You know many people over the years never said a word about being Native American until movies like "Dances With Wolves" and a few others came out. Then suddenly everybody's grandma was a "Cherokee Princess." But you know the concept of princes and princesses & kings and queens was a European one that came with them. So, grandma could not have been one of those. Other misconceptions have come from some (not all are bad) state tribes that were made state tribes usually because of guilt or a state official found "Indians" who would do what he wanted as far as selling out Native burials and sacred sites. Many of them had no other Native roots than "witnesses" who said, "Yup, their family was Injun." And through the years some of them have been a thorn in the side for protecting sacred sites and burials. But that's another story for another time.
A few very nice people from other races stood up with the Indigenous People back 30 or so years ago when so much of what has gone on since 1492 had happened over and over. Country music stars like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash come to mind. But there were others. The cover ups have had to get better. You know, things like the attacks on the Lakota Ghost Dancers in the 1800s, pregnant women, old men and children shot down for dancing and later, the murder of Elders at the Pine Ridge Reservation that led to the 1973 Wounded Knee confrontations with many unsolved murders. They got all upset because two F.B.I. agents got gunned down. So they had to find scapegoats like Leonard Peltier, because they had no idea who did it. But what you won't hear about is all the mysteriously dead Indigenous People that died then and still die today that no one does a thing about. Then there were the over 12,000 Navajos shipped to the Rio Puerco, a radio active toxic dump, to die of radiation poisoning and have deformed kids, if they lived, so that a British Coal company (Peabody) could mine their land with the support of John McCain and a big Mormon lawyer who stacked the Hopi tribal council with sellouts so it would appear that it was a conflict between the Navajo and Hopi. Ask any Hopi or Navajo (or Dine' as they are really called) elder and they will tell you the conflict was manufactured by the Mormon lawyer and other outside interests of big money.
Back in Andrew Jackson's day he and some of his men had pouches made of Indigenous men and women's private parts. Jackson had lamp shades made of Native American skins.
They used to hunt Native People for bounty and skin them. When the skins got too heavy for them to carry back, they started scalping them for the bounty. Then a few radical youth got carried away from the Indigenous side and they then tried to pin the whole "scalping thing" on Native Americans. Wrong.
And in my own family, when we moved to the U.S. state of Georgia in the 1950s, there was still a law on the books that forbade Native Americans to live in this state or have legal rights here.
But in the 1970s Governor Jimmy Carter did away with those laws. My mom was still so afraid when we moved here that she died her hair blonde "to fit in." But with her dark skin the blonde hair did not work for her. My wife was kidnapped in the 1950s from the Eastern Band of Cherokee's hospital in North Carolina when her Indigenous mom and dad took their very sick 2 or 3 year old child for help. They were told to leave her over night and she would be fine. When they came back in the morning, she was gone. Where she was gone to was the Children's Home Society in Florida where many Indigenous kids were taken during that time from many Nations for the great idea of assimilation into the dominate white society.
What this brilliant plan did was leave a bunch of broken families with messed up kids, who searched their whole lives for their families to get home. My wife is still searching and being blocked at every turn from finding her family.
Then there are the raped and murdered Indigenous women and murdered kids which has gone on for decades without solutions. And in the present, our beautiful Appaloosa colt was poisoned by racists, one dog disappeared, fences torn up, flags torn down, and constant harassment where we live now because we are Native Americans.
And we won't talk about the blankets infested with small pox purposely given to Indigenous People that decimated populations to the tune of millions. Yep, the first germ warfare.
I'll stop there because it gets depressing. But let me just say this, Adolph Hitler once told reporters when asked about his death camps, that he just patterned his genocide of the Jews after the treatment of Native Americans by the U.S.
So where am I going with all this? Well, the other day, on a place called Sodahead on the internet they sent me a "joke" about how proud they were of what the so called "cowboys" had done to the "Indians." They also stated that they were going to do the same to Muslim People. The "joke" was titled "It's a comin'."
Well I got (I can't find the right word.)... Let me just say as an Ex Marine I just went Marine on them. Told them off and said some things (not cuss words) that I never would say and don't believe. And I have no excuse to make for it. A couple of them said they were Native American. But I never saw any Native person make those kinds of comments, like all Indigenous Treaty rights are "hand outs." They just didn't act Indigenous. And I told them so and not very nice.
Yeah, I could make an excuse that I was also sick that day. But maybe I should have stayed off the internet if I was sick.
My point in this whole thing is this. When I let people carry me off topic regarding the rights of ALL people being equal and get into name calling, I become no better than the racist attitude that put it out, or the ones agreeing with her or him. When I forget my goal and get upset, I not only do Indigenous People no good, I become my own worst enemy, because that gives every racist exactly what they are looking for, a foil on which to base their hatred.
Martin Luther King, Jesus and Ghandi (not comparing the three as equals) understood this well. But at 63, I still have a ways to go. If we, the people who care, are forced into becoming like those who hate us, we become our own worst enemies, because we become that which we battle to overcome. And make no mistake this IS a spiritual battle for the souls and minds of humankind. We have a choice that is before us. You have a choice that is before you.
Will you and I and everyone who is with us remain calm in the face of evil and remember like the Christian Bible says, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty." (In other words spiritual or mental).
The founder of the Martial Art that I follow put it in different words. You defeat your opponent's mind before you ever touch his body. Do this and you may never have to use physical force.
So I ask myself, who is my worst enemy? Have you asked yourself, who is your worst enemy?
The good that we want to do will never win against evil if our mind and spirit are already defeated.
