It still sickens me to read about this and the other horrible travesties that were pounded down upon our Native people. I cannot get past it some days. This and the enslavement of Africans brings great shame upon me. This vicious treatment of “others” who are not male and white is still happening today. Look no further than Texas Governor Greg Abbot and his bussing of people fleeing from cruelty only to be thrown into the frigid cruel night. I am wringing my hands.
Victoria, I couldn’t agree with you more. Sickening! How did Texas RE-ELECT their nightmare governor! They had a REAL choice with Beto. We’ve got to do better!
Many years ago as I travelled across the country, I happened upon a young Lakota man who was hitchhiking back home on the Pine Ridge Reservation. We talked along the way and this young Lakota Sioux brought me to his home on the reservation and introduced me to his family. As a gift for transporting their family member home, they sang and danced a tribal song. I stayed and took in their hospitality and then pushed off to continue my trip westward. It was a moment I will never forget those many years ago. Thank you Heather for your research and stories that keep this tragedy of Wounded Knee alive.
Robert, born & raised in the SW area of SD, I know exactly the areas of that area of history, it’s beauty, it’s sometimes deadly winters. I’ve wondered how the native Americans could survive in those harsh conditions and then have to give up their homes and their very lives to the white man. The PineRidge Reservation is not close to the beauty nor bounty of their sacred Black Hills.
I wish all of our Earliest Americans an Honest US Government paying what is owed each Treaty partner and a casino - not run by Donald Trump - so they can be collecting on a lot of unpaid monies past allowing them to live more like they would like to, as friends in CA and other SW States do. And, then, with the combination of funds, they can be buying back their former lands.
Take a look at “banned books” in schools today. The precursor is not what our children are reading today to have an idea of the relevance of history… it’s what they are “NOT ALLOWED” to read.
I have a friend who is a Director for a Regional Library System. They supply/distribute books and other material to both Libraries and Schools. She gets notices to "pull" certain books from the various locations. She said the list is longer than what is published to the public. At first, she thought the banned book list was just the folly of a number of politicians and would go by the way side. It's not. It's School Board zealots and subgroups that pressure school Districts nationwide. She doesn't see an end in site. Grrrr
This book banning is one of marks of Fascism… be careful Americans.
True Patriots would never do such a thing. Perversity . The case of Santos is a perfect example. Not permitted to read books but can lie and lie unfettered. Trump brought this onslaught on us and the Florida Governor is an example of pure Fascsism.
Absolutely Susanna, especially when any given group is sipping from the same trough, singing the same hymns, inciting mob think in a self affirming echo chamber.
We're dealing with a variant, human-nature, ripened with disinformation. Aberrant behavior that serves to intimidate must be called out and dealt with evenly, without undue delay. I think we are seeing some of that.
Gerrymandering does not effect a State-wide race, like Governor, but it does allow the election of the unfit into the Legislature, who then create laws allowing Voter suppression - the ultimate act of Treason to the Constitution of any Democracy.
Beto gave away his election when he announced he would indeed take away the A-15's.
Don't announce that! You'll lose votes and have no chance to do get into office. Instead, work to reduce the harm, bit by bit, such as with insurance and licensing and background checks and red flag laws. That's how we are dealing with drug use.
“Common sense” gun control is obvious to Americans not familiar with gun culture. But any candidate who is so out of touch with Texas voting patterns that they openly advocate gun confiscation is a fool. Perhaps right. Perhaps noble. But still a fool.
Time is probably on Beto’s side, but his efforts so far have been doomed by his unpopular gun control position. “Common sense” is different in Texas.
Just maybe it's time to make his "unpopular" gun control position popular. AR-15s are military assault rifles and unsuitable for anything but slaughter.
You and I can agree on this. So can voters in about fifteen states. Openly calling for gun confiscation is a sure way to lose in the other 35. When we call for gun policy reform they give us “constitutional carry”. Better for Democrats and hypothetical sane Republicans to support candidates who are more aware of what is possible where they are running.
Sarah, just another aspect of the far-right and guns is the massive number of online ads for guns for sale! I monitor and download just the videos they provide and I have hundreds and occasionally watch them. They use human shapes as targets, show how to hit targets from 300yds, etc. Worst of all, the ads and videos show kids, looking as young as 14, using the guns and looking proud! It’s sickening! My main reason though for making this post is the utter frustration at the fact that the far-right is massively arming up for the open warfare they are working towards! It’s utter BS that the thin shield of so-called responsible gun owners rights need to be protected at the expense of civil war! GenXers are no more to blame than the boomers with tee shirts with sayings like “Shoot Democrats to protect Your Freedom!”. Yeah, I’m 76, white and really scared about what’s coming!
Remember, that the US did have a ban on 'assault' rifle sales,
"The 10-year ban was passed by the U.S. Congress on August 25, 1994 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994.[1] The ban applied only to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment. It expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision." - Wiki
Supposedly, it only resulted in a slight decrease of mass shootings, and no decrease is homicides where pistols are overwhelmingly used.
Time to change our "gun culture." I have many in my family that are lifetime members of the NRA along with law enforcement officers of just about every type & description. This is the problem with not doing anything to address the issues. Politicians have long been cowed by the NRA & other lobbies in DC to the point of insanity! We must get Big Money out of our law making process. Repeal Citizen’s United & take our country back from the corporations & special interest groups. The vast majority of voters are in favor of gun reform. The GOP whips up a frenzy of fear & the gun companies stuff their wallets. Fear sells, it's effect keeps folks reacting without taking time to understand the consequenses. There are more guns than people in this country. Weapons need to be regulated, just like we do with cars & driving, when don't we stand up & protect ourselves, our children & our country. Look at Jan 6th, Thank God more of them weren't armed. It has become time for the GOP to do something or they become the scum my great grandkids will learn about in history class.
Indeed! A cowboy without a gun is JUST a “man,” lol! They are weaklings, of course, without a barrel to shoot from! But, yeah, you are 100% right! Covertly campaigning against these weasels has its merits, I suppose, but lying and cheating is reserved for them because without those bucket hats and their guns, they are mere mortals like the rest of us. Remember during the first outbreak of Covid-19 when Abbott retorted that the elderly and compromised folks were “expendable?” AR-15s? My gun toting relative said she hunted with the two she has! Wow!
How much chance does "common sense legislation" have when the current SCOTUS (along with the GOP) is so determined to misinterpret the 2nd Amendment as not allowing any restrictions on gun ownership? These people are "originalists" in everything but that. Not that the 2nd Amendment's history is all that glorious -- it seems it made its way into the Bill of Rights in order to win support from the slave-dependent southern states, which depended on various militias to prevent and put down slave revolts. (Carol Anderson's book THE SECOND is an excellent source on this.)
It’s not that long ago, a few hundred, that “slave patrols” roamed the Carolinas preventing uprisings and runaways! Nothing will change until the old white guys in Washington go on to meet their makers; G-d???
Thanks for recommendation! Yes, things *can* be done, and I think/hope that more attention is being paid to the state legislatures, secretaries of state, et al.
Beto probably thought that the wholesale massacre of shoppers, school children and the realization that none are safe would be a no-brainer. Well not with Rupert and a rogue Republicans party on the loose with lies at 90 decibels.
