State Apology Could Spur Federal Action
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Rob Capriccioso, Indian Country Today, June 6, 2008
Some Indian and national leaders are predicting that a recent Colorado Legislature resolution that apologized for and remembered the deaths of millions of American Indians after colonization will strengthen efforts for similar action on the federal level.
The nonbinding state measure passed 22-12 in the Senate and 59-4 in the House in late-April. It states that Europeans in some cases intentionally caused many American Indian deaths and that early American settlers often treated Indians with “cruelty and inhumanity.” It also recognizes that “American Indians have made many sacrifices in the history of this great nation.”
Former Republican Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a leader with the Northern Cheyenne Indian Tribe, believes the resolution could lead to similar movement on the national level.
{snip}
There’s already been some progress on the national level, but the deal has yet to be sealed. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., shepherded through an amendment to the Senate’s reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in February, which called for a national apology to American Indians. It stated in part that “officials of the federal government and private United States citizens harmed Native peoples by the unlawful acquisition of recognized tribal land and the theft of tribal resources and assets from recognized tribal land.”
In order to become law, similar legislation on the House side of Congress must also make headway—a prospect that is waning, if something doesn’t move before the congressional summer recess. Despite the lack of House progress, Campbell predicted that a renewed emphasis could soon materialize based on the efforts of Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., who heads the House’s Native American Caucus.
One sticking point to getting a national apology passed is the issue of monetary restitution. Some legislators have expressed concern that a Congress-sanctioned apology could create a precedent for lawsuits.
{snip}
The Brownback legislation did not authorize or support any claims or settlements from Indians or tribes against the United States.
Campbell believes that any formal federal apology should not incorporate the words “holocaust” or “genocide,” since he feels the processes of colonization were complex and that purposeful extermination of Indians wasn’t always the intent of early colonists. He also notes that it’s easy to blame everything on Europeans, “but the fact is that some of the bad things that were happening were here long before they got here.”
The former senator also does not see the issue as boiling down to a partisan battle, especially since its chief ally is a Republican, and Democratic legislators are largely seen as being open to the idea of a national apology.
The Colorado resolution specifically mentions the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation in 1838 and the Sand Creek Massacre of between 150 and 200 Indian people—composed of mostly elderly men, women and children—by members of the Colorado Territory militia in 1864. It also notes the many Indian deaths due to disease that were magnified by European conquest.
{snip}
Some lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, argued that the measure unfairly condemns all Europeans for injustices against Indians. But supporters said the resolution wasn’t meant to blame all Europeans—just to recognize the historical facts of U.S. colonization.
Rep. Debbie Stafford, D-Aurora, said she is especially excited that the Colorado resolution could help refocus national lawmakers’ attention on the issue. The Lakota Sioux legislator co-sponsored the state’s apology legislation, and she is in the process of contacting national lawmakers to lend advice, if it is needed. She said that partisan issues were not an overwhelming challenge in her state’s case.
{snip}
(Posted on June 6, 2008)
Comments
“It states that Europeans in some cases intentionally caused many American Indian deaths and that early American settlers often treated Indians with “cruelty and inhumanity.” ‘
Whoever agrees with the above is so woefully ignorant of American history he’s got to have been living in a cave with a politically correct tutor, being schooled in revisionism about the early days of this nation.
Much uncalled for treachery, murders, torture, theft and mayhem, were wrought on the white settlers by Indian miscreants. The resulting retaliation by whites was COMPLETELY justified.
Indians weren’t victims of anybody but each other.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 6:32 PM on June 6
“Some Indian and national leaders are predicting that a recent Colorado Legislature resolution that apologized for and remembered the deaths of millions of American Indians after colonization will strengthen efforts for similar action on the federal level”
Absurd, there certainly weren’t “millions” of American Indians living in the US when colonists started appearing.
Posted by Eric at 6:45 PM on June 6
What in gods name is going on? How about appologising for the 1965 immigration bill?
Posted by at 7:38 PM on June 6
Now it’s the Indians turn AGAIN to steal from Whitey? Stop the dang apologizing for once! Let’s see, how many more races and ethnicities do we have to pay and apologize for? Get them ALL out of America and be done with it! They are far better off here than in a culture that they themselves have created!
