Posted on 08/10/2009 11:40:34 AM PDT by yoe
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs passed a resolution by voice vote last week apologizing "on behalf of American people" to all Indian tribes for the mistreatment and violence by American citizens.
Senate Joint Resolution 14, sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), states that its purpose is “to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian Tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.”
In Section 1A, No. 4 of the resolution states that the apology is on behalf of U.S. citizens for harm they have done to “Native Peoples.” In the resolution, native peoples are defined as people who “inhabited the land of the present-day United States since time immemorial and for thousands of years before the arrival of people of European descent.”
“Apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native Peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples by citizens of the United States,” the resolution reads.
Requests by CNSNews.com for clarification of the language in the bill were not answered by Brownback’s office by press time, but Brownback issued a statement on Friday about the passage of his resolution.
“I am pleased that my colleagues have decided to move forward with a formal apology from the federal government to Native Americans," Brownback said. "This is a resolution of apology and reconciliation, and is a step toward healing divisive wounds.
“With this resolution we have the potential to start a new era of positive relations between tribal governments and the federal government,” Brownback said.
“For too much of our history, federal-tribal relations have been marked by broken treaties, mistreatment and dishonorable dealings. With this resolution, we can acknowledge past failures, express sincere regrets and establish a brighter future for all Americans,” he added.
Neither Brownback’s statement nor the resolution says whether the apology is on behalf of U.S. citizens who are alive today or U.S. citizens who lived in the past.
Co-sponsors of the resolution were Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.),Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
Good post, and I agree it should worry us all. Plus, since I’m part Native American and partly of Eurpean descent, I can’t quite figure out what the heck I’m supposed to do with this apology. Do I apologize from myself to myself, or just how does that work?
BTW, I really like your username even though I have no idea what it means. :-)
>>>>> These political sick souls. Lord, I loathe them. <<<<<
Capitol Hill is absolutely crawling with sociopaths.
That’s a pretty heavy charge, “ethnic cleansing”, does Ward Churchill happen to be your professor? You do realize 80-90% of the American Indian deaths were due to disease? The rest were in combat. Shall I talk about the thousands of innocent settlers(many of whom were women and children)who were scalped and slaughtered by the “peaceful” Indians?
***The Indians wont apologize to the Custer family because he committed suicide by stupidity. ****
What is even more interesting is that the battle of the Little Big Horn took place in pro US CROW Indian territory that had been invaded by the Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes.
And Chivington thrashed “peaceful” Indians at Sand Creek who had in their posession scalps of white men and children so fresh they had not been streched on hoops, and a blanket fringed with the scalps of white women.
Such peaceful Indians.
For an alternate view of the Indian wars you need to read the old book published about 1888. MASSACRES OF THE MOUNTAINS by JP Dunn Jr. Definitly no PC!
More non PC indian war info..
The Indian war of 1864 by Eugene Ware.
THE SAVAGE YEARS edited by Shepard Rifkin
ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY OF PIONEER LIFE by Augustus Lynch Mason.
And of course..MY LIFE ON THE PLAINS by GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER.
Everyone knows only redneck Fundamentalist Protestants may have their religious beliefs destroyed by superior Europeans!
“That’s a pretty heavy charge, “ethnic cleansing”, does Ward Churchill happen to be your professor? “
Oh, please, stop the baiting. Ward is just another race baiter and you are falling for it. Why didn’t you read all of what I wrote instead of trying to pick something to bitch about?
Yes, in many cases, it was ethnic cleansing. When thousands of people are forced from their homes at gun/bayonet point for the profit of another race...it IS ethnic cleansing. Study up on the Trail of Tears before you deny it again. But you and I had nothing to do with that, so the ‘apology’ is just BS.
Yes, many Indians were savages, just like many white people.
I contribute every chance I get!
Point two: Chivington's men killed mostly women and children and old men as the braves were out of camp at the time of attack. His men also cut out the women's vaginas and used them for hat bands. This camp was at peace at the time of this massacre and in fact was flying an American flag over one of the teepee's. You are reading the wrong books.
I'm sure that an old salty pioneer wrote a book about how blood thirsty the Indians were especially if he lost his family by them. But, the Indians didn't write books back then as I'm sure there would be volumes written about the loved ones killed and hunted down like animals. I could quote you a few books but I'm sure you wouldn't read them.
