National Museum of the American Indian Hides Genocide

New California Media Online | Dec. 6, 1999 | Carter Camp

[jimkress]

The Indian wars are over. You lost. Get over it.

Try making a better life for your people rather than just sitting around and whining about the 'good old days before the white devils came.'

[spqrzilla9]

Did it takesome C.I.A. psy-war expertto figure out how best to cover-up the murder ofover 200 million people?Ah, another gross exaggeration.

[robomatik]

"Am I the only indian who doesn't trust the graverobbing Smithsonian..."

Judging by the indian museums I've seen, I guess only indians are permitted to be graverobbers of their indian ancestors.

"Next, Americans can walk over to the museum of 'Indian' history.They willbe amazed and pleased at the beauty of our past..."

Scalping, skinning, impaling, etc.? (These were tactics used by warring tribes long before evil whitey showed up by the way) I wonder if the butchery on the side of the indian will also be included? Besides, living day to day in mudhuts is beauty?

Theres some old indian saying that goes something like, "noone can own the earth." If that is true, a) how is it that we purchased Manhattan with trinquets, and b) how is it exactly that "evil whitey" STOLE North America from the indian? If you cant own something, I dont think that you can steal it.

My old calculus professor (in Colorado) used to tell me a story:

A group of indians came upon great flowing river. The indians, having come from an area where food was sparce, decided to attempt crossing the river. By the time the tribe crossed the river on foot, over half of them were dead- swept away by the great river.

Months later a group of white men ("evil whities") came to the banks of the same river. Studying the river, and calculating the risks to be great, the white men decided to build a bridge across it. They did, everyone survived- and subsequent travellers could also use their bridge.

Professor: "The indians were passive relative to their surroundings. The white men used what surrounded them to conquer their obstacles...

I am a BUILDER!" /prof. quote> (In this analogy indians=indiginous peoples of the world, and evil whities=advanced societies).

[eddie willers]

the people they were stolen from (or bought, same thing)

That tells you all you need know about this idiot's thinking power.

[SoDak]

HUGE exaggeration.

[onedoug]

If the American aborigine had had the same means, methods and cultural drive as the occidental,
he could have conquered them.

But he didn't, and doesn't.

Maybe it's finally time to leave the reservation.

[muawiyah]

As the childhood diseases of the Old World traveled across the continents they sometimes killed 95% to 98% of the people.

It took over 3 centuries to repopulate the area up to anywhere near the numbers that had been here.

One of humankind's most devastating plagues destroyed the Indian nations and cultures - not genocide!

In fact, just about the only folks to survive it had an European ancestor or two from the first contacts. They still suffer a very high infant mortality rate. Reference the Apostolic Charismatic Church of the First Born. They have their Indian roots although most people who come in contact with them believe them to be white. Still, the peyote use after main church services is one give away. Another is their practice of serial polygamy. There are others.

Those still identifying themselves as Indians, particularly those on the reservations, know about the infant mortality rate first hand, as well, and will tell you about it. I don't know if they do the same things as COTFB, but I wouldn't be surprised.

[driftless]

Now just imagine the situation. At the time of the Pilgrims there were maybe five million Indians living in what would be the future U.S. Five million for 3.6 million square miles. That means the land was thinly populated with many areas almost totally uninhabited. Now what would you do if you were a group of people coming into a sparsely inhabited almost completely undeveloped wilderness? Would you say things were too crowded and turn back? But what did the original inhabitants (Indians) do when they settled the land thousands of years before? Do you think that they ran into some other groups of people and decided to go back to Asia? Hardly. They did what other people have done since humans began roaming the earth. They found space for themselves or drove other people off theirs. Indian victimologists like this person want to believe like many other humans that their society was totally pure and innocent of sin. No society of humans is perfect but very imperfect. That means they had killer societies like the Aztecs and others that practiced warfare and took other Indian lands like the Sioux.

But when the Europeans came the Indians faced an enemy with a superior culture and numbers. The result was inevitable. It was the same result my Slovenian ancestors experienced two thousand years ago when the Romans invaded their land. My ancestors inferior culture was swallowed up by the superior Roman one. That is the way of the world. Could the settling of this country have been done better? Obviously yes. But what do Indians like this writer wish for...a return to their hunter-gatherer past? It would just as ridiculous for my ancestors to junk their present modern life and go back to the mountains herding sheep for a living. All peoples must adjust to modern society or perish. Indians like David Yeagley have adjusted to reality. The writer of this article has not.

[sarasmom]

Truth lives somewhere in between the article and the responces so far.

I am of mixed ancestry.To look at me,my native heritage is blended,untill I tell someone I am Blackfoot.I have the same face of my mother, but brown hair and eyes and white skin.Without the black hair and the darker skin of my mother,I dont endure the slurs my mother has endured her entire life.My daughter is blond.

