and Becks
NOTE: In December, 1996 the Editor of Indian Country Today stated the following...
"At Indian Country Today we use internet sources as potential leads for stories. We carefully check the sources and authenticate information. We do not consider much of the internet as a factual source. Indian Country Today will no longer visit the [First Nations] web site ... because of [its] continued proliferation of gossip, rumor and innuendo in their misguided attempt to support American Indian issues. ...misleading and misinformed sources may harm innocent people and cause others unnecessary anguish. "In light of the Editor's antipathy towards Leonard Peltier, AIM, Peter Matthiessen and his support for the FBI, I consider his declaration an endorsement of this site's veracity.
12.17.96, Jordan S. Dill
[White privilege...] | [Killing the White Man's Indian - A review] | [Jill Cadreau and Milford High] | [Stealing Native Rights...How to?] | [Rogue Bureaucracy] | [Niggers NFL Team] | [American Indian Stereotypes] | [First Nations Satellite Bookstore] | [Laramie treaty still active?] | [Traveling The Path To Religious Freedom...] | [Listening To Native America...] | [Scalping analysis...] | [The Best Are The Dead Ones] | [Native Sterilizations] | [Lakota Sovereignty] | [Dead Indians] | [Ethnic Cleansing USA Style] | [Treaties...What's the Point?] | [He Who Writes Has The Power!] | [Tale of Suicide] | [Photo of Crazy Horse?] | [A Dream Reflection] | [Yet another Massacre...] | [Wasichu and the Crow Nation...] | [Mt. Rushmore] | [Wasichu's Graffiti] | [We must think for the Indian...] | [The Truth Re Tribal Voice] | [A Daughter's Poem] | [Washita...A Tale of Genocide] | [The Death of Elders] | [Some Thoughts On First Nations Sovereignty] | [Wasichu's Continuing Gall] | [Environmental Abuse] | [Walk the Mean Streets] | [Cultural Theft] |
"Here's what white privilege sounds like: I'm sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support. The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that being white has advantages in the United States. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege."
This book, with the unpleasant title, has also been reviewed and appears as a source in the excellent history of Indian dispossession, In a Barren Land by Paula Mitchell Marks.The well known historian of the West, Robert Utley considers this book significant:
"Killing the White Man's Indian could become as powerful in shaping public perceptions of and attitudes toward American Indians as did Vine Deloria's Custer Died for Your Sins and Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee a generation ago." (inside cover)If Bordewich does influence public opinion to this extent, the sympathy and understanding engendered by the other two books will be diminished.
Rogue Bureaucracy is a look back through recent years at the patterns of U.S. Department of Interior/Federal mismanagement - deliberate mismanagement in the author's opinion - of oil, gas, and other minerals owned by the U.S. taxpayer, State's citizens and American Indian tribes and individuals. Bill Robinson calls this "Rogue Bureaucracy" because it is his firm belief that the fraud and deception are deliberate. Even if no one is taking money to allow these various types of malfeasance (and worse), the decades-long history clearly qualifies Interior (and Congress) as a Rogue Bureaucracy. Billions of dollars have been lost. Feel free to email Bill (via the mailto link above) if you see related information that you think he should add. Better yet, capture this entire set of info and give it to your local newspaper editor.
Amazon.com is pleased to have the First Nations/First Peoples Issues site in the family of Amazon.com associates. We've agreed to ship books and provide customer service for orders we receive through special links on the First Nations/First Peoples Issues site.
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian" is a dead proverb. Many refuse to accept its death. They prop it up a chair, nurture it, and in so doing, diminish their own reality. The white man loses so much through his insistence on living uni-culturally in a multi-cultural society. Bury the old proverb and the hatred along with it. Let your neighbors know how inaccurate, distasteful, and unattractive their stereotypical comments of American Indians are, help them bury their hate, and give them a Tootsie Roll Pop.
These are the voices of Native Americans. Some of the judgments are harsh, very harsh, and it is not too difficult to imagine other voices arising to refute these Indian voices or to give another reading of the history in what would no doubt be an endless cycle of self-justification which would devalue the experience of Indians and explain away their judgments. One would no longer be able to listen to the Indian voices because the din would prevent hearing. What is worse, listening to self-justifications and explanations dull our moral outrage.
...I discovered Point [Communications] had picked as a top Native culture site, Tribal Voice, which is a commercial venture owned by a 100% white corporation that desecrates several major Indian religions in the guise of a "Warrior Game."
Get some Indian people to do the dirty work. There are always those who will act for you to the disadvantage of their own people. Just give them a little honor and praise. This is generally the function of band councils, chiefs, and advisory councils: they have little legal power, but can handle the tough decisions such as welfare, allocation of housing, etc.
Just being a woman was no protection from scalping, being a child also appears not to have always been a deterrent to becoming a victim of the custom. The youngest prehistoric victim of scalping found in this study was a child between the ages of five and seven years...
