The Forgotten People Of The America's

I have tried to link to all sources throughout this thread for people to check out

In our multicultural world that we all live in today it beggars belief that we all still have to deal with discrimination and racism, you would think from all off our pasts that we as a society would have learned from our ancestor’s mistakes. We hear in the news and learn in our schools about the brutal reality of which we all live. we learn about slavery, Nazism, Cuban wars, the Chinese oppressions and various other ‘incidents’ in our pasts that should make us ashamed. We hear about past war heroics or failures, the battles between peoples and governments and the various religious wars that have infected our societies no matter where we are but I have to wonder how many of us know anything about one particular group of people, this culture has had to endure the wrath of religions, the wrath of being called some of the most vicious and cruel names like barbaric – evil – monsters to name a few. They have had their lands raped, their woman raped their men killed, their children slaughtered and taken away from their parents/families, and they have endured genocide on a mass scale. How many people know what culture I am talking about? How many of you know their teachings or sufferings, I could hazard a guess and say very few people do.

If I was to ask you a simple question what would you answer? who would you say are the most persecuted people on the planet . I could hazard a few guess that people would say Muslims, colored people, the Jews, gypsies and no you wouldn’t be completely wrong however which of you would have guessed Native Americans? or ‘Indians’ as most would call them. How many of you learned of their plight in your schools? Heard about the atrocities set upon them by Catholics and others when they took over their lands. They were forced to turn their backs on their peoples teachings, forced never to speak their native tongues, they were killed, beaten, raped, thrown off their lands all in the name of god, all because the intruders to their lands feared them, and that my friends is racism, culturism and any other isms you can think off in a nutshell, FEAR of what you don’t know, FEAR because they were different.

According to Amnesty international the indigenous communities around the world have basics rights, including the right to land and to cultural identity - in the use of language, education and the administration of justice, all of which are ignored, stifled and are systematically violated. According to an article on their site

Examples of violations of indigenous people's rights known to Amnesty International include:

- Violations related to land and the environment

In countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua, indigenous people are reclaiming the lands of their ancestors, coming up against violent opposition from land-owners and companies exploiting natural resources, often supported by the authorities.
Across the region, large-scale projects for the construction of infrastructure or the extraction of natural resources on indigenous lands, threaten the communities' livelihood and survival, and are being planned and carried out without real and transparent consultation.

Examples include the Plan Puebla-Panamá, set to create infrastructure and industrial projects in the southern states of Mexico and Central America with inevitable impact on indigenous communities; a project to dig a dry canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean through sacred indigenous land in Nicaragua; the Urrá dam in Colombia, situated in the ancestral lands of the Embera KatÃ****o people, which some members of the community have been campaigning against; and projects for the construction of an oil pipeline in Ecuador.
In Brazil, Hipãridi Top'Tiro, an Xavante indigenous leader from the Sangradouro indigenous reserve in Mato Grosso state, was forced to leave his land due to the death threats he received on account of his environmental campaigning and of a legal action he brought against local landowners for deforesting part of an indigenous area.

www.amnesty.org.uk...

These are only a small cited example from them. The department of justice also has this to say about the native American plight when it comes to crimes and sexual assault

In 2009, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced an estimated 20 million violent and property victimizations, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). (NCJ 231327) These criminal victimizations included an estimated 4.3 million violent crimes defined as rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Almost 126,000 of the 1.4 million serious violent crimes were rapes and assaults. While this number has decreased over the last few years it is still shows that too many women are endangered and suffering.

American Indians are 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault crimes compared to all other races, (1)] and one in three Indian women reports having been raped during her lifetime. (2)

www.ovw.usdoj.gov...

Native Americans were considered an inferior race, to be "civilized" or else relegated to "reservations." By those that were around them from as early as the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, the European colonization of the Americas decimated the population of the Native Americans through displacement,

In the nineteenth century, the incessant Westward expansion of the United States incrementally compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west—sometimes by force and almost always reluctantly. Under President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Native American land east of the Mississippi Riverfor lands west of the river. As many as 100,000 Native Americans eventually relocated to the West as a result of this Indian Removal policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary (and many Native Americans did remain in the East), but in practice great pressure was put on Native American leaders to sign removal treaties. Arguably the most egregious violation of the stated intention of the removal policy was the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a dissident faction of Cherokees but not by the elected leadership. President Martin Van Buren's brutal enforcement of the treaty resulted in the deaths of an estimated 4,000 Cherokees (mostly from disease) on the "Trail of Tears."

American policy toward Native Americans has been an evolving process. In the late nineteenth century, reformers, in efforts to "civilize" Indians, adapted the practice of educating native children in Indian Boarding Schools. These schools, which were primarily run by Christians proved traumatic to Native American children, who were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions, and in other ways forced to abandon their various Native American identities and adopt European-American culture.

