[Wamvan] Fwd: [m2c] Lakota deserve apology for Wounded Knee, 120 Years Ago

[Tami Starlight]

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Tami Starlight 
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Begin forwarded message:
> 
> 

> http://www.progressive.org/mprolo122710.html
> 
> Lakota deserve apology for Wounded Knee, 120 Years Ago
> 
> By Mark Anthony Rolo, December 27, 2010
> 
> The 120th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre should serve as a
> reminder of the U.S. government’s brutal war on American Indians.
> 
> On the morning of Dec. 29, 1890, the U.S. 7th Calvary attacked a
> Lakota community camped along Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.
> Soldiers indiscriminately shot the Lakota, killing at least 150. Most
> of them were women and children. About 30 soldiers also died, some
> from friendly fire.
> 
> Many historians consider this bloodbath to be the sad endpoint of the
> Indian Wars. To make way for the white conquest of the West, the U.S.
> army subjugated the Indian nations, and Congress forced them into
> giving up most of their lands through coerced treaties. But America’s
> failure to live up to its end of the bargain— food, clothing and other
> provisions — led to great Indian unrest.
> 
> 
> By the turn of the 20th century,. the West was secured for white
> settlers. Indian tribes were, for the most part, demoralized and
> forgotten.
> 
> But the Indian Wars did not end on the frozen banks of Wounded Knee
> Creek. America continued its efforts to subdue the Indian with new
> strategies.
> 
> A policy of privatizing Indian property allowed for increased white
> land-grabbing. Tribes lost millions of acreage. The oppressive
> practice of sending Indian kids off to white boarding schools remained
> in effect. Thousands of Indian children were removed from their homes
> and shipped off to military-style schools designed to “kill the
> Indian, but save the man.”
> 
> In the 1950s, President Eisenhower signed legislation aimed at
> dismantling the tribal reservation system. “Indian termination” cut
> off treaty-based provisions such as health care and other critical
> services to tribes like the Menominee, Klamath and Potawatomi.
> 
> In the mid-1970s, Congress finally shredded the Indian termination
> policy — allowing tribes to reclaim nationhood.
> 
> In recent decades, tribes have reasserted themselves.
> 
> They have called on the nation’s courts to force the federal
> government into upholding treaty rights, and the courts have largely
> done so.
> 
> Tribes have demanded an end to corruption within the Bureau of Indian
> Affairs, the federal institution charged with funding and overseeing
> services to tribes, and this has led to measurable reform.
> 
> And on the cultural and spiritual front, American Indians are reviving
> their languages, customs and religions, which Washington once
> outlawed.
> 
> But Washington has yet to set the historical record straight.
> 
> In the days that followed the massacre at Wounded Knee, the U.S. Army
> awarded medals of honor to twenty of their soldiers. Indians have
> urged the federal government to strip away those medals. But the
> government not only refuses to withdraw the medals; it also refuses to
> apologize for the genocide it inflicted.
> 
> To the American Indian that means only one thing: the Indian Wars are
> far from over.
> 
> Mark Anthony Rolo is an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake
> Superior Ojibwe. He can be reached at pmproj at progressive.org.
> 
> You can read more pieces from The Progressive Media Project by clicking here.
> 
> -- 
> "Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted
> with enslavement." Lee Maracle
> http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre
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> http://noii-van.resist.ca/
> 
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