Students protest UNM seal

Protesters: Native American-made seal not native enough

The students are accusing the school of racism because the seal shows a frontiersman and a conquistador, but not a Native American.

The seal was designed by Theda Douglas Rushing, a Native American.

By Anthony GockowskiStudents at the University of New Mexico (UNM) are protesting their school’s official seal because of its implicit discrimination against Native Americans even though the seal itself was created by a Native American artist.

UNM’s student activists are accusing the school of racism because the seal depicts a frontiersman standing alongside a conquistador but fails to portray their historical counterpart—indigenous people.And:“The UNM [official seal] celebrates genocide and conquest—both are violations of basic human rights and belong in a museum of a bygone era,” said Nick Estes. “It’s 2016 and UNM is still celebrating crimes against humanity—colonialism and genocide—and Natives are still underrepresented at all levels at the University.”

However, UNM awarded Native American artist Theda Douglas Rushing a Meritorious Service Medal in 1994 for her outstanding contributions to the school, among which was the creation of the school’s now discriminatory seal.
Discussion

A Facebook discussion of this key point: Students protest a UNM seal that shows a frontiersman and a conquistador, even though a Native woman designed it.

I wonder if she was given free rein or a strict mandate. Kind of hard to believe someone thought a frontiersman and a conquistador were great ideas in the 21st century.

Apparently the redesign was back in 1980. I can understand that some people, including Natives, might not have thought about the problems much back then.

But I'm surprised it hasn't been protested out of existence since then. A frontiersman and a conquistador don't have anything to do with education. If anything, they're anti-education.

The message is nothing but, "Europeans founded this state and school. Europeans made us great." How is that not glaringly obvious to everyone--not to mention embarrassing?

They're even holding a gun and a sword. It's a pure conquest message--with Indians and their land as the implied booty. There's no educational message whatsoever.Yes. All that's missing is an equally in your face motto. "We exist because these guys spilled blood."Oddly, their school motto is "Lux Hominum Vita (Life, the Light of Men)." I guess because "Veni, Vidi, Vici" was taken?

For more on government seals, see Whitesboro Issue Increases Awareness and Flipping the Whitesboro Script.

Guns are central to America

White guys are killing us: Toxic, cowardly masculinity, our unhealable national illness

Race, guns and gender--the common denominator at the heart of so many problems--are what we need to talk about

By Chauncey DeVega[T]here is another little-discussed factor that helps to explain America’s obsessive and near pathological gun culture, unwillingness to treat gun violence as a public health crisis, Right-wing domestic terrorism, and propensity for mass shootings. It transcends all of those issues. But this factor is usually treated as verboten, something to not be unspoken of, because of the rage, threats of violence, and animus it inspires.

The common denominator is white masculinity and the particular ways that it is connected to American gun culture and the color line.

The gun is central to the founding of an American society where hierarchies of race and gender were central to the country’s Herrenvolk white racial settler democratic project. America was born as, and remains, a culture and society dedicated to maintaining the dominance, privilege, and power of white men over people of color and women. This was not an accident, bug, or a glitch. It was a feature.

Guns helped White America to commit genocide against First Nations peoples and to steal land under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The gun maintained Southern society as a white over black racial military dictatorship. The gun was also a tool for white elites to control the working classes and poor.Comment:  For more on gun control, see Guns as Penis Substitutes and Conservatives Let Mass Shootings Happen.

Obama: Colonists were merely dissastified

Obama Doesn't Understand American Indian History

By Peter d'ErricoPresident Obama doesn't understand America's history with Indigenous Peoples. A careful reading of his recent conversation with author Marilynne Robinson on September 14, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa, shows he has serious misconceptions.

In the midst of the conversation, Robinson referred to hearing people in America saying, "The system is failing." Obama responded: "That's part of what makes America wonderful, is we always had this nagging dissatisfaction that spurs us on. That’s how we ended up going west, that’s how we—'I’m tired of all these people back east; if I go west, there’s going to be my own land and I’m not going to have to put up with this nonsense, and I’m going to start my own thing, and I’ve got my homestead.'"

That's pretty amazing. President Obama, so attuned to the "fault line of race," has it in his head that the Indian wars resulted from dissatisfied non-Indians, who, in order to feel better about their lives, "went west"!

I guess the same explanation might apply all the way back: The Puritans were dissatisfied with their lot in England and Holland, so they went west to Massachusetts, and rounded up the Indians into "praying town" reservations. Other colonizers found their "own land" named "Virginia," where they became rich from tobacco plantations worked by indentured servants and slaves.

And so on back even further: The conquistadors, "tired of all those people" back in Spain, went west to the "new world" and made it their "own land," and made the Indigenous peoples their "own slaves."

Obama managed to skip over these gory details to get to his conclusion that "we" solved our "nagging dissatisfaction" and became a "wonderful" country. Who was "we"? It certainly didn't include the Indians. They were in "our" way.Comment:  What the colonizers really said:

"I'm tired of all these people back east with their rules requiring payment for land. If I go west, there’s going to be my own land stolen from Indians and given to me.

"If there's any trouble, the Army will protect me against the 'savages' who want their land back. I deserve these government handouts--free land and security--because I'm a privileged white man."

The White Privilege of Cows

Brown Student Newspaper Is Sorry For Op-Ed Offensive To Native Americans

Native Americans' ancestors were slaughtered, but they should be thankful anyway, the op-ed suggested.

By Amy AnthonyThe Brown University campus newspaper apologized Wednesday after publishing what it says were two "deeply hurtful" and racist columns.

The Brown Daily Herald's editorial board published an editor's note saying it regretted the hurt caused by the two opinion columns, both written by student M. Dzhali Maier.

One titled "The white privilege of cows," which was published Monday, "invoked the notion of biological differences between races," while "Columbian Exchange Day," published Tuesday, argued that Native Americans should be thankful for colonialism, according to the editor's note.

"The white privilege of cows" column was left on The Herald's website "in an effort to be transparent," according to an editor's note later added to it. The "Columbian Exchange Day" column was removed and replaced by an editor's note. That column was "unintentionally published due to an internal error," according to the note. It was online for about an hour before it was taken down.Maier's first controversial op-ed:

Ivy League Student Paper: Native Americans Should be Thankful for Columbus

The Daily Herald has published racist content three times in as many weeks.

By Amanda GirardThe White Privilege of Cows made the argument that European societies that developed agriculture were more capable than hunter-gatherer societies, and that a steady supply of crops and livestock allowed colonial empires to build up a military, develop technological advancements, and use those developments to sail the world in search of new lands to conquer.

Even though the concept of racial superiority has been repeatedly debunked, the author of the column went a step further. Maier suggested that native populations who were enslaved and systematically eradicated by these colonists ultimately benefited by assimilating into the agriculture-based lifestyle forced on them through colonial oppression, and that society was ultimately better off due to the technological developments that took place after colonization.

“Where is this all going? It is the strong who trample the weak, the rich who trample the poor,” Maier wrote. “Colonialism simply allows those who come from a history of being well-fed enough to let experimentation happen, conquering those who have not had that luck.”

The Brown University student also suggested that pre-colonial native populations were inferior due to not having domesticated animal populations. Maier’s op-ed also proposed the idea that colonists in Africa and the Americas did everyone a favor by taming and domesticating animals (after the enslavement and genocide of native populations, which was left out).

“It does stand as fact that English colonists in Africa were able to tame zebras to be ridden or driven,” Maier wrote. “It is also fact that wild animals in Africa and the New World were left untapped, while some wild Eurasian animals were domesticated.”

Analysis

Maier spends almost half this column talking about racial differences. She then switches to cultural differences, a completely different topic.

