Indian genocide without the apple pie

Wovoka, a Paiute Prophet, called for a unification of tribes. This was troubling to the US government....how dare those Indians practice their beliefs! The Ghost Dance was the core issue of this unification and something that the United States had to stop. When Sioux chiefs, such as Sitting Bull, took up the movement they were slaughtered.

When the tribes, unifying in this Spiritual movement, headed to Wounded Knee, for supplies, they were slaughtered. Women, children, infants and Elders were slaughtered for practicing their beliefs. That is wrong!

In this country Indians were slaughtered for their Spiritual beliefs.

Each day, we still dance our Ghost Dance, in our hearts and one day will do so on the land.

I wonder how many people in this country (even on this message board) could "guess" when the right of religious freedom was "granted" to Indians -- WITHOUT LOOKING IT UP.

When did the involuntary sterilization of Indian women stop?

When did the process of adopting Indian children out to white families stop?

What do these three questions have to do with genocide as it is defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?

When I became aware of these things I wept. This was monstrous and inexcusable. Along with the many other atrocities along the way.

We will get nowhere with the present arrogant leadership. It must wait for sanity to return to America. The spirit of America is kind. The present leadership is troubling to this spirit. This WILL change, and the Spirit will triumph!

'They' prefer the 'Hollywood' version.

Thank you for understanding....it is NDN time to no longer sit at the back of the bus.

People in this country rely on a leadership that laughs at them, behind their backs.

NDNs have always known the true nature of this government.

We were/are the 'canarie' in the mines....the only thing is that we are a tough bunch and won't go away.

RestofUs, I appreciate your sentiment, but frankly, at this point it is NOT the current administration that breaks my heart. It is the people. Up until about 1980, I still had a modicum of faith in the American people as a kind-hearted people. But ever since Reagan began poisoning the country with the ethic of I-meism and greed, this country has gone so rapidly downhill, I cannot believe it.

And here I truly intend no offense: but aren't you the same person who was just "scolding" two Indian people on another thread? And making unfounded charges and accusations without backing them up with any sort of "evidence"?

You say when you became aware of these things, you wept.

But still you demonstrate no awareness of those things.
When were American Indians granted freedom of religion?
When did the involuntary sterilization of Indian women stop? Can we be sure it has ever stopped?
When did they stop adopting Indian children out?

More importantly, what does this mean to you? What purpose do tears serve if they do not lead to action? And by action, I don't necessarily mean "political" action. Especially when it comes to Indian issues because there especially, I do not see any political remedies nor do I see that politics are as much the problem. I think the problem is denial amongst the American people and their absolute refusal to come to terms that the ground they walk on is saturated in Indian blood. And most important: that they ALL every one of them continue to profit from the genocide that clear-cut the path for their lives here.

Buffy St Marie said it best in the 60s and I do not see that anything in this regard has improved since then. These lyrics are the best summary of my own personal sadness I've ever seen.



My Country 'Tis of thy People You're Dying
w/m © Buffy Sainte-Marie
© Gypsy Boy Music
All Rights Reserved



Now that your big eyes are finally opened.
Now that you're wondering, "How must they feel?"
Meaning them that you've chased cross America's movie screens;
Now that you're wondering, "How can it be real?"
That the ones you've called colorful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda,
They starve in their splendour.
You asked for our comment, I simply will render:
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the long houses “breed superstition”
You force us to send our children away
To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions
Forbid them their languages;
Then further say that American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe and stress
That the nations of leeches who conquered this land
Were the biggest, and bravest, and boldest, and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country's birth?
Of the preachers who lied?
How the Bill of Rights failed?
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud over Kinzua mud?
Or of brave Unlce Sam in Alaska this year?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Hear how the bargain was made for West,
With her shivering children in zero degrees.
" Blankets for your land" - so the treaties attest.
Oh well, blankets for land, that's a bargain indeed.
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out
And the history books censored
A hundred years of your statesmen
say, "It's better this way".
But a few of the conquered have somehow survived
And their blood runs the redder
Though genes have been paled.
From the Grand Canyon's caverns
To Craven's sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York,
The white nation fattens while other grow lean.
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean:
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