Morning Jeri, I sort of posted the same sentiment yesterday. I read that Abbott was re-elected by an landslide in TX. With 60% of the women in Uvalde voting for him. As I said, I’m sure they completely understood and agreed that their babies were rightfully massacred so the party of Guns, God, and don’t say Gay can continue their rich tradition of white supremacy. That Beto’s “out of touch” with TX voters gun self-identity’s is surely the obvious reason for his loss and Texans waited with unabated glee for their next opportunity to freeze to death. Which, by the way arrived right on cue.
But, where is the Democratic Party’s support? Why wasn’t Texas a priority for Democrats? Because they decided it wasn’t a winner? We’ve left thousand of Americans to fend for themselves in a state hostile to existing humans while playing God in people’s bedrooms and physicians offices. We’ve done this because we think we want different things, but the truth is we don’t. We want better paying jobs, safer schools and better education for our children. We want a government that works at least part time for the people. We all want safe immigration and to say half the country does not is an outright lie. The entire country is willing to share the burden of immigration with border states, to say we do not is another lie. We need to get in there. Protect the rights of Americans to free and fair elections, show states like FL that you can’t put an AR15 in the smoker and serve it for Thanksgiving dinner. Will they not permit Democrats to try working with Texans or are Democrats just not willing to try? Flood the zone.
In Texas, there are those that love their guns and those that don’t. Beto was being a truthteller; making a promise to HIS base. But, let’s be realistic, Abbott won for other reasons…gerrymandering is the main reason and false information is the other.
I lived in the state of Texas for over 30 years and was relieved when I moved away. The mindset is money, status, and having little or no compassion for the less fortunate.
The way Abbott is bussing immigrants to D.C. to make a statement is heartless and unforgiveable. He busses them to Philly and other northern cities and we welcome them with open arms. So, in the long run, in a perverse way, he’s doing the immigrants a favor…Texas is still the wild west and now they have the worst of the worst; Elon Musk
Gerrymandering is a real problem, indeed, but it mostly affects cities, counties, and states that are divide into districts that each send a rep to a legislative body.
In a state-wide race, gerrymandering has next to no effect.
Imagine you put most of the Dems in one district, and it got one rep. The other districts have moderate R majorities. But in the other districts the Rs still win the right to send a rep to the leg. Those many many Dem votes - those beyond 50.1% - in that one district are "wasted."
I don't like gerrymandering, not for one minute, but it does not affect state-wide races.
(Gerrymandering does affect Pres/V-P races because of the dratted Electoral College. Let's get rid of the Electoral College!)
They cheat, legally by making their evil legal, just like Adolf did. Same happened in 2018. Hope Beto doesn’t give up. Wish Biden would use him somehow. The Texas evil trio has a choke hold on Texas, at the moment.
Suz-an, you are 100% on the money. WE did not re-elect the creep. When you think 75% of Gen Z did not vote (per Dash Dobrofsky, who I trust) at all is simply a big red flag to work harder and harder. Nine million registered NON-VOTERS is even more depressing. I love Michael Moore and would come live in Texas to help get your voters out, if needed. 2024 is a critical presidential race. WE better get a great candidate….there are several that come to mind.
One of my huband's Lakota relatives had a great grandmother who survived Wounded Knee. Nobody there has forgotten this travesty and it still continues. It took forever for the Gnome to call out some help for the people stuck on the Rosebud in the recent storm. And yes, then there is Greg Abbott and DeSatan using asylum seekers as political pawns. And those people are fleeing from problems that we helped create.
I agree. The damage that was and is can never be made right but also continues to be made worse. Why? Why? Why? (Although I get your reference, may I just ask that tfg not be associated with gnomes? I love gnomes...they.make me smile when there isn’t a lot to smile about these days :))
Yup, you can see the smoke floating away from the fire flaring up from their burning pants! Maybe we can dump water on them like Dorthy did to the evil witch. The flying monkeys
were freed from their curse and ceased playing pranks and such! We need a Glenda to free the monkeys in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Missouri, allowing good and the lights to return for a bit! Many good folks in these states need to get together and VOTE the monkeys out of office come next time around! Oorah!
Abbot’s thoughtless and cruel shipping of people into frigid temperatures Is an excellent comparison to the Lakota massacre.
Once people like the Texas Government reduce human beings to political pawns their indifference to their health and welfare becomes a destructive ingredient.
The Republican Party’s attempts to reduce of the humanitarian refugee crises to a Political Policy difference and refusal legislate for different results is not much different from the US Government designating the Indians as enemy savages in 1880.
It is just sad we can be so bereft the lessons of history. Especially in the season most Texans consider a Holiday celebrating the Prince of Peace.
Or in Ukraine, the masses huddling under makeshift bomb shelters of an over pass. No water, no shelter, no electricity, no heat, while bombs and drones continue to destroy infrastructure and residential areas.
Almost like this whole atrocity is being relegated to the level of some bad traffic accident where a drunken member of the Crown/Kremlin elite drove his Escolade into a van-load of pre-school kids with their mothers killing them against a parked (illegally) bulldozer. No big deal, the chauffeur was driving..no? Maybe it'll just go away...huh comrade?
Lemme tell you something.., we are dealing with a 'communist regime' so imbedded underneath the fingernails and in the bone-marrow of the work-trodden population. A population not far removed from Stalin (1937!!) that is totally intimidated and indoctrinated in the russo-kgb fear of being arrested/existence. So many of whom love Mother Russia so dearly they believe every promise that is sworn to them - never delivered. And, in their relative poverty, they support a space agency and extremely high-tech black-R&D. And it is this population who will be convinced "the operation" a mere sideshow, was an overwhelming succcess. This is the Russian way, and all the dukes, duchesses, barons and baronesses...oligarks all, they will see to it. They're well insulated, not about to suffer. I think the Biden administration is onto them. The Republicans have been bought off with parties, sex, drugs, alcohol, and $$ which keep pouring in. Look at em.
Victoria, yes, Abbot sponsored a cruel stunt. But, yes, there is a crisis at the border and a crisis of migration world wide. Remember, roughly 70% of today's world population is in dire poverty. That is about 5.46 BILLION people looking for a better life.
2.4 million of them came here in 2022 alone. Abbott is right that America needs a policy. He is wrong to use cruelty to make his point. Also, Title 42 does NOT apply to everyone as the below article notes. So, the world knows what countries can still get in free here.
"The 2.4 million Border Patrol encounters with migrants in the 2022 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 represented a record high. And it is probably no accident that the steepest increases were among migrants not subject to Title 42. There was a nearly 2000 percent increase in the number of Colombians encountered during that period compared with the previous fiscal year; Indians increased by 607 percent; Cubans by 471 percent; Russians by 430 percent and Nicaraguans by 227 percent.
By contrast, apprehensions of Hondurans and Guatemalans — two countries that made up a large share of the migrants arriving in the United States in most recent years, but whose nationals are now subject to expulsion under Title 42 — were down by 33 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
This unusual trend has continued in the new fiscal year: Of the migrants encountered in November at the border, 39 percent were from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, whose nationals can be expelled under Title 42. Cubans and Nicaraguans, who cannot be swiftly expelled, outnumbered migrants from the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — a situation that would have been unheard-of even a year ago."