I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western view of the Indian. I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Turn three hundred low families of New York into New Jersey, support them for fifty years in vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains. As for the soldiers, an Indian chief once asked Sheridan for a cannon. "What! Do you want to kill my soldiers with it?" asked the general. "No," replied the chief, "want to kill the cowboy; kill soldier with a club." ...Theodore Roosevelt
In Milford, Michigan there is a seventeen year old warrior by the name of Jill Cadreau. Jill attends Ojibway language classes every week and culture classes (she is learning bead work and other traditional crafts). She is determined to preserve and honor her traditional culture. Jill is a senior at Milford high school and they identify themselves as "Redskins". At sports events a chosen white kid outfitted in cheap phony regalia prances around like Chief Illinek. In August, '97 Jill committed herself to tackling this mascot/icon/name issue.
From 1972 to 1978 we observe a 130 per cent increase in the number of induced abortions performed. During this time the ratio of abortions per 1,000 deliveries has increased from approximately 34 to 77 (an increase of 126 per cent) (Temkin-Greener, 1981: 405). While not exactly within the confines of sterilization, the numbers indicate that the family planning program on the Navajo Reservation was definitely acquiring federal funds to carry on such a massive project.
First, as a counterpart to the Redskins, we need an NFL team called "Niggers" to honor Afro-Americans. Half-time festivities for fans might include a simulated stewing of the opposing coach in a large pot while players and cheerleaders dance around it, garbed in leopard skins and wearing fake bones in their noses. This concept obviously goes along with the kind of gaiety attending the Chop, but also with the actions of the Kansas Chiefs, whose tema members - prominently including black members - lately appeared on a poster ,looking "fierce" and "savage" by way of wearing Indian regalia. Just a bit of harmless "morale boosting," says the Chief's front office. You bet.
On the one hand Wasichu attempted to enforce the Laramie Treaty, on the other Congress was petitioned to "open up the country for settlement, by extinguishing the treaty rights of Indians." The Army then backed off on trying to keep prospectors out of the Black Hills, in effect giving them the green light to swarm where they had no right to go.
Washita: Genocide on the Great Plains
The Coree Are Not Dead!
Medals of dis-Honor and Shame T-Shirts
Ex-Pomo Ganger Tells All In His Video
Offerings from Crow Country
Silverwater art...
Stealing From Indians...
Zapatista Poster Series
Genocide is the denial of the right of existence to entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, results in great losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions represented by these groups, and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations.
The Lumbee are a tribe of over 40,000 Indians located in North Carolina who were "erased" by the Termination and Relocation Act of 1954. "Sorry, the government says you no longer exist but, Have a Nice Day!"
The First Nations/Wasichu relationship so too has been defined by a personal decision to align according to constructs. In this instance I decided to rally round the "fact" (assertion) that some issues, some posits ought not to change. That such will remain, should remain(?), unaltered despite the passage of time. This now causes discomfort in that, on the one hand, how can I admit that there are no "definites," picking and choosing a cause accordingly and, on the other hand assert that there are issues which do not, ought not, to change over time? It is a good thing that no one is listening to me carefully for I have been standing on thin air.
The journeys of Native people through the last 500 years have been painful and much has been lost since the invasions. Whole nations of our relations were wiped out in the holocaust with no survivors to carry on their distinct cultures.
The Social Worker arrived to take me away to my new home. On the way their he tryed to talk to me but I was'nt hearing or trying to hear. When we arrived the Social Worker wanted to talk to the parents alone so I remained in the car...I was taken into their house and [deleted] showed me where I would sleep. The room was in the basement of the house. When I walked into the room I could not believe my eye's. The floor was covered with water (about an inch and half) and there were boards on the floor to keep your feet from getting wet.
A personal revelation...
Ward's [Churchill] response to date (not to me, but to a friend of mine) has been simply "The picture is authentic, okay?" Since he's been travelling all summer, I haven't been able to get hold of him for elaboration.
While doing research for the manuscript Washita, Genocide on the Great Plains, I came across the "Treaty of Fort Laramie with Sioux, Cheyennes, Arrapahoes, Crows, Assinaboines, Gros-Ventre Mandans and Arikaras (September 17, 1851) ," reprinted in George E. Fay's Treaties, land cessions and other U.S. Congressional documents relative to American Indian Tribes. In carefully reading it, it appears to me to be still in effect today. I has been ratified and I do not see where it was abrogated collectively.
"I've been beaten, chained, humiliated and shipped from facility to facility by prison officials as payment for my persistence. These are the dues I've paid for the right to pray in my tribal ways..."
...inmate was "charged, hit, thrown to the floor, limbs wrenched, handcuffed, and shackled, carried out of his cell to the middle of the quad where his head [was] forcibly shaved while guards [held] him and [laughed] and onlookers [watched]"
"About 9 or 10 other guards handcuffed me behind my back real hard and put leg shackles on me and made me go in a room with all of them. Then they shoved a table in front of the door so nobody could get out. Then . . . the Asst. Supt. said that I am going to get a hair cut one way or the other and that they didn't care if I was Geronimo...[T]he guards all took my leg shackles and handcuffs real hard and held me down and this barber . . . came over and cut my hair into a raggedy mess. That is when they all started laughing and [the major] said that now I could get some white religion."