The past it just crumbled; the future just threatens
Our life blood is shut up in your chemical tanks,
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hand
And surprise in your eyes, that we're lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilisation you brought us
The lessons you've taught us;
The ruin you've wrought us;
Oh see what our trust in America got us.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity.
Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws.
Now that my life's to be known as your heritage.
Now that even the graves have been robbed.
Now that our own chosen way is your novelty.
Hands on our hearts
We salute you your victory:
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy.
Pitying your blindness; How you never see -
that the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory,
Were never no more than buzzards & crows:
Pushed some wrens from their nest;
Stole their eggs; changed their story.
The mockingbird sings it;
It's all that she knows.
" Oh what can I do?", say a powerless few.
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye:
Can't you see how their poverty's profiting you?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

I don't know what I can do beyond what I've done. I first became friends with an indian woman, Elizabeth, when I was about 21. We met at work in NCR in Rancho Bernardo CA. We became close friends and more, and I was invited by her parents to come to dinner on the Rincon Reservation near Escondido.

I met her mother, and her father the tribes Bruho. He liked me and said I had his blessing to date his daughter. I had to eat the traditional meal of rattlesnake, and cows stomach soup. It was ok, but they laughed at my reaction when they told me of the ingredients.

Elizabeth, nicknamed "Blackie" by her father, had been severely burned as a child and hid the scars she had. She had been betrothed to her now divorced husband at an early age and had no choice by tradition.

He was a brutal and cruel man, and he continued to threaten "Blackie" and her two children for leaving him. I pledged to protect her, and did my best. We went to many ceromonies, and I learned about conditions on the reservation. The father had worked for a long time on the state roads and so did many in the tribe. They had little but were generous with visitors.

The husband came drunk to her house one night when I wasn't there, and attacked her with a knife. She survived because of her fierce spirit to protect her children.

Before I could do anything, this man was struck with a massive heart attack, and was visited by the father in the hospital. Blackie told me what her father said to him; "That was just a "taste" of what will happen to you if you ever threaten my daughter again"! He recovered and disappeared never to return.

Blackie and I remained close friends for years, before I left to follow my spiritual path elsewhere. I have always loved her and her people, and try to buy from, and support the American Indian causes when ever my finances permit.

I told you this story so you will know I have some connection emotionally to your people, and I do what I can.

'....Blackie told me what her father said to him; "That was just a "taste" of what will happen to you if you ever threaten my daughter again"! He recovered and disappeared never to return...."


do you understand that statement, the genesis of it?

I had spoken with her father before this incident and he told me he had a relationship with the spirits. He had become unpopular with some in the tribe when the "Christian missionarys" had converted many in the tribe to Christianity. They were Seventh Day Adventists and were of the "Holy Roller" type. He criticized their untrained association with "spirits" and the danger of possession by negative entities.

He said he personally had spoken with "Chamuka", and didn't like him. The Ex-Husband apparently understood what had happened, and I didn't ask, but "guessed".

Please tell me what you know of this if you would.

What was done to the Native Americans is very much the history of the world..........the most powerful and greedy take by any means. Sadly, the current world is not so changed and seems doomed to continue repeating the history we can't seem to learn from.

"I think the problem is denial amongst the American people and their absolute refusal to come to terms that the ground they walk on is saturated in Indian blood." tombstoned

the crux of the matter....they fear their weakness and are not happy to have those transgressions called out

It is in vogue to be 'Spiritual', to read about Hopi belief and to 'become' one with the blood....they just don't understand that we live this, it is not under our skin, it is of our skin....

I continue to think its attention span and that has to do with Reagan's meism ...

People just don;t care if it doesn;t directly affect them

They want more money without thinking what it means --- and they could care a less about their fellow men and women...

Its sick if you ask me

I don't know the answers to those questions that you and Tombstoned asked. I was not trying to be in "vogue", when I was with Blackie. I am aware that no one who is not indian can fully understand what has been done to your people.

I saw strength, and beauty in the spirit of Blackie and her people. Her father had a sense of humor, in spite of what they had been reduced to. Buffy Saint Marie was the first Native American singer that spoke of the characterization of Native Americans as "Noble Savages", I also saw that they were just people who had been treated horribly, and were fighting to hold on to their traditions and beliefs in the face of continous efforts to eradicate their culture. Even the ex-husbands alcoholism and cruelty was part of the result of this ongoing persecution.

Now you know why I started this thread.