I'm grateful that you continue to share this haunting but so important history. Perhaps at some point we will learn from the past and do better in the future
It didn’t settle. Pine Ridge remained volatile. Fear reared its ugly head again. Hate joined hands. Black market automatic (full-auto) weapons sales took off. Walls in ranch houses were rebuilt to hide machine guns and more. Heavy weapons are still ready hidden in those reinforced walls. Federal intervention this time to prevent another Wounded Knee Creek. It didn’t settle.
I have to assume that those who are foaming at the mouth to keep "critical race theory" out of our schools (although it's a university-level course) are desperate for our children to never learn the real stories of our past. We were never taught the truth, but our children must know all of it.
There's an old proverb that once you know, you can never not know.
It's essential that we know what happened. What IS happening. Even though it forces us to face the ugly, cruel, and inhumane side of our collective nature. That it makes us feel guilt and shame over the mistreatment of others is a GOOD thing. These emotions motivate us to do better. To BE better people.
Cheryl, you are 100% correct, and those who want to hide the truth are the very same people who would continue to perpetrate the cruelty. We all must pay attention and read between the lines, to be sure that we understand the dynamics of today's events if we are to improve ourselves and our country's fabric.
This may well be true for individuals -- repressed memories do have their way of forcing themselves to the surface -- but I wonder if it applies to whole communities and societies. I've seen a whole lot of collective not-knowing in my lifetime. It's sobering to see how much "we" knew about climate change in the 1970s, and how completely that knowledge went underground during and after the Reagan administration. And the right to choose was fought for, won, and then taken for granted for a couple of generations -- until the Dobbs decision last June woke a lot of people up.
Susanna, there is an excellent book on the climate denial machinery that was funded by oil interests starting even earlier than the 70’s - Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes. The book details the similarities between the marketing campaign to convince us that cigarettes didn’t cause cancer and burning fossil fuels wouldn’t change the climate. Gobsmackingly awful to know how so many drank that Kool aid. And still do.
Or that once you’re seen, you can never “unsee”. Book banning and burning is on par with gerrymandering and voter suppression. The truth can be so painful yet as expressed here already, the governor of Texas is using tax dollars to carry out the same sort of cruelties on “others” and the only penalty can be at the ballot box. Some of Heathers letters are sinful to read but I’d venture to guess some readers (and more of others that do not read these letters) are or were unaware of these dark truths. The governors of TX and FL are 2 that will do their bests to continue this thinking and perpetuation of human cruelties. Heathers so very right, we cannot step into the past and change the trajectory of calamities. We can only hope to assure our future not repeat itself. It begins with with our children
Pat. "We can only hope to assure our future not repeat itself. It begins with with our children." Agree! That's why we must fight hard so kids get more than the 'sanitized version' of history. As a child of the '50s, our teachers completely omitted all the ugliness. I was horrified that I didn't know about Japanese internment camps til I was in my 20s.
I was born in 1951 so I was in junior high and high school in the '60s. I had mostly great teachers, especially in history and English, who didn't omit the ugliness but who couldn't cover everything. Racism, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War were on TV almost every night, but my in-depth education really began when I started college in 1969 and immersed myself in the antiwar movement. This was where I learned about McCarthyism (from people who'd been blacklisted and from "red-diaper babies"), the FBI's ongoing attack on the civil rights movement, the bloody history of the labor movement, the even bloodier war against the native peoples of this continent, and lots more. Once you get hold of one thread, it tends to lead to lots of other threads.
I note the use of "some" in "some things." There's a loophole there that isn't in the "old proverb" version, and it's important. Some other things it's all too easy to un-know, especially on the societal level. Which is why we need to keep reminding ourselves and others of what *really* happened, not just the watered-down version.
My conclusion as well. Human Nature, our collective nature, has evolved and must evolve a lot more and a lot quicker in order to help our planet and its inhabitants survive. Otherwise, I am imagining everyone competing and we have water wars, food wars, energy wars, and we keep killing ourselves and planet over it all. Or, we an honor the divine in all of us and all creation and care for it. Now.
It's hard for human nature to evolve, even on the individual level, as long as the economic and legal systems reward destructive short-term behavior and even punish long-term and creative planning.
I happen to have a copy of the 1932 revision of "The Outline of History", first published by H G Wells in 1920. The 1200-odd pages cover every aspect of our history. So many quotes - see if you can get hold of it somehow. "Ignorance is the first penalty of pride". "About these great changes of climate that are always in progress on the earth's surface (....) They are not periodic changes, they are slow fluctuations between heat and cold." And the preface concludes "...as knowledge increases it may be possible that our race will make its plans thousands of years ahead to meet the coming changes."
And moving right along to the chapter "The World after the Great War", we read, on voting as the instrument of democracy, "The crowd is backward but the crowd is mobile; if it learns little, it forgets easily, (...) it will take the shape of new institutions very readily. Its patriotisms, its loyalties, its hostilities, even its most passionately expressed beliefs, are no more than skin deep". And "We are passing beyond that first crude conception of democracy that looked to the voting mass for initiatives and direction. The future, we realise more and more clearly, is prepared in in the laboratory and study, and not in the streets." If Wells suddenly returned, he'd think he'd just been asleep for a while.
Haunting and sad. Will we ever learn! My granddaughter is 50% Navajo and her grandparents are 100%. It is always a fine balance to find a middle ground, my heart always aches for what we did to all indiginouse people. Get togethers are always stressful. But her granfather sang her Happy birthday in the Navajo lamguage which was beautiful ❤️
I live in Dakota County, MN on stolen Indian land. I learned beadweaving as a child growing up among Lakota, Dakota, Anishinabeg, Ho-Chunk and other Native people in Minneapolis and owe my grandparents' native neighbors a debt of gratitude I will never be able to pay as a result since I now am able to make my living selling my bead-weaving. On Tuesday, we revisited what is still the largest single execution in the county - 38 Natives died that day. Today, we revisit the horrific massacre at Pine Ridge.
Whenever I am again confronted with the genocide we've perpetrated against the Indigenous people of the US, I ask myself what I can do? What one thing could I do that would pay some of our collective debt forward?
For me, funding some of the Native-led nonprofits helps me feel like I'm doing something. One of the best I've found in the Lakota People's Law Project, located in Bismarck, ND. www.lakotalaw.org.
I hope that some of you will join me in funding this organization that seeks to help today's Lakota people. I stand with Standing Rock.
Yes yes yes and yes! I grew up in NM; a white kid with a brown heart, as I was raised near both the Navajo reservation (Farmington) and the Mescalero reservation (Roswell and Lincoln County). When I was a hitchhiking kid in the 70s, I hung with mostly brown kids because I hated my white congregation telling us to stay clear of the Mexicans and the drunk Indians. Once, when a bunch of us took an old Mescalero guy to a hospital in Alamogordo, the nurses and doctors took me aside and said they’d “help me get away from my friends. They only spoke to me. The rest of my group went to jail! Long story short, this began the development of MY religion: social justice! Free Leonard Peletier! Justice for the long walker descendants. And those who were removed from Georgia during Jackson’s 1828 “Indian Removal Act!” Ugh, so frustrating!