There are also many documented cases of sexual, physical, and mental abuses occurring at these schools. [9]
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 gave United States citizenship to Native Americans, in part because of an interest by many to see them merged with the American mainstream, and also because of the heroic service of many Native American veterans in World War I.

The Cherokee a-ni-yv-wi-ya, in the Cherokee language) are a people native to North America, who, at the time of European contact in the sixteenth century, inhabited what is now the Eastern and Southeastern United States. The Cherokee assimilated many aspects of the American settler culture, significantly their model of government. Due to the syllabary of the Cherokee language developed by Sequoyah in 1821, a written constitution was adopted, literature (including Christian scriptures emerged, and the tribe as a whole became literate. As a result, they are one of the tribes referred to as the Five Civilized Tribes. Nevertheless, most were forcibly moved westward in the 1830s along the infamous Trail of Tears.
Today, the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is located at Cherokee, North Carolina. All three are federally recognized. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, they are the largest of the 563 federally recognizedNative American tribes in the United States. They continue to practice many of their traditional ceremonies and dances, keeping those that are sacred closed to the public.

History


Unlike most other Indians in the American southeast at the time of contact with Europeans, the Cherokee spoke an Iroquoian language. Since the Great Lakes region was the core of Iroquoian languages, it is theorized that the Cherokee migrated south from that region. Linguistic analysis shows a relatively large difference between Cherokee and the northern Iroquoian languages, suggesting a split in the distant past (Mooney [1900] 1996). Glottochronology studies suggest the split occurred between about 1500 and 1800B.C.E. (Hopkins).

The ancient settlement of Keetoowah, or [I]giduwa[/I] in Cherokee, on the Tuckasegee River near present-day Bryson City, North Carolina, is frequently cited as the original Cherokee City in the Southeast (Mooney [1900] 1996). Europeans wrote of several Cherokee town groups, usually using the terms Lower, Middle, and Overhill towns to designate the towns.

The Lower towns were situated on the headwater streams of the Savannah River, mainly in present-day western South Carolina and northeastern Georgia. Keowee was one of the chief towns.
The Middle towns were located in present western North Carolina, on the headwater streams of the Tennessee River, such as the Little Tennessee River, Hiwassee River, and French Broad River. Among several chief towns was Nikwasi.

The Overhill towns were located across the higher mountains in present eastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. Principal towns included Chota and Great Tellico.

Seventeenth century

According to James Mooney, the English first had contact with the Cherokee in 1654. One of the earliest European-American accounts comes from the expedition of James Needham and Gabriel Arthur, sent in 1673 by fur-trader Abraham Wood of Virginia to the Overhill Cherokee country. Wood hoped to forge a direct trading connection with the Cherokee in order to bypass the Occaneechi Indians who were serving as middlemen on the Trading Path. The two Virginians did make contact with the Cherokee, although Needham was killed on the return journey and Arthur was almost killed. By the late seventeenth century, traders from both Virginia and South Carolina were making regular journeys to Cherokee lands, but few wrote about their experiences.
The characteristics of the Cherokee people were later described in the writings of William Bartram in his journey through the Cherokee lands in 1776:

The Cherokee…are tall, erect and moderately robust; their limbs well shaped, so as generally to form a perfect human figure; their features regular, and countenance open, dignified, and placid, yet the forehead and brow are so formed as to strike you instantly with heroism and bravery; the eye, though rather small, yet active and full of fire, the iris always black, and the nose commonly inclining to the aquiline. Their countenance and actions exhibit an air of magnanimity, superiority, and independence. Their complexion is a reddish brown or copper colour; their hair, long, lank, coarse, and black as a raven, and reflecting the like lustre at different exposures to the light. The women of the Cherokees are tall, slender, erect and of a delicate frame; their features formed with perfect symmetry; the countenance cheerful and friendly; and they move with a becoming grace and dignity (Pritchard 1847, 403-404).

The early trading was mainly deerskins, raw material for the booming European leather industry, in exchange for European technology "trade goods" such as iron and steel tools (kettles, knives, and so forth),firearms, gunpowder, and ammunition. Although selling alcohol to Indians was made illegal by colonial governments at an early date, rum, and later whisky, were a common item of trade (Drake 2001). In 1705 these traders complained that their business had been lost and replaced by Indian slave trade instigated by Governor Moore of South Carolina. Moore had commissioned people to "set upon, assault, kill, destroy, and take captive as many Indians as possible." These captives would be sold and the profits split with the Governor (Mooney [1900] 1996).

Eighteenth century

Of the southeastern Indian confederacies of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, (such as the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole along with whom they became known as the Five Civilized Tribes), the Cherokee were one of the most populous and powerful, and were relatively isolated by their mountainous homeland.

