NATIVE AMERICANS
HOLOCAUST OF NATIVE AMERICANS
Whites have taken their land, killed all their buffaloes, burned their homes and put all Indians in concentration camps. Today they live in ghettos while across their homeland, they are portrayed as racist mascots. They are the FIRST NATION. America was theirs. Columbus did not discover America, nor did the Vikings, it was already populated, 12 to 18 million souls when whites had arrived.
"What would Spaniards of the sixteenth century have said, had Native Americans landed at Spain 's shores and proclaimed to have discovered Europe ? The incredible variety of cultures and the impressive achievements Native Americans had developed throughout the millennia was lost. How well known is the fact that most Native Americans were living in towns and villages as farmers, long before Columbus and that the majority of Native societies in Northern America was organized democratically, including women's right to vote, long before such an idea was conceivable to Europeans?" /American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World
They've been "relocated" from their homeland, their place of birth. That is called ethnic cleansing. Major Native American resistance took place in the form of "Indian Wars" which were frequent up until 1890s. They were "granted" U.S. citizenship, they didn't want, in 1924. They are the braves but they are not free. Epidemic diseases from Europe, enslavement, genocide and wars have almost wiped them out. Smallpox proved deadly to Native Americans and disease was used as a bio weapon (infected blankets and smallpox vaccines) against them. U.S. government had comitted the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.
The Buffalo Hunt
Millions of buffalo once roamed North America, grazing the plains and prairies and populating the mountains. Historical documents around the time of Columbus's arrival describe the animals' importance to the indigenous people. According to early explorers, "the plains were black and appeared as if in motion" with buffalo herds. Until the hunters commenced to kill them off, their only enemies were the wolves and coyotes. A medium-sized herd, at that time, dotted the prairie for hundreds of miles, and to guess at the number in a herd was like trying to compute the grains of wheat in a granary. Woven into the fabric of Native American life for millennia, the buffalo was revered and honored. For thousands of Plains Indians—people like the Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Assiniboin, Crow, Cheyenne, Shoshoni, Arapaho, various Sioux or Dakota people, Comanche, and others—the buffalo was unquestionably paramount. But the buffalo represented more than food. For many it provided over one hundred specific items of material culture. Extermination of the buffalo was an official policy of the US government in order to achieve extermination of the Native Americans, particularly those living in the Western Plains. In order to make migration to the west easier, the US government, through the Army, adopted a policy to exterminate the buffalo. Extermination of the buffalo would inevitably mean the demise of the Indians who so relied on them for almost every aspect of their existence.
The Battle of the Wabash 1791
It was a major Native American victory, and remains the greatest loss to Native American forces by the United States Army in history, indeed, in proportional terms of losses to strength it was the worst defeat that United States forces have ever suffered in battle. Of the 1,000 troops that General St. Clair led into battle, only 48 escaped unharmed. The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War, recognized United States sovereignty of all the land east of the Mississipi River and south of the Great Lakes. The Indian tribes in the Old Northwest, however, were not parties to this treaty, and many of them, especially leaders such as Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, refused to recognize American claims to the area northwest of the Ohio River. President Washington, decided to use military force to pacify the region. At dawn on November 4, St. Clair's force was camped near the present-day location of Fort Recovery, Ohio, near the headwaters of the Wabash River. An Indian force consisting of around 1,000 warriors, led by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, waited in the woods while the troops stacked their weapons and paraded to their morning meals. The natives then struck quickly and, surprising the Americans, soon overran their perimeter... In 1794, a new U.S. force achieved what St. Clair had not when it decisively defeated the Indians of the Old Northwest at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The Western Confederacy, which had its roots in pan-tribal movements dating to the 1740s, came together to resist the expansion of the United States. Native Americans stood united to defend their lands against U.S. Army occupation.
