I remember in 7th grade Colorado History, we learned about "the Battle of Sand Creek," fought by many of the "Founding Fathers" of Colorado. I said to the teacher that reading it, it sounded like a massacre. For which I promptly went and spent the rest of the day "polishing the bench" outsid…
I remember in 7th grade Colorado History, we learned about "the Battle of Sand Creek," fought by many of the "Founding Fathers" of Colorado. I said to the teacher that reading it, it sounded like a massacre. For which I promptly went and spent the rest of the day "polishing the bench" outside the Vice Principal's office, one of many days spent in my battle to keep my perfect record of every report card saying "does not respond to properly constituted authority" I spent 12 years suffering through. A few years back, my oldest friend in the world, who stayed back there and became a teacher, told me it's now in Official Colorado History as the Sand Creek Massacre, and the genocidaires (like my great grandfather the Indian murderer and buffalo killer) are no longer considered "Founding Fathers."
In the California public school system of the 1960s, the Spanish conquistadors were presented as heroes. Now, we see them as treacherous liars and, in some cases, genocidal maniacs.
It's the way the world was run back then. How long have we have Peace studies in our schools/ colleges? Not long. But long enough that I recognize the dinosaurs still still roaming the land -- Putin, Trump, Ortega, Lukashenko, Orban, etc.
Yes, Custer did have it coming. He was a vainglorious nitwit. His incompetence resulted in the deaths of others who were obeying his orders. The US military, in the efforts to subdue the western areas had no problem killing women and children, whom whites considered “savages.” Those battles began the moment white Europeans set foot on this continent. Those Indigenous peoples were defending their home territory from invaders, exactly what anyone would if they came under attack.
I have often wondered who the true “savages” were.
Custer ran out of water for his horses and his men. He was forced to defend out in the open. Exhausted Horses became useless. Men suffered heat strokes as they struggled to defend themselves in open ground against greater numbers but not better armed force of Lakota’s.
Today, I’m thinking how we the people can be like the Lakota’s that day and for the next. The truth is the Lakota’s saw an opportunity and they did not hesitate to take advantage of it. They organized and attacked with relentless passion. We have to be that kind of ready for November. Getting more people to vote is the solution to the SCOTUS assault on our freedom and democracy today.
Great analogy Ted. We need some "trick plays" to support us until November. I wish that recent SCOTUS decisions (and a big one to come on the EPA) will galvanize the portion of our electorate that otherwise stays home. That is the key. But I know that there is a deep frustration in the ranks, and they want something done. Otherwise, too many will lose hope and stay home in November. But I have to say - the Republicans have us by the short ones. First - SCOTUS - it is as if Trump is still president. Ginsburg dying, and the Garland appointment being illegally held back by McConnell, are giant developments that allowed Trump to hand pick justices when the House and Senate were in Republican hands. That is not going to change for quite a while. Bad luck. But it's more than that. Republican mantra is to resist change or go backwards. With the filibuster and a sprinkling of gerrymandering, they can subvert the majority who are looking for progress. As if they are the majority. See? Young voters for the most part do not realize this. What they must realize is that in 2020, with their help, we got the ball back. We didn't score a touchdown - we just got the ball back. Now we are up against a stiff defense, and our quarterback just got sacked behind the line (Roe overturn). Second and long. The EPA is fixing to get scalped here soon - that's another sack. We need some kind of trick (executive actions?) that will get us a couple of first downs. Give people some hope. Then in November, we score the touchdown on a long pass (a blue wave of voters). What we have to have ultimately is 60 Senators, and hold our gains in the House, since we will get zero Republican support. A big ask. But without those first downs, I don't think we are going to get there.
This book is about the Doctrine of Discovery and both how it's been used and how it gave permission for white supremacy to commit genocide, seen in the almost complete extermination and defrauding of America's indigenous peoples.
*******
The truth behind 'We the People' - the three most misunderstood words in US history
The son of an American woman of Dutch heritage and a Navajo man, Mark Charles offers a unique perspective on three of the most misinterpreted words in American History. Written in the Papal Bulls of the 15th Century, embedded in our founding documents in the 18th Century, codified as legal precedent in the 19th Century and referenced by the Supreme Court in the 20th and 21st Centuries, the Doctrine of Discovery has been used throughout the history of the United States to keep "We the People" from including all the people.
