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Lewis & Clark re-enactors face anger, protests from American Indians
modbee ^ | 9-21-04

Posted on 09/21/2004 9:42:49 AM PDT by LouAvul

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A group re-enacting the Lewis and Clark expedition was confronted in South Dakota by American Indian leaders who questioned the legacy of the 200-year-old trip and its effects on native culture. An American Indian delegation greeted the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles over the weekend with protest signs, including one suggesting the original expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led to genocide of their people and destruction of their culture. The re-enactors were asked to go back home.

"I went as a peaceful emissary and asked in a kind way if they would leave," said Alex White Plume, a Lakota from Pine Ridge, S.D., who led the protest. "They should go home and rethink what they did to the native population."

Jon Ruybalid, a spokesman for the re-enactors, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the group expects more dialogue with the American Indians they met Saturday near Chamberlain, S.D.

"It wasn't easy listening," Ruybalid said. "What they said was filled with a lot of pain. We are being educated and, in the process, we are a platform for people to express their concerns."

About 20 people taking part in the expedition left St. Charles, Mo., on May 23 on its planned journey along the path of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-06. The expedition is heading up the Missouri River in a replica boat.

Ruybalid said members of several South Dakota tribes planned to take part in bicentennial events this weekend near Pierre, S.D. But White Plume said he was "saddened that some tribes welcome them with open arms."

(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: americanindians; lewisandclark; rewritinghistory
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To: LouAvul

Shall we play cowboys and indians again?


21 posted on 09/21/2004 10:14:43 AM PDT by G.Mason (A war mongering, red white and blue, military industrial complex, Al Qaeda incinerating American.)
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To: huskers2004

I agree with some here that Indians should get off of the reservations, go to schools, work, etc., at least for awhile when they're young. At the same time, the reservations are good spots for keeping History of cultures and all of that. And the casinos should be gone.


22 posted on 09/21/2004 10:17:10 AM PDT by familyop (Essayons)
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To: LouAvul
With all due PC respect, WTF is so horrid about the loss (replacement) of their old "culture"?

Do they refuse cars, houses, antibiotics, vaccines, water-heaters, electricity, telephones, firearms, cheese & butter, et-infinitum-cetera?

And begging the question, do they bitch and moan about the White Man destroying their previous ancestral culture, and creating the one they now piss and moan about losing, by introducing the horse?

Did their early chiefs sit around the camp fire, chomping on buffalo roasts, bitching about the "good old days" of hunting on foot, while the women carried everything on their backs?

If they like it so much, they could emulate the Old Order Amish, and eschew the Evil White Man's culture, and live in a tepee. Burning sticks to cook & keep warm. Hunting-gathering, without "W-M Commodities to tide them over if they aren't successful. Without refridgeration & caning. Drinking willowbark tea for their arthritis at 30, secure in the knowledge that in less than 10 years, their suffering will be over.

In the meanwhile, they can watch the Medicine Man wave the eagle feather, and administer herbs and "sacred clay" to their 2 year old son, who is coughing his guts out, and burning up with fever.

Or, do they just want it both ways, and keep the hand-outs coming?

Begging another question, but in the case of these protesting Lakota, just whose culture did their ancestors destroy, and how gentle and "sensitive" about it were they, when they invaded and occupied "their" 'sacred' Black Hills about 300 or so years ago?

23 posted on 09/21/2004 10:17:16 AM PDT by ApplegateRanch (The world needs more horses, and fewer Jackasses!)
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To: LouAvul
FYI: The Native American museum has just opened today in DC.
24 posted on 09/21/2004 10:20:32 AM PDT by rabidralph (Doing the gloating that Republicans won't do.)
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To: Jaysun
It was manifest destiny. Time to live with it.

I can't feature Thomas Jefferson(or any other American leader of the period) sitting back saying, "You know we don't need to be running off the Northwest, corrupting the indigenous cultures and making them sick. Lets not bother linking the the country together. It would just be too traumatic.Just think of the environment impact. The American public should be happy with what we have in the East."

America would have remained a didley-squat county or even worse divided up between Mexico and Canada. And the end what would be left would be speaking German and Japaneese.

25 posted on 09/21/2004 10:20:36 AM PDT by oyez (¡Qué viva la revolución de Reagan!)
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To: ZULU
"I generally am sympathtic to the sentiments of Native Americans"

I'm not. I live on an open Rez in western Montana. The indians here get free medical care, a quarterly stipend from the US of A tax payer, a host of ridiculously generous housing subsidies, unlimited hunting and fishing rights (when whitey can't hunt here at all and has to pay additional fees to hunt and camp), a $25 auto registration fee for brand new rigs (when I had to pay over $300.00), slaps on the wrist for severe traffic offenses (including DUIs. White cops can only hold, not arrest Indians on the Rez, until tribal cops show up. When they show up for tribal court, they almost always get off very easy).

And they still whine about the mean old racist white guys. But I have gotten used to it. Because this isn't like your normal reservation, it's beautiful here.
26 posted on 09/21/2004 10:20:47 AM PDT by GunnyHartman (Islam + Dubya = Waslam)
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To: G.Mason

Maybe this time we need to play cowboys and muslims...