*ding*ding*ding*

and over at the apple pie, the insanity continues

so....let the Un-insanity begin....(I'm losing track of what goes where here....please forgive mis-placed post and consider it a treasure hunt)

http://www.dickshovel.com/lsa22.html

I was there.©
by Marsha Freeman
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am a white woman, and I was in Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee. The atrocities that were committed were perpetuated by the FBI and the GOONs. I am a lawyer's daughter, and that same lawyer was a Special Agent for J. Edgar Hoover, and served his country as a paratrooper in Korea. I understand the workings of law. Civil injustice is civil injustice. Please pardon Peltier. Let there be SOME justice in this land.

I was there. Rosebud, South Dakota, Summer 1974. There were rumblings all around. Some like the buzzing of the bee, not intimidating. Others were loud, evil grumblings; sounds like the ones attributed to angry buffalo protecting their young. I was completely out of place - blonde, blue-eyed, seventeen, and fresh from the small town world of North Carolina.

I wasn't a country bumpkin, though. I had been well educated by my better-educated father. He saw to it that I looked at the world through unjudging eyes. I knew that what I heard and saw was unjust and unfair. I had known it since I was a small child and had seen most Americans 19th Century heroes depicted on the television engaged in atrocities against our Native brethren. It was appalling to me that Whites felt it necessary to engage in that vehement type of discrimination - against any other people. I just wasn't brought up to believe that I was superior to anyone of any race. It was a sign of the times, I suppose. My parents had never taught me to think the way others around me thought. I went into this new adventure with open eyes and an open mind.

I hadn't aimed for South Dakota, at all. I had been in California visiting some friends, and was returning to my home. I saw a nerdy guy on the highway hitch hiking, and picked him up. He was going to South Dakota - to the first official Sun Dance since the occupation of this country by outsiders. He was a student at UC Berkley, working on his Master's thesis in Sociology. It sounded good to me, so I took him. I went through beautiful countrysides and long well built highways - to a point. The highways ended at the reservation border. There were broken-down trailers and cabins, homes built out of road signs and debris. The conditions of living were hard to accept, for this middle-class southern girl. But, what I found when I arrived at Crow Dog's Paradise changed the way I looked at the world forever.

It had nothing to do with the outside toilets - my grandmother had an outhouse for most of her life. It had nothing to do with the carrying of water from a distant well. It had to do with the spirit and pride of those around me, and a culture that was not going to be rubbed out because other people could not accept it. The People were close to Nature, as man was intended to be. They strove to live with it, encourage it, be part of it, in a way I had never encountered. I knew the woods, the ways of animals and plants. My grandmother had also been close to the Earth, and took the time to tell me of the old-fashioned Appalachian ways that lived through her. The People were a bit different in their approach, but the result was the same. Learn how Mother Earth operates, and help to take care of her, and she will provide. Simple idea.

I was privileged beyond belief. I was taken under the wing of a tall, well-made, proud man. He was Henry Crow Dog. I had startled him by following him into the woods late at night. He said he had never been followed into the woods by a white woman. He hadn't heard me behind him. I didn't know whether he had taken to me because of my gift for woodsiness, or just out of fear of whites. He did start to tell me about when he was a boy, and there were no whites. I had always had the utmost respect for older people, and found him to be most gracious. He took me through the woods to meet people and talked to them about the affairs going on around us. Some were a little concerned that I was white, and would speak in Lakota, knowing I would not understand. With a little assurance, they spoke fearfully of law-enforcement 'officials' and other who had no business being on sovereign ground. I was taken to a place where there were tanks tracks on the ground. I saw the bloodstains where people had fallen when murdered. I was allowed to participate in the sweat lodge, and other components of the religious ceremonies taking place.

Crow Dog's wife, Mary Gertrude, also took me under her wing. I was told about the expectations of a girl's place in the village, and her duties to her community. I helped with the meals, the children and the Medic. I earned the right to be a part of the community and was given a lawful place within it and a Lakota name. Grandpa arranged for me to be formally adopted when the Medicine men were there. I met Russell Means, Leonard Crow Dog, Clyde Bellecourt, Dennis Banks and several others. I learned that Ron Rosen, the Medic, was here to go on his first vision quest, a right he had earned by his contributions to this wonderful community. I was taught to make tobacco ties for him and others for their quest. I learned to find and pick the finest wild sage. I bathed in the clearest lakes with the other girls my age. This was all fascinating to me.