As noted in the first paragraph above, she talks about the amazing things accomplished by Near Eastern civilizations. One, the civilizations of the Americas produced many of the same things: agriculture, writing and math, art, religion, philosophy, architecture, astronomy, medicine, etc. Two, these accomplishments had nothing to do with racial characteristics. Maier talks about biology, but the only biology in play here is access to better crops and livestock.

Near the end, Maier asks whether the link between race and culture is correlation or causation. In her final paragraphs, she implies it's causation. For instance, British colonists domesticated zebras, she claims, whereas African natives couldn't.

But as Jared Diamond pointed out in Guns, Germs, and Steel, this is mostly wrong:

The Story of... Zebra and the Puzzle of African AnimalsPerhaps the most puzzling question Jared Diamond encounters as he investigates animal domestication is: Why were no large mammals ever domesticated in tropical Africa?

Africa, south of the Sahara, is home to the richest diversity of animal life on the planet, including some of the largest mammals on earth. So why did the Africans never domesticate the rhino? Why did they never farm the hippo? The elephant? Or the giant wildebeest? Perhaps most strangely of all, given the importance of the horse to European history, why did tropical Africans never domesticate their own species of wild horse, the zebra?

Zebra are closely related to the domesticated horse, sharing a genus (Equus) and a common ancestor. They stand nearly five feet at the shoulder, live in small family groups or herds, are sociable herbivores who breed well in public and live in harmony with their mammalian neighbors, like antelopes and wildebeest. They are even strong enough to carry an adult human on their backs.

Zebras are also notoriously difficult to catch. They have evolved superb early-warning mechanisms, such as peripheral vision far superior to other horses. Often bad tempered, they grow increasingly antisocial with age and once they bite, they tend not to let go. A kick from a zebra can kill—and these creatures are responsible for more injuries to American zookeepers each year than any other animal.

Pity the poor human, therefore, who might try to domesticate a zebra in the wild. During the colonial era, some adventurous Europeans tried to harness this African horse. Lord Rothschild famously drove a zebra-drawn carriage through the streets of Victorian London. Yet these creatures were never truly domesticated—they were never bred and sustained explicitly under human control.Western Civ is best?

Maier is basically gushing about Western Civilization while pooh-poohing non-Western civilizations. There's no attempt at balance here--no mentions of European horrors such as the slave trade, the extermination of native populations, and the Holocaust. Her goal is to tout the superiority of white civilizations.

She tries to fudge this by referring to "Eurasians," but there are no specifics about the great cultures of China or India. With the notable exception of the Mongols, these civilizations did not try to colonize the world. Why not? Because being "well-fed" and "strong" like these Asian cultures doesn't necessarily lead to conquest.

What leads to conquest is a religious or philosophical belief that you're a chosen people who deserve to rule. That it's your God-given duty to bring the "light" of "civilization" to the dark (-skinned) corners of the globe. It's that kind of attitude that drove all the soul-crushing civilizations of Europe, including Rome, Britain, America, Germany, and the USSR.

For more on Western Civilization, see King Touts "Values Columbus Brought" and Alternatives to "Got Land?" Shirt.

"White Man" = bogeyman

America’s grand historical deception: Why it pretends White Supremacy no longer exists

Violence against Black Americans is real and documented, so why does White America continue to deny it?

By Chauncey DeVegaFrom initial colonial and Imperial encounters, to the later intimacy of slavery and bonded labor, Black and brown people, aboriginal and other First Nations brothers and sisters, had to invent language to describe “The White Man” they encountered for the first time and then later came to regret having ever known.

“The White Man” became a ghost or a monster. (In fact, the robes of the Ku Klux Klan represent the ghosts of the Confederate dead who have returned to avenge themselves on now free black Americans.) He haunted. He killed. He raped. He destroyed.And:Tales of “The White Man” would be used to scare children into obedience, and like most folk tales and children’s stories they were lessons to prepare those youngsters for life in an unfair world. But “The White Man” is not a chimera. He is real. We see him when cops kill and abuse innocent and defenseless Black and brown people in America. he choked Eric Garner to death. He shot Tamir Rice, stole his childhood and his life. ”The White Man” maces and electrocutes Black people who are suffering from a stroke while sitting in their car. But America does not want to confront “The White Man,” because that would mean reflecting on its own behavior and culture of racialized violence.

The innocence and nobility of Whiteness and “The White Man” are bedrock lies for America and the West that dissolve under even the most minimal levels of critical inquiry. If America looked in the mirror at “The White Man” looking back, it could be either a moment of catharsis, where the violence and meanness of White Privilege and White Racism were owned and internalized with pride (yup! that is us, White America, what a good thing, let’s stop pretending we are surprised or ashamed!) or where upon seeing “The White Man” in his full glory a moment of White Fragility would freeze the viewer in stone as though he or she were touched by Medusa.Comment:  For more on white privilege, see Black Professor Criticizes White Men and Whites Can't Handle Racial Stress.

Colonizing Mars = colonizing America

Colonize Mars? Not until we learn some lessons here on Earth

By Dr. Danielle N. Lee[I]s it right to think about the galaxy as a playground that is ours for the taking? History is full of examples of how of individuals and governments exploit others in order to gain access to limited resources like land, gold, water, and oil. The scientific community is not exempt from such impulses: Contemporary examples abound of scientists exploiting and harming others when broad and diverse groups of people are not allowed to advocate for their interests.

Add to this the fact that the dominant scientific narrative in the United States space program parallels the American cultural narrative, what Dr. Linda Billings, NASA Space Communicator and space policy analyst at George Washington University calls “frontier pioneering, continual progress, manifest destiny, free enterprise, rugged individualism, and a right to life without limits.” Within astrophysics circles, the idea that it is our right and imperative to conquer other planets is commonly presented as natural, in keeping with other aspects of human history: Just as Europeans immigrated to North America, so must the human race colonize Mars. Red Colony, a website for Mars exploration enthusiasts, opens its introduction with a parable on the benefits of creating settlements, focusing on “how the country that came out of [Western Expansion] advances the world perhaps centuries beyond its time in scientific, economic, diplomatic, and religious progress.”

The problem with the ideas being pushed by Musk and Hawking is that the conversation is focused only on the possible promises of a Mars colonization, not the potential perils. (Dr. Billings has criticized the idea of Mars as “the New World” extensively and written numerous reports and papers that examine the financial, legal and ethical impact of American cultural narratives on space programs and policy.) In short, the way Mars is discussed gives individuals like Musk–people with a strong commercial interests in space travel–both a platform for shaping public rhetoric concerning planetary exploration projects, and the ability to influence policies that would allow them to profit greatly from intergalactic expeditions.

It’s not just the rich and the famous, either. People like Robert Zubrin, co-founder of and Executive Director of The Mars Society, which aims to “further the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet,” praise the founding of America as if it is an uncomplicated narrative. Zubrin’s core argument, that “Mars is to the new age of exploration as North America was to the last,” doesn’t acknowledge is how these “New World” trade activities were based on the displacement and genocide of Indigenous people in the Americas and the forced immigration and labor of Africans. This new human civilization that held so much promise to those in Europe was also oppressive and exploitative to other groups, a development that led to what is the most powerfully disparate economic system in the world today.Comment:  Martians don't have to exist for Lee's thesis to work. Her point is that "exploration" tends to favor the rich over the poor.

In other words, it's the opposite of the "neutral" scientific enterprise we think of. It's inherently biased by politics and economics.

Are people like Elon Musk planning to form nonprofits and donate everything they find to humanity as a whole? If not, Lee suggests, beware.

