Remember: There Was Genocide in the United States, Too

[KamaAina]

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/09/18/remember-there-was-genocide-united-states-too

On the National Mall in Washington D.C there is the Jewish Holocaust Museum. Most people have only a superficial knowledge of what this museum stands for. You may, like I did, believe that it contained only images of dead bodies, stacked like cordwood and that it really wasn’t something I wanted to see. Why there is such a need for such a thing is a question that is left hanging in the space of our collective consciousness. Then when you finally go, you find that your understanding was just the tip of the iceberg.

Like the Egyptian “Art of Memory” practiced by the Freemasons in their lodges, the tour takes you from one chamber of thought to another. It begins with photographs of ordinary people, family photos, a youngster holding a violin. In the late 1930s the Jews in Europe were ordinary human beings living their lives unaware that they would soon be the objects of extermination. The first shock to your worldview comes as you read a quote on a plaque by Martin Luther who started the Reformation, “ …to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn…I advise that their houses be razed and destroyed...that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them…”. One of the greatest lessons to be learned here is that wars and genocide begin in the hearts and words of seemingly righteous men. Moving on, we read of the laws which outlawed Germans from marrying Jews. There were laws which prevented Jews from holding civil service jobs, and laws which stripped them of all their rights including the right to own property. We are told that in Austria, ‘Aryan Austrians’ submitted applications to acquire former Jewish owned businesses. By the time you reach the part of the tour dealing with the deportment of the Jews to the concentration camps, you get a sense of deja vu. If you leave the Jewish Holocaust Museum with an eerie feeling that the Jewish Holocaust and American history are somehow connected, you are right. Not only did Hitler pattern his land grabbing policy of lebensraum (living space) after the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the American Indians, but he referred to the indigenous Slavs as “redskins."

Why is there a need for the Jewish Holocaust Museum? Does it exist in order “to play the guilt card”? Are reparations the goal? No, the purpose of the Holocaust Museum is to prevent history from repeating itself. Likewise, our museum, the American Indian Genocide Museum here in Houston, Texas exists for the same reason. Currently we have been protesting the Buffalo Soldiers Museum, also located here in Houston. The Buffalo Soldiers take great pride in dressing up in Cavalry uniforms and parading around as if hunting our people down and forcing them onto reservations was at one time, the patriotic thing to do. Dr. Quintard Taylor (who is black) of the University of Washington has put the whole situation in perspective when he said, “Here you have black men killing red men for the white man”. Has it been forgotten that the Buffalo Soldiers were so recently emancipated from 200 years of slavery by the white man at the time? Also, our museum has uncovered evidence that the earliest account of anyone ever claiming to have coined the phrase, ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ was by a white man. Former Texas Ranger, Ed Carnal wrote, “At Fort Richardson were stationed what we Texans called the ‘buffalo soldiers’—U.S. negro troops”. Ed Carnal died in 1921 at the age of 72. Thanks to Ed Carnal, we can put the bizarre myth to rest that our ancestors ‘honored’ those who hunted them with the name, “Buffalo Soldiers’.

As long as America fails to admit the influence American history had on men like Adolf Hitler, then history will continue to repeat itself. America must learn from history that Hitler emulated the organized ethnic cleansing and genocide found in the history of America. Today, the indigenous people of the rain forests of Brazil continue to be forced off their land and killed just as it was done in America during the time of the Buffalo Soldiers. As in Nazi Germany, there existed a culture here in America that glorified extermination. William Henry Harrison, who would later become president remarked that most frontiersmen “consider the murdering of Indians in the highest degree meritorious”. In September of 1868 the Buffalo Soldiers killed 25 Apaches and were allowed after the battle to collect scalps and souvenirs by Lieutenant Cusack. Upon their return to Fort Davis, Texas, they were observed “rigged out’ in “full Indian costume with the most fantastic head-dresses” and their “faces painted in a comical style”. How did the Buffalo Soldiers differentiate between friendly Indians and hostile? The formula was simple: “Indians who rejected reservation life were regarded as hostile”. When genocide is not condemned, it is glorified.

[olddots]

1. great article

[shenmue]

2. That's true

[closeupready]

3. Just got done watching "Hidalgo" which opens with the Wounded Knee Massacre,

or a dramatization of the events of that shameful episode of American history:

On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it.[7] A scuffle over Black Coyote's rifle escalated and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry's opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow soldiers. The Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking soldiers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but U.S. cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed.

By the time it was over, more than 200 men, women, and children of the Lakota had been killed and 51 were wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300.[4] Twenty-five soldiers also died, and 39 were wounded (6 of the wounded would later die).[8] At least twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor.[9] In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning the awards and called on the U.S. government to rescind them.[10] The site of the battlefield has been designated a National Historic Landmark.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

[Brother Buzz]

4. Genocide wasn't just glorified in California, it was profitable

Local authorities offered rewards rangeing from $5 for every severed head in Shasta City in 1855 to 25 cents for a scalp in Honey Lake in 1863. One resident of Shasta City wrote about how he remembers seeing men bringing mules to town, each laden with eight to twelve Indian heads. Other regions passed laws that called for collective punishment for the whole village for crimes committed by Indians, up to the destruction of the entire village and all of its inhabitants. These policies led to the destruction of as many as 150 Native communities.