The longer I stayed, the more I learned. I heard talk of the GOONs in Pine Ridge. I heard talk of the FBI's incarceration of people who just wanted to be heard, and their culture appreciated for its simple beauty. I heard talk of the National Guard's tanks invading Indian land, where they had no right to be. Then, one day, it was no longer talk. I saw the body of a man who had been shot in Pine Ridge by a Native police officer. He had done nothing, was not even armed at the time. I was appalled by the nonchalant attitude of those designated as 'officers' at their murder of an unarmed citizen. Yes, I said Citizen. He had not been treated as one. I saw the remains of a building that had been the subject of a bombing late one night. All of the people inside had been killed, children included. My views were permanently stained.

I went home to North Carolina in the fall. I had sold my car to someone who needed it far more than I did. I had learned to birth babies, sew gunshot and knife wounds, and to be a part of something worthwhile. I learned to distrust law-enforcement officials-people I had grown up with. After all, my father was an attorney, an ex-FBI agent. Labels that had taken on a completely different meaning for me. I had learned skepticism, and distrust of what I knew to be true. I understood the meaning of friendship and family, though, in an entirely new light.

Fortunately, my newfound friend Ron Rosen kept in touch with me by mail and phone for years after that summer. He married and became a doctor in Denver. He told me about some of the further atrocities going on in Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee and Rosebud, as well as other places. I also heard from my friend Barbara Eagle on occasion for some time. She and I had experienced a lot of growing and learning together.

I still felt disconnected to the world I had come back to, long after my oldest daughter was born. She was raised differently from me. When she was killed in 1993, she had achieved a sense of self and pride most people never attain. I had instilled the belief that we are all equals in an unequal world in her. It can happen, I had discovered through her.
I can not change the way the world works. I still don't know why people can not accept that others are different from themselves, and appreciate the differences for what they are. I try to instill that appreciation in my children and grand child. I wish that Henry Crow Dog was still alive to introduce them to. I have spent most of my adult life trying to shape the way the children I have contact with think of people different from them selves. For, they can change the world.

TWISTED FOOTNOTE TO WOUNDED KNEE
Looking Back at Wounded Knee 1890
by Professor Robert Venables, Senior Lecturer
Rural Sociology Department., Cornell University
published in "Northeast Indian Quarterly" Spring 1990
of Cornell University's American Indian Studies Program


One hundred years ago, on December 29, 1890, in a ravine near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, the U.S. Army, supported by American Indian mercenaries, slaughtered approximately 300 Lakota men, women and children -- 75 percent of Big Foot's Lakota community. Two-thirds of the massacred Lakotas were women and children. Only 31 of the 470 soldiers were killed, many by "friendly fire" of fellow soldiers.

Big Foot's Lakota followers had already surrendered when they were brought to Wounded Knee by the army. While the Lakota warriors were being disarmed, fighting broke out. Any real resistance on the part of the warriors was quickly over. But atrocities escalated as the U.S. troops turned their weapons -- including four rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns -- against clearly defeated warriors and innocent women, children and old men. Women and children trying to escape were pursued and slaughtered. An official U.S. report noted that "the bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two miles from the scene of the encounter."

The following quotes were printed in "The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer," a weekly newspaper published in Aberdeen, South Dakota. The first was published immediately after Sitting Bull's assasination by Indian Police Dec. 15, 1890.

"Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.

"He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.

"The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.

"We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America."
The editorial begins ambivalently, but concludes by calling for the extermination of American Indians.

The editor and publisher of "The Aberdeen Pioneer" who advocated genocide is well known: his name is L. Frank Baum. A decade later, his book "The Wizard of Oz" (1900) would become a classic. As you [re]read Baum's editorial, you may also recall that last year, 1989, was the 50th anniversary of the MGM version of this children's book.

On December 20, the next editorial, notable for the irony it offers, is separated from the first only by a graphic line:


"On Christmas day the Nativity of Christ is observed. "The Kris Kringle or, Santa Claus, is a relic of the ancient Yule Feast, so that the festival of Christmas is a curious mingling of ancient heathen and Christian customs, albeit a very pleasing and satisfactory celebration to the people of today.

"With this issue it is a pleasant duty for us to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas."
On January 3, 1891 (after the Wounded Knee massacre) "The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer" published another editorial:


"The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.

"The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.

"An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that `when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."
I first obtained a microfilm copy of Baum's Saturday Pioneer in 1976, believing that I would probably find editorials which protested the massacre of Wounded Knee. After all, what else would one expect from the original Wizard. After mulling over the editorials for fourteen years, I must admit to the reader that I still love both the books and the movie.