For more on colonization, see Rubio Ignorant of US History and Whites Destroy Other People's Homes.

Why Indian mascots are anti-Indian

An excellent article makes a key point about mascots:

The invasion of America

The story of Native American dispossession is too easily swept aside, but new visualisations should make it unforgettable[T]he language used to chronicle the dispossession of native peoples–‘Indian’, ‘chief’, ‘warrior’, ‘tribe’, ‘squaw’ (as native women used to be called)–conjures up crude stereotypes and clouds the mind, making it difficult to see the wars of extermination, forced marches and expulsions for what they were. The story, which used to be celebratory, is now more often tragic and sentimental, rooted in the belief that the dispossession of native peoples was unjust but inevitable.Let me explain. The glorification of Indian warriors--in mascots, the military, and so forth--sends a pro-American, anti-Indian message.

How so? Because it furthers the American mythology of benign conquest. Our band of brave soldiers fought their band of savage warriors on horseback. Just like you saw in the movies.

We won because we were more noble and heroic; they lost. But we've extended the hand of friendship to our former foes. Let's forget our past differences and celebrate our common warrior heritage.

Slaughter, not skirmishes

How exactly is this anti-Indian? Because it reduces 500 years of conflicts to a few skirmishes where the "best side" won. It erases all the "wars of extermination, forced marches and expulsions," as the article puts it. All the times white people lied, cheated, and stole Native land and resources. Hundreds of broken treaties attesting to the white man's perfidy.

Moreover, it obscures the entire nature of Native America. The inhabitants weren't scattered bands of warriors on horseback. They were full-fledged nations with governments. They had complex laws, customs, languages, religions, arts, and sciences. The US didn't beat a few warriors in a fair or unfair fight. It decimated entire civilizations with its genocidal policies.

So talking about the strength and courage of Redskins or Warriors or Chiefs is a complete crock. It's designed to delude people into supporting the American mythology, the American way. The "conflicts" were "inevitable," so the story goes, so they couldn't be helped. Cultures "clashed," one side happened to win, and that's the end.

In particular, the "good guys" (Americans) won, so we'll pretend the "bad guys" (Indians) were good too. Both sides were good, so there's no need to question or challenge the mythology. We're all Americans now--North and South, black and white, American and Indian--so let's forget the past and move forward together.

That's what mascot lovers think. And that's what they want you to think. By challenging them, you're challenging the entire mythology of American goodness. They can't handle the truth, so they attack you instead. You lost, get over it, etc., etc.

All this because of the one-dimensional warrior stereotype.

For more on the subject, see Native Stereotyping = Anti-Indian Propaganda and "Redskins" = Pan-Indian Romanticism.

Rubio ignorant of US history

Marco Rubio doesn't know about America's history with Native Americans

By Scott SuttonSometimes politicians tweet helpful and insightful things. Other times, they tweet things that are regrettable at best and in denial of history at worst.

A tweet from 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) early Wednesday afternoon fits into that latter category.

You can see the tweet below, which we took a screenshot of because it seems destined for deletion.Gawker may have summed it up best with the snarky (and 100 percent correct) headline “Marco Rubio Remembers the Trail of Tears.”

Here’s what they had to say about the tweet:The conservative estimate of the US Native American population before the arrival of European settlers was over 12 million. Today, that number has been reduced by 95 percent.Here’s a quick list of just a few times America has been engaged in armed conflict in order to expand its territory:

Northwest Indian War
Winnebago War
Patriot War
Mexican-American War
Apache Wars
Puget Sound Wars
Utah War
Great Sioux War of 1786
Second Samoan Civil War
We didn’t even get into the 20th century with that list.My tweeted response to Rubio:

BlueCornComics ‏@bluecorncomics May 14
BlueCornComics retweeted Marco Rubio
Except for killing the Indians, adding slave states, taking land from Mexico, etc. How ignorant can @marcorubio get?

Who exactly was gaining freedom when the US expanded into Indian territory? Not the Indians, obviously. The settlers? If you define "freedom" as freely taking things from others, I guess.

In this context, the US is roughly like a bank robber. The criminal gains more "freedom"--more opportunity to live high on the hog--after he robs a bank. The stolen wealth increases his ability to act.

Only problem is, it decreases the freedom of those who were robbed. Their opportunities are limited by their loss of wealth. Whether it's buying goods such as food and medicine or services such as education, they have fewer choices.

When we're talking about fixed assets such as land, this is pretty much a zero-sum game. White men win, Indians lose. More "freedom" for some means less freedom for others.

At least Rubio is consistent, I guess. Like other conservatives, his political career is all about increasing the wealth "freedom" of rich white folks. He accomplishes this by cutting services to and raising taxes on poor brown folks.

"Expanding freedom" for the rich by contracting freedom for the poor...that could be the Republican slogan for 2016. Thanks for nothing, Rubio.

For more on America's colonizing efforts, see Debating Professor Grundy's Tweets and America Constructed to Erase Indians.

Debating Professor Grundy's tweets

Yesterday I posted this link about a black professor's tweets to Facebook:

Boston University Professor Tweets ‘Your White Ancestors Were Land Thieves, And Slave Owners–Nothing More’

I tagged the posting with this line:

I'd tweet that my ancestors were land thieves and slave-owners too if I knew it for sure.

Then added more comments:

My Mayflower ancestors

I don't understand the Ben Affleck "sanitize one's history" approach. I've posted before about my ancestor who may have massacred Indians.

Why wouldn't I? The only way it reflects on me is by showing how forthright I am.

If you go back enough generations, everyone's related to someone "bad." It probably doesn't require that many generations, either. Maybe half a dozen.

For every king or president in your family tree, you probably have several rapists, slave-owners, murderers, and so forth. Everyone does.

It's ridiculous to highlight one "good" ancestor as if that proves anything about you. Or proves anything, period.

I wouldn't give people a pass because their ancestors lived in Europe. Those people financed and managed the conquest of America and the slave trade. As well as oppressing their own people.

I wouldn't give people a pass if their ancestors came over "only" a few decades ago, either. Once you're here, you become complicit in the system. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

If people came over in 2015, I might give them a pass. They missed the last national election, so they haven't had much chance to change the system.

The Native aspects

A couple of Professor Grundy's tweets focused on Native history:



One Facebook friend criticized Grundy for these tweets:And this just shows that extremism and nuttiness are not just relegated to the conservative side of the spectrum. While there is definitely some truth to what she says, she paints with the same broad brush and selective history as those who criticized, say, the Baltimore protests and their ilk. In fact, the ancestors of the overwhelming majority of white people in the United States did not own slaves nor kill Natives. In fact, more died to secure their freedom in the Civil War. Yes, whites have benefited from those who did steal land and enslave humans, and certainly need to face up to that history and have a reckoning with it, but to reduce a diverse population of people to a simplistic caricature is as overly simplified and bigoted as anything coming out of the Tea Party. I mean, seriously, what exactly are Poles and Slovaks who worked the Chicago stock yards guilty of? What about Italian longshoremen in New York? Or Irish day laborers in Boston? Even on the so-called frontier, what about the Scots-Irish who would both fight and intermix with Southeastern Indian tribes? One of their descendants, btw, was Sequoyah. This isn't even to mention the rich, and yes, sometimes tragic, culture and history that came from the Europeans and Natives mixing in Mexico and the Southwest. My problem is that left-wing radicals can be as susceptible to divisive pseudo-intellectual bullshit that attempts to masquerade as legitimate grievance and historical redress. This is not the real McCoy and shouldn't be mistaken as such.My responses:

I don't have a problem with Grundy's five tweets. I'd try to avoid saying "all," as in all white people are Ben Affleck. But the percentage who call their ancestors benign terms like "pioneers" and "farmers" must be incredibly high. Perhaps 90-95% or more. So "all" isn't much of an exaggeration.

