Posted on 05/25/2005 11:32:48 AM PDT by nypokerface
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. senator on Wednesday urged a Senate committee to pass a resolution apologizing on behalf of the United States to American Indians for centuries of massacres, broken promises and other injustices.
Indian leaders at the hearing said they would need more than an apology to overcome the poverty, substance abuse and health care problems that many of their people face.
The United States has never formally apologized for its treatment of the indigenous people who were living here before European settlement began.
Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who is spearheading the apology resolution, told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs it would be a first step toward healing deep wounds.
"Before reconciliation, there must be recognition and repentance," he said. "It begins the effort of reconciliation by recognizing past wrongs and repenting for them."
Brownback introduced a similar resolution in the last Congress. It was voted out of the committee but the full Senate never acted on it.
The closest the United States has come to a formal apology to Indians came in 2000 when an assistant secretary for Indian affairs apologized for the past conduct of his agency. He said policies of successive U.S. governments had "set out to destroy all things Indian" and left a "legacy of misdeeds that haunts us today."
Brownback's resolution says the United States must acknowledge "the broken treaties and many of the more ill-conceived federal policies that followed, such as extermination, termination, forced removal and relocation, the outlawing of traditional religions, and the destruction of sacred places."
The resolution apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all American Indians "for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on native peoples by citizens of the United States." It also asks forgiveness for massacres such as the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, where as many as 200 Indians were killed, and the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, where about 350 Indians died in 1890.
Indian leaders at the hearing said much more than an apology was needed to help deal with the many problems their communities are facing, including poverty, ill health and poor health care, alcoholism, drug addiction and unemployment.
"The president has proposed drastic budget cuts to many of the programs that are vital to the health and well-being of our people," said Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians.
Edward Thomas, president of the central council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian tribes of Alaska, said it was clear that some in the U.S. government were sorry about the treatment of Indians while others were not.
"An apology to us while ignoring the Third World conditions of so many of our people just doesn't seem genuine," he said.
Saying "Sorry" opens the gov't up to all sorts of lawsuits.
What is wrong with the GOP on the Hill? Have they gone batty? They are behaving in the oddest manner.
Like what? Charging $19.95 for the Roast Beef buffet in the casino?
Get over it already.
Well, an apology is all you will get from Sam Brownback. Give it a rest, Sam. Meanwhile, millions of illegal aliens from Mexico are enjoying the benefits needed on the rez.
I will always love playing cowboys and indians, and I am always a cowboy.
How many apologies are we going to have to give each year?
Oh say, like the attempt to massacre the Jamestown colony.
The thing is there are NO purebred American Indians. All are mixed. A tremendous number (in the tens of millions) of people in this country are part American Indian. Some are a "lot" and others are "some" and "a little".
Not likely any of them owes anybody any apologies, nor should their Congress-critters assume they can speak for them!
The way I read this is that the people still on the reservations are sitting down and negotiating some sort of deal with some white people who feel "white Liberal guilt".
That's a non-starter. The people on the reservations speak only for themselves, not for everybody affected, and they are a minority of the affected anyway.
Back in the day, my family had lots of cattle and ranch hands killed and hunted by non-Indigenous-to-the-region Indians that would operate as rustlers and poachers, not because they were "thrown off their lands," but because they were common theives and stealing was easier than ranching.
They could start there.
What have you done for the last 100 years to improve yourselves?
Why do you need foreign aid?
I am really confused here.
First step for long, drawn out litigation is an "apology".
Good thing we got that compromise on the filibuster so the Senate could get back to work! (sarcasm)
Unfortunately, the history of humankind is filled with brutality. Americans may have been more technologically adept at destruction than others, and we are not perfect. But I doubt there has been a nation in the history of the world which is as powerful AND as compassionate as the US has been.
If I'm wrong someone will certainly point it out.
Some would also say that the biggest genocide in American history is still going on every day, and has been since January 22, 1973.
There's judges still to fight over, the Bolton nomination fight (which is going on right now on C-SPAN2), terrorism, taxes, the energy bill, the ILLEGAL invasion and this mope is worried about a freaking apology to Sitting Bull.
I swear, we need a mandatory IQ test for ALL political candidates. They're all a step above simpletons.
(no offense to simpletons)
Right. There were battles on both sides of this issue here.
We won, but we are losing this country daily. So in reality what was it for?
Our ancestors fought bravely for freedom, now we let people sneak in and give valuable things like citizenship and Social Security benefits just for the asking.
In the end that particular bunch of Indians nearly withered away from Old World disease, alcohol, and internal warfare.
So what.
I want an apology for the crap the Senate has done this year and betrayed my vote. I am holding my breath now. ......Mmmmm......Mmmmmm....Whew.
Screw that. While I get outraged at the actions of our government in times past, it WAS in times past. Long past. Since the 1890's there haven't been any military campaigns against Indian tribes.