27 posted on 09/21/2004 10:20:51 AM PDT by myrabach
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To: G.Mason

maybe this time we need to play cowboys and muslims...


28 posted on 09/21/2004 10:21:31 AM PDT by myrabach
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To: GunnyHartman
"additional fees to hunt and camp"

D'oh! Fish and camp.
29 posted on 09/21/2004 10:22:13 AM PDT by GunnyHartman (Islam + Dubya = Waslam)
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To: RonF
The horse enabled the Apaches and Comanches to be more mobile so that they could expand their range and live like Huns.
30 posted on 09/21/2004 10:27:46 AM PDT by oyez (¡Qué viva la revolución de Reagan!)
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To: RedwM
Yeah. Just think what would have happened if they all owned guns and lived in trailers, didn't drink at all, and went to church every Sunday. I don't think they are the ones smoking too much dope.

Just think. What kept them from taking over Europe? I don't care what you say, it's over and they have just as much - no, more - opportunities to succeed as everyone else does. One thing's for sure, they won't get far by occupying their time with ridiculous indigence for something that happened centuries ago.
31 posted on 09/21/2004 10:28:49 AM PDT by Jaysun (Taxation WITH representation isn't so hot either.)
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To: 2banana
The judgment of history also looks with displeasure on technical inaccuracies. King Philip's War was in 1675-76 not 1688. The effective end of the war was when Philip was ironically killed by a Wampanoag fighting with Captain Benjamin Church's force at the Battle of the Great Swamp.
32 posted on 09/21/2004 10:31:25 AM PDT by robowombat
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To: LouAvul
This is yet a another example of professional grandstanding "protesting" by Tree-Huggers and the Left...

Without the MSM -- whom they know will orgasmically report this crap -- these people would blow away like one more insignificant leaf.

33 posted on 09/21/2004 10:35:11 AM PDT by F16Fighter
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To: LouAvul
I've got a brother-in-law who is part Cherokee who constantly pisses and moans about lost Indian culture and the evils of the white man.

I just tell him this - if you hate white culture that much, then give up your computer, your automobile, your television and DVD player, tear off your clothes, put on a loin cloth and move into a damn teepee.
34 posted on 09/21/2004 10:36:35 AM PDT by reagan_fanatic (President Kerry - - there, scared ya didn't I?)
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To: Jaysun
"They should go home and rethink what they did to the native population."

I'm with you. When the white man came, the Indians were already running around killing each other. Had any of the tribes had the technology, the number of soldiers, or the discipline that the whites did, they too would have gladly taken over the continent and made it the Native States of America.

35 posted on 09/21/2004 10:44:21 AM PDT by tom h
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To: Cogadh na Sith
Didn't Lewis and Clark carry muskets for this kind of thing?

I saw a special on television recently. I seem to recall that they had "Frontiersman" or "Kentucky" type rifles among other things. They had a group of people with them to help with the supplies.

To commemorate what they did isn't "insensitive." They had to be very brave (or nuts) to venture into the great unknown, not knowing who or what they might encounter.
36 posted on 09/21/2004 10:53:43 AM PDT by Jaysun (Taxation WITH representation isn't so hot either.)
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To: myrabach
"maybe this time we need to play cowboys and muslims..."

Good point! ;)

37 posted on 09/21/2004 10:53:45 AM PDT by G.Mason (A war mongering, red white and blue, military industrial complex, Al Qaeda incinerating American.)
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To: ZULU
I generally am sympathtic to the sentiments of Native Americans,...

You mean "American aborigines" or, to use the British term, "Red Indians". A "native American" is anyone born w/i the goegrpahical borders of the United States.

Not meaning to scold, just that this term "Native American", like "self-confessed" (you don't confess to yourself) and "free gift" (For pete sake, what other kind of gift is there?), is a kind of verbal paper-cut to me; small but irritating as h---.

38 posted on 09/21/2004 10:56:03 AM PDT by yankeedame ("Born with the gift of laughter & a sense that the world was mad.")
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To: LouAvul
"I went as a peaceful emissary and asked in a kind way if they would leave," said Alex White Plume, a Lakota from Pine Ridge, S.D., who led the protest. "They should go home and rethink what they did to the native population."

How much money are you taking from the casinos, Alex?

Maybe you should go home and rethink how dependency on vice corrupts the native population.

You seem to be a prime example of that.

39 posted on 09/21/2004 10:58:01 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Drug prohibition laws help fund terrorism.)
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To: LouAvul

PUlleeeze. And the PC crowd raises hell about celebrating southern heritage. But if it is Indian heritage, some of what we all know was not too damn glorious at times, that is a very profound thing.

Let the Native Americans remember their culture and history, but leave the hell alone those who honor aspects of our White forefathers.

If not, and they want to play that, "we are victims card." Then let us damn those peoples who met the Europeans that day on an Atlantic shore. The first words out of their mouth was, how, here, have a smoke.

By fostering the evil weed of tobacco upon and addicting us to a hell that has killed hundreds of millions around the world, and continues to do so yet today.

People who live in glass houses and et al.


40 posted on 09/21/2004 11:00:40 AM PDT by Ursus arctos horribilis ("It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919)
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