Native American perspectives on "Indian" identities by Cynthia

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

By: Annette Hatton

Living Repercussions of the Native-American Genocide Holocaust: America's Four Hundred Year War

The extermination of America's First People began in 1492 with the discovery of the Americas and escalated to unconditional warfare ending in 1890. In 1492 Columbus wrote of the American Natives, “They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest, but they are an inferior race and could easily be commanded and made to work, to sow and do whatever might be needed, to build towns and taught to adopt our ways.” Subsequent reports were filled with accounts of enslavement, murder and rape of the natives of who resisted.

Successive centuries overflow with accounts of similar aggression and increasing violence toward the Natives.

In June 1524 Florentine explorers captured Native children sending them to France as slaves and brothel prostitutes. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540 began his march through northern Mexico to the upper Rio Grande raping, pillaging, killing and methodically burning at the stake as many as two hundred natives at one time. No one stood in his gold-thirsty way.

In the summer of 1610, Jamestown Governor, Thomas West De la Warr ordered Powhatan to hunt down runaway Englishmen. Powhatan did not respond to the liking of De la Warr, which he took as reason to order the slaughter of all Powhatan's tribe ordering that
none, including women and children be spared. The massacre was complete.

United States Colonists formally won independence from England with the signing and ratification of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Since 1787 the new American government made and broke over seven hundred fifty (750) treaties, forcibly taking Native American land and
segregating Natives into smaller and smaller reservations where they were subsequently starved, brutalized, tortured and raped.

It can be argued there were hostilities on both sides, but like the American anger aroused by the unprovoked December 7, 1941Pearl Harbor massacre, Native Americans were deliberately provoked by treaties, terms of surrender that were offered then deliberately broken. In a letter dated April 1, 1889, General George Cook wrote to General Philip H. Sheridan aptly describing that deliberateness, “If offensive movements against the Indians are not resumed, they will remain quietly in the mountains for an indefinite time without crossing the line. They must be provoked.”

Weapons of American expansionist invaders included manipulation, conspiracy,
lies, broken promises and broken treaties, ambush, starvation, murder and rape. The battle cry, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” They believed Manifest Destiny their God-given right. Their hatred and fear of Indians fueled by the very biased pioneer drive-by
media, the goal was Native People genocide.

Officially the Native Holocaust ended with the South Dakota 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. Unofficially, it continues to this day.

In any war children feel the repercussions most. For four centuries sandwiched between the indigenous and the interlopers were the children. There were children who as adults remained in the fray. Then there were children who lost their family connections. We may have lost our family identities, but we retain a blood knowledge that cries for provision
our souls yearn for tribal family ties. We want and need to be taught about our people and their ways.

Our thrust partly slaked by information found on the Internet, but we know many of these websites are the Whiteman and Wannabes, who steal, pervert and claim knowledge of
Native ways, but are the modern invaders with their gold-lust and Manifest Destiny mantra.

Four centuries of war left Native People with deep scars of distrust so there is little wonder today's Natives are cloistered and developed a Native American exclusiveness snobbery.

Thus the excluded lost Native children live in a dichotomous suspension between two Native extremes. On the one hand we are told, “If you ask someone to teach you this offends and he/she will not speak to you or at least distance themselves from you.” On the other hand we hear, “If you want to know ask, we welcome all seekers. Creator knows your heart.” It is little wonder we find ourselves seduced by Native American occultism and mysticism that true Native People abhor.

I am one of many who walk this path between two worlds. For fifty years unknowingly I walked the path of the feather. Not until a huge Raven landed a few feet in front of me, looked in my eyes and spoke then pulled a feather from a wing and balanced it perpendicular on the ground for me to pick up, did someone tell me there was such a thing as the path of the feather and that a bird pulling a feather from its wing to give me carried significance. You can imagine the questions, but asking netted me the loss of several friends and Internet contacts. I was, according to some, perverting Native American teachings with new age mysticism and witchery.

“Seek the council of your tribal elders,” they admonished.

“I have no tribal elders, I have no tribe. Lost is my connection to my family. I have no Native identity, I was raised white,” my response.

Given what we see as cold Native standoffishness lost Native children are frustrated and feel rejected. Thus abandoned to fend for ourselves the only conclusion we can make is it matters little how much or how little

Native blood flows in our veins from our ancestors, our tribes and families are afraid or too caught-up in the whiteman’s greed to embrace us. Is our ancestry along with rites and practices of our people to remain lost to us, our blood to remain unrequited?

The lost children are living repercussions of those five hundred plus years of genocidal warfare fought against our ancestral Native People. We find answers and knowledge in our dreams and visions, which may or may not be teachings and knowledge American Natives of the Twenty-first Century want to know or hear. We upset Natives because we use modern language to describe our visions. We are learning. In order to maintain an understanding of our kinship to Mother Earth, we draw from where we can, mostly each other. We form our own tribal families for substance and borrow what we can from our shared knowledge. Our ancestors learned, guided only by the elder voices of Creator, Mother Earth and animal and plant spirits. So shall we. Right or wrong, we sink our roots deep into Mother Earth guided only by our blood knowing, our dreams and visions and Creator's Spirit.

The Seven Fires Council published a statement, "Our People, Our Future," that began with the statement, “Native American Indians are a people in transition between history and contemporary America. The challenge for Native Americans is to maintain their heritage, erase a stereotype and adjust recognition in society." Is Creator asking the lost Native children to lead the way?

Learn more about this author, Annette Hatton.
http://www.helium.com/items/1915795-native-american-perspectives-on...