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To: Fightin Whitey
My irritation is that even someone as unoriginal as yourself ought to take a little care (or maybe spend more than a little time reading) before mouthing stupid platitudes about whites slaughtering Indians...

Why don't you try some reading. Start here.

or whites committing genocide on Indians, and all the rest of that tired Hollywood claptrap. (A better question would be whether knuckleheads like you were running around making such claims before the invention of Hollywood movies...now there is a topic for your next ‘History of Evil Whiteys 504’ class paper...)

I stopped watching Hollywood westerns, because all I saw in them was how the righteous Europeans were liberating the land from the "evil, savage Indians". That became offensive after a while.

I don’t think you know anything about the history of indigenous people on this continent, nor anything about their widely differing cultures, nor any actual indigenous people, for that matter.

I know many, and I know that a war of aggression and ethnic cleansing was waged against the entire continent. How you figure that a war of ethnic cleansing on that scale could be waged while only killing "tens of thousands" defies logic.

That’s why you p!$$ed me off.

I pissed you off because I pointed out a part of our past that none of us are proud of.

294 posted on 12/17/2012 4:31:11 PM PST by TwelveOfTwenty (Ho, ho, hey, hey, I'm BUYcotting Chick-Fil-A)
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To: TwelveOfTwenty; Post Toasties

I have a hard time getting past your smugness. But I will add a couple things just to explain my perspective, whether or not it ends up meaning anything to you.

My hometown is on a reservation (I am white), and I grew up amid a group of tribes who were hounded across the Plains for untold generations by Indians of superior warring strength, primarily (and very rudimentarily) the various Siouxan or Lakotan tribes.

As a matter of fact the native people in my home area often still can’t abide the company of the Lakota, and the young men (and women) will often come to blows when they meet, just as they did when I was young.

I am grateful to have lived where I do and I have long been proud of just how well the tribes and the whites have managed to get along and grow together, through friendship and marriage and business partnerships, in the face of many and very considerable challenges.

The challenges grow greater and more painful with the passing years, as families break up (both white and Indian) and as racial strife is exacerbated by the same political opportunism—pitting group against group—that we see everywhere in the nation.

Below are a couple links to a recent story from my hometown, which recounts one of the greatest blows to community harmony in my memory (which reaches back nearly to the founding of the town).

By the way don’t let the town name throw you...it is only a startling coincidence...

http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/fbi-plans-complete-public-report-on-new-town-murders/article_0f969a76-341d-11e2-96c7-0019bb2963f4.html

http://www.bakkentoday.com/event/article/id/34430/

and, of general interest (I don’t know why the link goes to ‘Story #5...you can actually peruse the whole site):

http://www.welchdakotapapers.com/2011/12/war-drums-genuine-war-stories-from-the-sioux-mandan-hidatsa-and-arikara/#story-no-5

None of these pieces is specifically relevant to the kind of talk you were throwing around. I post them for you simply to underscore that when you live the life, when you raise your family there, when you grew up as teammates and best friends with some of the people involved (and I am talking the NATIVE family here, the family of the perpetrator, not the murder victims), then you are reflexively just a little bit resentful of mouthfuls of cliches and slurs and ad hominems...can you understand that?


298 posted on 12/19/2012 8:56:13 AM PST by Fightin Whitey
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