Yes, Michael Moore is really cool! He’s so cute he’s 100% more effective. No yelling or fighting, just a sea of love! I’ve had lots of buds sending letters too! I’ve worked this for so so so many years! My 3rd great-grandmother was sold to a bean farmer in NM! She was Kiowa on my woman-side, and G-d only knows what else! Injustices happen; preplanned attacks and revenge aren’t necessary justice only unnecessary injustice.
Michael Moore has me writing to President Biden and bring up Leonard every time an opportunity presents itself (or not). This injustice must ended! We are dedicated to seeing to it.
Learning the truth of indigenous history is learning US history. It is heartening to hear non Indigenous people wanting to make reparations. Donations to Indigenpus organizations is a good way to do so. I am Ojibwe White Earth Nation and contribute regularly to Lakota law project.
Jeri yes, Andrew Jackson was perhaps the most genocidal president in our history. And crimes continued under Clinton, Obama, Biden, none of whom have honored our treaties with indigenous nations.
Thank you for telling this terrible story, lest we forget. I hope it helps keep our eyes open as we enter a new year of Danger--including the danger others face from our irrepressible and cocksure naivete.
Professor, I cannot say that I "like" this account, but I do appreciate that you have provided it here. It's a clear—and horiffic—reminder of the terror-filled events US forces have delivered to people in these United States (and elsewhere). Regardless of whether it repeats or rhymes, I hope that we learn from these histories and resolve that US forces should never visit such episodes on other people again.
Heather, thank you for shining a bright line on what people are capable of when they consider a group of people so inferior that their lives are worthless. When people go along with atrocities to increase their power or to protect themselves, it doesn’t go well.
As the Mafia has shown, the first step to promoting/ignoring reprehensible actions against “the others” is a small action. The threat of exposure is then used to pressure the person to take gradually more onerous actions. Since we want to see ourselves as honorable, we make excuses that often involve casting the victim as having provoked our action.
As you’ve shown, the first step to acting better is to acknowledge your past transgressions. By sharing your history lessons, more and more readers now know the facts (acts and results) and can resolve to do better next time.
It seems to me that white males of European ancestry have been the most dangerous predators in the New World. (My ancestry is English.) The native people were just prey animals to the soldiers.
When the English reached the coasts of Australia, there were no streets or buildings, just some puzzled dark-skinned savages, so they declared it to be terra nullius and raised the flag in the name of King George (the same one).
Not only the US, but also the rest of us - what have we really learned from our history? Do we have less wars now? Do we treat indigenous populations better? Seems to me, all we are is Neanderthals with smart phones - we never seem to make it out of the caves, technology just gets better.
Please don't blame the Neanderthals, we probably wiped the last of them out too before a bit of genetic interchange (sound familiar?) We are what we are and who knows what Neanderthals might have been like.
"Despite their reputation as being primitive 'cavemen', Neanderthals were actually very intelligent and accomplished humans. These were no 'ape-men'. So it's unfair to them that the word Neanderthal is used as an insult today."
You are precisely correct. The old world held 70 million people in 1492. The new world held 62 million mostly farmers. There are no more than 7 million indigenous souls now.
I visited Wounded Knee in 1997. I also spent days with the Lakota, as part of my initiative to create, in concert with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a summer teachers institute for those who taught humanities at over two dozen Native American colleges..
What was seared in my mind was that the Army unit at Wounded Knee was the 7th Calvary, the unit that Custer commanded at the Battle of Big Horn 14 years earlier. Custer went rashly into battle, where he was annihilated by the Lakota and other tribes.
The 7th Calvary was humiliated. I firmly believe that they were yearning for retaliation when they encountered the Lakota at Wounded Knee. Of course this never would be reported in formal Army reports—as hundreds of Lakota were slaughtered. (My recollection is that the 7th Calvary set up artillery on the hill overlooking where they initiated their encounter with the Lakota.)
[Our military does not have an unblemished record in reporting its soldiers’ ‘massacres.’ In 1968 at My Lai under Lt. Calley over 500 Vietnamese civilians were raped and murdered. This was initially investigated by then-Major Colin Powell, who wrote a ‘whitewash’ report. Only a year later did My Lai explode into a national scandal, after a soldier was a whistleblower and journalist Seymour Hersh published an account of this cold-blooded massacre.
A lt. General conducted a major investigation. About a dozen soldiers were reprimanded. Lt. Calley was sentenced to life in prison. Three years later he was released.
My Lai was not a one-off incident. Among others, there was a major general, who reportedly was responsible for the killing of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who had the nickname ‘The Butcher of the Delta.’]
Your theory makes perfect sense. The military unit's desire for revenge, augmented by free-flowing alcohol, made for a horrible massacre of the Lakotas.
It still sickens me to read about this and the other horrible travesties that were pounded down upon our Native people. I cannot get past it some days. This and the enslavement of Africans brings great shame upon me. This vicious treatment of “others” who are not male and white is still happening today. Look no further than Texas Governor Greg Abbot and his bussing of people fleeing from cruelty only to be thrown into the frigid cruel night. I am wringing my hands.
Victoria, I couldn’t agree with you more. Sickening! How did Texas RE-ELECT their nightmare governor! They had a REAL choice with Beto. We’ve got to do better!
Gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Many years ago as I travelled across the country, I happened upon a young Lakota man who was hitchhiking back home on the Pine Ridge Reservation. We talked along the way and this young Lakota Sioux brought me to his home on the reservation and introduced me to his family. As a gift for transporting their family member home, they sang and danced a tribal song. I stayed and took in their hospitality and then pushed off to continue my trip westward. It was a moment I will never forget those many years ago. Thank you Heather for your research and stories that keep this tragedy of Wounded Knee alive.
Robert, born & raised in the SW area of SD, I know exactly the areas of that area of history, it’s beauty, it’s sometimes deadly winters. I’ve wondered how the native Americans could survive in those harsh conditions and then have to give up their homes and their very lives to the white man. The PineRidge Reservation is not close to the beauty nor bounty of their sacred Black Hills.
I wish all of our Earliest Americans an Honest US Government paying what is owed each Treaty partner and a casino - not run by Donald Trump - so they can be collecting on a lot of unpaid monies past allowing them to live more like they would like to, as friends in CA and other SW States do. And, then, with the combination of funds, they can be buying back their former lands.
So special, Robert. <3
And Dash Dobrofsky on Substack said 75% (seventy-five! ) of Gen X’ers in Texas did not vote! That is terrible news.
Elisabeth the fact that the GenX'ers chose not to vote is perhaps a precursor to the upcoming General Election. Very unsettling indeed.
Take a look at “banned books” in schools today. The precursor is not what our children are reading today to have an idea of the relevance of history… it’s what they are “NOT ALLOWED” to read.
The 50 most banned books in America - CBS News https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-banned-books-in-america/
Salud, Linda.
🗽
Good morning Christine!
I have a friend who is a Director for a Regional Library System. They supply/distribute books and other material to both Libraries and Schools. She gets notices to "pull" certain books from the various locations. She said the list is longer than what is published to the public. At first, she thought the banned book list was just the folly of a number of politicians and would go by the way side. It's not. It's School Board zealots and subgroups that pressure school Districts nationwide. She doesn't see an end in site. Grrrr
One of the best ways I know of to arouse interest amongst those 11 to 13 year olds is to "ban" something.