But what of L. Frank Baum? I've tried to read his editorials as satire or parody -- even as proto-Monty Python. They aren't.

The editorials at points are curiously ambivalent -- the description of Sitting Bull, for example. But their core message is genocide. Like so many humans who are capable of uttering and doing the unthinkable, L. Frank Baum was in many respects a sensitive and loving man. But I don't believe it is enough to say that his editorials are an indication of how, in Baum's era, calls for genocide were not abberations, that they were widely held, and that they were public.

I have instead been haunted by a hypothetical parallel: imagine what the reaction would be if a former Nazi newspaper editor who had advocated the "Final Solution" had, ten years after World War II, published a children's book in Germany. Imagine that this author and this children's book became world famous. Imagine a movie, with wonderful music.

All this is possible -- if Germany had won the war.

Five Twists
(Commentary on Twisted Footnotes to Wounded Knee by David Yarrow)


Tragic, regrettable irony has further astonishing twists.

L. Frank Baum was from Chittenango, NY, and lived there when he published "The Wizard of Oz." Chittenango is at the crossing of Routes 5 & 13, 13 miles east of Syracuse, at the Heart of the Empire State. Today, Chittenango has a yellow brick sidewalk, and every year a Wizard of Oz parade.

L. Frank Baum married a young woman from Fayetteville, 7 miles east of Syracuse. They wed in the parlor of his financee's home at the corner of Genesee and Walnut Sts.

Now the first twist:

Baum's mother-in-law was Mathilde Joslyn Gage, a foremother of modern feminism, one of the Trinity of the Three Sisters who led women's rights to victory in America.

In 1851 the third national women's rights convention was held in Syracuse, the Salt City, built by the Onondaga Salt Springs Reservation. In ancient culture, salt was a power of Virgins -- dedicated to The Mother; in Tarot, the High Priestess sits on a cubic crystal of salt.

In 1851 in the Salt City, for the first time, Mathilde joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony on a platform. At age 26, Mathilde was the youngest woman to speak, yet her speech was printed as the new movement's literature. Together, these Three Sisters led Womens' Sufferage to enfranchise women -- something the Founding Fathers left out.

For 50 years Mathilde Joslyn Gage sustained this quality of leadership, not only in rhetoric, but also strategy, theory and research. After the victory, Susan, Elizabeth and Mathilde wrote "The History of Women's Suffrage."

In 1893, at age 67, Mathilde published her life's research of women in ancient human civilizations -- and the challenges to women in modern society. In "Women, Church and State" Mathilde insisted the real issue women face isn't the right to vote, nor is their real enemy the State. Our struggle, she said, is for possession of our souls, and our children's souls; our true opponent is all-male Church hierarchy.

This was too radical for the Christian Temperance sisters of Mathilde's age.

Now comes the second twist:

Mathilde Joslyn Gage was an Honorary Member of the Haudenosaunee Council of Clanmothers -- an honored guest at theOnondaga Nation south of Syracuse. Onondaga is still Firekeeper of Six Nations Confederacy Grand Council.

The Onondagas' matrilineal society gives women title to family name, land, and each Chief's Council seat. Clanmothers administer the selection of a Chief, and can order his removal; their Council can veto a decision of the Chiefs to go to war.

Mathilde didn't only theorize on women's role. She participated in North America's oldest surviving matrilineal society and government.

And a third twist:

The Six Nations Confederacy was both inspiration and model for the Founding Fathers to declare liberty from Britain's King, and establish the United States of America. Mathilde herself wrote this in "Women, Church and State."

As early as 1854, at the first continental meeting of the colonies called by Ben Franklin at Albany, NY, Mohawk Chief Tiyanoga was invited to describe his peoples' form of self-government, liberty and peace. Franklin then offered his first Plan of Union for a Grand Council of American colonies.

In 1773, as Sons of Liberty, disguised as Indians, dumped imported tea in Boston Harbor, they sang:


"Rally Mohawks, bring your axes,
tell King George we'll pay not taxes
on his foreign tea."
Three years later, on June 10, 1776 a delegation of Six Nations ambassadors, led by an Onondaga, were welcomed as "brothers" by President John Hancock to a Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.

The Declaration of Independence was signed three weeks later.

And a fourth spin:

The Six Nations Confederacy was founded in ancient time by a legendary figure who appeared one day on Onondaga Lake in a white stone canoe. This virgin-born Messenger from the Creator is remembered as The Peacemaker.

