daniel.n.paul degrading experience of Residing in Caucasian Countries

San Francisco CA

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American Indian Genocide "The degrading experience of Residing in Caucasian Countries, that Europeans founded on your ancestral lands, which they appropriated by brute force for themselves, where the existence of your Race is considered of no value" “The people of our Frontier carry on private expeditions against the Indians, and kill them whenever they meet them. And I do not believe there is a jury in all of Kentucky who would punish a man for it.” - John H. - Major, U.S.Army “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s Heaven to kill them.” - Colonel John Chivington From 1492 to the late 1900s, throughout the Americas, the killing and raping and robbing of American Indians by Caucasians did not result in very much, or any, negative consequences for the perpetrators. The reason why such barbarous injustice prevailed for the better part of five centuries is laid bare by the Caucasian mindset described in the next two paragraphs. This statement, "No state can achieve proper culture, civilization, and progress... as long as Indians are permitted to remain." although articulated by U.S. President Martin Van Buren in 1837 it lays bare the predominate White supremacist genocidal mentality that the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas have had to contend with since Columbus landed in 1492. In April 1850, the California legislature passed a law that stated "In no case shall a white man be convicted of any offense upon the testimony of an Indian " Thus, if any case was brought to trial any white men who raped, killed, enslaved Indians or illegally took their lands, they were not found guilty simply because no Indian would or could testify". In this case it was a written law, but, realistically, across the Americas, the same law prevailed, albeit, mostly unwritten. I used the before mentioned examples to describe the White supremacist mentality that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas have had to contend with for survival for the better part of five centuries simply because I had them readily available. However, one should not believe for one second that it was only the Caucasians of the United States of America that indulged in such uncivilized behaviour towards American Indians, several works of encyclopedic proportions could be filled with similar activities taken from the archives of other countries of the Americas. For instance, Canada had on it’s books until 1951 a law that prevented Indians from taking legal action against the federal government. Also, up until the 1990s, all programs it enacted to meet it’s Constitutional responsibilities for Indians were begot to realize the eventual resolving of it's "Indian Problem" by the extermination of it’s American Indian population by assimilation. The following are examples of Canadian white supremacist mentality at the highest level of Canadian government. Quoted from an address by Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada’s First Prime Minister, to the Canadian House of Parliament, July 6, 1885, - regarding the Indian situation in the United States and Canada: "...that we have been pampering and coaxing the Indians; that we must take a new course, we must vindicate the position of the white man, we must teach the Indians what law is..." "...along the whole frontier of the United States there has been war; millions have been expended there; their best and their bravest have fallen. I personally know General Custer, and admired the gallant soldier, the American hero; yet he went, and he fell with his band, and not a man was left to tell the tale -- they were all swept away..." Sir Edward Lytton, co-founder of the British colony of British Columbia, in his book The Coming Race - 1868 "Colonization is civilization ~ If we, the superior race, take the land of other races, we must utterly destroy the previous inhabitants." A sample of the sincerity of Caucasians who negotiated Treaties with North American First Nations "Treaties were never made to be kept, but to serve a present purpose, to settle a present difficulty in the easiest manner possible, to acquire a desired good with the least possible compensation, and then to be disregarded as soon as this purpose was tainted and we were strong enough to enforce a new and more profitable arrangement." “The more Indians we kill this year, the fewer we will need to kill the next.” “I intend if possible to keep up a good correspondence with the Saint John's Indians, a warlike people, tho' Treaties with Indians are nothing, nothing but force will prevail.” The Reverend Martin Luther King made the following observation about the founding of the United States of America - an observation that I find equally applicable to the founding of Canada: "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it." The Destruction and Depopulating of the Indigenous Civilizations of the Americas by European Invaders “Until the Lion has his historian, the hunter will always be the hero” (Unknown.) The Lion today will be the American Indian, and on his behalf I will present an American Indian perspective about the European