This book banning is one of marks of Fascism… be careful Americans.
True Patriots would never do such a thing. Perversity . The case of Santos is a perfect example. Not permitted to read books but can lie and lie unfettered. Trump brought this onslaught on us and the Florida Governor is an example of pure Fascsism.
But they voted in record numbers elsewhere! The activist Gen Xers must organize with help if they need it. The Boomers are there for them!
Elisabeth, exactly. We needed them so horribly in Texas and they disappointed.
We need to find out how this fell through the cracks.
Wait until 2024! Holding my breath.
Just under two years to change that situation. They must be made to understand.
Also, white supremacy is a powerful drug.
Absolutely Susanna, especially when any given group is sipping from the same trough, singing the same hymns, inciting mob think in a self affirming echo chamber.
And keeping caches of deadly weapons to shoot the rest of “us”…omg, D4N.
The gun nuts were just as important
Especially, when combined with the other powerful drugs of 'religion' and guns.
We're dealing with a variant, human-nature, ripened with disinformation. Aberrant behavior that serves to intimidate must be called out and dealt with evenly, without undue delay. I think we are seeing some of that.
Gerrymandering does not effect a State-wide race, like Governor, but it does allow the election of the unfit into the Legislature, who then create laws allowing Voter suppression - the ultimate act of Treason to the Constitution of any Democracy.
Well said!
Yeah. They cheated.
Spot on J.
I was stunned when Beto lost I was thinking maybe something was fishy?
In Texas?? With Greg Abbott as Governor and his collection of anti-American officials??
Naw, couldn't happen ...
Beto gave away his election when he announced he would indeed take away the A-15's.
Don't announce that! You'll lose votes and have no chance to do get into office. Instead, work to reduce the harm, bit by bit, such as with insurance and licensing and background checks and red flag laws. That's how we are dealing with drug use.
https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/harm-reduction
Too bad maybe that common sense legislation might have prevented the Uvalde massacre of innocent children & teachers.
“Common sense” gun control is obvious to Americans not familiar with gun culture. But any candidate who is so out of touch with Texas voting patterns that they openly advocate gun confiscation is a fool. Perhaps right. Perhaps noble. But still a fool.
Time is probably on Beto’s side, but his efforts so far have been doomed by his unpopular gun control position. “Common sense” is different in Texas.
Just maybe it's time to make his "unpopular" gun control position popular. AR-15s are military assault rifles and unsuitable for anything but slaughter.
You and I can agree on this. So can voters in about fifteen states. Openly calling for gun confiscation is a sure way to lose in the other 35. When we call for gun policy reform they give us “constitutional carry”. Better for Democrats and hypothetical sane Republicans to support candidates who are more aware of what is possible where they are running.
Sarah, just another aspect of the far-right and guns is the massive number of online ads for guns for sale! I monitor and download just the videos they provide and I have hundreds and occasionally watch them. They use human shapes as targets, show how to hit targets from 300yds, etc. Worst of all, the ads and videos show kids, looking as young as 14, using the guns and looking proud! It’s sickening! My main reason though for making this post is the utter frustration at the fact that the far-right is massively arming up for the open warfare they are working towards! It’s utter BS that the thin shield of so-called responsible gun owners rights need to be protected at the expense of civil war! GenXers are no more to blame than the boomers with tee shirts with sayings like “Shoot Democrats to protect Your Freedom!”. Yeah, I’m 76, white and really scared about what’s coming!
Remember, that the US did have a ban on 'assault' rifle sales,
"The 10-year ban was passed by the U.S. Congress on August 25, 1994 and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1994.[1] The ban applied only to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment. It expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision." - Wiki
Supposedly, it only resulted in a slight decrease of mass shootings, and no decrease is homicides where pistols are overwhelmingly used.
Time to change our "gun culture." I have many in my family that are lifetime members of the NRA along with law enforcement officers of just about every type & description. This is the problem with not doing anything to address the issues. Politicians have long been cowed by the NRA & other lobbies in DC to the point of insanity! We must get Big Money out of our law making process. Repeal Citizen’s United & take our country back from the corporations & special interest groups. The vast majority of voters are in favor of gun reform. The GOP whips up a frenzy of fear & the gun companies stuff their wallets. Fear sells, it's effect keeps folks reacting without taking time to understand the consequenses. There are more guns than people in this country. Weapons need to be regulated, just like we do with cars & driving, when don't we stand up & protect ourselves, our children & our country. Look at Jan 6th, Thank God more of them weren't armed. It has become time for the GOP to do something or they become the scum my great grandkids will learn about in history class.
They ARE the scum, and why your suggestions fall on no Repub ears
Common sense is not common in Texas
Indeed! A cowboy without a gun is JUST a “man,” lol! They are weaklings, of course, without a barrel to shoot from! But, yeah, you are 100% right! Covertly campaigning against these weasels has its merits, I suppose, but lying and cheating is reserved for them because without those bucket hats and their guns, they are mere mortals like the rest of us. Remember during the first outbreak of Covid-19 when Abbott retorted that the elderly and compromised folks were “expendable?” AR-15s? My gun toting relative said she hunted with the two she has! Wow!
How much chance does "common sense legislation" have when the current SCOTUS (along with the GOP) is so determined to misinterpret the 2nd Amendment as not allowing any restrictions on gun ownership? These people are "originalists" in everything but that. Not that the 2nd Amendment's history is all that glorious -- it seems it made its way into the Bill of Rights in order to win support from the slave-dependent southern states, which depended on various militias to prevent and put down slave revolts. (Carol Anderson's book THE SECOND is an excellent source on this.)
It’s not that long ago, a few hundred, that “slave patrols” roamed the Carolinas preventing uprisings and runaways! Nothing will change until the old white guys in Washington go on to meet their makers; G-d???
There are young-ish white women in Congress carrying guns and voting the party line, too.
Thanks for recommendation! Yes, things *can* be done, and I think/hope that more attention is being paid to the state legislatures, secretaries of state, et al.
Beto probably thought that the wholesale massacre of shoppers, school children and the realization that none are safe would be a no-brainer. Well not with Rupert and a rogue Republicans party on the loose with lies at 90 decibels.
Morning Jeri, I sort of posted the same sentiment yesterday. I read that Abbott was re-elected by an landslide in TX. With 60% of the women in Uvalde voting for him. As I said, I’m sure they completely understood and agreed that their babies were rightfully massacred so the party of Guns, God, and don’t say Gay can continue their rich tradition of white supremacy. That Beto’s “out of touch” with TX voters gun self-identity’s is surely the obvious reason for his loss and Texans waited with unabated glee for their next opportunity to freeze to death. Which, by the way arrived right on cue.