Posted by at 9:11 PM on June 6
What happened to the Amerinds is nothing more or less than what happens to ANY primitive (yes, PRIMITIVE) bunch of people when confronted by more advanced race with superior technology, superior culture, and most of all, superior bang-bang. Had the moccasin been on the other foot, the Euros would have been repelled, and Cherokee Nation would have prevailed. But that was not the case.
Unfortunate? Yes. Avoidable? No.
Sorry, Tonto, but Kemosabe don’t make the rules. Take your complaints to Great Spirit in Sky.
As much as it makes self-hating liberal whites blow their stacks, the following is simply UNDENIABLE: The history of Mankind is, to a large extent, the history of weaponry. He who has the best weapons, wins.
The Injuns were primitives with bows-and-arrows; the Eurowhites were advanced people with firearms.
Heap big unfairness? You betcha. Much like life itself. Red man’s problem, not mine.
Moral of the story: don’t bring a tomahawk to a gunfight.
Posted by at 10:38 PM on June 6
“How about apologizing for the 1965 Immigration bill?”
Agreed. And furthermore, how about LBJ’s devastating Great Society giveaway programs? Perhaps he meant well, but in typical fashion they’ve been dreadfully abused, and for far too many decades than anticipated.
And how about apologizing for the EP that did not contain a clause about repatriation?
And how about apologizing for the total loss of our cities, schools, neighborhoods, public transportation, and culture?
I want my country back. NOW.
Posted by at 11:19 PM on June 6
Fort Parker massacre 1836.
Rachel Plummer’s story.
…On May 19, 1836, at sunrise, everything appeared normal as the men went to the work in the fields. Plummer, three months pregnant with her second child, was in the fort caring for her firstborn, James Pratt, two years old, the first child born to the Parker family in Texas. It would be the last normal morning of Rachel Plummer’s life, and the last time she would ever see her child.[1] Her husband and father were working in the fields.[1]
In her memoir, Plummer wrote that “one minute the fields (in front of the fort) were clear, and the next moment, more indians than I dreamed possible were in front of the fort.”[1] As the Parkers debated what to do, one of the Indians approached the fort with a white flag. No one believed the flag was genuine, but Benjamin Parker believed it gave the family a chance for most of them to escape. He got his father’s support to try a bold gamble, and went out to try to buy time for the family to escape - which most of them did. Only five women and children were captured.
As the other women and children were leaving, Plummer chose to stay in the fort out of fear that she and her son would not be able to keep up. After Benjamin Parker returned from his first talks with the Indians and warned them that they would likely all die, Plummer wanted to flee, but Silas told her to watch the front gate while he ran for his musket and powder pouch.[1] “They will kill Benjamin,” she reported her Uncle Silas saying, “and then me, but I will do for at least one of them, by God.” At that moment, she said she heard whooping outside the fort, and then Indians were inside. She then ran, holding her little boy’s hand, while behind her she said she saw Indians stabbing Benjamin with their lances.[1]
Plummer was then seized by mounted warriors who threw her up behind them, and watched helplessly while another seized her son. She witnessed her grandfather’s torture and murder and her grandmother’s rape. Her cousins Cynthia Ann Parker and John Richard Parker were also captured. All five of the men present in the fort that morning were killed. [1] That night the war party stopped and did a ritual scalp dance, and then raped the two women. Plummer never directly addressed the subject of rape in her book except to say dryly that anyone who said that a good woman died before being violated had not been forced to run naked tied by a rope to a horse for a day or two in the sun,[2] and further:
“ To undertake to narrate their barbarous treatment would only add to my present distress, for it is with feelings of the deepest mortification that I think of it, much less to speak or write of it.”[1]
Plummer’s book is considerd an invaluable glimpse into the culture and mindset of the Comanche as a people before the white man’s diseases and war destroyed them.[1] She not only recounted her feelings about her captivity, but detailed the life, lifestyle, and much as she could, the mindset of the Comanche. She detailed the roles men, women, children, and slaves, played in that society, and why.[1][2] In her account of her life among the Comanche, Rachel wrote that six weeks after giving birth to a healthy son, the warriors decided she was slowed too much by childcare, and threw her son down on the ground. When he stopped moving, they left her to bury him. When she revived him, they returned and tied the infant to a rope, and dragged him through cactuses until the tiny body was torn to pieces.[1]
The other female mentioned, 9 year old Cynthia Ann Parker was likely the basis for the Alan LeMay book The Searchers, it was made into a film by John Ford.