Although there was trading contact, the Cherokee remained relatively unaffected by the presence of European colonies in America until the Tuscarora War and its aftermath. Hundreds of Cherokee joined the British army in North Carolina to defeat the Tuscarora and their allies.

The Tuscarora War altered the geopolitical context of colonial America in several ways, including creating a general Iroquois interest in the south. For the many southeastern Indians involved, it was the first time so many had collaborated in a military campaign and seen how different the various English colonies were. As a result, the war helped to bind the Indians of the entire region together. It enhanced Indian networks of communication and trade. The Cherokee became much more closely integrated with the region's various Indians and Europeans. The Tuscarora War marked the beginning of an English-Cherokee relationship that, despite breaking down on occasion, remained strong for much of the eighteenth century.

The Tuscarora War also marks the rise of Cherokee military power, demonstrated in the 1714 attack and destruction of the Yuchi town of Chestowee (in today's southeasternTennessee). The Cherokee attack on the Yuchi ended with Chestowee, but it was enough to catch the attention of every Indian tribe and European colony in the region. Thus, around 1715, the Cherokee emerged as a major regional power (Gallay 2002).

In 1715, the Yamasee War broke out. Numerous Indian tribes launched attacks on South Carolina. The Cherokee participated in some of the attacks, but were divided on what course to take. After South Carolina's militia succeeded in driving off the Yamasee and Catawba. The Cherokee's position became strategically pivotal. Both South Carolina and the Lower Creek tried to gain Cherokee support. Some Cherokee favored an alliance with South Carolina and war on the Creek, while others favored the opposite. The impasse was resolved in January 1716, when a delegation of Creek leaders were murdered at the Cherokee town of Tugaloo. Subsequently, the Cherokee launched attacks against the Creek

but in 1717 peace treaties between South Carolina and the Creek were finalized, undermining the Cherokee's commitment to war. Hostility and sporadic raids between the Cherokee and Creek continued for decades (Oatis 2004).


In 1730, at Nikwasi, Chief Moytoy II of Tellico was chosen as "Emperor" by the Elector Chiefs of the principal Cherokee towns. He unified the Cherokee Nation from a society of interrelated city-states in the early eighteenth century with the aid of an unofficial English envoy, Sir Alexander Cuming. Moytoy agreed to recognize King George II of Great Britain as the Cherokee protector. Seven prominent Cherokee, including Attacullaculla, traveled with Sir Alexander Cuming back to England. The Cherokee delegation stayed in London for four months. The visit culminated in a formal treaty of alliance between the British and Cherokee, the 1730 Treaty of Whitehall. While the journey to London and the treaty were important factors in future British-Cherokee relations, the title of Cherokee Emperor did not carry much weight among the Cherokee. The unification of the Cherokee nation was essentially ceremonial, with political authority remaining town-based for decades afterward.

In 1735 the Cherokee were estimated to have 64 towns and villages and 6000 fighting men. In 1738 - 1739 smallpox was introduced to the country via sailors and slaves from the slave trade. An epidemic broke out among the Cherokee, who had no natural immunity, and killed nearly half their population within a year. Hundreds of other Cherokee committed suicide due to disfigurement from the disease.

Beginning at about the time of the American Revolutionary War in the late eighteenth century, divisions over continued accommodation of encroachments by white settlers despite repeated violations of previous treaties, caused some Cherokee to begin to leave the Cherokee Nation. Many of these dissidents became known as the Chickamauga. Led by Chief Dragging Canoe, the Chickamauga made alliances with the Shawnee and engaged in raids against colonial settlements. By 1800 some of these early dissidents had moved across theMississippi River to areas that would later become the states of Arkansas and Missouri. Their settlements were established on the St. Francis and the White Rivers.

Nineteenth century

In 1815—after the War of 1812 in which Cherokees fought on behalf of both the British and American armies— the U.S. Government established a Cherokee Reservation in Arkansas. The reservation boundaries extended from north of the Arkansas River to the southern bank of the White River. Cherokee bands who lived in Arkansas were: The Bowl, Sequoyah, Spring Frog, and The Dutch. Another band of Cherokee lived in southeast Missouri, western Kentucky, and Tennessee in frontier settlements and in European majority communities around the Mississippi River.

After being ravaged by smallpox, and pressed by increasingly violent land-hungry settlers, the Cherokee adopted a white man's form of government in an effort to retain their lands. They established a governmental system modeled on that of the United States, with an elected principal chief, senate, and house of representatives. On April 10, 1810 the seven Cherokee clans met and began the abolition of blood vengeance by giving the sacred duty to the new Cherokee National government. Clans formally relinquished judicial responsibilities by the 1820s when the Cherokee Supreme Court was established. In 1825, the National Council extended citizenship to the children of Cherokee men married to white women. These ideas were largely incorporated into the 1827 Cherokee constitution (Perdue 2000). The constitution stated that "No person who is of negro or mulatto parentage, either by the father or mother side, shall be eligible to hold any office of profit, honor or trust under this Government," with an exception for, "negroes and descendants of white and Indian men by negro women who may have been set free" (Perdue 2000).

