Tribal Butterfly: In response to Michael Medved's REJECT THE LIE OF WHITE "GENOCIDE" AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS

In response to the article: Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans

Hello everyone,

This is my response to this article, please see below.

Regards,

Tamra

This article is not only appalling, but is completely mis-informed on the TRUE history of the genocide that has taken place for the past 500+ years. I have read some of the comments posted, the people responding to your trash are just as mis-informed as you are, Medved. It would appear that you all have bought into the lies and misconceptions, that the white history books insist on shoving down our school systems throats. One of these days the REAL and TRUE stories of genocidal maniacs and murderers that invaded this country, including most of the people in power at the time will be told.

The beginning; Columbus was a slave trader, rapist and a murderer, he enslaved many Indigenous peoples including American Indians. He was responsible for murdering 8 million people, making his "contribution" to history the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples. Eye witness accounts document brutal torture including, burning people at the stake slowly, bashing babies heads in, murdering and raping women.

The definition of genocide " the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group" I would think that annihilation of millions of people, in some cases completely exterminated, constitues as genocide!

The real Thanksgiving story: The year was 1637.....700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe, gathered for their "Annual Green Corn Dance" in the area that is now known as Groton, Conn.
While they were gathered in this place of meeting, they were surrounded and attacked by mercenaries of the English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth, they were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building.

The next day, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared : "A day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women and children. For the next 100 years, every "Thanksgiving Day" ordained by a Governor or President was to honor that victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.

Source: Documents of Holland, 13 Volume Colonial Documentary History, letters and reports form colonial officials to their superiors and the King in England and the private papers of Sir William Johnson, British
Indian agent for the New York colony for 30 years. Researched by William B. Newell (Penobscot Tribe) Former Chairman of the University of Connecticut Anthropology Department.

Ever heard of the Trail of Tears, where 17,000 Cherokee people were forced to walk 1200 miles, about 4,000 people died along the Trail. Ever heard of the massacre at Wounded Knee, where 300 people mainly women and children were gunned down and massacred, ever heard of Sand Creek massacre of the Cheyenne people, the Long Walk of the Dineh (Navajo) people? Ever heard of the brutal hanging in Mankato, MN where President Lincoln ordered the hanging of 30 American Indian men, for no reason other than they were Indian. Did you know that Andrew Jackson was responsible fo the Trail of Tears? The Governments blantant extermination campaign of the wild buffalo, was a perfect example of the attempt to annihinialate or assimilate the Tribes into modern day society. I could continue this list of massacres all day, but would it help you to even begin to understand what genocide is? Probably not!

Modern day: American Indians were not even considered "citizens" of our own country until 1924. We didnt have the right to vote in all the states until 1957. We could not participate in our own ceremonies or spirituality until 1978, becuase it was considered illegal until then! It was ILLEGAL for us to pray in OUR ways! Could you imagine it being illegal for you to go to church to pray? In the 1960's children continued to be removed from their homes and forced into white boarding schools, they were beaten if they spoke in their own language. There were thousands of unsolved cases of children dying in these boarding schools!

Anyone who was not a Christian, was a savage and had to become "civilized," conquer and divide.

Are you getting it now? If you want a REAL history lesson, why don't you try speaking with a American Indian, WE are still in existance!

Cherokee and proud of it.

Please use the link below to comment on this idiotic article, and explain to this obviously very delusional talk show host about the "REAL" history of genocide on our people!

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MichaelMedved/2007/09/19/reject_the_lie_of_white_genocide_against_native_americans?page=full&comments=true

To contact the show directly:

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Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans
By Michael Medved
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

www.townhall.com/Common/Print.aspxons

Few opinions I've expressed on air have produced a more indignant, outraged reaction than my repeated insistence that the word "genocide" in no way fits as a description of the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists or, later, American settlers.

I've never denied that the 400 year history of American contact with the Indians includes many examples of white cruelty and viciousness --- just as the Native Americans frequently (indeed, regularly) dealt with the European newcomers with monstrous brutality and, indeed, savagery. In fact, reading the history of the relationship between British settlers and Native Americans its obvious that the blood-thirsty excesses of one group provoked blood thirsty excesses from the other, in a cycle that listed with scant interruption for several hundred years.

But none of the warfare (including an Indian attack in 1675 that succeeded in butchering a full one-fourth of the white population of Connecticut, and claimed additional thousands of casualties throughout New England) on either side amounted to genocide. Colonial and, later, the American government, never endorsed or practiced a policy of Indian extermination; rather, the official leaders of white society tried to restrain some of their settlers and militias and paramilitary groups from unnecessary conflict and brutality.

Moreover, the real decimation of Indian populations had nothing to do with massacres or military actions, but rather stemmed from infectious diseases that white settlers brought with them at the time they first arrived in the New World.

UCLA professor Jared Diamond, author of the universally acclaimed bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," writes:

"Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies of North America, the Mississippian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600's, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River (page 78)....

"The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus rank top among the killers." (page 212).

"As for the most advanced native societies of North America, those of the U.S. Southeast and the Mississippi River system, their destruction was accomplished largely by germs alone, introduced by early European explorers and advancing ahead of them" (page 374)

Obviously, the decimation of native population by European germs represents an enormous tragedy, but in no sense does it represent a crime. Stories of deliberate infection by passing along "small-pox blankets" are based exclusively on two letters from British soldiers in 1763, at the end of the bitter and bloody French and Indian War. By that time, Indian populations (including those in the area) had already been terribly impacted by smallpox, and there's no evidence of a particularly devastating outbreak as a result of British policy.

For the most part, Indians were infected by devastating diseases even before they made direct contact with Europeans: other Indians who had already been exposed to the germs, carried them with them to virtually every corner of North America and many British explorers and settlers found empty, abandoned villages (as did the Pilgrims) and greatly reduced populations when they first arrived.

Sympathy for Native Americans and admiration for their cultures in no way requires a belief in European or American genocide. As Jared Diamond's book (and countless others) makes clear, the mass migration of Europeans to the New World and the rapid displacement and replacement of Native populations is hardly a unique interchange in human history. On six continents, such shifting populations – with countless cruel invasions and occupations and social destructions and replacements - have been the rule rather than the exception.

The notion that unique viciousness to Native Americans represents our "original sin" fails to put European contact with these struggling Stone Age societies in any context whatever, and only serves the purposes of those who want to foster inappropriate guilt, uncertainty and shame in young Americans.

A nation ashamed of its past will fear its future.

One of the most urgent needs in culture and education for the United States of America is discarding the stupid, groundless and anti-American lies that characterize contemporary political correctness.

The right place to begin is to confront, resist and reject the all-too-common line that our rightly admired forebears involved themselves in genocide.

The early colonists and settlers can hardly qualify as perfect but describing them in Hitlerian, mass-murdering terms represents an act of brain-dead defamation.

Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host, is author of 10 non-fiction books, including The Shadow Presidents and Right Turns.

I must say that I agree totally with Tamra, for I am too angry to say much more, except Michael Medved's article stinks!! It is the biggest crock of bullshit I've ever read! He should try getting his facts straight first before writing such trash! Better stop at that, cause if I say much more, everyone will know to what extent my anger goes right now!! I am royally pissed!!!