by P. Brisdaine

Created on: January 01, 2009

I really enjoyed Jame's writing on this topic. It was very well delivered. This particular topic is of importance to me because my wife is Native American - Cherokee. Has been registered her whole life as such.

What James has so perfectly captured in his last lines of his article is a comedic truth. The Europeans (white man) was sensationalized in history as defenders of our occupation of lands. That the Indians would attack unprovoked and such. To this day, I can't even watch a true historical film about how Europeans treated Indians. I will refer to all tribes of Native Americans as Indian's for this article so as to add another 'hit word' for peoples searches on this topic.

I'd like to also mention that towards the end of the Indian occupation era, Europeans began meeting with the Indian elders. The Europeans in general were giving a single ultimatum. There really was little to no room for the Indians to resist or to counter-offer on a deal. Thus, fighting often continued. People died on both sides. Both ignoring the holiest of rules. That life is a gift. To go forth and prosper. Our corruption of that statement goes on. Never seeming to learn from our mistakes.

The Europeans have taken entire colonies of Indian Tribes and relocated them or more widely known as killing them off. The remaining Indian children were forced into our public schools and taught and were required to dress and speak as Europeans. Anything relative to their Indian heritage was forbidden and punishable. Thus, the Europeans had in fact destroyed a firm link between the Indian heritage and the future generations. If the Indians refused to send their children to public schools and abide by European requirements, then they were denied any public aid. They had lost their land, their homes and were literally forced into being governed by European society. Fear for their children eating, most were forced into this so that their children could eat and have a home and clothing. It was sickening and it disturbs many to this day. Aside from the children forced into public schools, the men were forced into speaking English also and taking European jobs such as salesman, bankers, etc. They had to cut their hair and dress as Europeans. The cutting of Native American man's hair was a very insulting proposition. Thus, you can imagine how humbled the male Indians were having to do all of this to provide for their families.

Thank you for providing this story and helping document the truths of what happened in our history. Allot of what we (older) people have learned in our history class was absolutely documented wrong. By most reason to make us Europeans feel good about defending our people and the land we owned that the Indians tried to take from us or whatever our ridiculous reasons were. Fact is, we now know that our Native American people were simply destroyed in most ways. I lay tribute to all Native Americans that gave their lives to our forefathers (white man) that simply were greedy and ignored their very Catholic beliefs in living a proper life. Greed can be powerful enough to trump even our faith.

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