Unfortunately, if you, I, or any of the rest of us were to look in the bathroom mirror, it's likely we would be staring at the descendant of one of the "true savages." I know I am. My great-great grandfather Weist went from being the youngest drummer boy in Sherman's Army on the March to the Sea (he ran away from home at 14 to join up) to being a "professional hunter" for the railroads (they used to bring a train near a buffalo herd and then shoot them till all were dead, and leave them to rot on the prairie as a way of exterminating native Americans by cutting off their food source) and "Indian fighter," (genocidaire). I have a photo of him at age 28 in 1877, and even with 19th century photography you can see the spider veins in his nose and he looks like someone you would cross the street to avoid. He's also, as I have figured out, the main source of the four generations of untreated PTSD that flowed through the generations and poisoned my family with his dysfunction. (I have another photo of him in the midst of his 11 grown children in the 1890s - they're all giving him sidelong glances like what one does when they know there's a hand grenade with the pin pulled there)
Can’t do better ‘til you know better. That’s why knowing our family history and true history of events of this country are so important. When you’ve lived a lie given to you there is one path and one only..the lie. When you know the truth, then you have a choice of a couple paths. The lie might work for you or perhaps it’s another way that is chosen. It’s something I believe about writers. There’s something in them that just has to “KNOW”.
When given a choice, most will choose comfort over challenge. This is why kindness works so well to break the cycle of trauma and the challenge that comes with it. Those with social support built with kindness are better equipped to accept the challenge of learning the past, accepting the pain that comes with uncomfortable truths.
The scalpers didn't invent it - the British did. Scalping goes back to the Royal Governor of Massachusetts in King Phillip's War in the 1680s when the Good Pilgrim Fathers finished the job of exterminating the local native Americans they began the afternoon after dinner of the "first Thanksgiving." And yes, it was for "proof" to get the bounty for killing one.
If you're going to change it, you first have to admit it's there, and too much of America thinks all we did is just fine, the way John Wayne went on bout "the Indians selfishly wanting to keep all this land," or my own father saying they "just let everything be" while we "made better use of it," which I always disagreed with.
How many long long years did it take for them to admit the truth? Funny about that - the same enlightenment has taken place in far too many instances - exactly what "exceptional" white men have done for hundreds of years - because they have made this country "great"! Right? Boy, have we all been snowed (a polite way of putting it) from kindergarden on. Frankly, TC your perfect record & the bench polishing are both very impressive. Wish I could say I had been that enlightened that early.
TC must’ve had some special insight as a youngster. I was too young and naïve to have any clue how the public school system was bullshitting and indoctrinating us. My German immigrant parents taught me exactly nothing, except integrity, but nothing about history and the world. It took Howard Zinn to even begin waking me up, and I’m still learning.
TC, you are full of a never-ending cache of stories from your own life that are parables for political enlightenment. It's like you've been issued an assignment, and the ammunition to enforce it. What good fortune that you have the skills, and the determination, to make it so interesting to your audience.
Growing awareness is leadership. Early on in discovering the truth, the few that tell it, suffer for it. As fast as things go bad, good takes so much more time and effort… and pain.
As the old saying goes, "Custer had it coming."
I remember in 7th grade Colorado History, we learned about "the Battle of Sand Creek," fought by many of the "Founding Fathers" of Colorado. I said to the teacher that reading it, it sounded like a massacre. For which I promptly went and spent the rest of the day "polishing the bench" outside the Vice Principal's office, one of many days spent in my battle to keep my perfect record of every report card saying "does not respond to properly constituted authority" I spent 12 years suffering through. A few years back, my oldest friend in the world, who stayed back there and became a teacher, told me it's now in Official Colorado History as the Sand Creek Massacre, and the genocidaires (like my great grandfather the Indian murderer and buffalo killer) are no longer considered "Founding Fathers."
In the California public school system of the 1960s, the Spanish conquistadors were presented as heroes. Now, we see them as treacherous liars and, in some cases, genocidal maniacs.
Roland (CA->WA)
Correcto-mundo!
In your same era I too remember in Venice High School those "Politically Palatable Proscriptions" adulterating the real historical truth.