Hiawatha was an Onondaga who adopted the Path of Peace, and became Peacemaker's spokesman. It was at Onondaga Lake (the Salt Lake), first in the chain of Finger Lakes, that Peacemaker gathered the original Five Nations to "bury the hatchet" and plant The Tree of Peace.

After transmitting The Great Law of Peace, this Messenger from the Creator vanished from history.

And a fifth (but not final) spin:

In June 1990 the Salt Treaty between the Onondaga Nation and New York State expired after a 200 year term. The Empire State lease for Salt Lake and Salt City has lapsed. The Onondaga Nation has notified State they must now negotiate a new agreement.

Yes, L. Frank Baum, we made a mistake. And now, the 1990s, is its time to come back to haunt us.

Oct. 15, '90, at a site by Onondaga Lake named four times in the 1790 Salt Treaty as the place of beginning, Pyramid Cos. opened Carousel Center, flagship of their 23 shopping malls -- 5-story Temple of Consumption with green skylights. It looks like The Emerald City; Syracuse newspapers said so.

While shoppers rush to a new emerald Carousel Castle by the Salt Lake, the Three Sisters -- Liberty, Justice and Peace -- knock on a locked door at the Heart of the Empire State.

This is no fairy tale, but is how the unbroken threads of history and her story converge by Onondaga Lake in this last decade of a century which began with "The Wizard of Oz."

Before U.S. attacks Iraq, President (no longer King) George "the burning" Bush had best have our soldiers bury the hatchet in Gulf sands and plant trees of peace in Middle East deserts. Time to be forest, not against us -- not just beat swords into plowshares, but transform warriors into peacemakers.

We in the West had better answer the knock on our Empire State door. It's at our back door.

This isn't just information, but awareness to appeal for action.

You are now aware.

Act.

I'm off to the hospital for the day....

Absolutely, there is an extreme case of denial in this country....but truth is stronger than denial.

I believe that we can only live what is in our hearts....I don't 'decide' today I will fight for NDN causes....it is 'always' a natural thing for me....we hear the stories of our Elders and see the sadness that still comes to their eyes.

Last month I went to a Moon Lodge Sweat, it was the first one to be held in the Kansas City area in 104 years. There was an Elder who came to prepare food for us, for after. Because she was in her late 80s, she was unable to do the 4 door Sweat. She came to each one of us before we entered and touched our cheek, in Spirit she was in the Sweat with us. We saw the tears in her eyes, as she stood at the door when we came out. I am so proud to be a part of that history and thankful to Great Spirit to enrich my life in that way. It is humbling to know that you are a part of the Circle.

That is my Truth, the only Truth I will live.

Indeed, but sometimes truth seems to be harder to take than denial. Denial is certainly easier. But as a friend of mine once said: the best path is not always the easiest.

Got that sh*t straight!

Those who chose to deny or lessen the atrocities of the Genocide of American Indians are looking at the issue with their tainted version of Truth. It's an Oz thing. [so much Spirit envy in that pic] I'm surprised the munchkins weren't red or carrying apples instead of lollipops.

So I'd been meaning to point out this book I read last year and thought was a really good treatment of the reparations issue. Haven't found any excerpts but here are some reviews.


http://www.nathanielturner.com/raceracismreparations.htm
Race, Racism & Reparations

By J. Angelo Corlett

   
If affirmative action and other ethnicity-based social programs are justified, then J. Angelo Corlett believes it is important to come to an adequate understanding of the nature of ethnicity in general and ethnic group membership in particular. In Race, Racism, and Reparations, Corlett reconceptualizes traditional ideas of race in terms of ethnicity. As he makes clear, the answers to the questions "what is a Native American?" or "What is a Latino/a?" have important implications for public policy, especially for those programs designed to address historic injustices and economic and social imbalances among different groups in our society.

Having supplanted "race" with a well-defined concept of ethnicity, the author then analyzes the nature and function of racism. Corlett argues for a notion of racism that must encompass not only racist beliefs but also racist actions, omissions, and attempted actions. His aim is to craft a definition of racism that will prove useful in legal and public policy contexts.