Many of the lost tribes warred with each other prior to European influence. But it is also true many of the lost tribes were subject to ugly genocide by the "civilised" new people in the America's.

It is also true that the governments of the Americas continue to marginalise the "native" people.I have the blood of both and I refuse to be torn by the "pride" of either culture.It is possible to live with the truth of history, accepting the horrors and the beauty of both cultures.

My least favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.For obvious reasons,I prefer to keep a low profile on this day.

Re-writing history is an incredibly ignorant passtime modern people are enjoying.It makes people feel better and relieves them of the cultural guilt some may wish to impose on them and/or the tiny voices of racial superiorty felt in some degree by everyone, no matter their ancestry. It is a human thing.

Ignoring present reality is equally ignorant.Why should anyone carry the burden of guilt for the sins of their ancestors?We would all be better served to keep the truth of the past,refuse the guilt for actions not our own,and respect the cultures that have made us what we are.

I rarely here of Europeans describing themselves as Saxons or Normans.Life goes forward.Never smoothly, but always forward.All civilizations either adjust, or fail.

[sarasmom]

Smallpox infected blankets intentually distributed with the sure knowledge of inflicting lethal disease is not the same as a new and deadly flu accidentally spread.That was biological warfare.Historical fact. Ugly, but true anyway.The ugly parts of history should not be forgotten or future generations will be doomed to repeat them.

[sneakypete]

"If the Blacks get money, I want some too!"

You got it. As a Indian myself,it shames me to see these parasitic cretins get all the press. You ain't seen PC untill you have seen Indian PC. Some of these people make claims that would make Jesse Jackson blush.

[sneakypete]

Scalping, skinning, impaling, etc.? (These were tactics used by warring tribes long before evil whitey showed up by the way)

Let's not forget kidnapping and slavery,along with rape. Nothing the whites and other races didn't do too,but the point is the Indians also were doing their share of it.

Besides, living day to day in mudhuts is beauty?

What Indians lived in mud huts?

[muawiyah]

I can find documented support for a single British officer with serious mental problems having done that.

Frankly, smallpox really wasn't needed to do the job. Chickenpox, measles, mumps,... the ordinary diseases were deadly to the American Indians.

Then, think of the guys handing out the blankets? Wouldn't they get smallpox as well? Most folks who had been vaccinated still didn't mess with smallpox. There were sub-varieties of it that didn't necessarily succumb to the anti-bodies produced in response to innoculation.

Most of the big die-offs were done with by the winter of 1648. Over the next two centuries small groups of isolated individuals would catch up to the plague. Some of this was observed by Lewis and Clark.

[robomatik]

Pueblo and Anasazi ("enemies of the ancient ones") to name two.

p.s. I am part blackfoot. I just do not like pc history.

[sarasmom]

Chicken-pox was and remains to this day, an antibody producing virtual vaccination against smallpox. A single British officer was not the culprit.The Brits were long gone in the mid-late 1800s.Revisionist history is not history.Seek deeper.

My grandfather grew up on an Oklahoma Cherokee Reservation. His father was an Indian Agent.In the 60s and 70s, the facts of history were still readily available, and taught in US schools.Now, the truth is as obscured as the Jewish hollocaust deniers wish their version could be accepted.

I could wish the tribal/reservation Indians had as powerfull an ethnic presense to force the truth to remain obvious.But the "indians" are mostly dead now.I will not play a research game with you to prove the truth.You appear not to be a serious history expert. You may claim whatever you wish.Repetition does not make it fact.

[sneakypete]

Pueblo and Anasazi ("enemies of the ancient ones") to name two.

I wouldn't call adobe a "mud hut",any more than I would call a brick house a "mud hut". I don't think I have ever heard of the Anasazi.

[spqrzilla9]

There were some such incidents. They were relatively few and together with other massacres accounted for some thousands of native americans within the boundaries of the present United States. Far more natives died in abusive slave labor conditions in central and south america and the Caribbean. Even when you add in the far more numerous unintentional epidemic deaths, these did not add up to 200 million.

It is virtually impossible that there were 200 million inhabitants of the Americas in 1492.

[sarasmom]

I did not claim a number of dead people.But it is a bit of a stretch for you to refute the authors article since he claimed 200 mil period. Not in the single year of 1492.I have not confirmed an actual count, but would surmise his estimate is closer to reality than your denial of history.

"Few and far between incidences" as you state is a patently false premise.

.Is this entire thread a reaction to re-reported news of Canadian catholic church re-education schools ,and the current suits involving child sexual abuse?If so, I would like to point out these "re-education" camps operated into the 1960s.If not, feel free to post your "feelings", but dont expect me to respect your opinion as factually based or reasoned.