Custer's family should apologize to the US army!
Yea, lets talk about the “Trail of Tears”, The Choctaw voluntarily left and the the Chickasaw left for monetary compensation. The Creeks signed away their land throug”h treaties and were given monetary compensation to sell their” lands. And the fact is, North American Indians overwhelmingly were nomads, so we didn’t force them from “their” lands. We settled on open land they weren’t using and didn’t want to be bothered, they didn’t like we were there and attacked us(this was often the case).
Don’t apologize for me, it was the government that is resposible.
That being said, my beautiful indian wife accepts your apology.
Now go fix the border like we told you to do.
What is this...the Oprah Show?
You are mixing a lot of history and tribes together. They were as different as night and day in many cases.
For your information, many of the Cherokee who were forced from their homes....NOT huts...modern, European designed homes, were Christian, better educated than you or I will ever be and had lived on that land for centuries, had a constitutional government. They wanted nothing but to be treated as an AMERICAN. They won a Supreme Court case stating they were as sovereign as any citizen. But that didn’t stop Jackson and his power brokers.
They spoke the Queen’s English, published newspapers in English and Cherokee....something today’s protected’immigrant’ can’t seem to do.
Bottom line is...the POWER wanted something those ‘Indians’ had ..just like today, and the POWER will take it from you, just like they did them.
Would you like to see some of those homes? Actually learn something? Or would you just like to argue? If it’s the latter, buzz off, I have better things to do.
Excerpts from the book, “Jesus Wept” An American Story
Elias Boudinot, son of OOWatee and brother of Stand Watie, had been educated at a school established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Cornwall, Connecticut. Here he took the name of a rich colonial benefactor, a citizen of New Jersey and a friend of George Washington who had served as a president of the Continental Congress.
Elias married a white woman, Harriet Gold from Connecticut, much to the dismay of her cultured neighbors and family of New England. They settled near New Echota, the Capitol of the Cherokee Nation, among other Deer Clan families such as Bell, Adair, Lynch, Vann, Martin, Starr, Ridge.
After some time passed, Benjamin Gold, Harriet’s father traveled to the ‘wilderness’ to look in on his daughter living among the savages. On the 8th of December, 1829, he wrote from New Echota to his brother in New England describing his daughter’s home.
“She has a large and convenient framed house, two story, 60 by 40 ft. on the ground, well done off and well furnished with comforts of life.
They get their supplies of clothes and groceries—they have their year’s store of teas, clothes, paper, ink, etc.,—from Boston, and their sugars, molasses, etc., from Augusta; they have two or three barrels of flour on hand at once.
This neighborhood is truly an interesting and pleasant place; the ground is smooth and level as a floor—the centre of the Nation—a new place laid out in city form, —one hundred lots, one acre each—a spring called the public spring, about twice as large as our sawmill brook, near the centre, with other springs on the plat; six framed houses in sight, besides a Council House, Court House, printing office, and four stores all in sight of Boudinot’s house.”
Elias Boudinot, as Editor of The Cherokee Phoenix, which was published both in English and Cherokee and read in the East and Europe, captured the Cherokee situation in just a few words.
“Perhaps Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were only tantalizing us when they encouraged us in the pursuit of agriculture and government. Why were we not told long ago that we could not be permitted to establish a government within the limits of any state? The Cherokees have always had a government of their own. Nothing, however, was said when we were governed by savage laws. Others say it is time for the Cherokees to submit to inevitable destiny.
What Destiny? To be slandered and then butchered? Yes, this is the bitter cup prepared for us by a republican and religious government. We shall drink it to the dregs.”
I don’t gamble at all but when I am near the Casino near where my family lives in N. Calif. I go there every Wednesday night for all the prime rib dinner you can eat for under ten dollars. Now they have started a lunch once a week also. I will be over there in about two more weeks and will be eating there a lot. You can’t buy the groceries and go home and cook it for that amount of money.
BTW, RebelYell1990......Those same Indians on the trail of tears fought for the Confederacy....they held Ark. Texas, Indian territory after being deserted by the confederacy.
You also said, “We settled on open land they weren’t using and didn’t want to be bothered, they didn’t like we were there and attacked us(this was often the case).”
Wrong. The citizen of Georgia with the Georgia Malitia forced the Indians out of their homes...HOMES and plantations.