Even the attempts to deny Indians their language and culture were based on the "science" of the times vis a vis assimilation and the best way to integrate the Indian to make him a part of American society and to hopefully end the reservation system.
Today, while those methods such as punishing them for speaking their own language are denounced, it still doesn't warrant an "apology".
It was wrong to commit genocidal actions [just as it was wrong for them to attempt the same against us] and to break our word to them as we did.
But "apologize"? I don't think so.
Besides, my folk weren't even here.
We didn't do a thing to them.
I have nothing to apologize for.
Apology?
OK.
Then y'all get no more $$$ for nuthin', and start paying income tax like the rest of us.
They want an apology for their self destruction? Seriously, I as an American, do not owe an apology to the Indians, or the descendants of slaves, railroad workers, or indentured servants. I never killed an Indian, or stole land, or took a slave, or coerced and exploited anyone for free labor or money. Perhaps my forefathers did but I am not responsible for their sins.
Like what? Charging $19.95 for the Roast Beef buffet in the casino?
Funniest thing I've heard all week. Thanks I needed that. Seriously though the Europeans were expanding their territory and the Indians were defending theirs. That's life. No apologies are necessary. Just about every group in the world has been through it in some form or another.
We presume you've purchased good title insurance however. Although you are not responsible for anything at all, you may still be held accountable for it!
It seems to me that if all of the participants are dead, then an apology is worthless. You can have a pronouncement that "US government had treated the Indians wrongly", but then does anyone not know this? An "apology" means nothing at this point. We cannot be "sorry" for something _we_ didn't do. I am dissapointed, sure, but thats not sorry, there is no contrition on my part (not even my ancestors, but I digress). This "I'm sorry" crap is just part of the Oprah Generation...
That's outrageous.
"Oh say, like the attempt to massacre the Jamestown colony."
Was that the same colony that was built without consent with the native citizens of that land?
It's what the illegal aliens are trying to do.
The wars themselves are history, but a moral country lives up to it's commitments. The US government should calculate a way to compensate for broken treaties and agreements.
The apology thing is just a way to make the government thugs feel better about things without actually making good on the commitments.
What total BS. Is this what we send them to Washington for ?
Is Brownback trying to jump on the bandwagon of that new Spielberg series coming out?
What actions?
Being here and protecting their land?
I'm not part of the-beat-the-European-American crowd, but America's treatment of native Americans has been despicable.
I actually blame it on the French.
Between 1689 and 1763 the French, ensconced in Canada, used Native American indian "allies" to conduct a brutal frontier war on British American civilians. Their use of these unfortunate people as a political and military foil engendered in the American mind the concept of American Indians as a brutal savage, equivalent to wolves and cougars, who was only fit to be shouldered aside from lands he "occupied" but did not "own".
The Eastern Tribes only wanted to survive. They were trapped between the twin millstones of French and British expansionism and tried to select the lesser of the two evils. Unfortunately they chose "not wisely."
The Amerindians were forced off their own lands at gun point, they were compelled to "sign" documents they didn't understand, plied with whiskey, deprived of a livelihood, crowded into barren "reservations", forced to watch their children taken from them and educated as whites, punished when they spoke their own language, prevented from practising their own religion, ridiculed for their dress and customs, and decimated by diseases they had no resistance to and couldn't understand.
Pity the American Indian. And pity us for the heritage they and WE have lost. They are Americans also.
I think they deserve at least an apology and maybe more - the few of them that we left around still alive, that is.
Before Indians were running casinos and selling cigarettes tax-free in North America, they were a stone-age people before the "pale face" came. They had not learned to domesticate animals (except dogs), they had no written language, they used only stone tools and they had not even yet invented the wheel.
They had never seen a horse, a metal knife, a cart or a plow.
They also commonly practiced slavery, genocide and cannibalism against other tribes. No matter how many times you watch "Dances with Wolves" and "Pocahontas," it will not change these facts.
In terms of population percentage loss, the worst war we ever fought was King Philip's War in 1675-76. King Philip was an indian chief (also known as Metacomet) who attacked to oust white settlers from New England. The Indians burned down/destroyed twelve of ninety Puritan towns and attacked forty others (including Providence). The Colonists' population was small in 1675 and a good percentage of that population was killed in the war (with about 1000 slain out of a population of 52,000, this death rate was nearly twice that of the Civil War and more than seven times that of World War II). The Indians lost the war.
The Indians sided with the French in the French And Indian War (1753). The indians lost the war.
The Indians sided with the British in the Revolution. The Indians lost the war.
The Indians sided with the British again in the War of 1812. The Indians lost the war.
As the Americans moved west, fighting was constant on both sides. The Indians lost everytime.
No they are not, by their own choice. Haven't you heard? They are sovereign nations.
Spare us the BS, OK? Pity yourself all you want, but please jettison the arrogance that allows you to think you can speak for me.