A phrase like "kill Natives" is obviously open to interpretation. Did most Americans point a gun at Natives and shoot them? No. Did most Americans vote for politicians who implemented policies that had the predictable effect of killing Natives? Yes. Therefore, most Americans did kill Natives indirectly if not directly.

Most Americans accepted a system in which some of them owned slaves or killed Natives. For the sake of argument, it doesn't matter much if most Americans benefited from theses crimes directly or indirectly. The point is they were complicit: guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. They were not innocent "farmers" and "pioneers."

And again, no free passes for recent immigrants. Americans of every vintage are fighting against treaty rights, land-into-trust deals, and casino expansions. They're building on sacred sites such as Mauna Kea or Mt. Graham, or allowing it.

Unless recent immigrants are willing to stand up against these practices, and call their fellow Americans "land thieves," they might as well be land thieves themselves. Again, they're part of the solution or part of the problem. They don't get to be neutral if they're US citizens with the right to vote.

"She paints with the same broad brush and selective history"...you realize these are 140-character tweets, right? It's nutty to expect a nuanced argument in that limited space.

I'm guessing her academic papers and teachings are as nuanced as anyone else's. It's ridiculous to chastise her for being slightly inflammatory when she makes a completely valid point. Namely, that the word "pioneer" is a euphemism for people who routinely broke treaties, invaded "foreign" territory, and introduced diseases. And sometimes killed Natives outright.

For more on America's colonization and genocide, see Whites Destroy Other People's Homes and America Constructed to Erase Indians.

Whites destroy other people's homes

White America’s greatest delusion: “They do not know it, and they do not want to know it”

Pundits and politicians are all too eager to condemn violent protest. How quickly they forget our nation's history

By Tim WiseIt is bad enough that much of white America sees fit to lecture black people about the proper response to police brutality, economic devastation and perpetual marginality, having ourselves rarely been the targets of any of these. It is bad enough that we deign to instruct black people whose lives we have not lived, whose terrors we have not faced, and whose gauntlets we have not run, about violence; this, even as we enjoy the national bounty over which we currently claim possession solely as a result of violence. I beg to remind you, George Washington was not a practitioner of passive resistance. Neither the early colonists nor the nation’s founders fit within the Gandhian tradition. There were no sit-ins at King George’s palace, no horseback freedom rides to affect change. There were just guns, lots and lots of guns.

We are here because of blood, and mostly that of others; here because of our insatiable and rapacious desire to take by force the land and labor of those others. We are the last people on Earth with a right to ruminate upon the superior morality of peaceful protest. We have never believed in it and rarely practiced it. Rather, we have always taken what we desire, and when denied it we have turned to means utterly genocidal to make it so.

Which is why it always strikes me as precious the way so many white Americans insist (as if preening for a morality contest of some sorts) that “we don’t burn down our own neighborhoods when we get angry.” This, in supposed contrast to black and brown folks who engage in such presumptively self-destructive irrationality as this. On the one hand, it simply isn’t true. We do burn our own communities, we do riot, and for far less valid reasons than any for which persons of color have ever hoisted a brick, a rock, or a bottle. We do so when our teams lose the big game or win the big game; or because of something called Pumpkin Festival; or because veggie burritos cost $10 at Woodstock ’99 and there weren’t enough Porta-Potties by the time of the Limp Bizkit set; or because folks couldn’t get enough beer at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake; or because surfers (natch); or St. Patty’s Day in Albany; or because Penn State fired Joe Paterno; or because it’s a Sunday afternoon in Ames, Iowa; and we do it over and over and over again. Far from mere amateur hooliganism, our riots are indeed violent affairs that have been known to endanger the safety and lives of police, as with the infamous 1998 riot at Washington State University. To wit:

The crowd then attacked the officers from all sides for two hours with rocks, beer bottles, signposts, chairs, and pieces of concrete, allegedly cheering whenever an officer was struck and injured. Twenty-three officers were injured, some suffering concussions and broken bones.

Seventeen years later, one still waits for the avalanche of conservative ruminations regarding the pathologies of whites in Pullman, whose disrespect for authority suggests a larger culture of dysfunction, no doubt taught to them by their rural, corn-fed families and symbolized by the easily recognizable gang attire of Carhartt work coats and backwards baseball caps.

On the other hand, it is undeniably true that when it comes to our political anger and frustration (as contrasted with that brought on by alcohol and athletics) we white folks are pretty good at not torching our own communities. This is mostly because we are too busy eviscerating the communities of others—those against whom our anger is aimed. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Manila, and on down the line.Below:  White folks not torching their own neighborhood.

America constructed to erase Indians

Dichotomy of Declaration of Independence Highlights the Bi-polar Character of USA

By Mark CharlesAs a Native man one of the excuses I often hear for people’s ignorance regarding Native issues is “there are no Native Americans in my context.” I tell them, “Yes. That was by design. Your nation was intentionally constructed so you would never have to be faced with the reality that there were people here prior to Europe’s colonization.”

This is why our schools teach that America was “discovered.” It is why American Indian reservations were created. It is why the apology to Native peoples in 2009 was buried in an appropriations bill and never publicly mentioned by the White House or Congress. And it is why the professional football team located in our nation’s capitol continues to utilize the mascot “Redsk*ns.”

The United States of American has gone through incredible lengths to keep the public narrative regarding the indigenous peoples of this land in mythical terms. Because, the moment we stop being caricatures and become human, our nation must face the uncomfortable reality that the only reason it ever stated “All men are created equal” is because it has an incredibly narrow definition of who is actually human.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Tarantino: "Indians Have More or Less Disappeared and How Euro-Americans "Vanished" Indians.

America's "intentional ignorance" about racism

Noam Chomsky: “Intentional ignorance” fuels American racism

Linguist and activist tackles America's original sin in new interview

By Luke BrinkerThe harsh realities of American racism and how it functions are seldom acknowledged, Chomsky argues—the willful result of national myth-making and truth-shrouding.

“There is also a common variant of what has sometimes been called ‘intentional ignorance’ of what it is inconvenient to know: ‘Yes, bad things happened in the past, but let us put all of that behind us and march on to a glorious future, all sharing equally in the rights and opportunities of citizenry,’” he explains.

Intentional ignorance dates to the earliest days of settlement—when American colonists would reassure themselves that their displacement of Native Americans was part of a “humanitarian intervention” against “savagery”—and continues to the present day, undergirding discussions of African Americans’ alleged pathologies, for instance.

“The appalling statistics of today’s circumstances of African-American life can be confronted by other bitter residues of a shameful past, laments about black cultural inferiority, or worse, forgetting how our wealth and privilege was created in no small part by the centuries of torture and degradation of which we are the beneficiaries and they remain the victims,” Chomsky notes. “As for the very partial and hopelessly inadequate compensation that decency would require—that lies somewhere between the memory hole and anathema.”
Noam Chomsky on the Roots of American Racism

By George Yancy and Noam ChomskyG.Y.: This “intentional ignorance” regarding inconvenient truths about the suffering of African-Americans can also be used to frame the genocide of Native Americans. It was 18th century Swedish taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus who argued that Native Americans were governed by traits such as being “prone to anger,” a convenient myth for justifying the need for Native Americans to be “civilized” by whites. So, there are myths here as well. How does North America’s “amnesia” contribute to forms of racism directed uniquely toward Native Americans in our present moment and to their continual genocide?