[snip] ....The Cherokees made the question of civilization a subject of deliberation in the council of the nation. ‘Shall the Cherokee adopt the habits, customs, and institutions of the white race, or shall they continue in the way of their forefathers?’ That was the question. They determined in favor of civilization.
Accordingly, they organized a civil government founded on the three fundamental ideas: Law, Law understood, and Law executed. The rights and liberties of the citizens were suitably guaranteed; religion was made free; morality encouraged and education provided for. With the greatest unanimity and most commendable zeal, they addressed themselves to the employments of civilized life, and pleasant homes, mingled with churches and schoolhouses, sprang up and adorned the land.
They had begun to appreciate and enjoy the blessings of home, and to love wife and children with a more refined devotion. The land, which they inhabited, was no more their cherished ‘hunting ground’, but their country, which they had learned to love with all the fervor of an enlightened patriotism. Their increased intelligence enabled them to discern more accurately the distinctions between justice and injustice, while their moral sensibilities, vitalized by the influence of civilization, experienced a new delight in the triumphs of the former, and flamed with an unwonted indignation at the invasions of the latter.
In their estimation, the white men were no more, as in ancient times they had been supposed to be, ‘children of the sun’, but were only men, like themselves, capable of evil as well as good. To be, at this period, driven from their country, endeared by so many improved causes of attachment, and sent to new and untried abodes in the western wilderness far beyond the Mississippi, was a prospect, which filled the heart of the nation with sensations of chilly horror.
..... They cried to their ‘Great Father at Washington’, but his answers never rose to anything higher than hypocritical expressions of parental regard for his ‘Red children’. Georgia well understood this bias of the Administration.......’The Cherokees must go,’ was her motto; it had been whispered in her ear at the White House. ‘The Cherokees must go’ was caught up and echoed by the intruders. ‘The Cherokees must go,’ was the war cry throughout the state.
An act was hurried through the forms of legislation having in view the twofold purpose of driving the Cherokees out of their country and putting Georgia in possession of their lands. The statute abolished the Cherokee body politic, annulled all Cherokee laws, and made it a penal offense for any person to enforce, or attempt to enforce, a judgment or process of any Cherokee court. It extended the laws of Georgia over the Cherokee country, and punished all white men with imprisonment who should be found remaining therein without first taking the oath of allegiance to the state government and to support her in her measures against the Cherokees.
By its terms, no Indian was allowed to bear witness against a white man in any of the courts of the state; and if any Indian should be detected in digging gold, except in the employ of a loyal citizen of the state, he was liable to be arrested and punished with imprisonment. It also provided for a survey of the Cherokee lands and for dividing them up ‘by lot’ in homesteads to such loyal citizens as might see fit to venture out and make improvements in the wilds of the newly acquired territory.....
To put this oppressive law into execution, the militia of the state were called out, armed and mounted. Dr. Elizar Butler and Rev. S. A. Worcester, who were in the service of the American Board among the Cherokees, were the most distinguished of these recusant missionaries.
They were arrested by militia on charge of being found in the Cherokee country contrary to the terms of the statute.... The prisoners were pinioned. For each, they prepared a rope. One end they tied around the prisoner’s neck, the other to the pummel of a saddle. The ruffians then rode away, while these good men trotted along behind them on the way to jail. They were tried, found guilty of violating the statute and sentenced to the penitentiary. They served out their time and were discharged, and returning to the Cherokees in their new home west of the Mississippi, resumed their labors. They gave their lives to the Cherokees, and their works live after them and bless their memory.
If a lot happened to cover an occupied improvement, the owner was thrown out of possession on private responsibility. Such personal property as was found upon the premises, especially the implements of husbandry and the mechanical arts were appropriated by the newcomer. The poultry was dressed and enjoyed by him, his wife and little ones.
The hogs were remarked and the cattle re-branded in the name of the white man, and went to augment his patrimony.
Two horsemen now came into view far down the highway in the direction of the white settlement. They were armed with rifles certainly and doubtless with other weapons that are visible only in cases of emergency. They were white men. It was a good hit for them, for their ‘lot’ covered the man’s premises completely. They were coming to see their newly acquired property. The first part of the improvement that came under their notice was the pasture in which the man’s horses were grazing. Here they loitered and looked for a time with evident satisfaction. At length, they moved on. The orchard next attracted their attention. Here they estimated the number of fruit trees and tried to take in their quality and variety.