Did you know?

Despite their cooperation with white settlers, which had earned them recognition as one of the Five Civilized Tribes, thousands of Cherokees were sent to their death on the Trail of Tears.

In accordance with the cultural transformation proposed by George Washington and Henry Knox, which involved many treaties and efforts to cooperate with the settlers, including abandoning traditional practices and adopting white ways, the Cherokee, along with the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, earned the title of Five Civilized Tribes (Perdue 2003).

Trail of TearsCherokees were displaced from their ancestral lands in northern Georgia and the Carolinas in a period of rapidly expanding white population. Some of the rapid expansion was due to a gold rush around Dahlonega, Georgia in the 1830s. One official reason given was that the Cherokee were not efficiently using their land and the land should be given to white farmers. However there is ample evidence that the Cherokee were adopting modern farming techniques, and a modern analysis shows that the area was in general in a state of economic surplus (Wishart 1995). The Indian Removal Act was signed into effect by president Andrew Jackson in 1830, and the relocation of the American Indians from the Southeast began.


John Ross led the battle to halt their removal. His father had emigrated from Scotland prior to the Revolutionary War; his mother was a quarter-blood Cherokee woman whose father was also from Scotland. John Ross became the chief of the tribe in 1828 and remained the chief until his death in 1866. His position was in opposition to a group known as the "Ridge Party" or the "Treaty Party," so called in reference to the Treaty of New Echota, which exchanged Cherokee land for land in the west, and its principle signers John Ridge and his father Major Ridge. On June 22, 1839, Cherokee extremists executed the signers of the Treaty of New Echota, including Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot.


Despite a Supreme Court ruling in their favor, many in the Cherokee Nation were forcibly relocated West, a migration known as the Trail of Tears or in Cherokee Nunna Daul Tsunny ("The Trail Where They Cried") and by another term [I]Tlo Va Sa[/I] ("The Tragedy"):

Then… there came the reign of terror. From the jagged-walled stockades the troops fanned out across the Nation, invading every hamlet, every cabin, rooting out the inhabitants at bayonet point. The Cherokees hardly had time to realize what was happening as they were prodded like so many sheep toward the concentration camps, threatened with knives and pistols, beaten with rifle butts if they resisted (Carter 1976).

Not all of the eastern Cherokees were removed on the Trail of Tears. William Holland Thomas, a white store owner and state legislator from Jackson County, North Carolina, helped over 600 Cherokee from Qualla Town (the site of modern-day Cherokee, North Carolina) obtain North Carolina citizenship. As citizens, they were exempt from forced removal to the west. Out of gratitude to Thomas, these Western North Carolina Cherokees served in the American Civil War as part of Thomas' Legion, which consisted of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The legion mustered approximately 2000 men of both Cherokee and white origin, fighting on behalf of the Confederacy, primarily in Virginia.

In addition, over 400 other Cherokee hid from Federal troops in the remote Snowbird Mountains of neighboring Graham County, North Carolina, under the leadership of Tsali . Together, these groups were the basis for what is now known as the Eastern Band of Cherokees.

Twentieth century

In Oklahoma, the Dawes Act of 1887 had broken up the tribal land base. Under the Curtis Act of 1898, Cherokee courts and governmental systems had been abolished by the U.S. Federal Government. These various acts were designed to end tribal sovereignty and to pave the way for Oklahoma Statehood in 1907. The Federal government appointed chiefs to the Cherokee Nation, often just long enough to sign a treaty. In reaction to this, the Cherokee Nation recognized that it needed leadership and they convened in 1938 to elect a Chief. They choose J. B. Milam as principal chief, and, as a goodwill gesture, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt confirmed the election in 1941.

W. W. Keeler was appointed chief in 1949. Because the federal government had adopted a self-determination policy, the Cherokee Nation was able to rebuild its government and W. W. Keeler was elected chief by the people, via a Congressional Act signed by President Richard Nixon. Keeler, who was also the President of Phillips Petroleum, was succeeded by Ross Swimmer and then Wilma Mankiller.

There is a very good example of what these people had to contend with, this is a story called Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools in amnesty international magazine by a Cherokee woman called Andrea Smith here is the article in full , the article can also be found www.amnestyusa.org...


U.S. and Canadian authorities took Native children from their homes and tried to school, and sometimes beat, the Indian out them. Now Native Americans are fighting the theft of language, of culture, and of childhood itself.


By Andrea Smith

Andrea Smith (Cherokee) is interim coordinator for the Boarding School Healing Project and a Bunche Fellow coordinating AIUSA's research project on Sexual Violence and American Indian women.


