by Jishi Santos

Created on: September 12, 2008

Racism against Native Americans.

On a recent rip to New York my wife and I visited Battery point and Wall St and the area of the former twin towers. Nestled in amongst all of this is the Museum of American Native History. Once inside you can see a large map of the United States and where all the American first peoples lived in their tribes, be they the Black Crow or Cherokee or Sioux. Like the Australian aborigines, (where we come from by the way)the tribes covered the land from head to toe and now in both countries they are living on reserves far way from their tribal hunting grounds and spiritual lands.

We all know the ignorant attitude of the past, that if you regard someone else as a threat and you brand them a savage, just because their ways are not as polite and genteel as yours, you cruelly eliminate them. The hand of friendship was extended in America when the English wanted to settle Chesapeake Bay and the local tribes warned them they would not survive the summer conditions. They warned them to move away for that time as they had been doing for centuries. In their foolish pride and probably seeing it as a trick to get them to move on they stayed and died. In Australia the same thing happened in Sydney when the local tribes offered food and help to the new white settlers only to find that they were double crossed and raided and killed themselves. So began fighting with the original peoples of both lands trying to defend their lands which were literally being stolen from them as if the new settlers had every right to do so. Captain Cook, discoverer of Australian settlement at Botany Bay, met his death on Hawaii when he arrogantly insisted on the locals doing something they did not want to regarding a boat. He was speared, chopped up and met local justice. The American Indian certainly thought the same about the arrogance of the French and English and the film, "The last of the Mohicans" was based on this constant struggle leading to death and disenfranchisement. The battle of Wounded Knee was the last utterly cruel act perpetrated upon the proud holders of the plains of buffalo. The settlers even stripped the plains of food for the buffalo so that the main source of food for these peoples would vanish. We have a picture of some American Indians doing the buffalo dance hoping in vain the buffalo would come back. Almost pathetically sad and where have they been left today? On a reserve somewhere and like our aborigines they have lost their connection with

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