Kakki: I agree 100% with your post. I grew up in the 60's and 70's when the horrors of mistreatment of native Americans were the subject of books like "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." One of the more evocative depictions for me was, ironically, the Hoffman film, "Little Big Man." This oppression is one of those things that can get me naseous just thinking about. My quibble was a minor one: whether we have seen genocide in our lifetimes perpetrated on the native Americans.
BTW, who was the professor who touched you so? Ron l.a. ----- Original Message ----- From: "kakki" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "RSM" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 11:26 PM Subject: Re: native peoples in the US NJC | Hi Ron, | | The subject of Native Americans interests me greatly (but I have no want to | get into a diatribe! ;-) I've had a lifelong interest in the local | California tribes, particularly with regard to those who lived on the Calif. | Channel Islands. Back in the 80s I took an incredible course on "American | Indian History" (that's what it was called at the time) from a brilliant | professor who is one of the world's leading scholars on the history of the | natives of North, Central and South America. She really opened my eyes to | some of the real history that most U.S. school children are never taught. I | agree that "genocide" is a strong word and also equate the term with | systematic mass murder of a particular group of people. I did, however, | walk away from that course with the feeling that historically some in the | U.S., in their push westward in the 1800s, did contribute to some | unintentional genocide of many of the native groups. As the settlers and | adventurers pushed westward they often deliberately pushed the natives off | their lands to lands that no one else wanted (mostly the bleak and harsh | areas of the western U.S. where it was most difficult to grow crops and | survive) My professor used to say that in the end the Native Americans got | the last laugh by owning land on western reservations which are enormously | rich in uranium and other strategic metals. The Spanish advernturers and | missionaries in California often did more harm than good to the native | tribes, bringing in foreign diseases and conscripting them to labor as serfs | for the crown and church. The missionaries, however, sometimes had good, if | not always wise, intentions toward the California tribes. By rescuing many | of them from the islands they saved (or tried to save) many of them from the | Russian fur traders who were often truly committing genocide against the | island tribes in order to have no competition in their monopoly of the seal | and otter populations. At any rate, the course was one of the most | fascinating I've ever experienced and it left me wishing that more people in | the U.S. could learn more about the Native American history. I assume that | the tribes in Utah are being prevented from opening casinos because of the | Mormon religion there disapproves of gambling. You may be familiar with the | fight here in Calif. a few years ago with regard to letting the tribes have | "Las Vegas style" gambling. The Federal government was fighting them on it | because they supposed that the Mafia would then infiltrate the reservations. | I was squarely on the side of the tribes on that one and was happy that they | eventually won the fight. The tribes are supposed to have many sovereign | rights on the reservations. In many real and legal senses the reservations | are their own "countries" within the U.S. They are exempt from certain laws | that govern the rest of the U.S. I've always thought they should have a | right to have any kind of gambling or other enterprises they choose and the | government should butt out. They have been neglected and lived in poverty | too long and should be allowed to prosper as best they can. | | Kakki | |