Invasion of the Americas, and the consequent near fatal disastrous results it had for our civilizations. The following is a slightly modified version of an Anti-Racism Lecture that I gave on March 22, 2011, at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, By Mi’kmaw Elder Dr. Daniel N. Paul, C.M., O.N.S. NOTE: In this paper the term American Indian is applicable to all of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The main topic of my commentary today will be about the Hidden History of the Americas, and the Conspiracy of Silence that keeps it out of Eurocentric Education Systems, and hidden safely away in the Archives of Canada, the United States, the Vatican, France, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, and far to many other countries to mention here. Yesterday, March 21st, was the date that the United Nations set aside in 1966 to remind humanity each year thereafter that we have a moral obligation to work diligently for the Elimination of Racism around the world. Today, I’ll provide you with some of the highlights of the true histories of the invasion and colonizing of the Americas by Europeans, which I hope will provide a small forward step in that direction. My presentation is designed to put on the table for discussion a long denied fact; the dispossessing of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas by Europeans, and the near extermination of them in the process, is the greatest inhuman barbarity that this World has ever known. The following are some of the major tragic consequences that stem from the European invasion. First and foremost the suffering that it caused American Indians over the centuries is beyond measurement, and the number that perished because of it is so immense that uncountable millions is the only reasonable estimate that can be given! Besides out and out Genocide, starvation, which was caused by the deliberate destruction of Indigenous trading patterns and food supplies, took a heavy toll (“The buffalo hunters have done more to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army! For the sake of lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalos are exterminated!” - General Phil Sheridan - US Army.) Another item that took a heavy toll was malnutrition. It started shortly after the invasion's onset and slowly became universally widespread among the Indigenous Peoples of the two Continents and continued until recent times. Initially, it was caused by food supply destruction, but later the major cause was the near starvation rations passed out to them by Caucasian governments - in a weakened state even common illnesses were very often deadly. People sold into slavery was also a hugh factor. Then we must not forget the hundreds of thousands of American Indians who died at the hands of brutal Caucasian governments during the 1900s, in such places as Guatemala, where they were the majority population fighting the minority for representation. Notable, is the fact that Caucasian Canadian and American politicians turned a blind eye to the atrocities that their peers were committing in these countries, probably justifying their non-interference by labelling the rebellions communist inspired. Before laying out some facts to support my previous statement I’ll provide a sampling of pre-Columbian American Indian statistics and accomplishments. In 1492, when the European invasion of the Americas was instigated by a human error that saw Christopher Columbus get lost at sea, while trying to reach the Indies, and making landfall instead in the Americas, the two Continents were not, as some would have us believe, two vast and vacant land masses that were created by the Great Spirit for the specific purpose of enriching Europeans. In fact, both Continents were widely populated by humans who were citizens of hundreds of well established diverse civilizations - a statement of fact that may not set well with those who buy into the White Supremacist belief that the inhabitants of the two Continents were not civilized human beings but savage animals. Unfortunately, because of the lack of reliable statistics the number of humans that were residents of the Americas in 1492 can only be estimated. Thus, over the eons, using various methods, experts have made estimates that vary widely - a few million to a hundred million. However, I believe, due to the fact that the vast land mass was populated from the Arctic to the tip of South America, including deserts, islands, swamps, Jungles, and mountains, that a total population estimate of 100 million would not be far of. The citizens of these Nations spoke hundreds of different languages and resided in societies that covered the spectrum - hunter gatherer to sophisticated city dwellers. Farms that fed thousands of citizens of these Nations existed, and many cities had large populations. The norms of human interaction such as marriage, divorce, social assistance, etc., were in place. Such disciplines as engineering, astrology, medicine, etc., were available for educational pursuit in many societies. Calendars, suspension bridges, and record keeping, etc., were also part of the fabric of many societies. Trading patterns between most Nations were developed and well established. Politics ranged