But, where is the Democratic Party’s support? Why wasn’t Texas a priority for Democrats? Because they decided it wasn’t a winner? We’ve left thousand of Americans to fend for themselves in a state hostile to existing humans while playing God in people’s bedrooms and physicians offices. We’ve done this because we think we want different things, but the truth is we don’t. We want better paying jobs, safer schools and better education for our children. We want a government that works at least part time for the people. We all want safe immigration and to say half the country does not is an outright lie. The entire country is willing to share the burden of immigration with border states, to say we do not is another lie. We need to get in there. Protect the rights of Americans to free and fair elections, show states like FL that you can’t put an AR15 in the smoker and serve it for Thanksgiving dinner. Will they not permit Democrats to try working with Texans or are Democrats just not willing to try? Flood the zone.
In Texas, there are those that love their guns and those that don’t. Beto was being a truthteller; making a promise to HIS base. But, let’s be realistic, Abbott won for other reasons…gerrymandering is the main reason and false information is the other.
I lived in the state of Texas for over 30 years and was relieved when I moved away. The mindset is money, status, and having little or no compassion for the less fortunate.
The way Abbott is bussing immigrants to D.C. to make a statement is heartless and unforgiveable. He busses them to Philly and other northern cities and we welcome them with open arms. So, in the long run, in a perverse way, he’s doing the immigrants a favor…Texas is still the wild west and now they have the worst of the worst; Elon Musk
Gerrymandering is a real problem, indeed, but it mostly affects cities, counties, and states that are divide into districts that each send a rep to a legislative body.
In a state-wide race, gerrymandering has next to no effect.
Imagine you put most of the Dems in one district, and it got one rep. The other districts have moderate R majorities. But in the other districts the Rs still win the right to send a rep to the leg. Those many many Dem votes - those beyond 50.1% - in that one district are "wasted."
I don't like gerrymandering, not for one minute, but it does not affect state-wide races.
(Gerrymandering does affect Pres/V-P races because of the dratted Electoral College. Let's get rid of the Electoral College!)
"Let's get rid of the Electoral College" - I've heard those words before...
The only State he belongs in, this Musk man!
They cheat, legally by making their evil legal, just like Adolf did. Same happened in 2018. Hope Beto doesn’t give up. Wish Biden would use him somehow. The Texas evil trio has a choke hold on Texas, at the moment.
Biden probably thought he'd win - I'm sure he's aware of this wonderful resource.
Suz-an, you are 100% on the money. WE did not re-elect the creep. When you think 75% of Gen Z did not vote (per Dash Dobrofsky, who I trust) at all is simply a big red flag to work harder and harder. Nine million registered NON-VOTERS is even more depressing. I love Michael Moore and would come live in Texas to help get your voters out, if needed. 2024 is a critical presidential race. WE better get a great candidate….there are several that come to mind.
One of my huband's Lakota relatives had a great grandmother who survived Wounded Knee. Nobody there has forgotten this travesty and it still continues. It took forever for the Gnome to call out some help for the people stuck on the Rosebud in the recent storm. And yes, then there is Greg Abbott and DeSatan using asylum seekers as political pawns. And those people are fleeing from problems that we helped create.
I agree. The damage that was and is can never be made right but also continues to be made worse. Why? Why? Why? (Although I get your reference, may I just ask that tfg not be associated with gnomes? I love gnomes...they.make me smile when there isn’t a lot to smile about these days :))
They are referring to Kristi Noem, the MAGA governor of SD.
The Gnome is this case is the South Dakota governor and it is South Dakotans who can't stand her that came up with this play on her name.
The horror of these stories recounting the plain truth is unspeakable. No wonder the descendants and spiritual heirs of those men are habitual liars.
Yup, you can see the smoke floating away from the fire flaring up from their burning pants! Maybe we can dump water on them like Dorthy did to the evil witch. The flying monkeys
were freed from their curse and ceased playing pranks and such! We need a Glenda to free the monkeys in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Missouri, allowing good and the lights to return for a bit! Many good folks in these states need to get together and VOTE the monkeys out of office come next time around! Oorah!
WE need to be wringing our hearts!
Abbot’s thoughtless and cruel shipping of people into frigid temperatures Is an excellent comparison to the Lakota massacre.
Once people like the Texas Government reduce human beings to political pawns their indifference to their health and welfare becomes a destructive ingredient.
The Republican Party’s attempts to reduce of the humanitarian refugee crises to a Political Policy difference and refusal legislate for different results is not much different from the US Government designating the Indians as enemy savages in 1880.
It is just sad we can be so bereft the lessons of history. Especially in the season most Texans consider a Holiday celebrating the Prince of Peace.
Or in Ukraine, the masses huddling under makeshift bomb shelters of an over pass. No water, no shelter, no electricity, no heat, while bombs and drones continue to destroy infrastructure and residential areas.
Yeah!!! Whewww!! Like WTF-over?
Almost like this whole atrocity is being relegated to the level of some bad traffic accident where a drunken member of the Crown/Kremlin elite drove his Escolade into a van-load of pre-school kids with their mothers killing them against a parked (illegally) bulldozer. No big deal, the chauffeur was driving..no? Maybe it'll just go away...huh comrade?
Lemme tell you something.., we are dealing with a 'communist regime' so imbedded underneath the fingernails and in the bone-marrow of the work-trodden population. A population not far removed from Stalin (1937!!) that is totally intimidated and indoctrinated in the russo-kgb fear of being arrested/existence. So many of whom love Mother Russia so dearly they believe every promise that is sworn to them - never delivered. And, in their relative poverty, they support a space agency and extremely high-tech black-R&D. And it is this population who will be convinced "the operation" a mere sideshow, was an overwhelming succcess. This is the Russian way, and all the dukes, duchesses, barons and baronesses...oligarks all, they will see to it. They're well insulated, not about to suffer. I think the Biden administration is onto them. The Republicans have been bought off with parties, sex, drugs, alcohol, and $$ which keep pouring in. Look at em.
Victoria, yes, Abbot sponsored a cruel stunt. But, yes, there is a crisis at the border and a crisis of migration world wide. Remember, roughly 70% of today's world population is in dire poverty. That is about 5.46 BILLION people looking for a better life.
2.4 million of them came here in 2022 alone. Abbott is right that America needs a policy. He is wrong to use cruelty to make his point. Also, Title 42 does NOT apply to everyone as the below article notes. So, the world knows what countries can still get in free here.
From today's NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/us/title-42-border-el-paso.html
"The 2.4 million Border Patrol encounters with migrants in the 2022 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 represented a record high. And it is probably no accident that the steepest increases were among migrants not subject to Title 42. There was a nearly 2000 percent increase in the number of Colombians encountered during that period compared with the previous fiscal year; Indians increased by 607 percent; Cubans by 471 percent; Russians by 430 percent and Nicaraguans by 227 percent.
By contrast, apprehensions of Hondurans and Guatemalans — two countries that made up a large share of the migrants arriving in the United States in most recent years, but whose nationals are now subject to expulsion under Title 42 — were down by 33 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
This unusual trend has continued in the new fiscal year: Of the migrants encountered in November at the border, 39 percent were from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, whose nationals can be expelled under Title 42. Cubans and Nicaraguans, who cannot be swiftly expelled, outnumbered migrants from the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — a situation that would have been unheard-of even a year ago."
“....who are not male and white” and Christian. What’s changed?
Hi HCR — this is not in response to the blog of 12/28/22 — but I think it might interest you?