Around eleven o'clock, the befuddled commander, Major Eugene Baker, headed downstream with all but one of his companies to find the real target, a hostile camp designated clearly in his orders. Gus Doane's F Company was left behind to count the corpses, dispose of them on a huge pyre made by torching everything in the camp, and round up the band's hundreds of mustang ponies.
Well, over time, one thing lead to another and the Crow Tribal Council passed resolutions that shut the door on hunting and fishing on the reservation to anyone who was not a member of the Tribe. Understandably, Wasichu was upset and the State of Montana asserted their assumed authority to regulate hunting and fishing on the reservation so as to allow Wasichu access (justified on the basis of equal footing doctrine). Surprising?
"We are standing on territory once belonging to the Sioux Indians - that great warlike race, like the Romans, who ruled everything from Wyoming to Chicago. I wish we had treated them better, in a more noble manner. We are standing on their very land, for which we never paid a cent - just stole it from them and lied about it. Well, these are the things we probably will do something about some day," Borglum said.
If I did learn anything about democracy from those stone faces starting down at me, it is that a democracy required an educated citizenry. We need to know in order to decide. That citizenry, now tucked in theirs homes watching a mock historic replay of "redskins" destroying "buffalo" will again venture out of their homes into their Winnebagos and head for the hills this summer in droves.
...a daughter relates.
The soldiers killed about 150 Indian men, women and children, including White Antelope. It had been an orgy of killing. Many of the victims had been physically mutilated by the soldiers. According to Congressional testimony, White Antelope's scrotum had been cut off, later to be used as a tobacco pouch. Soldiers had cut out the vaginal area from slain Indian women. Clusters of women had been shot trying to surrender. Children had been shot and clubbed to death.
Years down the road in Tee-Hit-Ton Indians vs. United States (1955) when the Tee-Hit-Ton, a clan of the Tlingit Nation comprised of no more than 70 individuals in 1955, claimed that over 350,000 acres of land and 150 miles of water had been taken from them "illegally," it was noted that "Congress has never recognized any legal interest of the petitioner [the Tee-Hit-Ton] in the land and therefore without such recognition no compensation is due the petitioner for any taking by the United States." Bottom line, I suppose, is that since I can not see you, you are not there. In fact, you don't even exist! Pretty neat, huh?
An on-line commemoration of a few who have passed...
As time, disease, despair, genocidal activity, public opinion and overwhelming superiority in terms of combatant bodies took their toll, the need for defining the First Nations as sovereign passed. "It was at this point that an effort to reconcile official terminology with the semantics of the general public began to emerge" and the "word 'tribe' completely [displaced] the word 'nation' in the legal discourse [which] lead to congressional termination of treaty-making with Indians in 1871."
"Then the white men hired hunters to do nothing but kill the buffalo. Up and down the plains those men ranged, shooting sometimes as many as a hundred buffalo a day. Behind them came the skinners and with their wagons. They piled the hides and bones into the wagons until they were full, and then took their loads to the new railroad stations that were being built, to be shipped east to the market. Sometime there would be a pile of bone as high as a man, stretching a mile along the railroad track...The buffalo saw that their day was over..."
The Black Hills is one of those areas of America that have been designated by the National Academy of Sciences as a National Sacrifice Area, and thus slated by the government and energy corporations for resource exploitation. There are over five thousand uranium leases held in the Black Hills region by such companies as Tennessee Valley Authority, Union Carbide, Chevron Resources, Anaconda (ARCO), the British-Canadian Rio Algom, Wyoming Mineral (Westinghouse), Kerr-McGee, and others. Union Carbide holds a lease in Craven Canyon, site of sacred Lakota rock writings. Only the companies know the extent and the value of the uranium holdings, but they are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, covering hundreds of thousands of acres of the Black Hills.
Medical care for urban Native Americans is appallingly non-existent at worst and demeaning at best. In many cases, alcohol provides an anesthetic for Natives who cannot obtain needed medical care. I've been surprised at the number of Natives who have severe dental problems. One man, who had lost an arm, was told by social services that he couldn't receive help unless a doctor certified that the arm was, indeed, missing!
One side of the stereotype Indian is the Hostile Savage - the dangerous, primitive warrior who attacked the settlers of the West, or the irresponsible reservation drunk who couldn't be trusted, the Indian of which it was said, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." The other side of the stereotype Indian is the Noble Savage - the innocent primitive who was naturally spiritual and lived in idyllic harmony close to the earth, the Indian of the Thanksgiving stories who helped the Pilgrims survive. These images are embedded deeply in our culture, and are a subliminal backdrop to any of our interactions with Native people or concepts.
This site is maintained by JS Dill.