A little while ago, I was supposed to attend a Halloween party. I decided to dress as a nun because nuns were the scariest things I ever saw," says Willetta Dolphus, 54, a Cheyenne River Lakota. The source of her fear, still vivid decades later, was her childhood experience at American Indian boarding schools in South Dakota.

Dolphus is one of more than 100,000 Native Americans forced by the U.S. government to attend Christian schools. The system, which began with President Ulysses Grant's 1869 "Peace Policy," continued well into the 20th century. Church officials, missionaries, and local authorities took children as young as five from their parents and shipped them off to Christian boarding schools; they forced others to enroll in Christian day schools on reservations. Those sent to boarding school were separated from their families for most of the year, sometimes without a single family visit. Parents caught trying to hide their children lost food rations.

Virtually imprisoned in the schools, children experienced a devastating litany of abuses, from forced assimilation and grueling labor to widespread sexual and physical abuse. Scholars and activists have only begun to analyze what Joseph Gone (Gros Ventre), a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, calls "the cumulative effects of these historical experiences across gender and generation upon tribal communities today."
"Native America knows all too well the reality of the boarding schools," writes Native American Bar Association President Richard Monette, who attended a North Dakota boarding school, "where recent generations learned the fine art of standing in line single-file for hours without moving a hair, as a lesson in discipline; where our best and brightest earned graduation certificates for homemaking and masonry; where the sharp rules of immaculate living were instilled through blistered hands and knees on the floor with scouring toothbrushes; where mouths were scrubbed with lye and chlorine solutions for uttering Native words."

Sammy Toineeta (Lakota) helped found the national Boarding School Healing Project to document such abuses. "Human rights activists must talk about the issue of boarding schools," says Toineeta. "It is one of the grossest human rights violations because it targeted children and was the tool for perpetrating cultural genocide. To ignore this issue would be to ignore the human rights of indigenous peoples, not only in the U.S., but around the world."

The schools were part of Euro-America's drive to solve the "Indian problem" and end Native control of their lands. While some colonizers advocated outright physical extermination, Captain Richard H. Pratt thought it wiser to "Kill the Indian and save the man." In 1879 Pratt, an army veteran of the Indian wars, opened the first federally sanctioned boarding school: the Carlisle Industrial Training School, in Carlisle, Penn.
"Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit," said Pratt. He modeled Carlisle on a prison school he had developed for a group of 72 Indian prisoners of war at Florida's Fort Marion prison. His philosophy was to "elevate" American Indians to white standards through a process of forced acculturation that stripped them of their language, culture, and customs.
Government officials found the Carlisle model an appealing alternative to the costly military campaigns against Indians in the West. Within three decades of Carlisle's opening, nearly 500 schools extended all the way to California. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) controlled 25 off-reservation boarding schools while churches ran 460 boarding and day schools on reservations with government funds.

Both BIA and church schools ran on bare-bones budgets, and large numbers of students died from starvation and disease because of inadequate food and medical care. School officials routinely forced children to do arduous work to raise money for staff salaries and "leased out" students during the summers to farm or work as domestics for white families. In addition to bringing in income, the hard labor prepared children to take their place in white society — the only one open to them — on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder.
Physical hardship, however, was merely the backdrop to a systematic assault on Native culture. School staff sheared children's hair, banned traditional clothing and customs, and forced children to worship as Christians. Eliminating Native languages — considered an obstacle to the "acculturation" process — was a top priority, and teachers devised an extensive repertoire of punishments for uncooperative children. "I was forced to eat an entire bar of soap for speaking my language," says AIUSA activist Byron Wesley (Navajo).
The loss of language cut deep into the heart of the Native community. Recent efforts to restore Native languages hint at what was lost. Mona Recountre, of the South Dakota Crow Creek reservation, says that when her reservation began a Native language immersion program at its elementary school, social relationships within the school changed radically and teachers saw a decline in disciplinary problems. Recountre's explanation is that the Dakota language creates community and respect by emphasizing kinship and relationships. The children now call their teachers "uncle" or "auntie" and "don't think of them as authority figures," says Recountre. "It's a form of respect, and it's a form of acknowledgment."

Native scholars describe the destruction of their culture as a "soul wound," from which Native Americans have not healed. Embedded deep within that wound is a pattern of sexual and physical abuse that began in the early years of the boarding school system. Joseph Gone describes a history of "unmonitored and unchecked physical and sexual aggression perpetrated by school officials against a vulnerable and institutionalized population." Gone is one of many scholars contributing research to the Boarding School Healing Project.
Rampant sexual abuse at reservation schools continued until the end of the 1980s, in part because of pre-1990 loopholes in state and federal law mandating the reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse. In 1987 the FBI found evidence that John Boone, a teacher at the BIA-run Hopi day school in Arizona, had sexually abused as many as 142 boys from 1979 until his arrest in 1987. The principal failed to investigate a single abuse allegation. Boone, one of several BIA schoolteachers caught molesting children on reservations in the late 1980s, was convicted of child abuse, and he received a life sentence. Acting BIA chief William Ragsdale admitted that the agency had not been sufficiently responsive to allegations of sexual abuse, and he apologized to the Hopi tribe and others whose children BIA employees had abused.