N.C.: The useful myths began early on, and continue to the present. One of the first myths was formally established right after the King of England granted a Charter to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629, declaring that conversion of the Indians to Christianity is “the principal end of this plantation.” The colonists at once created the Great Seal of the Colony, which depicts an Indian holding a spear pointing downward in a sign of peace, with a scroll coming from his mouth pleading with the colonists to “Come over and help us.” This may have been the first case of “humanitarian intervention”—and, curiously, it turned out like so many others.

Years later Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story mused about “the wisdom of Providence” that caused the natives to disappear like “the withered leaves of autumn” even though the colonists had “constantly respected” them. Needless to say, the colonists who did not choose “intentional ignorance” knew much better, and the most knowledgeable, like Gen. Henry Knox, the first secretary of war of the United States, described “the utter extirpation of all the Indians in most populous parts of the Union [by means] more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru.”

Knox went on to warn that “a future historian may mark the causes of this destruction of the human race in sable colors.” There were a few—very few—who did so, like the heroic Helen Jackson, who in 1880 provided a detailed account of that “sad revelation of broken faith, of violated treaties, and of inhuman acts of violence [that] will bring a flush of shame to the cheeks of those who love their country.” Jackson’s important book barely sold. She was neglected and dismissed in favor of the version presented by Theodore Roosevelt, who explained that “The expansion of the peoples of white, or European, blood during the past four centuries…has been fraught with lasting benefit to most of the peoples already dwelling in the lands over which the expansion took place,” notably those who had been “extirpated” or expelled to destitution and misery.

The national poet, Walt Whitman, captured the general understanding when he wrote that “The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated; it is the law of the races, history… A superior grade of rats come and then all the minor rats are cleared out.” It wasn’t until the 1960s that the scale of the atrocities and their character began to enter even scholarship, and to some extent popular consciousness, though there is a long way to go.

That’s only a bare beginning of the shocking record of the Anglosphere and its settler-colonial version of imperialism, a form of imperialism that leads quite naturally to the “utter extirpation” of the indigenous population—and to “intentional ignorance” on the part of beneficiaries of the crimes.

Should we fear "first contact"?

A Facebook friend posted this article:

Scientists fear ‘first contact’ with aliens because indigenous people usually lose

By Travis GettysSETI director Seth Shostak argued that earthlings must do more than listen for other life forms.

“Some of us at the institute are interested in ‘active SETI,’ not just listening but broadcasting something to some nearby stars, because maybe there is some chance that if you wake somebody up you’ll get a response,” Shostak said.

Shostak and other “active SETI” advocates want to send repeated signals from the world’s largest radio transmitter in Puerto Rico toward hundreds of stars within about 82 light-years of Earth.

However, he admits that some scientists—including physicist Stephen Hawking—oppose “active SETI” as potentially dangerous.

David Brin, the scientist and science fiction writer, argued during the conference against active attempts to contact alien life forms.

“Historians will tell you that first contact between industrial civilizations and indigenous people does not go well,” he told the BBC.He added this note: "A reasonable concern, Rob?" My response:

Yes and no.

On the no side, it's likely that FTL travel isn't possible. The cost of sending slow-moving generation ships would be prohibitive, as would the cost of conquering the earth. Every solar system probably has enough minerals to satisfy any race without traveling to another system.

On the yes side, even exchanging messages with an alien race would be hugely disruptive. But the disruption might be good rather than bad. It could sweep away old religions, provide answers for climate change and overpopulation, etc.

If you ignore the whole genocide thing, both sides benefited from Europe's contact with the Indians. It could be like that: setting off a new renaissance for the human race. Old-school priests and politicians wouldn't like it, but who cares about them?

To boil it down to the key questions: 1) Does distance make physical contact impossible? 2) Without the possibility of physical contact, would the cultural interaction be good or bad?"The cost of sending slow-moving generation ships would be prohibitive, as would the cost of conquering the earth."

All they would have to send is one really big bomb.The same issues arise:

1) Why do it?

2) How many resources would it take to build a planet-killing bomb?

3) Even if you've perfected the technology for, say, black-hole or antimatter bombs, is your engineering so good that you can develop automated spaceships that won't break down for hundreds or thousands of years of travel?

4) What kind of culture would go for the "gratification" of destroying another civilization centuries in the future in a cataclysm they can't observe or verify?

Yes, it's possible a planet of insane religious cultists would do anything to destroy a potential rival. Heck, we'd probably do that ourselves if aliens declared that God/Jehovah/Allah didn't exist. But such a planet is likely to destroy itself first--as we're doing a good job of proving.

Overall, I'd say the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. The potential gains outweigh the minuscule risks. So I vote for continuing.

The alien bomb scenario

Someone's probably written this story already, but it could be good. Alien race receives our radio and TV transmissions, decides we're heathen monsters, and sends a bomb to kill us. Eighty years later, we receive their reply:

"Eighty years ago we launched a black-hole bomb to destroy your monstrous planet. At near-light speed, it'll arrive in 20 years. Prepare to die!"

The earth has 20 years to get its act together and devise a way to stop the killer bomb. I leave you to plot the rest of the story as an exercise.

Oh, and the kicker: When the "bomb" arrives, it's a hoax. The aliens' latest transmission says:

"A global threat to your planet was the only way to shake you out of your parochial thinking. The only way to unify your planet despite its religious and cultural differences. We learned this from bitter experience.

"Now join us in a confederation of peaceful planets that have overcome their dark impulses and achieved enlightenment. Welcome!"

Good story, eh?Yes I might make the delay more than 20 years. And I'm not sure I'd make the bomb a fake either. It's a test, to see if the inhabitants can cooperate peacefully AND see if they're intelligent enough to solve the problem. Fail on either count and BOOM.Yes, the period could be 50 or 100 years or more. That would make it even more of an epic--the type I doubt I could write well.

And yes, making the bomb real but the intent good might be even more of a twist. "If you couldn't have stopped the bomb, it means you're the kind of race that would've threatened us eventually. As we know from bitter experience, again."

So what's your answer to the question of whether this is a reasonable concern?I think you answered it pretty well. The potential good outweighs the potential bad. I also agree with the comment (I think it was in the article) that anyone advanced enough to be a threat would probably already be aware of us.Another problem...solved!

Who knows aliens better: Stephen Hawking or us? Answer: We do!

For more on the subject, see Why Are Most Aliens White? and Missing Aliens in Star Trek.

Only white lives matter?

Disproportionate Emphasis on European and US Victimhood Is Racist

By Mark KarlinIt is human nature, in general, to associate with the identity group that an individual feels is most like him or her. That may be one explanation why so many in the Eurocentric nations and their white colonialized offshoots--including the US and Canada--are aghast at the killings of people like themselves, but hardly appear to notice or grieve for people of other colors and backgrounds who suffer horrible massacres.

That was the case in Rwanda, in 1994, when some 800,000 to a million men, women and children were slaughtered in a ghastly tribal bloodletting. The Eurocentric nations--which have instigated wars for oil and "counterinsurgency" that fuel Islamic fundamentalism--didn't lift a finger to stop the slaughter in Rwanda. Nor do many in Europe or the US remember how a genocide was carried out--because Rwanda is not a strategic fossil fuel supplier and is a nation of Black people--in Africa as Western nations went about their business.

BuzzFlash contends much of this double standard (regardless of the different circumstances of the murders) is due to racism. Europe and white descendent nations of European colonization (think of the US, Canada and Australia, for example) identify strongly with whites who look like them, raised with a shared European historical, cultural, economic and cult of "civilization" value structure.

