Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans
November 26, 2014
Thanksgiving
Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans
by GILBERT MERCIER
The sad reality about the United States of America is that in a matter of a few hundreds years it managed to rewrite its own history into a mythological fantasy. The concepts of liberty, freedom and free enterprise in the land of the free, home of the brave are a mere spin. The US was founded and became prosperous based on two original sins: firstly, on the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their land by European colonialists; secondly, on slavery. This grim reality is far removed from the fairytale version of a nation that views itself in its collective consciousness as a virtuous universal agent for good and progress. The most recent version of this mythology was expressed by Ronald Reagan when he said that America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.
In rewriting its own history about Thanksgiving, white America tells a Disney-like fairytale about the English pilgrims and their struggle to survive in a new and harsh environment. The pilgrims found help from the friendly and extremely generous Native-American tribe, the Wampanoag Indians, in 1621. Unfortunately for Native Americans, the European settlers gratitude was short-lived. By 1637, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop ordered the massacre of thousands of Pequot Indian men, women and children. This event marked the start of a Native-American genocide that would take slightly more than 200 years to complete, and of course to achieve its ultimate goal, which was to take the land from Native Americans and systematically plunder their resources. The genocide begun in 1637 marks the beginning of the conquest of the entire continent until most Native Americans were exterminated, a few were assimilated into white society, and the rest were put in reservations to dwindle and die.
When Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, on his quest for gold and silver, the Native population, which he erroneously called Indians, numbered an estimated 15 million who lived north of current day Mexico. It was, by all considerations, a thriving civilization. Three hundred and fifty years later, the Native American population north of Mexico would be reduced to less than a million. This genocide was brought upon the Natives by systematic mass murder and also by disease, notably smallpox, spread by the European colonists.
Columbus and his successors proto-capitalist propensity for greed was foreign to Native Americans. They viewed the land as tribal collective ownership, not as a property that could be owned by individuals. Columbus and his successors were not coming to an empty wilderness, but into a world which, in some places, was as densely populated as Europe, and where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations between men, women, children and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps in any other places in the world. wrote Howard Zinn in his masterful A Peoples History of the United States.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/26/celebrating-the-genocide-of-native-americans/
msongs
(67,405 posts)just another chance to hang out with family and friends in appreciation of the good parts of their lives
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)And the owners should get their land back
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)Last edited Thu Nov 27, 2014, 01:28 PM - Edit history (1)
Most of non native americans had nothing to do with this.
BTW, I am a native american, I was born in this country which makes me a native american.
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)GGJohn
(9,951 posts)NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)GGJohn
(9,951 posts)I was born in america, therefore that makes me a native american.
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)on any subject.
It causes high blood pressure and headache.
I choose not to celebrate the murder, rape and practical annihilation of the people who rightfully own the land we all sit on...
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)on reservations is ludicrous, considering most living americans had nothing to do with the plight of the American Indian.
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)Sparhawk60
(359 posts)So, what tribe did you turn your home over to? I assume you also turned over all your personal property as well? If you truly believe what your wrote, don't you have a moral obligation to return what ever stolen property you can?
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)the billions I/We owe them, because I cant do it myself, it has to be a joint effort.
Denying the FACT that this nation was created by rape, murder and theft, why would anyone want to take a position that either denies that or misdirects from that fact, especially on what I thought was supposed to be a liberal board?
Next, somebody here is going to tell me what happened in Murrieta earlier this year was OK...
Sweeney
(505 posts)only more rights in something than a disinterested party can claim. The place is still up for grabs along with the rest of the world.
malthaussen
(17,193 posts)... I would point out, however, that most land around the world has been seized from the indigenus people, and genocide is as old as humanity. Let us not forget that the very first books of the Bible, upon which all three of the greatest monotheistic religions in the world are based, detail the history of just such a land-grab and genocide, and justify it as the will of god.
So my question is this: at what point do we draw a line in history, and say "after this point, genocide, slavery and land-seizure are crimes, but before this point, anything goes?" We are all descended from slaves, just as we are all descended from kings. Which geneology should we emphasize?
-- Mal
can't say for the future, and a fast fish is only as fast as the man fast to him is strong. You can see even in the Bible a real concern for the legal justification of theft. Abraham is shown bargaining for the Grave of Sarah. and the seller very aware that it would give the buyer rights in that land that were expanded in time to be the state of Israel. If the seller knew what he was selling he might better have cut his own throat.
Sweeney
Sparhawk60
(359 posts)right after I get mine. lol Just joking , you raise a very valid point...at what point do we stop living in the past?
unionthug777
(740 posts)is what I call it.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)ellenrr
(3,864 posts)esp. when people ask me why I do not celebrate Thanksgiving:
http://www.alternet.org/culture/no-thanks-thanksgiving
http://www.alternet.org/story/68170/why_we_shouldn%27t_celebrate_thanksgiving
Judi Lynn
(160,527 posts)Sweeney
(505 posts)is a prize. I can point to it and tell people that rodent killed all the Indians. We know starvation, hogs, disease, and gun powder played a part, but to have the beavers with which Hatters made a superior felt hat, the natives became the agents of their own destruction. These were stone aged people. To have cloth which they thought better than any skin, needles, thread, iron pots and pans, steel knives, fire arms, the death of the beaver, themselves, or others was thought a small matter. The number of natives killed by white is likely very small compared with the number killed by other natives for trade goods.
Many of the raids in the southwest were in search of hoop iron. The movie scenes of smoldering wagons is not that far off. The native would burn barrels and wagon wheels to recycle the hoop iron as arrow heads and knives. Even the field museum in Chicago has examples of indian arrows with metal heads obviously unaware of what a change that represents.