The effects of the widespread sexual abuse in the schools continue to ricochet through Native communities today. "We know that experiences of such violence are clearly correlated with posttraumatic reactions including social and psychological disruptions and breakdowns," says Gone.

Dolphus, now director of the South Dakota Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, sees boarding school policies as the central route through which sexual abuse became entrenched in Native communities, as many victims became molesters themselves. Hopi tribe members testified at a 1989 Senate hearing that some of Boone's victims had become sex abusers; others had become suicidal or alcoholic.

The abuse has dealt repeated blows to the traditional social structure of Indian communities. Before colonization, Native women generally enjoyed high status, according to scholars, and violence against women, children, and elders was virtually non-existent. Today, sexual abuse and violence have reached epidemic proportions in Native communities, along with alcoholism and suicide. By the end of the 1990s, the sexual assault rate among Native Americans was three-and-a-half times higher than for any other ethnic group in the U.S., according to the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Alcoholism in Native communities is currently six times higher than the national average. Researchers are just beginning to establish quantitative links between these epidemic rates and the legacy of boarding schools.


A more complete history of the abuses endured by Native American children exists in the accounts of survivors of Canadian "residential schools." Canada imported the U.S. boarding school model in the 1880s and maintained it well into the 1970s — four decades after the United States ended its stated policy of forced enrollment. Abuses in Canadian schools are much better documented because survivors of Canadian schools are more numerous, younger, and generally more willing to talk about their experiences.

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure. In 1928 Alberta passed legislation allowing school officials to forcibly sterilize Native girls; British Columbia followed suit in 1933. There is no accurate toll of forced sterilizations because hospital staff destroyed records in 1995 after police launched an investigation. But according to the testimony of a nurse in Alberta, doctors sterilized entire groups of Native children when they reached puberty. The report also says that Canadian clergy, police, and business and government officials "rented out" children from residential schools to pedophile rings.

The consequences of sexual abuse can be devastating. "Of the first 29 men who publicly disclosed sexual abuse in Canadian residential schools, 22 committed suicide," says Gerry Oleman, a counselor to residential school survivors in British Columbia.

Randy Fred (Tsehaht First Nation), a 47-year-old survivor, told the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, "We were kids when we were raped and victimized. All the plaintiffs I've talked with have attempted suicide. I attempted suicide twice, when I was 19 and again when I was 20. We all suffered from alcohol abuse, drug abuse. Looking at the lists of students [abused in the school], at least half the guys are dead."

The Truth Commission report says that the grounds of several schools contain unmarked graveyards of murdered school children, including babies born to Native girls raped by priests and other church officials in the school. Thousands of survivors and relatives have filed lawsuits against Canadian churches and governments since the 1990s, with the costs of settlements estimated at more than $1 billion. Many cases are still working their way through the court system.

While some Canadian churches have launched reconciliation programs, U.S. churches have been largely silent. Natives of this country have also been less aggressive in pursuing lawsuits. Attorney Tonya Gonnella-Frichner (Onondaga) says that the combination of statutes of limitations, lack of documentation, and the conservative makeup of the current U.S. Supreme Court make lawsuits a difficult and risky strategy.
Nonetheless, six members of the Sioux Nation who say they were physically and sexually abused in government-run boarding schools filed a class-action lawsuit this April against the United States for $25 billion on behalf of hundreds of thousands of mistreated Native Americans. Sherwyn Zephier was a student at a school run from 1948 to 1975 by St. Paul's Catholic Church in Marty, S.D.: "I was tortured in the middle of the night. They would whip us with boards and sometimes with straps," he recalled in Los Angeles at an April press conference to launch the suit.

Adele Zephier, Sherwyn's sister, said, "I was molested there by a priest and watched other girls" and then broke down crying. Lawyers have interviewed nearly 1,000 alleged victims in South Dakota alone.
Native activists within church denominations are also pushing for resolutions that address boarding school abuses. This July the first such resolution will go before the United Church of Christ, demanding that the church begin a process of reconciliation with Native communities. Activists also point out that while the mass abductions ended with the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), doctors, lawyers, and social workers were still removing thousands of children from their families well into the 1970s. Even today, "Indian parents continue to consent to adoptions after being persuaded by 'professionals' who promise that their child will fare better in a white, middle-class family," according to a report by Lisa Poupart for the Crime and Social Justice Associates.
Although there is disagreement in Native communities about how to approach the past, most agree that the first step is documentation. It is crucial that this history be exposed, says Dolphus. "When the elders who were abused in these schools have the chance to heal, then the younger generation will begin to heal too."
Members of the Boarding School Healing Project say that current levels of violence and dysfunction in Native communities result from human rights abuses perpetrated by state policy. In addition to setting up hotlines and healing services for survivors, this broad coalition is using a human rights framework to demand accountability from Washington and churches.