Arc.
Posted by Arcadian at 11:27 PM on June 6
I am glad to be done collecting taxable income so I will not be a part of this extortion of white guilt. I never mistreated an Indian, I have never even known or met one, so it makes sense for me not to have to contribute (pay taxes or go to jail) to this shakedown. I miss receiving my salary, but I like not having so much of it taken back by the US and Michigan government for uses which I strongly object to.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 12:40 AM on June 7
This is making me want to hurl. First, the blacks demand reparations for slavery. Now the Indians want an apology (and reparations?) because they were domesticated by Whites. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but my parents were immigrants from Europe in the 1950’s. I have no ancestors who lived in North America prior to WWII. That means I have no ancestral guilt when it comes to slavery or alleged mistreatment of Indians. So can they kindly explain why I owe them anything, money or an apology, for something my ancestors never did? Oh, I get it. It’s because I’m White. Never mind. I forgot. I’m privileged. How stupid of me to forget it’s a racial thing.
Posted by Jim S at 9:57 AM on June 7
No more apologizing for what dead people did to dead people. Guilt is NOT inherited.
Posted by at 10:33 AM on June 7
To start apologizing starts one on the never ending slippery slope of appeasement!
First: The unilateral apology.
Second: Compensation.
Third: Reparations.
Fourth: Repatriation.
The only way that European Caucasians can ever atone for their treatment of the American Indian is to immediately not only to convey any and all profits that have been made from the use of “THEIR LAND”, but to then vacate “THEIR lAND” and return to whence they came. Of course, that would also apply to Hispanics, African - Americans, and Asians who might not want to return to their native homelands, from whence they came, as well!
However, that is of no moment! As all liberal students of history can attest, the Hispanics, African - Americans, and Asians would not be present in this country whatsoever but for the unscrupulous, money grubbing tactics of those sleazy white Europeans. Consequently, their white descendants must pay for these descendants’ passage and repatriation to their native countries as well!
May God help us all!
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 1:36 PM on June 7
If the current Government has to appologize for something it never sanctioned, then it may have to pay out large fees next. Expect this to become an annual ritual as white politicians have to beg minorities for votes. We are already seeing it with Obama.
Basicly, they will have to pander to the racial conciousness of the non whites, further dividing this country. Americans are amazingly pacified to this nonsense. Will we wake up with an Obama-Nation??
“I have seen the enemy and it is us.”
Posted by at 1:53 PM on June 7
“…Whoever agrees with the above is so woefully ignorant of American history he’s got to have been living in a cave with a politically correct tutor, being schooled in revisionism about the early days of this nation…”
Posted by Robert Kelly at 6:32 PM on June 6
Robert:
It seems the entire White populace is steeped in Native American historical revisionist history—and it’s no wonder because…
The politically correct K-12 curricula (and I suspect college curricula as well) explicitly teach our youth that Whites committed genocide against Native Americans because Whites are predisposed to—and even enjoy— genocide against non-Whites.
Horrific slaughter of White settlers is never mentioned, of course.
Since the ’60s and ‘70 the prevailing wisdom in the US History texts has been that Whites invented the practice of scalping and taught it to the Native Americans, who had no previous knowledge of it before 1492.
But:
“…Europeans didn’t introduce scalping to America. New World peoples invented it independently, probably multiple times. When explorers stumbled on the practice in two separate regions of South America in addition to North America, they apparently found it perplexing and couldn’t agree on what to call it, with multiple terms long competing in each European language.
Since 1940 archaeologists have discovered hundreds of pre-Columbian skulls with scalping marks…many of the skulls come from a single site in South Dakota where almost 500 people were massacred and scalped around 1325 AD…”
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061215.html
Europeans are depicted as bloodthirsty animals (at times justified) who committed unspeakable atrocities against peaceful, earth-loving Native Americans—never are the massacres against White settlers reported.