On January 22, "The Daily Show" Senior International Foreign Correspondent Trevor Noah (famous in his own right as a noted South African comedian and social critic) engaged in an unusually solemn discussion (with Jon Stewart) of how the Eurocentric nations are ignoring the terror, slavery and mass murder of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Noah pointed out that during the same period of the Paris killings, perhaps as many as 2000 Nigerians were slaughtered by Boko Haram and only a few statements of pro forma condemnation were issued by the US government. Meanwhile, the approximately 300 school girls Boko Haram kidnapped are still not released, amidst reports they are being sold off as slave wives and also being used as child soldiers.

Are these lives of less value than the lives lost in Paris? Why are we not marching with signs "Je Suis Nigeria?" Not to factor race into that answer would be mistaken.Comment:  For more on the subject, see The Science of Racism and Indians, Blacks Are America's "Others."

"Explorer fallacy" in roleplaying games

Five Destructive Myths Perpetuated by Roleplaying Games

By Oren Ashkenazi3. The Explorer Fallacy

Western culture has a bit of a fetish for explorers. We idolize them, from Marco Polo to Lewis and Clark. It’s no surprise, then, that so many of our roleplaying games focus on exploring new lands. PCs are always forging new paths through primal forest or being the first to set foot on an alien world. The problem is that, all too often, we have a completely incorrect idea of what exploration was like.

The vast majority of people we think of today as explorers were traveling through places where people already lived. They weren’t conquering untamed wilderness; they were asking for directions and buying supplies from the locals. The successful ones relied as much on diplomacy as navigation or survival.

Why does this matter? First of all, it’s pretty self-centered to say a place was discovered only when someone from our own culture got there. Far more importantly, the explorer myth pushes an idea of these new lands being effectively uninhabited. When natives are mentioned at all, they are documented more as part of the terrain than as actual residents. This is dehumanizing, and it justifies claiming a land’s resources for ourselves. After all, no one was really living there.

In roleplaying games, we’ve established an elaborate framework to justify the explorer myth. It’s amazing how the ‘evil’ races are used as obstacles to be overcome rather than neighbors that deserve respect. Orcs have a culture and society, yet no one bats an eye at intruding into their lands in search of treasure. We have the luxury of knowing that orcs can’t be reasoned with. They are inherently bad, so we don’t have to feel guilty about whatever we do to them. They are often referred to as a ‘savage’ race, inferior to civilization.

Ralph Lauren's "assimilation aesthetic"

Assimilation Aesthetic

By Ruth HopkinsImagine my horror this morning, upon discovering Ralph Lauren’s latest venture. Let’s call it Assimilation Era Chic.

Old portraits of Native men from the Allotment and Assimilation Era (1887–1943) are displayed like cover models among Ralph Lauren’s latest line for the 2014 Holiday season. I did a double take for an instant, because one of the men pictured looked like my ancestor.

Hopkins explains what's wrong with this:Mr. Lauren, these stylish Native men in your pictures are not your employees, nor your slaves. They lived. They have names. They come from a proud lineage of Native peoples older than America. Each warrior pictured is someone’s grandfather, and I guarantee they suffered mightily just to survive the genocidal holocaust European invaders inflicted upon them. Why do they look so stoic? They were brave Native warriors who witnessed the massacre of innocents, had their lands stolen from them, and faced an uncertain future after the Federal government broke every treaty they ever made with Native nations in this country. They were fighting for the survival of our kind.

What many people alive today fail to realize is Natives of the Assimilation Era wore western clothes because they were forced to do so. We were hunted by cavalry soldiers and made to give up our freedom and live on reservations. Our culture and language was ripped from us. Our ceremonies and religious practices were declared illegal. My own father and uncles, who were torn from their mother’s embrace and put in boarding school, were mercilessly beaten for speaking their Native tongue. They didn’t want to wear itchy woolen vests and tight narrow shoes made for white children. They had no choice. The fashion Ralph Lauren glorifies arose from oppression.Adrienne Keene notes more problems with the ads:

Keene: Dear Ralph Lauren, Our Ancestors Are Not Your Props!

By Dr. Adrienne KeeneCultural appropriation takes away our symbols, our art and our designs, and with it, takes away our power over our cultural markers. This is dangerous, because not only is it blatantly disrespectful to the places, people, and traditions these images come from, it continues the colonial mentality that Native peoples, lands, and traditions are free for the taking.

We become commodities—objects that can be bought and sold. I mean, the heading of this page says “featured stock,” referring to the clothing, but when there are images of Native people right next to the $265 headdress t-shirt, it’s hard to separate the people from the products. Additionally, when the word is “stock,” one can’t help but think of animals (or slaves) for sale.

There’s also this piece that I can’t quite put my finger on, and don’t know if I can adequately express. The photos are all men in (mostly) western clothing, with “tribal” accents here and there. I feel like there is a subtext here of “civilizing”—even the “wild Indians” can look dignified in these clothes. You can have your Americana aesthetic without the savage overtones! It just reminds me of the "Tom Torlino—Navajo" photograph, which is representative of the cultural genocide of government boarding schools.

Finally, there is the economic piece at play here. Look at the prices. A $265 T-shirt featuring a sacred headdress, a $1,300 plaid coat, $400 sweaters—and all of this money is going straight to building Lauren’s personal wealth and empire, none of it is going to the communities he is directly exploiting to sell his product. How American of him: seeing Natives as inherently disposable and exploitable, and using Native resources to build his personal wealth, while simultaneously yearning for the romanticized past when Natives roamed the plains, and ignoring his own complicity in the ongoing settler colonial project. Pretty much the story of the United States.

Ralph Lauren backs off

Ralph Lauren apologizes for Native American ads

By Sarah LeTrentRalph Lauren's 2014 holiday ad campaign for its RRL line was raked over the coals on social media this week for its "assimilation aesthetic," featuring what appear to be antique photos of stoic Native Americans dressed in Western attire.

Now, the company is apologizing for the imagery and has since removed the images from its website.

"Ralph Lauren has a longstanding history in celebrating the rich history, importance and beauty of our country's Native American heritage," the company said in a statement. "We recognize that some of the images depicted in the RRL look book may have caused offense and we have removed them from our website."

Ruth Hopkins, a contributor to the site Last Real Indians, took issue with the campaign's use of Native Americans, claiming that the imagery is not only ignorant, it's a harsh reminder of a time of extreme oppression, and even genocide, for the nation's indigenous people.Celine Cooper: Withdrawn Ralph Lauren advertising had used offensive images of Native Americans

By Celine CooperLast week, American company Ralph Lauren debuted its Double RL & Co 2014 holiday line of clothing. The website campaign didn’t feature the usual doe-eyed teenagers wearing tweed hats and polo shirts. Nope. Instead, the advertisement was organized around old sepia portraits of Native American men and women, unsmiling and wearing Western clothes, from the Allotment and Assimilation Era in the United States as its cover models (presumably without the permission of their descendants). Beside their images was Ralph Lauren’s “New Stock” of holiday clothes—cargo pants, wool jackets, button-down shirts and purses.

Thankfully, Ralph Lauren, that doyen of classic Americana, was immediately met with an online campaign against the company’s questionable “assimilation aesthetic.” (You can read the outrage on the Twitter hashtag #BoycottRalphLauren).

The online activism worked. On Friday, the company took down the images. Although they didn’t offer an actual apology, they did release the following statement: “We recognize that some of the images depicted in the RRL look book may have caused offense and we have removed them from our website.”