The Massacre at Bad Axe 1832 /link
The Battle of the Little Bighorn 1876
A remarkable victory for the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne, led by Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake) "Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights." . The U.S. Seventh Cavalry, including a column of 700 men led by General Custer, was defeated. Five of the Seventh's companies were annihilated and Custer himself was killed as were two of his brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law. White men call it Custer's Last Stand. Modern documentaries suggest that there may not have been a "Last Stand," as traditionally portrayed in popular culture. Instead, archaeologists suggest that, in the end, Custer's troops were not surrounded but rather overwhelmed by a single charge. The battle reassessed American outlook on Native American fighting abilities, as well as public perception of the Great Sioux War. After the 1875 Sun Dance alliance, made by Sitting Bull between the Lakota and Cheyenne, thousands of Indians had slipped away from their reservations in early 1876. Chief Sitting Bull during this Sun Dance had a vision of soldiers falling from the sky meaning a victory was ahead. Military officials planned a summer campaign to force them back to the reservations. U.S. Army generals thought that it would be just another "catch them in their sleep and slaughter their women and children" kind of campaign, but they were about to realize that the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne were present "in force and not running away." and that they were outnumbered by approximately three to one, or roughly 1800 against 600. Interpretations of Custer's fight are conjecture, since none of his men survived the battle. David Humphreys Miller, who between 1935 and 1955 interviewed the last Indian survivors of the battle, wrote that the Custer fight lasted less than one-half hour. The Lakota asserted that Crazy Horse personally led one of the large groups of warriors that eventually overwhelmed the cavalrymen in a surprise charge from the northeast, causing a breakdown in the command structure and panic among the troops. Many of these men threw down their weapons while Cheyenne and Sioux warriors rode them down, "counting coup" with lances, coup sticks and quirts. Some Indian accounts recalled this segment of the fight as a "buffalo run."
The Wounded Knee Massacre 1890
Wounded Knee became a catch phrase for all the wrongs inflicted on Native Americans by the descendants of Europeans. The Massacre of Wounded Knee became a symbol for the Lakota Nation, of the lies and deceit of the "Great White Father in Washington" and the U.S. Government. The mass graves at Wounded Knee became a symbol to them to never forget and never to trust again... When the rain of ammunition ceased, over 300 Lakota people lay dead from gunfire, cannonfire, or manual butchering within the encampment and within adjacent ravines up to two miles away. The dead were Lakota men who had been disarmed before the weapons fire began, women, many with babes in arms or waiting to be born, and children. The soldiers walked away from their crime against humanity and left the dead where they lay. That night, the sky cried snow and the warm winter wind of peace was supplanted by the cold winter wind of grief. For four days, the dead laid where they were, frozen into grotesque shapes of lifelessness. Finally, the soldiers came and loaded the dead like cordwood in wagons, and hauled their loads to hastily dug mass graves, where the dead were thrown in - the bodies of men, women, and children whose spirits walked the encampment and ravines, wailing. The mass graves were filled and the soldiers left. Twenty seven Congressional Medals of Honor for "bravery" were awarded to the soldiers who participated in that heinous murder for their parts in fighting the allegedly hostile "war parties" attacking them that day.
"Now the U.S. Government wants to take from us 1,800 acres (including "lands, and all mineral rights, water rights, easements, permanent structures, and fixtures on such land") to turn our sacred site, the burial grounds, and "the historic landscape of Wounded Knee" into a national park. The government claims that it wants to do this so that it can " express its commitment to acknowledge and learn from our history, including the Wounded Knee Massacre, in order to provide a proper foundation for building an ever more humane, enlightened, and just society for the future (quoted from the enabling legislation). " To do so, the U.S. Government wants to remove and relocate any individuals and families living within that 1,800 acres and restore the landscape to the government's vision of 1890 historical conditions. Any buildings and fixtures currently within the 1,800 acres that are not found to coincide with that vision will be destroyed. The government also wants to build a visitors' center, an amphitheater, roads, and trails, and to relocate the three main roads that intersect at the current Wounded Knee memorial and one mass grave site. These activities are wholly inappropriate for a cemetery and burial site and will disturb the spirits of the people buried there... We stand opposed to the creation of this national park for all of the reasons given here and many others. We are asking you to help us in our fight to save this sacred site from development. "
NATIVE AMERICANS IN WWII
It is estimated that more than 3,600 young Navajo men and women joined the armed forces and over 10,000 Navajos went to work in the military factories during World War II. Proportionately, that figure represents one of the highest percentages of total population in the armed service of any ethnic group in the United States. A special group of Navajos were formed during World War II called the Navajo Code Talkers. The Code Talkers used a special code based on the unwritten Navajo language to transmit messages, making it futil for the Japanese enemy to decipher American battle messages about the time and place of attack. The complex syntax and complicated tonal qualities of the Navajo language could baffle even the most experienced linguists. Navajos were an integral part of the war effort even though they were not given the right to vote in Arizona until 1948, in New Mexico until 1953, and in Utah until 1957!