In those days I must admit my attention was mostly on:
(1). The day's weather report about the possibility of Off-Shore-Wind-Direction and surf size
(2). Caravanning to the day's biggest consistent surf break
(3). Teaming up for two man beach volley-ball
(4). Mid-day napping on the warm sand using it as my "pillow"
Then, a few years latter, the world all of a sudden became rather complicated especially the lottery-draft paranoia solution...doobies! Far-out-man!
Imperial system invaders, same as Russia attacking Ukraine. Invade to enslave and exploit for a King to profit at the native peoples tragic expense.
It's the way the world was run back then. How long have we have Peace studies in our schools/ colleges? Not long. But long enough that I recognize the dinosaurs still still roaming the land -- Putin, Trump, Ortega, Lukashenko, Orban, etc.
That is a really good analogy. Like the dinosaur…
Yes, but a dinosaur will still tear your head off....
Yes, Custer did have it coming. He was a vainglorious nitwit. His incompetence resulted in the deaths of others who were obeying his orders. The US military, in the efforts to subdue the western areas had no problem killing women and children, whom whites considered “savages.” Those battles began the moment white Europeans set foot on this continent. Those Indigenous peoples were defending their home territory from invaders, exactly what anyone would if they came under attack.
I have often wondered who the true “savages” were.
Custer ran out of water for his horses and his men. He was forced to defend out in the open. Exhausted Horses became useless. Men suffered heat strokes as they struggled to defend themselves in open ground against greater numbers but not better armed force of Lakota’s.
Today, I’m thinking how we the people can be like the Lakota’s that day and for the next. The truth is the Lakota’s saw an opportunity and they did not hesitate to take advantage of it. They organized and attacked with relentless passion. We have to be that kind of ready for November. Getting more people to vote is the solution to the SCOTUS assault on our freedom and democracy today.
Great analogy Ted. We need some "trick plays" to support us until November. I wish that recent SCOTUS decisions (and a big one to come on the EPA) will galvanize the portion of our electorate that otherwise stays home. That is the key. But I know that there is a deep frustration in the ranks, and they want something done. Otherwise, too many will lose hope and stay home in November. But I have to say - the Republicans have us by the short ones. First - SCOTUS - it is as if Trump is still president. Ginsburg dying, and the Garland appointment being illegally held back by McConnell, are giant developments that allowed Trump to hand pick justices when the House and Senate were in Republican hands. That is not going to change for quite a while. Bad luck. But it's more than that. Republican mantra is to resist change or go backwards. With the filibuster and a sprinkling of gerrymandering, they can subvert the majority who are looking for progress. As if they are the majority. See? Young voters for the most part do not realize this. What they must realize is that in 2020, with their help, we got the ball back. We didn't score a touchdown - we just got the ball back. Now we are up against a stiff defense, and our quarterback just got sacked behind the line (Roe overturn). Second and long. The EPA is fixing to get scalped here soon - that's another sack. We need some kind of trick (executive actions?) that will get us a couple of first downs. Give people some hope. Then in November, we score the touchdown on a long pass (a blue wave of voters). What we have to have ultimately is 60 Senators, and hold our gains in the House, since we will get zero Republican support. A big ask. But without those first downs, I don't think we are going to get there.
One scholar said “kindness”. That is it.
Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
by Mark Charles, Soong-Chan Rah
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46033992-unsettling-truths
This book is about the Doctrine of Discovery and both how it's been used and how it gave permission for white supremacy to commit genocide, seen in the almost complete extermination and defrauding of America's indigenous peoples.
*******
The truth behind 'We the People' - the three most misunderstood words in US history
https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_charles_the_truth_behind_we_the_people_the_three_most_misunderstood_words_in_us_history
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HOktqY5wY4A
The son of an American woman of Dutch heritage and a Navajo man, Mark Charles offers a unique perspective on three of the most misinterpreted words in American History. Written in the Papal Bulls of the 15th Century, embedded in our founding documents in the 18th Century, codified as legal precedent in the 19th Century and referenced by the Supreme Court in the 20th and 21st Centuries, the Doctrine of Discovery has been used throughout the history of the United States to keep "We the People" from including all the people.