Offence, indeed. Here’s the thing. What Ralph Lauren wants to sell is not the actual history of America, but an idea about America, a certain nostalgia and patriotism. Their ads were meant to evoke a pioneering spirit; the outpost, the frontier where natives were tamed and the Wild West was won. Cowboys and Indians. Classic Americana, that.A previous Ralph Lauren problem:Jessica Deer ‏@Kanhehsiio
Ralph Lauren is one of those repeat offenders of cultural appropriation. Stumbled upon this gross stuff in Feb.

And Indians from that era who weren't modeling Ralph Lauren:

Yes, He's Handsome--But He's Not Your Model. 25 Photos of Natives in European Dress

The stereotype here is that Indians were willing participants in a 19th-century fashion revolution. That they would've sat and posed for pictures to help Ralph Lauren sell its goods.

For more on the subject, see Ralph Lauren's Fetishistic Native Collection.

Indians, blacks are America's "others"

A blogger makes the case for how Native stereotyping relates to shootings, violence, and terrorism:

Ferguson, #ChangeTheName, and White Supremacy Entangled

By Miguel GarciaBoth the movement to fight against offensive native mascotry and the murder of yet another unarmed young black man are connected through “othering” and the dehumanization of people of color. “Othering” can be defined as the concept of creating and maintaining a difference of division between one group of people and another (Said, 1979). This of course is white society and the other, the non-white society.

This creation and maintaining of difference manifest itself in Native Americans portrayed as mascots on football helmets, and young black men seen as “demons” by White police officers. The “other” is not viewed by white society as a human being. The “other” is viewed as non-living, a caricature, a mythical devil or demon.

This dehumanization is a product of White Supremacy and Colonialism. White Supremacy is the political ideology that believes white people (Europeans) are superior over people of color. White supremacy is upheld and reinforced through political, economic, social, cultural, educational, legal, and military systems of power. Colonialism can be defined as the subjugation or domination of a group of people and/or culture over the other through the establishments of settlements in a distant territory.

In the white imagination, Native Americans don’t exist anymore but only as artifacts of the past, in the form of mascots. Not only did European settlers commit the biggest genocide in human history when Columbus landed in 1492, Native Americans never existed in the white psyche to begin with. This Thanksgiving let’s not forget that fairy tale of manifest destiny. European colonial settlers as the great discovery states, discovered a land unoccupied by no one. God had made them the chosen people, who had the right to this uninhibited land. So how would white society even treat Native Americans as humans, when they didn’t exist in the first place?His conclusion:Like the Hottentot Venus human zoos (Blanchard, et. al., 2009) and Buffalo Bills Wild West shows (Maddra, 2006) of the past, Black and Indigenous people are only here for white society’s entertainment. What’s the difference of displaying Black people in cages and Native Americans portrayed as uncivilized savages who had to be tamed by the Cowboy hero Buffalo Bill? There is no difference. They were both seen as not humans. They were “othered.”Comment:  For more on Ferguson, see Black and White Rage in Ferguson and Prosecutor's Bias in Ferguson Shooting.

45th National Day of Mourning

National Day of Mourning Reflects on Thanksgiving’s Horrific, Bloody History

By Matt JuulWhile families across the country indulge on their Thanksgiving Day feasts, hundreds will gather at Cole’s Hill in Plymouth on Thursday to commemorate a different tradition: the National Day of Mourning.

The event, held annually on Thanksgiving, is meant to honor Native American ancestors who died due to the European invasion, and to expose the bloody history behind the November holiday.

Now in its 45th year, the National Day of Mourning’s organizers hope to shine a light on modern issues facing Native Americans today, as well as to bring more awareness to the real, horrific story behind Thanksgiving.

“I think there seems to be this myth in this country propagated about Thanksgiving that, ‘Oh, you know, the Pilgrims and the Indians all sat down to have a meal together and they were good friends and everybody lived happily ever after,” says Mahtowin Munro, co-leader of the United American Indians of New England, which organizes the annual event. “It’s really important for us to stand up and talk about what the reality was and to teach others about that reality.”This Thanksgiving, Let’s Talk About Genocide Rather Than Pilgrims and ‘Friendly Indians’

By Sonali KolhatkarFew people have put that context of violence on paper as eloquently as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an American Indian activist and academic whose latest book, “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” is now in its fifth printing in less than two months since it was released. In it, Dunbar-Ortiz teases out the complex web of intersecting American policies toward Native peoples that include land theft, dispossession, extermination, broken pledges, Christian missionaries and boarding schools, but also self-determination, resistance and survival. Dunbar-Ortiz refutes the Thanksgiving ideal, writing that “the idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the U.S. is an insidious smoke screen.” Rather than her book being one that is told from a collective indigenous people’s perspective, she writes, “This is a history of the United States.”

American Indians are not simply a footnote in our collective origin story. They are here because they have survived genocide. Today there are nearly 3 million American Indians, comprising more than 500 federally recognized indigenous communities and nations. In the late 1800s, after centuries of extermination, there were fewer than 1 million indigenous people left who had descended from 15 million inhabitants of the land that we now call the United States of America. In a Nov. 5 interview on “Uprising,” Dunbar-Ortiz told me that “the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 marks what people in the U.S. call ‘the end of the trail’—the last Indian. There was a [real] genocide and then a ‘narrative genocide’ in history.” It is this narrative genocide that Dunbar-Ortiz attempts to undermine, because, as she writes in her book, “it was crucial to make the reality and significance of Indigenous Peoples’ survival clear.”

To understand the magnitude of the genocide, it is instructive to lay out the pre-colonial sophistication of indigenous societies in the Americas. Not only were their agricultural systems highly developed to coexist with natural systems, they even invented methods of mass food storage, and charted trails within and between territories, many of which form the basis of the modern freeway system. Additionally, American Indians “were very healthy [and] lived long lives,” said Dunbar-Ortiz, “partly supported by excellent hygiene, which the Europeans always noted with some suspicion.” Many American Indian forms of self-government were matrilineal, which, explained Dunbar-Ortiz, was not simply “the opposite of patriarchy”; rather, it was a democratic form of government. In fact, “women were in charge of the food supply and the distribution of food.” There was also a rich and vibrant system of trade. These facts about pre-colonial Native American history “[don’t] make it out of the technical and archaeological journals,” she lamented.

The arrival of the pilgrims, which is celebrated today as part of this nation’s birth story, represented the beginning of the end of an indigenous way of life. Foremost in the project of extermination was the land grab, which is rooted in notions of “manifest destiny,” a sense of entitlement of land by Anglo settlers that was free for the taking. But that land was not free—it was inhabited for generations by indigenous people who had a very different approach to land ownership from the settlers. Dunbar-Ortiz expanded on that difference, saying, ” The United States when it was founded created this whole new idea of ‘parcels of land’ ... making parcels that were commodities for sale, real estate.” It promoted the notion of land as “private property,” which had never before existed on the continent.

Killing "terrorists" = killing Indians

Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?

By John TirmanWhy the American silence on our wars’ main victims? Our self-image, based on what cultural historian Richard Slotkin calls “the frontier myth”—in which righteous violence is used to subdue or annihilate the savages of whatever land we’re trying to conquer—plays a large role. For hundreds of years, the frontier myth has been one of America’s sturdiest national narratives.

When the challenges from communism in Korea and Vietnam appeared, we called on these cultural tropes to understand the U.S. mission overseas. The same was true for Iraq and Afghanistan, with the news media and politicians frequently portraying Islamic terrorists as frontier savages. By framing each of these wars as a battle to civilize a lawless culture, we essentially typecast the local populations as the Indians of our North American conquest. As the foreign policy maven Robert D. Kaplan wrote on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page in 2004, “The red Indian metaphor is one with which a liberal policy nomenklatura may be uncomfortable, but Army and Marine field officers have embraced it because it captures perfectly the combat challenge of the early 21st century.”

