Posted on 03/08/2007 5:24:52 AM PST by SJackson
A lot of people carry that oral history with them, and that's why they use the word 'invasion,' because it truly was an invasion, and I'm sure some of the Indian people will probably want to tell that as a part of the story of 400 years."
Maybe “a lot”, by numbers - not “a lot” by percentage. I know and have know a lot of people of American Indian ancestry - including my late wife (Seminole). I never actually met an American Indian who preferred the term “Native American”. I never met one who carried a grudge for what happened centuries ago.
Man, you just can't make this crap up!
We had a dear friend, also now deceased, who was involved with the Virginia Council on Indians. She explained to me that "American Indian" is the politically correct term in Virginia.
Oh, yes they can.
So...liberals don't celebrate the Mexican/illegal invasion of our country by throwing "May-Day" celebrations?
My family and I are planning to attend the Jamestown 400th.... however, there is no mistaking that many native populations were destroyed due to war and disease brought by the Europeans. Gotta call a duck a duck.
Looks like the Ward Churchill POV has won.
It’s true there was encroachment by settlers on lands claimed by the Indians as their hunting grounds, but in NO way can this be morally compared to the massacre, torture and kidnapping of many thousands of people by the Indians. The vast majority of those killed by the Indians in the massacres were NOT encroaching on Indian lands.
Suppose you own a vast ranch upon which you graze wide-ranging herds of cattle. One day you discover there are families that have moved onto the edges of your land. Are you morally justified in killing, torturing and kidnapping these people? And not only these people, but thousands of other people who are not even on your land?
It is wrong to pick out isolated events later on in the long history of the relations with the Indians (such as the “blankets with smallpox” incidents) and claim these events balanced things out with the Indians. The die was cast long before BY the Indians themselves in the 1750s, 1760s and 1770s and everything else progressed from the foundation that was laid in those years. There was an opportunity in those years to achieve a modus vivendi with the colonists and avoid the large-scale bloodshed that occurred, but the most war-like of the Indians chose to ally themselves with the cynical and calculating French and then later the British monarchy. The prevailing aim of these Indians was to exterminate the settlers. Traditional Indian culture celebrated the killing of other humans above all other activities. Only in Indian culture was a man who sneaks up behind a farmer in his field and buries his tomahawk in the other man’s brain considered an “honored warrior.”
The Indians perpetrated savage cruelties upon a huge number of people, all along the frontier. These Indians in their barbarities stooped to the very lowest levels of human behavior, and did their very level best to earn the undying enmity of the frontier people. From these brutalized frontier communities would arise people such as Andrew Jackson, who would later find himself in a position of influence over the destiny of many of these Indian tribes.
>fretting over the use of one word is just a bit silly.<
I'd bet Ann Coulter would heartily agree with you (c;
One of the reasons I enjoy being a Virginian.
The calendar at that site lists scores of events, of which a scant few fit the picture WND paints.
And not one wheel anywhere in their nation.
I, too, have never met an American Indian who prefers "native American." Most prefer to be referred to by their specific affiliation (Seminole, Cherokee, Navajo) rather than by any blanket term; but if a generic term is the only one available, American Indian is just fine. I occasionally run across "Amerind," but it's mostly faded along with Afro-American, Chicano, and all the other fad terms that sprung up during the '70s.
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And what about the invasion of this Eden-like continent by the people from Asia who came here before there were any humans? They made several species extinct, didn't they? We should not celebrate their invasion either...
bump
I don't think anyone was living on Iceland when some Norwegians found it & settled it.
That doesn't mean they weren't wandering. They exploited the soil and wood in an area for a while, then moved on to another area. After burning down the forests in a new area, they had newly fertilized lands.
As a review of Cronon's Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England points out:
"[...] for thousands of years, the people and animals of New England had traveled at will over a land sheltered by native trees and fertilized by fire. This migratory lifestyle was not only made possible by the richness of the land, it was a force for its active maintenance."
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