Corlett places special emphasis on the broad questions of whether reparations for ethnic groups are desirable and what forms those reparations should take: land, money, social programs? He addresses the need for differential affirmative action programs and reparations policies—the experiences (and oppressors) of different ethnic groups vary greatly. Arguments for reparations to Native and African Americans are considered in light of a variety of objections that are or might be raised against them. Corlett articulates and critically analyzes a number of possible proposals for reparations

--Publisher

Until now, most philosophy texts on race have focused narrowly and monochromatically on the black experience. This challenging new book broadens the traditional spectrum to include the neglected browns and reds, Latino and native American colors, of the American racial palette. The result is a  much richer picture of the moral complexities of the ethnic and racial landscape, from the subtleties of how best to analyze Latino identity to the highly contentious issue of reparations to native Americans.

--Charles W. Mills, University of Illinois, author of The Racial Contract

J. Angelo Corlett's book presents a brilliant case for reparations for African Americans and native Americans. It is thorough, astute, and compelling.

--Bernard Boxill, University of North Carolina, Chapter Hill, author of Blacks and Social Justice

In this provocative book, J. Angelo Corlett brings the debate about reparations for the victims of gross injustices to a new level. using the skills that are characteristic of a good analytical philosopher, he provides reasons in support of reparations programs that should appeal to sensitive and thoughtful human beings. This book is the most lucid account of this important subject that I have encountered.

--Howard McGary, Rutgers, The State University of New jersey, author of Race and Social Justice

Cornell University Press / Sage House / 512 East State Street / Ithaca, New York 14850

*****

WARNING: This guy makes Tombstoned sound like Miss Congeniality!

By the way was the ghost dance forbidden by decree or by law! i ask becourse if it was by law is it still on the books?
Not spiritual beleifs, Greed & Fear, mostly greed.

"Not spiritual beleifs, Greed & Fear, mostly greed."

What do you mean by this statement?





http://www.narf.org/pubs/justice/1997winter.htm


In the 1890's, after tribes were placed on reservations, U.S. troops effectively suppressed the Ghost Dance religion by slaughtering Sioux Ghost Dance worshippers at Wounded Knee and arresting Pawnee Ghost Dancers in Oklahoma. In that same decade, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) who were under the auspices of the Executive Branch outlawed the Sun Dance and banned other ceremonies which were declared "Indian offenses" and made punishable by withholding of rations or imprisonment. The ban was not lifted until 1934, more than a generation later and ten years after Indians were granted citizenship in 1924.


Serious problems in Indian religious freedom persisted into the 1970s. Federal agents arrested Indians for possession of tribal sacred objects such as eagle feathers; criminally prosecuted traditional Indians for the religious use of peyote; cut the hair of Indian children; denied access to sacred sites located on federal lands; and interfered with tribal ceremonies.


In 1978, the United States Congress sought to reverse this history and create a federal policy that would cease the deplorable treatment of American Indian spiritual practices, by enacting the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA). Section 1 states that "it shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom of worship through ceremonial and traditional rites."


As many Indian people feared, this policy proved to be meaningless and lacked any "teeth" for enforcement. While it was the intention of Congress to have traditional religious practices protected, the courts and land management agencies ignored AIRFA altogether in decisions that impacted the practice of American Indian religion.

American Indian tribes, Native Hawaiians and Alaska Natives and all world religions share a unifying dependence upon sacred sites. Worship at sacred sites is a basic attribute of religion itself. However, when thinking of sacred sites, most Americans think only of well-known Middle Eastern sites familiar to the Judeo- Christian tradition such as the Mecca, the Wailing Wall, Mount Sanai or Bethlehem. Unfortunately, the laws of the United States overlook that our own landscape is dotted with equally important American Indian religious sites that have served as cornerstones for indigenous religions since time immemorial. The Forest Service, Park Service and private interests have been allowed repeatedly to destroy irreplaceable Native sacred sites.

In the 1988 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protection Association decision, the United States Supreme Court allowed the Forest Service to virtually destroy an ancient site held sacred by the Karok, Tolowa and Yurok peoples of California. The court ruled that construction of a road would not violate the First Amendment rights of these American Indians whose spiritual lives are inextricably linked to that area. The Lyng decision meant that a basic cornerstone of tribal religion is unprotected opening the door to unchecked government destruction of sacred sites.

That no matter the official reasoning, it was almost always greed that were the major factor in killing/removing the tribes, fear also played a role but more on a lokal level, but i would take a wild guess that it was greed after land, political power, minerals or cold strategic thinking (USA from sea to sea) that were the major reasons for the attacks and betrayals!

right about that....that mind set still exists....the Tribes are owed less, through the Indian Trust, than the government has used to destroy Iraq

Sick and un-American...