In the last few weeks, Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration have attempted to mend fences. We have seen the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The EPA has taken over the job of issuing air permits in Texas, a state which I can tell you from personal experience has been unable to “just say no” to polluting industries. Hack, hack.
Wheeze. There, now that I can breathe again----
Obama has also pledged to support a UN resolution in support of indigenous people. This measure had been opposed by some of the world’s biggest (colonial) superpowers, including the US, Australia and Canada---all countries with large, oppressed native populations.
The right wing has been predictably hostile.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who has been particularly critical of the Pigford claims process, expressed concern about the potential implications of the U.N. document on indigenous peoples. He said he's curious what "special rights" the document could convey.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/24/obama-reversal-indigenous-peoples-stirs-concern-legal-claims/ Special rights. Hmmm. Would he be referring to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which most of the immigrants on our shores possessed at the same time that Native Americans were being driven from their land, starved and slaughtered? Here are some of the
special moments in the history of our country.
Trail of Tears In 1829, gold was discovered in parts of North Georgia which had been owned by Cherokees for generations. Almost immediately, the U.S. government began conspiring to steal the natives’ land. In 1838, 13,000 Cherokees---men, women and children---- were rounded up, herded into containment camps and finally forced to march for a thousand miles in winter to their new “home” in Oklahoma. Four thousand died of disease, starvation, exposure and violence along the way. Their farms were given to white Americans in a lottery. The other southern nations including the Choctaw, Seminole, Creek and Chickasaw were also resettled---sometimes forcibly---in order to make way for immigrant settlers.
"I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west....On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure..."
Private John G. Burnett
Captain Abraham McClellan's Company,
2nd Regiment, 2nd Brigade, Mounted Infantry
Cherokee Indian Removal 1838-39
http://www.powersource.com/cocinc/history/trail.htm Sand Creek Massacre In 1858, gold was discovered on land that had been deeded to the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Once again, the U.S. government took action to deprive the natives of their land. In 1864, US Army Colonel John Chivington ordered his men to slaughter a group of 800 Cheyenne---mostly women, children and men too old to fight---who had gathered to discuss a peace treaty.
All manner of depredations were inflicted on their persons, they were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word...worse mutilated than any I ever saw before, the women all cut to pieces.... hildren two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors.
John S. Smith, interpreter
http://www.operationmorningstar.org/sand_creek_massacre.htm Wounded Knee Massacre In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota. This lead to usual round of treaty breaking and forced resettlement. Some of the natives resisted the theft of their ancestral lands. In 1890, US troops attacked a group of Lakota that largely consisted of women and children.
"There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce...A mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing...The women as they were fleeing with their babies were killed together, shot right through...and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys...came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there."
Edward S. Godfrey; Captain; commanded Co. D of the Seventh Cavalry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_MassacreRep. Peter King and Fox News claim to be alarmed at the thought of the financial cost of reparations. There they go, thinking only about gold. That was what started all the violence in the first place.
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