“involuntary servitude”
https://www.laprogressive.com/gender-discrimination/constitution-protects-access-to-abortion
I agree with you Victoria. It's so heartbreaking everytime I read about THIS!!!
And, Not Learning the Whole Accurate Experience in SCHOOL!!!
I'm grateful that you continue to share this haunting but so important history. Perhaps at some point we will learn from the past and do better in the future
It didn’t settle. Pine Ridge remained volatile. Fear reared its ugly head again. Hate joined hands. Black market automatic (full-auto) weapons sales took off. Walls in ranch houses were rebuilt to hide machine guns and more. Heavy weapons are still ready hidden in those reinforced walls. Federal intervention this time to prevent another Wounded Knee Creek. It didn’t settle.
The Bundy’s and their ilk were another chapter in my dark cloud history
I have to assume that those who are foaming at the mouth to keep "critical race theory" out of our schools (although it's a university-level course) are desperate for our children to never learn the real stories of our past. We were never taught the truth, but our children must know all of it.
Thank you, Heather - again.
There's an old proverb that once you know, you can never not know.
It's essential that we know what happened. What IS happening. Even though it forces us to face the ugly, cruel, and inhumane side of our collective nature. That it makes us feel guilt and shame over the mistreatment of others is a GOOD thing. These emotions motivate us to do better. To BE better people.
Cheryl, you are 100% correct, and those who want to hide the truth are the very same people who would continue to perpetrate the cruelty. We all must pay attention and read between the lines, to be sure that we understand the dynamics of today's events if we are to improve ourselves and our country's fabric.
This may well be true for individuals -- repressed memories do have their way of forcing themselves to the surface -- but I wonder if it applies to whole communities and societies. I've seen a whole lot of collective not-knowing in my lifetime. It's sobering to see how much "we" knew about climate change in the 1970s, and how completely that knowledge went underground during and after the Reagan administration. And the right to choose was fought for, won, and then taken for granted for a couple of generations -- until the Dobbs decision last June woke a lot of people up.
Susanna, there is an excellent book on the climate denial machinery that was funded by oil interests starting even earlier than the 70’s - Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes. The book details the similarities between the marketing campaign to convince us that cigarettes didn’t cause cancer and burning fossil fuels wouldn’t change the climate. Gobsmackingly awful to know how so many drank that Kool aid. And still do.
"Silent Spring" came out in 1962. There wasn't a serious bookshelf without it. Sixty years have passed.
Some were not fooled, look over Bill Moyers archives
They motivate others to lie, to hide the guilt and shame, and to claim to be the best people.
Or that once you’re seen, you can never “unsee”. Book banning and burning is on par with gerrymandering and voter suppression. The truth can be so painful yet as expressed here already, the governor of Texas is using tax dollars to carry out the same sort of cruelties on “others” and the only penalty can be at the ballot box. Some of Heathers letters are sinful to read but I’d venture to guess some readers (and more of others that do not read these letters) are or were unaware of these dark truths. The governors of TX and FL are 2 that will do their bests to continue this thinking and perpetuation of human cruelties. Heathers so very right, we cannot step into the past and change the trajectory of calamities. We can only hope to assure our future not repeat itself. It begins with with our children
Pat. "We can only hope to assure our future not repeat itself. It begins with with our children." Agree! That's why we must fight hard so kids get more than the 'sanitized version' of history. As a child of the '50s, our teachers completely omitted all the ugliness. I was horrified that I didn't know about Japanese internment camps til I was in my 20s.
I was born in 1951 so I was in junior high and high school in the '60s. I had mostly great teachers, especially in history and English, who didn't omit the ugliness but who couldn't cover everything. Racism, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War were on TV almost every night, but my in-depth education really began when I started college in 1969 and immersed myself in the antiwar movement. This was where I learned about McCarthyism (from people who'd been blacklisted and from "red-diaper babies"), the FBI's ongoing attack on the civil rights movement, the bloody history of the labor movement, the even bloodier war against the native peoples of this continent, and lots more. Once you get hold of one thread, it tends to lead to lots of other threads.
I agree right up to your last sentence. I'm not letting any of us, including those without children (which would include me), off the hook.
Cheryl P. "There's an old proverb that once you know, you can never not know."
“𝘖𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮. 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘢 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺.” ― Alice Hoffman, "Incantation"
I note the use of "some" in "some things." There's a loophole there that isn't in the "old proverb" version, and it's important. Some other things it's all too easy to un-know, especially on the societal level. Which is why we need to keep reminding ourselves and others of what *really* happened, not just the watered-down version.
Ron
Thanks for the source. ❤️
My conclusion as well. Human Nature, our collective nature, has evolved and must evolve a lot more and a lot quicker in order to help our planet and its inhabitants survive. Otherwise, I am imagining everyone competing and we have water wars, food wars, energy wars, and we keep killing ourselves and planet over it all. Or, we an honor the divine in all of us and all creation and care for it. Now.
It's hard for human nature to evolve, even on the individual level, as long as the economic and legal systems reward destructive short-term behavior and even punish long-term and creative planning.
I happen to have a copy of the 1932 revision of "The Outline of History", first published by H G Wells in 1920. The 1200-odd pages cover every aspect of our history. So many quotes - see if you can get hold of it somehow. "Ignorance is the first penalty of pride". "About these great changes of climate that are always in progress on the earth's surface (....) They are not periodic changes, they are slow fluctuations between heat and cold." And the preface concludes "...as knowledge increases it may be possible that our race will make its plans thousands of years ahead to meet the coming changes."
And moving right along to the chapter "The World after the Great War", we read, on voting as the instrument of democracy, "The crowd is backward but the crowd is mobile; if it learns little, it forgets easily, (...) it will take the shape of new institutions very readily. Its patriotisms, its loyalties, its hostilities, even its most passionately expressed beliefs, are no more than skin deep". And "We are passing beyond that first crude conception of democracy that looked to the voting mass for initiatives and direction. The future, we realise more and more clearly, is prepared in in the laboratory and study, and not in the streets." If Wells suddenly returned, he'd think he'd just been asleep for a while.
It's astonishing.
Haunting and sad. Will we ever learn! My granddaughter is 50% Navajo and her grandparents are 100%. It is always a fine balance to find a middle ground, my heart always aches for what we did to all indiginouse people. Get togethers are always stressful. But her granfather sang her Happy birthday in the Navajo lamguage which was beautiful ❤️
Sad beyond belief.
Amen.
Thank you. Painful to read and remember but crucial to do so.
I live in Dakota County, MN on stolen Indian land. I learned beadweaving as a child growing up among Lakota, Dakota, Anishinabeg, Ho-Chunk and other Native people in Minneapolis and owe my grandparents' native neighbors a debt of gratitude I will never be able to pay as a result since I now am able to make my living selling my bead-weaving. On Tuesday, we revisited what is still the largest single execution in the county - 38 Natives died that day. Today, we revisit the horrific massacre at Pine Ridge.
Whenever I am again confronted with the genocide we've perpetrated against the Indigenous people of the US, I ask myself what I can do? What one thing could I do that would pay some of our collective debt forward?
For me, funding some of the Native-led nonprofits helps me feel like I'm doing something. One of the best I've found in the Lakota People's Law Project, located in Bismarck, ND. www.lakotalaw.org.
