque romanticism of what it was (or is) to be indian.

[MrSlayer]

14. I certainly meant no offense.

I wasn't trying to make light of or belittle the ceremonies in any way. Nor was I disparaging the use of oral history. I think it gives you a greater sense of community. It was just a better way of life in a lot of ways.

[4morewars]

10. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"

You probably don't want to read that one either.

[fishwax]

28. goddam that's a good book

incredible stuff. Not happy reading, but well worth it, imo.

[wildhorses]

11. thanks for recognizing the fact...

I hang onto the fact that I have Cherokee and Creek blood so I have some shred of a claim to this place but DAMN it's in such a mess...who wants it anymore?

[Peter Frank]

12. First stolen land...

...then stolen ballots.

[Beware the Beast Man]

16. This comes up every year around this time here in Cleveland.

And of course, no one really cares. :(

Good thing I don't like baseball, yet alone the Tribe.

[johnnie]

18. Nothing ever changes

Humans have been slaughtering humans since the dawn of man. I have a feeling that if the "white man" didn't come here back then, eventually someone would have. And chances are, looking back through history, it would have probably been a battle either way.

[amitten]

22. Yeah, but Americans love to go on and on about how just and

righteous we are as a nation.

Bullshit. We're no "holier" than the rest.

[RedCloud]

19. The silenced Majority

Try to imagine 100,000,000 more people from Alaska to Ushuaia being allowed to live and multiply through the centuries.

Genocide tips the balance a different way.

I have estimated the cost of European aggression in human lives for the original inhabitants of North and South America as over 100,000,000 in five centuries.

You could make a similar claim about those stolen against their will from Africa and the Far East as being over 100,000,000.

[Richardo]

20. .

Never mind. Overwrought liberal guilt brings out the worst in me. Sorry.

[amitten]

23. I don't feel guilt. I didn't do it. I just think it was certainly a bad

start for a supposedly free, just, and 'moral' country.

[cssmall]

24. When people forget that Native Americans had treaties

and definite nations, they believe Toqueville. Those were lies plain and simple. They had nations, they had DEFINITE cultural boundries that are easily construed as being part of a national or group mentality. They developed DIFFERENTLY, but remember we did'em a favor and gave'em God so that they savages wouldn't have to keep moving and praying to the animal spirits (which they don't have, of course) :sarcasm:

[skygazer]

25. It is, unfortunately, the story of mankind

And in truth, native tribes themselves warred with each other and stole land from each other and drove each other out of various areas. That's not said to excuse what white Europeans did because of course, they did it on a far vaster scale with superior weapons and technology.

But the point remains that wherever human habitation has developed, people have fought and squabbled and killed each other for more land, more room, more resources, more wealth, more prestige, etc. It happened in Europe and in Africa and across the islands of the Pacific and Atlantic.

Human beings are savage animals - they just have larger brains than other animals and so can kill far more efficiently. And there seems to be some sort of genetic need to spread out and grab more. Sometimes I don't really think we've evolved that far at all.

(As an aside, I DO feel a sort of collective guilt about the fate of the American Indian. My great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War. He fought for four long years in a war to end slavery - though I have no idea what his views on slavery were - and then went west to kill indians. Always struck me as bizarre. How could he watch and participate in the freeing of one group of people and then do the same in the subjugation and attempted destruction of another? His involvement in that makes me feel ashamed of my heritage and my blood while at the same time, I feel pride in his participation in the other. Strange feelings...)

[amitten]

26. My problem is the whole American 'holier-than-thou" attitude

about our country.

I know that war and devastation have existed since the beginning of man (gotta LOVE that testosterone magic). But what I hate is that the average American seems to think that the country was founded with honor, and continues to exist in some state of honor, when in fact we're just as dirty and greedy and underhanded as the rest of the world.

Our military does (and always has done) all kinds of rotten immoral crap. But then we make excuses for it, using words like "manifest destiny", and "spreading democracy". Bull. Shit. It's greed, pure and simple.

[DerekG]

27. Read Stannard's "American Holocaust" for the full horror story

Having read it, I perceive our 500 year assault on the American Indian to be the greatest crime in modern history.

I fear that by the time the neocons finish giving us the razzle dazzle, the Indians will respond to our tales of woe with, "Welcome to the club."