While this project is Herculean in its scope, its success could be critical to the healing of indigenous nations from both contemporary and historical human rights abuses. Native communities, the project's founders hope, will begin to view the abuse as the consequence of human rights violations perpetrated by church and state rather than as an issue of community dysfunction and individual failings. And for individuals, overcoming the silence and the stigma of abuse in Native communities can lead to breakthroughs: "There was an experience that caused me to be damaged," said boarding school survivor Sammy Toineeta. "I finally realized that there wasn't something wrong with me."

Famous Cherokees

There have been many famous Cherokees in American history, including Sequoyah, who invented the Cherokee writing system. It was thought for many years that he was the only person to single-handedly invent a writing system, however it has been recently speculated that there was an ancient clan of Cherokee priests who had an older, mostly secret rudimentary written language from which Sequoyah may have gotten inspiration. Many historians speculate that Sequoyah never learned to speak, read or write the English language for various reasons.

Elias Boudinot (1802–June 22, 1839), originally known as Gallegina "Buck" Watie, was a statesman, orator, and editor. He took the name "Elias Boudinot" from the man who paid for his education. He wrote Poor Sarah, the first Native-American novel. He also started and edited the tribe's first newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. He was a missionary who translated the New Testament Bible and hymns into Cherokee with the help of a missionary friend, Samuel A. Worcester. Stand Watie, Buck's younger brother, was a famous frontiersman and the last general of Confederate forces to surrender in the American Civil War.

Will Rogers (1879 – 1935) was a comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, and actor. He was the father of U.S. Congressman and World War II Veteran Will Rogers, Jr..

Other famous people who claim Cherokee ancestry include the actors Chuck Norris and Wes Studi, musician Jimi Hendrix, guitarist and singer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the singers Rita Coolidge and John Phillips (of The Mamas and the Papas), and the activist John Leak Springston.

Are these the people that own the big casinos in the tribal areas? Oh yeah. it is!

[SNIP]

That is surely a VERY long post. But I do believe that this subject is a bit old... Doesn't mean it's not true, though. Yes, Natives were persecuted and raped. Yes, they still are.

It's a sad world of mixed Light and Darkenesse that we live in.




Mod Edit: Let's try and focus on the actual topic - and let's put some effort into it.

Every continent has it's forgotten peoples. Some have been wiped out altogether.

Rememebr that certain indians almost wiped out some of their own kind as they moved inland and took territoruy off others. NZ Maori did that also. I would say only the Aboriginies of Australia were not guilty of beating up their own.

reply to post by pacifier2012


oh most definatly, as i did mentioned in my op's some tribes of Indians have done really well for themselves, i done this to highlight the plight alot of them suffered through the years the personal story i included by Andrea specifically highlighting the plight alot of them had during their time in the so called boarding schools

not everyone may agree with my ops and thats fine but i felt it only right to highlight the downsides this culture has suffered, irrigardless to what alot of peoples perceptions of them today would be. when you go back through their histories is it any wonder that alot of them turned out the way they did

Originally posted by ronishia
reply to post by pacifier2012

 

oh most definatly, as i did mentioned in my op's some tribes of Indians have done really well for themselves, i done this to highlight the plight alot of them suffered through the years the personal story i included by Andrea specifically highlighting the plight alot of them had during their time in the so called boarding schools

not everyone may agree with my ops and thats fine but i felt it only right to highlight the downsides this culture has suffered, irrigardless to what alot of peoples perceptions of them today would be. when you go back through their histories is it any wonder that alot of them turned out the way they did

That is an example of superior technology used to wipe out tribes with inferior technology. That is why technology advancement must be matched by ethical advancement. The 3 laws of Asimov state very well the basics of ethics.

reply to post by ronishia
Thanks OP for this thread and the work you put into it ...Its a sad tale with few un scathed ...A few years back I took the time to read threw the royal commissions on aboriginal people www.collectionscanada.gc.ca...://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sgmm_e.html ..It was a painful read and will have what I think is a healing effect on me ..Some times we wonder why things are the way they are with no answer ...Its the truth of what happened and the whys that are able to heal ....In the commissions report you find a group of victims that fled into the woods only to fall to assimilation after all .. When I was a child I always wondered why it was a no no to talk about our history ...I guess it was the fear of the reserves and the prejudices that were quite open and excepted in society that caused some to take a stand with the white man. Some people succumb to bullies and become bully's them selves .. any how thanks for thread , I wanted to mark it for a reference and say thanks ...peace S&F

reply to post by ronishia


S&F

the abuses continue Arizona’s Sens. McCain & Kyl Seek to Extinguish Navajo and Hopi Water Rights educate-yourself.org...