I hope that some of you will join me in funding this organization that seeks to help today's Lakota people. I stand with Standing Rock.
Yes yes yes and yes! I grew up in NM; a white kid with a brown heart, as I was raised near both the Navajo reservation (Farmington) and the Mescalero reservation (Roswell and Lincoln County). When I was a hitchhiking kid in the 70s, I hung with mostly brown kids because I hated my white congregation telling us to stay clear of the Mexicans and the drunk Indians. Once, when a bunch of us took an old Mescalero guy to a hospital in Alamogordo, the nurses and doctors took me aside and said they’d “help me get away from my friends. They only spoke to me. The rest of my group went to jail! Long story short, this began the development of MY religion: social justice! Free Leonard Peletier! Justice for the long walker descendants. And those who were removed from Georgia during Jackson’s 1828 “Indian Removal Act!” Ugh, so frustrating!
Yes!! Free Leonard!!
Yes, Michael Moore is really cool! He’s so cute he’s 100% more effective. No yelling or fighting, just a sea of love! I’ve had lots of buds sending letters too! I’ve worked this for so so so many years! My 3rd great-grandmother was sold to a bean farmer in NM! She was Kiowa on my woman-side, and G-d only knows what else! Injustices happen; preplanned attacks and revenge aren’t necessary justice only unnecessary injustice.
Michael Moore has me writing to President Biden and bring up Leonard every time an opportunity presents itself (or not). This injustice must ended! We are dedicated to seeing to it.
Learning the truth of indigenous history is learning US history. It is heartening to hear non Indigenous people wanting to make reparations. Donations to Indigenpus organizations is a good way to do so. I am Ojibwe White Earth Nation and contribute regularly to Lakota law project.
And I stand with the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. Not alone.
My friend Daryl who was born on Turtle Mountain says Miigwich!
Thanks, Sheila. Appreciate your suggestion and link.
Thanks Janet! Here's the link to make a gift: https://pages.nativehope.org/
Janet, Thank you for Native Hope information. I immediately went to their site and will definitely be donating. Forget the Democratic Party!
Did Dems perpetuate the crimes against indigenous people?
Jeri yes, Andrew Jackson was perhaps the most genocidal president in our history. And crimes continued under Clinton, Obama, Biden, none of whom have honored our treaties with indigenous nations.
Can you be more specific?
It's a good idea to evaluate any charity organization before donating. Charity Navigator gives this group two out of a possible four stars.
Deep appreciation to you for everything you write!⭕️⭐️🙏
Thank you for telling this terrible story, lest we forget. I hope it helps keep our eyes open as we enter a new year of Danger--including the danger others face from our irrepressible and cocksure naivete.
The savagery of war in Ukraine today is equally inhumane.
Professor, I cannot say that I "like" this account, but I do appreciate that you have provided it here. It's a clear—and horiffic—reminder of the terror-filled events US forces have delivered to people in these United States (and elsewhere). Regardless of whether it repeats or rhymes, I hope that we learn from these histories and resolve that US forces should never visit such episodes on other people again.
Keep telling us the full story. It is not adding history it is filling out the history we knew only part of. And it will always make me cry....
Same here
Heather, thank you for shining a bright line on what people are capable of when they consider a group of people so inferior that their lives are worthless. When people go along with atrocities to increase their power or to protect themselves, it doesn’t go well.
As the Mafia has shown, the first step to promoting/ignoring reprehensible actions against “the others” is a small action. The threat of exposure is then used to pressure the person to take gradually more onerous actions. Since we want to see ourselves as honorable, we make excuses that often involve casting the victim as having provoked our action.
As you’ve shown, the first step to acting better is to acknowledge your past transgressions. By sharing your history lessons, more and more readers now know the facts (acts and results) and can resolve to do better next time.
It seems to me that white males of European ancestry have been the most dangerous predators in the New World. (My ancestry is English.) The native people were just prey animals to the soldiers.
When the English reached the coasts of Australia, there were no streets or buildings, just some puzzled dark-skinned savages, so they declared it to be terra nullius and raised the flag in the name of King George (the same one).
One tiny way, shape or form happened in Alaska at the mid-terms.
Also Deb Haaland's appointment as secretary of the interior at the beginning of the Biden administration.
We will never learn if we don't understand our history, both as individuals and as a nation.
Not only the US, but also the rest of us - what have we really learned from our history? Do we have less wars now? Do we treat indigenous populations better? Seems to me, all we are is Neanderthals with smart phones - we never seem to make it out of the caves, technology just gets better.
Warren Zevon observed that men are monkeys with guns. (and money!)
Yes!!!
Please don't blame the Neanderthals, we probably wiped the last of them out too before a bit of genetic interchange (sound familiar?) We are what we are and who knows what Neanderthals might have been like.
"Despite their reputation as being primitive 'cavemen', Neanderthals were actually very intelligent and accomplished humans. These were no 'ape-men'. So it's unfair to them that the word Neanderthal is used as an insult today."
So says the Natural History Museum in London. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html
While less than 2% of my DNA traces back to Neanderthals, the amount is 42% higher than other customers of 23andMe, which analyzed my DNA.
The Neander Valley is just outside Düsseldorf, a reasonably civilised region of Germany, in spite of one of the world's most popular insults :)
"Humans" include the Denisovans branch as well - no read out from 23andMe and or onThem.
The indigenous population has fallen so much that they are no longer a threat to white nationalists.
You are precisely correct. The old world held 70 million people in 1492. The new world held 62 million mostly farmers. There are no more than 7 million indigenous souls now.
I visited Wounded Knee in 1997. I also spent days with the Lakota, as part of my initiative to create, in concert with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a summer teachers institute for those who taught humanities at over two dozen Native American colleges..
What was seared in my mind was that the Army unit at Wounded Knee was the 7th Calvary, the unit that Custer commanded at the Battle of Big Horn 14 years earlier. Custer went rashly into battle, where he was annihilated by the Lakota and other tribes.
The 7th Calvary was humiliated. I firmly believe that they were yearning for retaliation when they encountered the Lakota at Wounded Knee. Of course this never would be reported in formal Army reports—as hundreds of Lakota were slaughtered. (My recollection is that the 7th Calvary set up artillery on the hill overlooking where they initiated their encounter with the Lakota.)
[Our military does not have an unblemished record in reporting its soldiers’ ‘massacres.’ In 1968 at My Lai under Lt. Calley over 500 Vietnamese civilians were raped and murdered. This was initially investigated by then-Major Colin Powell, who wrote a ‘whitewash’ report. Only a year later did My Lai explode into a national scandal, after a soldier was a whistleblower and journalist Seymour Hersh published an account of this cold-blooded massacre.
A lt. General conducted a major investigation. About a dozen soldiers were reprimanded. Lt. Calley was sentenced to life in prison. Three years later he was released.
My Lai was not a one-off incident. Among others, there was a major general, who reportedly was responsible for the killing of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who had the nickname ‘The Butcher of the Delta.’]
Your theory makes perfect sense. The military unit's desire for revenge, augmented by free-flowing alcohol, made for a horrible massacre of the Lakotas.
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