The state of California also got involved. The government paid about $1.1 Million in 1852 to militias to hunt down and kill indians. In 1857 the California legislature allocated another $410,000 for the same purposes.

In 1856 the state of California paid 25 cents for each indian scalp. In 1860 the bounty was increased to $5.

[truedelphi]

7. And the many Miwok and Pomo Indians who were not outright killed ended up

Being utilized as slaves, toiling in the fields, or else as house servants.

Imagine being a ten year old who has survived seeing most of your extended family brutally killed - and then you have to spend the rest of your life pampering an obnoxious, smugly arrogant group of white people, who now "own" you!

[Brother Buzz]

9. That practice, as odious as it was, started with the Californios

The Northern bands and tribes were mostly untouched until the Northern gold fields were developed.

[stevenleser]

5. True and it should not be minimized, but the point of why the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide and

more recent genocides are more shocking is that in the 20th century and beyond, the human race should have evolved beyond this.

Disgusting that we haven't, really.

[KamaAina]

6. The point of the article is that the Holocaust in particular

can be traced back to this.

[truedelphi]

8. Well, the entire postulates of human behavior that the "Modern Civilization"

standards have evolved from --they all employ a divisive measure.

How you look, your apparel, and how "educated" you are - those two things have a great deal of determination as far as what you can do or can't do in your life. So what evolves is a class warfare that is destructive of the poor.

The ability of the One Percent to arrange the financial affairs of a nation have allowed both the nobility of France, circa 1770 to 1781, to plunder middle class wealth in France, and now America, 1990 to forever, to allow that only the upper one half of One Percent controls the money supply.

Once things are so bad that 49 cents out of every dollar of profit created in a nation goes ONLY to the One Percent, it destroys the middle class, and allows for a continual destruction of democracy. (Back in the days of Ron Reagan, a mere eight cents out of every dollar of profit ended up in Big Bankers' coffers.)

Right now, we are a democracy in name only. In my state, California, the names of those candidates who are on the ballot can ONLY be the top two vote getters in a primary. (So in the past elections, June 2014, November 2014, only 29% of us even bothered to vote, as for the most part it was only the Two Big Money Party candidates being allowed to be on the ballot.)

[Demeter]

10. You could make the case that there still is genocide in the US

[Stonepounder]

11. Of course we have genocide.

War is just too damn profitable. Particularly when you can sell to both sides. Look at IBM, Kodak, Standard Oil, Ford or Chase during WWII. Look at Haliburton and KBR today. These lovely people get filthy stinking rich by killing millions and completely destroying countries. And domestically we can look at the Native Americans, the Mayans, the Incas.

I sometimes think that the entire world would be a whole hell of a lot better off if we just exterminated mankind from the face of it.

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. the Nazis got eugentics from America's real practice of it

Many were for it including Ford

[Johnny Rash]

13. Let's not forget the Native Aboriginal from Down-Under: They were dealt with the same BLOW!

It is moment like this, that I am so ashamed of the what was done to countless Aboriginal Cultures by White Men mostly from the UK.

[progressoid]

15. Thanks for the movie link.

Will have to watch it later but the first 10 minutes have me

[Johnny Rash]

17. I guess I could say that the UK was successful in hiding this ATROCITY from the whole world.

I had just been made aware of this, yesterday! My reaction was the same: A Total Outrage came over me!

To make a long story short, the video clip tells the story about a primitive culture, close to Heaven, which was brutally killed for the sake of Financial GAIN.

Maybe, it can explain the HIDE, I got from the same party involved in your POST! I just couldn't take the BS, anymore, and I was bound in letting them know it the best way I know "How".

The really sad thing about the Party involved in your POST is that they haven't got a clue what real suffering is all about; They haven't realized yet, just how lucky they really are when it comes down to it.

[hfojvt]

14. so being on a reservation is the same as genocide?

What did Apaches usually do who rejected reservation life?

Stuff like this

"The first years of the 19th century were no better for Spain and Ignacio Zuniga, who commanded the Northern districts in Sonora, recorded that between 1820 and 1835 no fewer than 5,000 settlers had been killed by Apaches, and that more than 100 ranches, mining camps and outlying communities had been put to the torch."

"Penetrating deep into Mexico, Apaches from the north followed half a dozen major plunder trails, burning and killing as they went." p. 4

Of course, that was in Mexico, so why should the US care? Well, because the Treaty which ended the Mexican-American war, made the USA responsible for Indian raids from the US into Mexico, and because of that

"By 1853, the Mexican Government had filed some $15 million in claims against the United States for damages inflicted by Apache raiders." p. 10

But yeah, the soldiers hunting down armed raiders are the bad guys.

[truedelphi]

16. What?

How is your making such a statement a sign of any intelligence or even any knowledge of history?

[niyad]

18. k and r