Unfortunately, if you, I, or any of the rest of us were to look in the bathroom mirror, it's likely we would be staring at the descendant of one of the "true savages." I know I am. My great-great grandfather Weist went from being the youngest drummer boy in Sherman's Army on the March to the Sea (he ran away from home at 14 to join up) to being a "professional hunter" for the railroads (they used to bring a train near a buffalo herd and then shoot them till all were dead, and leave them to rot on the prairie as a way of exterminating native Americans by cutting off their food source) and "Indian fighter," (genocidaire). I have a photo of him at age 28 in 1877, and even with 19th century photography you can see the spider veins in his nose and he looks like someone you would cross the street to avoid. He's also, as I have figured out, the main source of the four generations of untreated PTSD that flowed through the generations and poisoned my family with his dysfunction. (I have another photo of him in the midst of his 11 grown children in the 1890s - they're all giving him sidelong glances like what one does when they know there's a hand grenade with the pin pulled there)
Can’t do better ‘til you know better. That’s why knowing our family history and true history of events of this country are so important. When you’ve lived a lie given to you there is one path and one only..the lie. When you know the truth, then you have a choice of a couple paths. The lie might work for you or perhaps it’s another way that is chosen. It’s something I believe about writers. There’s something in them that just has to “KNOW”.
Salud, TC.
When given a choice, most will choose comfort over challenge. This is why kindness works so well to break the cycle of trauma and the challenge that comes with it. Those with social support built with kindness are better equipped to accept the challenge of learning the past, accepting the pain that comes with uncomfortable truths.
The true savages:
• The U.S. Cavalry
• The Spanish conquistadores
• The settlers who butchered Native Americans
• The whites who invented scalping as a means of proving a murder so they could collect U.S. bounties on dead Natives
• The whites who invented and established those bounties
• the culture of European invaders that condoned lynching of Natives, “Chinese” (= Asian immigrants), and kidnapped Africans
The scalpers didn't invent it - the British did. Scalping goes back to the Royal Governor of Massachusetts in King Phillip's War in the 1680s when the Good Pilgrim Fathers finished the job of exterminating the local native Americans they began the afternoon after dinner of the "first Thanksgiving." And yes, it was for "proof" to get the bounty for killing one.
Is any human tribe without some sort of historical evil brutality? “Evil is banal” Hannah Arendt
If you're going to change it, you first have to admit it's there, and too much of America thinks all we did is just fine, the way John Wayne went on bout "the Indians selfishly wanting to keep all this land," or my own father saying they "just let everything be" while we "made better use of it," which I always disagreed with.
No need to wonder. It seems quite clear.
TCinLA - "As the old saying goes, 'Custer had it coming.'"
All the lies that were spoken
All the blood we have spilled
All the treaties that were broken
All the leaders you have still
Custer died for your sins!
Custer died for your sins!
Oh, a new day must begin
Custer died for your sins
All the tribes you terminated
Or the myth you keep alive
All the land you compensated
For freedom you deprive
Custer died for your sins!
Custer died for your sins!
oh, a new day must begin!
Custer died... for your sins
Custer died for your sins!
Custer died for your sins!
Oh, a new day must begin
Custer died... for your sins.
For the truth that you pollute
For the life that you have tossed
for the good you prostitute
And for all that we have lost
Custer died for your sins!
Custer died for your sins!
oh, a new day must begin
Custer died... for your sins.
Custer died for your sins!
Custer died for your sins!
Oh, a new day must begin
Custer died.. for your sins.
Custer diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY_a-HjdiOE
I've long had the Floyd Red Crow Westerman CD on which he sings this. Wrenching.
How many long long years did it take for them to admit the truth? Funny about that - the same enlightenment has taken place in far too many instances - exactly what "exceptional" white men have done for hundreds of years - because they have made this country "great"! Right? Boy, have we all been snowed (a polite way of putting it) from kindergarden on. Frankly, TC your perfect record & the bench polishing are both very impressive. Wish I could say I had been that enlightened that early.
TC must’ve had some special insight as a youngster. I was too young and naïve to have any clue how the public school system was bullshitting and indoctrinating us. My German immigrant parents taught me exactly nothing, except integrity, but nothing about history and the world. It took Howard Zinn to even begin waking me up, and I’m still learning.
me, too.
Good work.
TC, you are full of a never-ending cache of stories from your own life that are parables for political enlightenment. It's like you've been issued an assignment, and the ammunition to enforce it. What good fortune that you have the skills, and the determination, to make it so interesting to your audience.
Thank you. I used to think it was a curse.
Growing awareness is leadership. Early on in discovering the truth, the few that tell it, suffer for it. As fast as things go bad, good takes so much more time and effort… and pain.
🐴