Posted on 05/25/2005 11:32:48 AM PDT by nypokerface
Screw that. While I get outraged at the actions of our government in times past, it WAS in times past. Long past. Since the 1890's there haven't been any military campaigns against Indian tribes.
Even the attempts to deny Indians their language and culture were based on the "science" of the times vis a vis assimilation and the best way to integrate the Indian to make him a part of American society and to hopefully end the reservation system.
Today, while those methods such as punishing them for speaking their own language are denounced, it still doesn't warrant an "apology".
It was wrong to commit genocidal actions [just as it was wrong for them to attempt the same against us] and to break our word to them as we did.
But "apologize"? I don't think so.
Besides, my folk weren't even here.
We didn't do a thing to them.
I have nothing to apologize for.
Apology?
OK.
Then y'all get no more $$$ for nuthin', and start paying income tax like the rest of us.
They want an apology for their self destruction? Seriously, I as an American, do not owe an apology to the Indians, or the descendants of slaves, railroad workers, or indentured servants. I never killed an Indian, or stole land, or took a slave, or coerced and exploited anyone for free labor or money. Perhaps my forefathers did but I am not responsible for their sins.
Like what? Charging $19.95 for the Roast Beef buffet in the casino?
Funniest thing I've heard all week. Thanks I needed that. Seriously though the Europeans were expanding their territory and the Indians were defending theirs. That's life. No apologies are necessary. Just about every group in the world has been through it in some form or another.
We presume you've purchased good title insurance however. Although you are not responsible for anything at all, you may still be held accountable for it!
It seems to me that if all of the participants are dead, then an apology is worthless. You can have a pronouncement that "US government had treated the Indians wrongly", but then does anyone not know this? An "apology" means nothing at this point. We cannot be "sorry" for something _we_ didn't do. I am dissapointed, sure, but thats not sorry, there is no contrition on my part (not even my ancestors, but I digress). This "I'm sorry" crap is just part of the Oprah Generation...
That's outrageous.
"Oh say, like the attempt to massacre the Jamestown colony."
Was that the same colony that was built without consent with the native citizens of that land?
It's what the illegal aliens are trying to do.
The wars themselves are history, but a moral country lives up to it's commitments. The US government should calculate a way to compensate for broken treaties and agreements.
The apology thing is just a way to make the government thugs feel better about things without actually making good on the commitments.
What total BS. Is this what we send them to Washington for ?
Is Brownback trying to jump on the bandwagon of that new Spielberg series coming out?
What actions?
Being here and protecting their land?
I'm not part of the-beat-the-European-American crowd, but America's treatment of native Americans has been despicable.
I actually blame it on the French.
Between 1689 and 1763 the French, ensconced in Canada, used Native American indian "allies" to conduct a brutal frontier war on British American civilians. Their use of these unfortunate people as a political and military foil engendered in the American mind the concept of American Indians as a brutal savage, equivalent to wolves and cougars, who was only fit to be shouldered aside from lands he "occupied" but did not "own".
The Eastern Tribes only wanted to survive. They were trapped between the twin millstones of French and British expansionism and tried to select the lesser of the two evils. Unfortunately they chose "not wisely."
The Amerindians were forced off their own lands at gun point, they were compelled to "sign" documents they didn't understand, plied with whiskey, deprived of a livelihood, crowded into barren "reservations", forced to watch their children taken from them and educated as whites, punished when they spoke their own language, prevented from practising their own religion, ridiculed for their dress and customs, and decimated by diseases they had no resistance to and couldn't understand.
Pity the American Indian. And pity us for the heritage they and WE have lost. They are Americans also.
I think they deserve at least an apology and maybe more - the few of them that we left around still alive, that is.
Before Indians were running casinos and selling cigarettes tax-free in North America, they were a stone-age people before the "pale face" came. They had not learned to domesticate animals (except dogs), they had no written language, they used only stone tools and they had not even yet invented the wheel.
They had never seen a horse, a metal knife, a cart or a plow.
They also commonly practiced slavery, genocide and cannibalism against other tribes. No matter how many times you watch "Dances with Wolves" and "Pocahontas," it will not change these facts.
In terms of population percentage loss, the worst war we ever fought was King Philip's War in 1675-76. King Philip was an indian chief (also known as Metacomet) who attacked to oust white settlers from New England. The Indians burned down/destroyed twelve of ninety Puritan towns and attacked forty others (including Providence). The Colonists' population was small in 1675 and a good percentage of that population was killed in the war (with about 1000 slain out of a population of 52,000, this death rate was nearly twice that of the Civil War and more than seven times that of World War II). The Indians lost the war.
The Indians sided with the French in the French And Indian War (1753). The indians lost the war.
The Indians sided with the British in the Revolution. The Indians lost the war.
The Indians sided with the British again in the War of 1812. The Indians lost the war.
As the Americans moved west, fighting was constant on both sides. The Indians lost everytime.
No they are not, by their own choice. Haven't you heard? They are sovereign nations.
Spare us the BS, OK? Pity yourself all you want, but please jettison the arrogance that allows you to think you can speak for me.
Do a Google to learn how the Comanche came to dominate vast areas of Texas. They moved in from the north and forced everyone in their way to other parts. Peaceful coexistence was definitely not a feature of the frontier.
One of the reasons local Indians were willing to stay at the missions was because the Spanish defended them against other marauding tribes.
There's plenty of bad, bloody history on all sides to go round. This silly self-flagellation over the past must stop.
Me too. This weak-kneed, psychobabble line of thinking is ridiculous.
They're right. An apology is no help at all, since the referenced problems are entirely of the Indians' own making. Americans who happen to be Indian have full citizenship, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities that entails. Let them start solving their own problems--nothing stops them but their own bad choices.
Welfare grab.
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