Bon
Posted by at 2:01 PM on June 7
I betcha anytime soon there’s going to be White Tax and if you’re white, you’ll have to forcibly pay for it
Posted by at 2:23 PM on June 7
I read the Fort Parker massacre story and it was chilling.
Wow - dragging a white baby through cactuses till it splinters into pieces - that’s horrific.
That’s something only a monster could do. And this is something we should mention when the tired “whites killed the Indians” arguments come up.
Posted by RealityCheck at 3:17 PM on June 7
In California, the Spanish-Mexican invasion was responsible for the deaths of up to 70% of the native populations here with most of the rest enslaved.
The United States of America had zero to do with that. Blame Mexico. Blame the Mexican invaders as they are the ones responsible.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 6:44 PM on June 7
Yes, back in a completely different era, indians were at times treated cruelly by whites. This was wrong but it has nothing to do with today. Indians today are not mistreated and whites today have done nothing to the indians. That was between two groups of people now all dead.
Posted by at 2:45 AM on June 8
I’d say there was enough mutual savagery to go around in early America. But on balance I’d say the Indians were lucky that it was the white Europeans who discovered the Americas and not Ghengis Khan and his Mongol hordes.
Posted by john at 3:15 PM on June 8
For research, see the movies “The Searchers” with John Wayne, and Ulaza’s raid with Burt Lancaster. Both are movies that remind us that the indians were very cruel and racist.
Posted by flyingtiger at 9:10 PM on June 8
The Sand Creek Massacre here in Colorado does not appear to have been provoked. Chief Black Kettle had already made peace with us, and flew an American flag over his lodge after he had been told this would keep him safe from attack. The Dog Soldiers, responsble for all the trouble with whites, were not under Black Kettle’s control or command.
The Colorado cavalry and militia, after drinking heavily along their march, happened upon this encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho while the men were out hunting, and slaughtered the women, children and elderly, ignoring both the US flag and a white flag that was later raised. Among the chiefs killed at Sand Creek were most of those who had advocated peace with whites: White Antelop, One Eye, Yellow Wolf, Spotted Crow, and others. The younger men returned home later to discover their tribe was essentially extinct. Not one of the proudest chapters in white Colorado history, and counterproductive, as it gained the militaristic Dog Soldiers support they would not otherwise have received. That said, though, what sort of federal action should this spur? We already have scholarships and goodies galore for them.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:15 PM on June 9
If anyone is stupid enough to beat their breast and apologizing for ANYTHING done (or not done) to Blacks or Indians, they are out of their f——-g minds! What in hell does any living White person have to apologize and grovel for? These claimed misdeads, (slavery, the act of pushing Indians to reservations) happened long before our present generation.
Just when, if ever, will our minorities stop sniveling and whining in their corners, get up and act like human beings. Working like us Whites, and making something of themselves and their offspring? Get a life already. Get yourself an education. Then get a paying job! Instead of being such sorry excuses of humanity. That goes doubly for Afro-Americans who just can’t get over the twin claims of slavery and discrimination for the abject failures their race produced worldwide.
Posted by Fed Up at 5:41 PM on June 9
I know a fair bit about this, as a Coloradan. Black Kettle and the innocent people with him took the blame, while the Dog Soldiers murdered over 200 whites in Colorado’s Arkansas River valley. The Dog Soldiers are coming back. I met some in federal prison.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 10:11 PM on June 9
The only thing the Indians did wrong was lose. We aimed to
dispossess them and we did. Bad for them, good for us. And the
same fate awaits us if we allow ourselves to be dispossessed. Only I doubt if our brown conquerors will be as magnamimous as
we were.
Posted by Freyr at 10:44 PM on June 9
After the massacre of peaceful Indians at Sand Creek, which is still commemorated as a Union “victory” in Denver, the Dog Soldiers murdered over 200 whites in the Arkansas River valley in southern Colorado.
There were deliberate efforts to keep honest men from talking about Sand Creek. Several days after giving testimony in court against Colonel Chivington, Captain Soule was murdered on the streets of Denver.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 6:42 AM on June 10