One Polluted Stream Of Consciousness
January 28th, 2006 | by christine |This morning I checked in with Modem Butterfly to see how the latest Carnival of the Liberals is coming along. I ran across this December 5 article, in which she shares her experience of being fired for being an atheist. I was especially intrigued by this paragraph:
“American society has spent a lot of time coddling and catering to Xians. We have allowed them to impose prayer on our school children, we have allowed them to change the face of our money, we have applauded them for changing the text of our pledge of allegiance. Xians have the only federally recognized holiday on the calendar. Xians have enjoyed a history of privilege in this country, and in fact, have even come to regard it as their due. Is it any wonder that they express outrage when this privilege is at all threatened?â€
I’ve been pretty irritated with the Christian Right myself. In the last couple of months I’ve counted over a dozen letters to the editor in the Argus Press which have argued that we should teach Intelligent Design in public schools because this country was founded on Christian principles. This is an interesting argument, from people who live in or near a town called Owosso, in the county of Shiawassee, in the state of Michigan. We are surrounded by Indian names and words. How can any of us ever forget that this country was founded on the slaughter of its natives?
I admit, I might be more sensitive to this than most. My grandfather grew up on a reservation in Wisconsin. He spent his childhood being forced to speak English and practice Christianity. Then he spent the rest of his life teaching his family to speak Ojibwa and understand our native faith.
One day my grandfather was showing me pictures taken of his family when he was young. He pulled out a picture of his mother and started telling me all about her. She was a matron at the reservation school. She never learned to speak English, which made things really difficult for her because the children were not allowed to speak Ojibwa. She had a brother named George who always brought candy when he came to visit. She had another brother who helped build a house for Al Capone. She cried for three days when my grandfather’s little brother died of pneumonia.
Then my grandfather stopped talking.
I waited.
“Two of her uncles were killed fighting Custer.â€
“What????â€
I don’t know if I said that out loud, but I sure did think it.
I was so excited! My grandpa had another new story to tell, and he was so good at telling them. He spared no detail, and he spoke with such passion that I hung on his every word. He would show me pictures when he told his stories, and if he didn’t have pictures he would show me something else, like the pipe that belonged to his father. He was always so careful in making sure that I experienced every nuance. I was the most important person in the world when my grandpa was talking to me. Nothing came between me & my grandpa.
My mind flooded with questions. Who were these men? How old were they when they died? Did they fight at Little Big Horn, or was there another battle? Did they have families? Were they warriors or medicine men or something else? What were their names?
I waited, but he offered no details. He looked back at the picture and traced the outline of his mother’s face with his finger. Then he said softly, “we were never supposed to talk about that.â€
I spent a lot of time learning about Chippewa from my grandfather. I knew about the reservations and the rules imposed by the federal government. I knew about the destruction of those of us who refused to leave our homelands. I knew that the soil of this county is soaked with the blood of Native Americans. But I never felt the defeat of my people until I was robbed of that story.
My grandfather never talked about his uncles again.
There is a part of me that has resented the United States government every day since then. There is a part of me that feels that I cannot be both a Chippewa and an American unless I stop thinking about the Chippewa part. It must’ve been worse for my grandfather; his brother and son both became soldiers for the government that enslaved him as a child.
So here we are, nearly 100 years after my grandfather was forced into Christianity, debating whether or not this country was founded on Christian principles. I am deeply offended by that debate.
I am going to close this entry with the words of another Native American, who chose to remain anonymous. This was written shortly after September 11, 2005.
And I Remember
Recently this country marked the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I keep hearing that this was the worst terrorist attack to happen in this country.
Today we say
WADO, WOPILA, Thank You!
But while my heart goes out to the dead, their families and those who are forever scarred by these events, there have been millions of people murdered in this country by terrorists.
It would be impossible for me to list all of the acts of terror our People have faced, but I want to mention a few of them because our People are also worthy of remembrance.
You won’t find many monuments to these, the unquiet dead. But their bones and blood make up the soil where your shopping centers and highways now stand.
Where is their memorial?
It is in the hearts of those who remember.
Today I remember:
The thousands of Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, Iroquois, Ojibway, Pottawatami, Seminole, Sioux & Chickasaw (and many others) who suffered untold agony during the forced removal from their homelands in the 1830s.
Innocent men, women and little children perished in concentration camps or froze and starved to death on the Trail Where They Cried.
The 90 women and children who died in the Bear River Massacre in southeastern Idaho.
The 200 Cheyenne men, women and children who were slain at Sand Creek in eastern Colorado by the US Cavalry led by Col. John Chivington, a Methodist minister who ordered his men to “Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.”
The 200 murdered Blackfeet women and children who died at Maries River in northern Montana and the other 140 People who were left to freeze to death in the January cold.
The 103 Cheyenne women and children who were butchered on the Washita River in western Oklahoma.
The 200 to 300 Sioux who were slaughtered under a flag of truce at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.
The 500 Sauk and Fox Indians led by Black Hawk who were massacred by militia forces while trying to negotiate a surrender.
The Yuki’s and other tribes of Indians in California whose populations declined from 11,000 to less than 1000 because white men wanted the land to search for gold. Organized Indian hunts were held on Sundays and our People were killed for sport.
The little children who were kidnapped from their homes and forced to attend BIA schools. Many of them died alone and lie in unmarked graves. From the small pox, measles, typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, TB, and VD epidemics brought to us by the white invaders to the continued genocide still being waged against us, we know about terrorism.
And I remember.
The End…. Or is it the End of The Suffering of the Many Nations………
Author Unknown
