I don't expect comments...as it makes people uncomfortable. I don't expect anyone to read it when they see it is a "serious" blog. I blog this for me and my children. To have it in print and to look back on. Please remember this blog is for my purposes, not a guilt trip to anyone who is proud of who they are. After all, isn't that what we should all be....proud of who we are?
116 years ago was what the U.S. 7th Calvary called the last Battle of the Sioux. It was a massacre. Even though Chief Big Foot and his people surrendered to the U.S. Government, the Calvary open fired when an eagle bone whistle was sounded by a medicine man reminding his people of the Ghost Dance Shirts they had believed to protect them from the soldiers bullets.
146 men,women, and children were killed. They only wanted to dance.
This site is about half hour from where I live and tomorrow the The Big Foot Memorial Ride will be riding in to Wounded Knee to commemorate this. The Ghost Riders. I found a video on youtube explaining more if you wish to watch it, it is ten minutes long.
After watching this you can understand how my people believe that they have been fighting terrorism for 500 years. That terrorism started here and continues here. You can understand, maybe, how we still carry this pain and hurt with us. We teach all the wrong that was done to us to the next generation, we pass on the knowledge of the wrongs, of the hurt, and of the pride that should have been lost. I have yet to meet a youth, elder, or peer that doesn't know this story here. But still we pass it on because it is embedded in our DNA. We can't forget.
It hurts me when ignorance surfaces and I am told that "this was the past....forget about it,already." After all I would never, ever tell anyone that about the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, or 9/11. From the beginning, the genocide of the Native People of America was never counted...ever. So no one knows how many were actually "killed off", there is no number.
Yes, like many people of many different lands, our lands were taken. We were placed on reservations of the worst part of any state. Unresourceful and unable to farm. Children taken to boarding schools, away from families and forced to try to forget their culture. Men unable to roam and hunt to provide for their family. Yet no jobs available.
Think about that the next time you hear someone bitch about Indians being able to own casinos, or Indians not paying taxes. (Which is false.) I am not asking for a guilt trip or trying to piss anyone off, I am just saying...think about that.
We know what we used to have, but we never knew the glory of it.
That pain lives with us, and we can't "forget about it."
2 comments:
Just as relevant now as it was then. Stupid people make stupid attacks that ruin themselves and others. Either way, your children are entitled to see this blog.
I think many tell you to "move on" perhaps out of their own guilt, or what they feel as such...I know I feel in a way "guilty", for one thread of my family can be traced back to the Mayflower, which means at least someone I'm related to may have been involved in an atrocity (in fact, more likely than not) ...that said I can do nothing but applaud your effort to keep the memory of your people alive; the good and bad. How can any of us truly learn without a honest account of history? I believe us as humans all too often do not recall the past with the amount of veracity necessary, hence the repeated horror over and over...all is truly saddening.
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