from democratic to autocratic. For instance the Aztecs, Inca and Maya lived under emperors, while most of the North American Nations were democratic. In fact, shortly after the invasion started, the democratic ideals of these Nations soon gave rise to the democratic aspirations of long oppressed Europeans. Proof of it lies in the fact that both the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the United States of America were modeled to a large extent after the democratic ideals and laws of Indigenous American Nations, in particular an Iroquoian law entitled “The Great Law of Peace”. The before mentioned adoption of American Indian democratic values and ideals was officially acknowledged for the first time by Caucasians when the US Congress did it by Resolution in November1988. Over ten thousand years ago American Indian horticulturists engineered a plant they christened Maize, commonly known today as corn. In modern times the harvest of corn provides approximately 21 percent of human nutrition across the Globe. Interestingly, it took until 2010 before modern science could finally figure out how they did it. Further, American Indians were very ingenious in domesticating food sources; including corn, they domesticated nine of the most important food crops that feed and sustain the modern world’s population. Another long ignored fact to ponder. Over five thousand years ago the Indigenous People of California, utilizing a process they had perfected to take the bitterness out of Acorns, were milling flour out of them. To assure a reliable supply of acorns they grew and groomed large orchards of Oak trees. This was at a time when many Europeans were still hanging out in caves. The before-mentioned items are just a tiny example of some of the positive societal information that is readily available about the Nations of the pre-Columbian Americas, but, of course, it is not taught in schools or widely publicized. Thus, due to the lack of teaching and publicizing, I venture to state without hesitation that just about everybody attending this session, until I mentioned them, did not know any of the facts just relayed. Which begs the question; in view of the fact that the information just mentioned is readily available to educate, why is it excluded? The answer will be revealed by the time I finish. QUESTION: Why does the racism that degrades American Indians continue to blatantly exist within the fabric of the modern Nations of the Americas? The answer is simple; most of the modern Nations of the Americas, due to their Eurocentric founding, will not willingly do what good conscience and justice demands; teach the truth about the European invasion and colonization of the two Continents. This course of action, no matter how demeaning to the European founders of their societies it is, is a moral obligation that these modern Nations, if they ascribe to being civilized societies, should no longer ignore and resist! In his discourse, "Lessons at the Halfway Point," Michael Levine accurately identifies with this gem of wisdom why intolerance exists: "If you don't personally get to know people from other racial, religious or cultural groups, its very easy to believe ugly things about them and make them frightening in your mind." A sound piece of wisdom. If after 1492, instead of illegally appropriating and colonizing the territories of the sovereign Indigenous Nations of the Americas, Europeans had followed the advice it contains, and had gotten to know and had accepted Indigenous Americans as equals, a peaceful interaction between American Indians and Europeans would have occurred. However, instead of civilized interaction they adopted White supremacist racist beliefs that led them to depict American Indians, and later the Africans they imported into the Americas from Africa to be their slaves, as bloodthirsty inhuman savages - false depictions of both Peoples that have continuously been passed along from Caucasian generation to generation for the better part of five centuries. If white supremacists attitudes had not prevailed, both peoples of colour would not have suffered the indescribable hells that they suffered throughout the Americas until recent times and, in far too many cases, still suffer. However, if at that time in history, Europeans had been civilized enough to accept all fellow human beings as equals, as did American Indians, they wouldn’t have in the first place been occupied with “discovering” and stealing the properties that belonged to other sovereign Nations. And, without apparent conscience, while in the process of illegally appropriating, barbarously decimating their populations. But, with racial superiority notions prevailing, the European invaders utilized two very effective white supremacist creations to justify their invasion of the generally peaceful Nations of the Americas, and the pillaging of them. Without conscience, demonizing propaganda (Example) was created and used to dehumanize American Indians, and the Doctrine of Discovery, a Papal document that stated that non-Christians could not own land, was used to give a smidgeon of legality and a Christian blessing to the stealing of American Indian National territories, and the carnage that the invaders visited upon the