Do a Google to learn how the Comanche came to dominate vast areas of Texas. They moved in from the north and forced everyone in their way to other parts. Peaceful coexistence was definitely not a feature of the frontier.
One of the reasons local Indians were willing to stay at the missions was because the Spanish defended them against other marauding tribes.
There's plenty of bad, bloody history on all sides to go round. This silly self-flagellation over the past must stop.
Me too. This weak-kneed, psychobabble line of thinking is ridiculous.
They're right. An apology is no help at all, since the referenced problems are entirely of the Indians' own making. Americans who happen to be Indian have full citizenship, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that entails. Let them start solving their own problems--nothing stops them but their own bad choices.
Welfare grab.
Yep.
And since accountability is a remedy assigned through the courts, I've got no problem with it. Right is right. Even when it hurts.
Oh no! Not my house . . . :-)
And when are American Indians going to apologize for all the wars they fought on each other, killing other tribes?
Yeah, I've got Cherokee Indian ancestry too. I'm not full-blooded but this constant dredging up of things 200-400 years that no living American was involved in, nor the nations, is ridiculous. There are many benefits in educational assistance, etc.
I guess since my parents lived through Pearl Harbor I could start filing lawsuits against the Japanese gov't. Never mind they weren't actually *at* Pearl Harbor.
Ok, and they apologize to each other for centuries of warfare among the different tribes right?
Then the criminals involved should be making the apologies, not an entire race of people.
Otherwise, what race should be apologizing for Jesse James or Al Capone?
What a crock! These wimps and wusses in the GOP get more disgusting every day. How sick can you get. Apologizing for somthing you had nothing to do with.
It was a classic clash of cultures between the American Indians and the Europeans and the Euros won.
With the Indian and Mestizo invasion from Mexico going in full bore, they may win Round II, however.
"Otherwise, what race should be apologizing for Jesse James or Al Capone?"
I fully concur.
My point was it is absurd for one people to apologize to another. We are all individuals.
Bump for reading.
These morons we elect are like the character Kevin Bacon played in Animal House, where he was kicked as part of the treatment for pledges and he said ... "Thank you sir. May I have another?"
U.S.Congress = Animal House, without the laughs. ;)
"They also commonly practiced slavery, genocide and cannibalism against other tribes."
Uhhh, pick up a book on European History. Check out the Thirty-Years War.
"They had never seen a horse, a metal knife, a cart or a plow."
?????????????
"In terms of population percentage loss, the worst war we ever fought was King Philip's War in 1675-76. King Philip was an indian chief (also known as Metacomet) who attacked to oust white settlers from New England."
King Phillip was the son of Massasoit, the Chief who welcomed and helped the Pilgrims. When Massassoit died, Phillip's' older brother Wamsutta, or King Alexander, was brow-beaten by the Puritans in Boston and forced to come at their beck and call there like a subordinate, where he was humilated as though he was an underling instead of an independent ruler. On his return ne died under questionable circumstances, and the other Wampanoags believed he had been poisoned by the English.
When Metacomet succeeded Phillip, the English continued to force the Wampanoags to surrender lands to them, and otherwise abused and humiliated them. Phillip himself was whipped by the Puritans - a punishment no Indian would tolerate normally, and certainly not a Chief.
A little sneaking rat Wampanoag traitor named John Sassamon was detected by the other Wampanoags, killed and his body sunk in Assawomsett Pond. When the English found out their informer had been executed, they demanded the killers be turned over to them for "justice". These were hanged.
Phillip then was forced into his "rebellion". During this war, not only were English settlements depopulated, but the English attacked a large settlement of ostensibly neutral Narragansetts in the Great Swamp "Fight" in the dead of winter. The Puritans thought the Narragansetts had provided shleter to refugee Wampanoags. In Native American tradition, anyone seeking shelter was usually welcomed and helped.
The Puritans surrounded the village and set it on fire and then proceeded to shoot down anything moving in it or trying to escaape from it. Even some Pequot Indians who were heriditary enemies of the Narragansetts were horrified at the slaughter of women and children - something completely alien to their culture at the time. Whoever got away died of exposure in the cold.
It later transpired that most of the people in the village were women and children and old men. The warriors were away on a hunt.
The English did pretty poorly in this war until somebody named Benjamin Church came along and offered captured Indians immunity from punishment and freedom if they would serve as scouts for the British and allow them to attack the hostile indians.
When the war was over, despite Church's promises, those indians who helped him were sold along with all captured indians as slaves in the sugar plantations of the West indies - a sure death warrant.
As for Phillip himself, he was shot by an indian and, at Church's direction, his body was quartered and beheaded like a beast instead of a human being and parts of his body displayed all over New England.
Who, I ask you, behaved like the "savages"?
Yup. there's the connection all right.
It's all about money.
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