Senate Bill 2109 Seeks to Extinguish Navajo and Hopi Water Rights

www.nativenewsnetwork.com...

TUBA CITY, ARIZONA – Senators Jon Kyl, Arizona - R, and John McCain, Arizona - R, will be in Tuba City on Thursday, April 5, 2012, to persuade Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribal leaders to give up their peoples' aboriginal and Treaty-guaranteed priority Water Rights by accepting a "Settlement Agreement" written to benefit some of the West's most powerful mining and energy corporations.

They are doing so by trying to persuade the Navajo Nation and Hopi leaders to support and endorse Senate Bill 2109. Senate Bill 2109 45; the "Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Act of 2012" was introduced by Kyl and McCain on February 14, 2012, and is on a fast track to give Arizona corporations and water interests a "100 th birthday present" that will close the door forever on Navajo and Hopi food and water sovereignty, security and self-reliance. S.2109 asks the Navajo and Hopi peoples to waive their priority Water Rights to the surface waters of the Little Colorado River "from time immemorial and thereafter, forever" in return for the shallow promise of uncertain federal appropriations to supply minimal amounts of drinking water to a handful of reservation communities.

The Bill - and the "Settlement Agreement" it ratifies - do not quantify Navajo and Hopi water rights - the foundation of all other southwestern Indian Water Rights settlements to date - thereby denying the Tribes the economic market value of their water rights, and forcing them into perpetual dependence on uncertain federal funding for any water projects. Senators Kyl and McCain know well that without water, life is not
possible. Yet, their Bill and the "Settlement Agreement" close the door forever to any possibility of irrigated agriculture and water conservation projects to heal and restore Navajo and Hopi watersheds (keeping sediment from filling downstream reservoirs) to grow high-value income and
employment-producing livestock and crops for Navajo, Hopi and external markets; and to provide once again for healthy, diabetes - and obesity-free nutrition and active lifestyles for all future generations of Navajo and Hopi children.

Senators Kyl and McCain demand that the Navajo and Hopi people waive and give up all their rights to legal protection of injury to surface and ground water supply and quality in the past, present, and future - yet the Navajo and Hopi peoples do not even know the full extent and nature of the rights they are being pressured to waive because the details of the "Settlement Agreement" are not being shared with the public.

yet another treaty to be violated

a native member here once posted that legally the tribes are classified,
not as human, but as wildlife.

i imagine that makes it easier for scum like mccain to break treaties when it's profitable

reply to post by DerepentLEstranger


Oh dear Lord.. I had not heard anything about that. Lovely, just lovely. I should say that I'm surprised they would attempt such a thing, but if I'm honest I have to say that it shouldn't be all that surprising. The continuation of mans inhumanity to man is sickening to say the least. I just hope the tribal councils stand strong and vote not to support such a thing. However, in saying that, I have to wonder if they do decide to oppose it, just what kind of strong arm tactics will be employed by the federal government to take what is not theirs to begin with,

Thanks for posting this, I will now be following it with interest to see how this all plays out.

reply to post by DerepentLEstranger


More stealing by the scum in Washington. I live within about ten minutes of three reservations. A drive across any of these reservations reveles that many people living there are living well below the poverty level. Some live in what I can only describe as shacks.

The federal laws provide for tribal lands to be independant nations within the US.Yet the states still try to tax their businesses and control their lands.Even the constitution says that only the federal government can deal with the native americans.

People talk about the casinos and other businesses that the natives have and the states still try to get a piece of the action. To me this is a violation of federal law. Why can't these people be left alone to earn a living? There is nothing wrong or illegal about their businesses.

To me, the states trying to tax the natives, is the same as them trying to collect taxes from Canada. Wish they'd try it. Bet that would go over big. If the states weren't so badly managed by the crooked politicians, there would be no need to break the law and attempt to tax the natives.

With all the oppression of the natives which has occured, I would think that they would rebel against such treatment.However they are good people and do not. I have friends on the reservations and they are wonderful folks. They seem to take the bad treatment in stride. As if it was to be expected. That's just a damn shame. Nobody deserves the treatment they have to endure.

Now they want to steal their water. How predictible. Hope they tell that war monger McCain to get stuffed. But he and the other crooks will just find another way to steal from them.

I am somebody who supports the native americans all the way. They are wonderful people with a really interesting culture and belief system. They deserve the support of all of us. I for one will stand with them. Even though I am not one of them.