Politicians tend to speak in broader terms, such as defending Western values, or simply refer to resistance fighters as terrorists, the 21st-century word for savages. Remember the military’s code name for the raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound? It was Geronimo.

The frontier myth is also steeped in racism, which is deeply embedded in American culture’s derogatory depictions of the enemy. Such belittling makes it all the easier to put these foreigners at risk of violence. President George W. Bush, to his credit, disavowed these wars as being against Islam, as has President Obama.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Indians, Terrorists = US Enemies and Bin Laden Codenamed Geronimo.

Renaming Columbus Day angers Italian Americans

On the Columbus Day front this year, Minneapolis and Seattle passed resolutions to change the name:

Inaccurate, controversial history of Columbus leads to alternative celebrations in North Dakota

By Garrett Richie“We don’t necessarily talk about Columbus Day,” Braun said. “We talk about Columbus and the complexity and the history that Columbus in fact did not discover North America. Mostly, we talk about the larger issues of what happened as Europeans settled in North America and the consequences of that.”

As far as the holiday is concerned, it originally came about as a way for Italian Americans to celebrate their heritage during a time when they were still being discriminated against in the U.S. in the late 19th century. However, as Italian Americans began to blend into the general white population in the U.S., the holiday became a more national event, and the focus shifted.

“The irony is that this holiday that started out as a celebration of a significant ethnic heritage against some kind of discrimination has become something that another ethnic group finds oppressive to them,” Braun said.

With this in mind, some towns and groups have tried to find ways to reconsider Columbus by either renaming the holiday or creating a celebration that recognizes Native Americans. This year, the Brainerd, Minn., city council proposed (but eventually tabled) a motion to replace Columbus Day with Chief Red Wing Day, and Minneapolis designated Columbus Day as Indigenous People’s Day.Later articles addressed this change. In particular, Italian Americans weren't happy about the slight to their hero:

Seattle council faces backlash from Italian-American group

Italian-American activists say they’re forming a political-action committee to oppose local politicians who supported designating Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

By Daniel BeekmanSome Italian-American activists in Seattle say they’re forming a political-action committee to strike back at members of the City Council who voted unanimously Monday to recognize an Indigenous Peoples’ Day on the same date as Columbus Day.

They say the council members disrespected Seattle’s 25,000 Italian-American residents when they picked Columbus Day rather than another date.

Some Native-American activists, backed by the Seattle Human Rights Commission and more than 30 other organizations, had asked for an Indigenous Peoples’ Day on that date to recall the harm inflicted on their ancestors by Europeans such as Christopher Columbus.

“We empathize with the death and destruction of the Native Americans,” activist Ralph Fascitelli said Thursday during a news conference at Il Terrazzo Carmine, an Italian restaurant in Pioneer Square. “But we think right now this is almost going too far in terms of political correctness.”

They claim the holiday has nothing to with Columbus, but instead celebrates immigration:

Columbus Day changes run aground due to lack of interest, resources; Shared Vision tables issue of honoring American Indians around holiday

By Zach KayserThe idea is spreading beyond Minnesota, too: on Oct. 6, city leaders in Seattle also voted to change the holiday. However, the move drew criticism from Seattle's Italian-American community, news agency Reuters reported.

"Italians are intensely offended," Seattle resident Lisa Marchese told the City Council. "For decades, Italian-Americans celebrated not the man, but the symbol of Columbus Day. That symbol means we honor the legacy of our ancestors who immigrated to Seattle, overcame poverty, a language barrier, and above all, discrimination."

However, the argument for changing the name centers around the link between the holiday and Columbus' legacy. Honoring him as the man who "discovered" America is perceived as paying short shrift to the millions of American Indians who lived here for generations before his arrival. Symbolism aside, there's also a more literal aspect: the acts of aggression on the part of Columbus' expeditions.

Anton Treuer, director of BSU's American Indian Resource Center, said the full extent of atrocities committed by Columbus remains widely unacknowledged.Alas, the facts don't support their claims:

Redface in America

By Robin Annette LaDueThere have been people of Italian descent who claim that their ethnicity is being disrespected by changing the name from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Their statements are that Columbus Day is really Italian Heritage Day. However, their arguments do not adhere to the facts of the matter. Columbus Day, was, in fact, first put forth under President Harrison. A more likely use of Columbus Day was that:

“During the four hundredth anniversary in 1892, teachers, preachers, poets and politicians used Columbus Day rituals to teach ideals of patriotism. These patriotic rituals were framed around themes such as support for war, citizenship boundaries, the importance of loyalty to the nation, and celebrating social progress.”

Nowhere was it suggested in the process of making Columbus Day a federal holiday that it was in honor of Italian heritage. This does not mean that this holiday is not of great significance to people of Italian descent. It is simply not a reality that changing the name is meant to dishonor people of Italian descent. To frame the long overdue decision to recognize Native people as being disrespectful of Italian people is part of ignoring the reality of the grief so many Native people still deal with on a daily basis due to the loss of land, language, children, culture, and life that began with the landing of Columbus. These are not realities that should be celebrated.

A fact that appears to be lost in this discussion is what the immigration of people of Italian descent and other Europeans meant for Native people of the Americas. For every person who immigrated, another Indigenous person was displaced. The pain of this displacement is almost impossible to express. In effect, when politicians and others tell Native people to go home, it would be to the backyards of such people.

You don't have to dig far to see what Italian Americans are really celebrating. It's the same thing other Americans celebrate: their own "greatness."

Columbus gets his comeuppance: Why his holiday is in deep jeopardy

Mascot for violent European colonialism has been celebrated for years. These major U.S. cities are saying "no more"

By J.P. LawrenceSome Italian-Americans and others object to the name change, deeming it political correctness. If Columbus Day needs a name change, they say, so does the District of Columbia; Columbus, Ohio; and Columbia University.

Dr. Joseph V. Scelsa, founder and president of the Italian American Museum in New York City’s Little Italy, said Columbus represents the courage shown by immigrants, such as his ancestors, when they came to America.

“If it weren’t for this courageous European who came to these shores, 99% of us would not be here today. He must be seen in the context of his time, not ours,” he said. “What he did was bring Christian civilization to the Western World, and the benefits of that outweigh any disadvantages.”

Scelsa, who holds a doctorate in Sociology and Education from Columbia University, disputed claims Columbus directly killed anyone, while the “Incas practiced blood sacrifice and committed genocide.”

“I believe it is a travesty of justice to dishonor this courageous man who gave so much for this country, and I totally disagree with it,” Scelsa said. “There are many other ways to celebrate Native Americans, and we should, but not at the expense of Columbus.”Comment:  So apparently it is all about the man and his individual accomplishments after all.

The benefits of "Christian civilization" outweigh any disadvantages? Many American Indians and African Americans would disagree.

And now we're at the crux of the conflict. Italian Americans and other white Americans think they're the center of the universe. They think it's more important to celebrate and honor them than it is to acknowledge the death and destruction of Native cultures. The message is that white peoples' feelings are more important than Native peoples' lives.

It's more than understandable why Natives and their liberal allies don't accept this message. Because it's immoral and un-Christian to celebrate conquest. Killing and enslaving people isn't "civilization," it's barbarism.

The final word is my tweet on the subject:

Mussolini's death toll was 300,000. Columbus's toll was similar. Let's replace Columbus Day with Mussolini Day to honor Italians' heritage.

For more on Columbus, see King Touts "Values Columbus Brought" and Columbus Day Celebrates White Superiority.

Below:  A present-day reminder of what Columbus means to most Americans.