By and by, they came to the great gate that stood near the barn.
One of them here dismounted, flung the gate open, remounted and they both rode in. On they went, inspecting, prospecting-slowly onward till at last they were lost from sight in the expanse of the farm. They arrived at the same great gate and passed out still wearing an impenetrable air of inquiry and investigation. Here one of the white men drew from his pocket and read a certificate showing that he had won the man’s premises at Georgia’s infamous lottery box. They then rode away in the direction they had come.
The man’s dark eye followed them as they went. His deep sense of wrong had hung itself in shadows upon his swarthy brow, and in the tones of one whose spirit, oppressed by a power which it cannot repel, finds its last support in hopeless feelings of contempt, he said: ‘The impudence of a white man! Specimens of a glorious civilization! Those obdurate villains have the hardihood to say that God has a peculiar liking for them and their race on account of what they know and what they are; that He gives them the whole world for a possession, and commissions them on errands of rapine and murder against us as He did Joshua against the poor Canaanites. If that be so, it is wonderful how such great meanness can be so popular in heaven, and be entrusted with such fearful prerogatives over the rest of mankind! Away with such civilization! -Nations are rarely human when they are not afraid to play the beast.’
A fortnight passed and two emigrant wagons rolled into view. They were attended by the same two white men that had a few days before explored the man’s premises. Their wives and their children were with them, also their hired hands. They came trudging, dusty, dirty, evidently weary. A long way they had doubtless traveled. Step by step their teams tugged on, freighted to the bows of their wagons’ white arching roofs with all the precious prospects of a new and happy home in the beautiful land of the Cherokees. On they came, soberly and directly, tending toward the big gate just back of the barn. They arrived and halted before its majesty. There was no god in all the Cherokee nation that commanded the reverence of those impious white men like that gigantic gate. They swung it wide open upon its ponderous hinges, though, and in they drove.
In the meantime, the man himself had received a threatening notification that his own well-being was conditioned upon his own gentle behavior, and that in case he should attempt any interference, his right to life and liberty would be deemed forfeited. He brought an action in the superior courts of the state of Georgia..... a system of persecution was inaugurated by the intruders, and daily the man and his family felt their sensibilities galled by insulting epithets and brutal maledictions. Their national pride was outraged by heaping contemptuous ridicule upon their name and race.
At length, the case came on for trial. ‘Bring on your witnesses, Mr. Plaintiff,’ came the injunction from the bench.
‘Hold!’ cried a voice from the defense. ‘We object to the competency of those witnesses. Those witnesses, your honor, are all Cherokee Indians; this defendant is a white man, and the statute of our state provides that no Indian shall be allowed to testify against a white man in any of the courts of the state of Georgia.’
‘The objection is well taken,’ responded the court, ‘and must be sustained. Have you no white persons to testify for you, Mr. Plaintiff?’
‘None, your honor.’
‘Your case, then, must be dismissed at your own cost, and it is so ordered.’
Years have since rolled away. He and his heroic wife have long since found rest in death. The children still live, and that malignant power, falsely called civilization, is to this day still at their heels demanding their room or their ruin.”
Preserved from history is a formal notice delivered to a Cherokee citizen to vacate his home as per a lot drawing. It states:
“It becomes my duty to give you notice to evacuate the lot of land No. 125, in the 14th District, of the third section, and to give the house now occupied by you to Col. William Handen, or whoever he may put forward to take possession of the same and that you may have ample time to prepare for the same, I will allow you until the 28th day of this month to do the same. “
Apologize for MURDERING the white settlers who came in peace, who were raped and sat down on sharpened tree saplings to bait rescuers, or the babies who had their throats slit, or the scouts who were scalped and sent back to camp tied across their horses, crops burned settlements wiped out.
When are the "Native American" savages going to apologize for not being willing to share a wide open and undeveloped land by a very tolerant christian people who had finally had enough of their savage Indian behavior and were forced to reluctantly slaughter them in order to survive !
WHEN !
Cherokees didn’t want to be citizens, they wanted their own nation inside of America. we gave them the concepts of property, writing, the English language, borders. Just because some of them went to American schools and owned black people doesn’t make them superior or more educated than me. the fact is, they signed the Treaty of New Echota, an agreement signed under the provisions of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. So they like rule of law, writing, property and borders only in certain instances.
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