Sent
Blog, ws, indivs:
OMNI
US IMPERIALISM:
CONTINENTAL AND SOUTHERN (and NORTHERN) EXPANSION, NEWSLETTER #2, September 13,
2013.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace.
(#1 Jan. 12, 2013)
What’s at stake: The
westward sweep across the continent seemed to fulfill what many
nineteenth-century US citizens believed was God's plan for the nation. Informed, thoughtful people no longer believe
in the extirpation of hundreds of native nations to have been “Manifest
Destiny.” We have increased in awareness
and truth. Yet the over forty invasions and
interventions perpetrated by the leaders of the US since WWII were justified by
similar delusory and deluding, arrogant claims, such as “US exceptionalism.” Whether “Manifest Destiny” or “Exceptionalism”
or “bringing Democracy to the world,” the words similarly disguise callous
greed and power for permanent war.
My blog: The War Department and Peace Heroes
Newsletters:
Index:
Contents CONTINENTAL
WESTWARD EXPANSION #1 at end.
(Also: Go to US Imperialism
Pacific/E. Asia Westward Movement, Encircling C hina Newsletter, http://omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/,
#1 May 8, 2012; #2 August 22, 2012; #3 Nov. 25, 2012; #4 Jan. 12, 2013; #5
March 27, 2013; #6 July 5, 2013; #7 August 12, 2013; #8 Nov. 8, 2013; #9 Jan.
2, 2014; #10 Feb. 3, 2014; #11 Feb. 26, 2014; #12 April 21, 2014; #13, June 26,
2014).
Contents Continental Westward
Expansion (and South and North) #2
Dick, Charles Mann, Decimation of Indian
Population, Westward Movement
Baker’s
Review of Charles Mann, 1491 (2011).
Latin
America: Dix and Fitzpatrick , Nicaragua
NORTH AMERICA
North
American Indian Genocide: Google Search
Elizabeth Fenn, the Mandans
Hatch, Osceola and the Great Seminole War (2012)
Rutkow, American Canopy, History of US Forests
US Art for
Empire: Art Glorifying Westward Conquest of Manifest Destiny: Emanuel
Leutze
Leutze
Richard
White, Railroads
From the
Continent to the Pacific: Japanese-Americans
Interned During WWII, One Consequence (see US
Imperialism Pacific/E. Asia Newsletters)
Imperialism Pacific/E. Asia Newsletters)
Winona La Duke’s
Native Struggles for Land and Life, Reviewed
by Mokhiber and
Weissman, “Somebody Else’s Land.”
Weissman, “Somebody Else’s Land.”
Vacy Vlazna, Australian
and Israeli Genocidal Parallels
THE AMERICAS,
BEFORE AND AFTER COLUMBUS
THE
AMERICAS, THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF EUROPEAN INVASION, a review of Charles Mann’s 1491 by Dick Bennett
One of the most powerful methods of US Southern
Western Hemisphere . In 1491, Charles Mann writes: “Probably the most accurate descriptor for
the original inhabitants of the Americas America ” refers to the
Western Hemisphere, or “the Americas America ”
by the accurate name for one part of North America--USA
Mann also provides additional
clarification in at least two ways: the
large number of indigenous people in this hemisphere preceding Columbus
Although “no definitive data exist,” and
that data are disputed, there is some agreement that perhaps there were 40
million throughout the Western Hemisphere before Columbus Mexico Americas
The figures for North America are not so abysmal,
because native population growth there had been limited by the mile-deep ice
not so many years before, and it was still very cold in the fifteenth century in
what is now called New England . But “by 1610 Britain
alone had about two hundred vessels operating off Newfoundland
and New England,” and these travelers uniformly reported “that New England was thickly settled.” The pattern of European invasion of North
America was similar to the pillage and decimation of South America. In 1619, Thomas Dermer landed in Maine and
discovered an empty coast from southern Maine to Narragansett Bay, “a cemetery
two hundred miles long and forty miles deep.” Some captive French sailors had
transmitted apparently hepatitis A, which killed “as much as 90 percent of the
people in coastal New England ” (62). To the Pilgrims “the good hand of God” had
“swept away great multitudes of the natives. . .that he might make room for
us” (63). When the Mayflower
Europeans landed in 1620 first at Cape Cod ,
they ransacked a deserted Indian village and stole stored maize, which they
carried back to the ship in a stolen metal kettle, while praising “God’s good
providence” they had found the corn (58).
In 1633 a smallpox epidemic
crushed the Narragansett. Thousands of
Indians were enslaved: By the eve of the
colonial revolution, “a third of the native people in Rhode Island
The New England Indians, the “people of
the First Light,” were defeated, killed, and dispersed. They “could avoid or adapt to European
technology but not European disease.”
(70). And with the improvement of arms during the next two centuries, the US Westward
Movement truly became “Manifest Destiny,” and continues to this day.
'1491': Vanished Americans
Review By Kevin Baker, October
9, 2005
MOST of us know, or think we know, what the first Europeans
encountered when they began their formal invasion of the Americas in 1492: a
pristine world of overwhelming natural abundance and precious few people; a
hemisphere where - save perhaps for the Aztec and Mayan civilizations of
Central America and the Incan state in Peru - human beings indeed trod lightly
upon the earth. Small wonder that, right up to the present day, American
Indians have usually been presented as either underachieving metahippies,
tree-hugging saints or some combination of the two.
Courtesy Gabriel González Maury/From ''1491''
1491
New Revelations of theAmericas Before Columbus
By Charles C. Mann. Illustrated. 462 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. 2011.
New Revelations of the
By Charles C. Mann. Illustrated. 462 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. 2011.
First Chapter: '1491' (October 9, 2005)
Forum: Book News and Reviews
The trouble with all such
stereotypes, as Charles C. Mann points out in his marvelous new book,
"1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus," is that they
are essentially dehumanizing. For cultural reasons of their own, Europeans and
white Americans have "implicitly depicted Indians as people who never
changed their environment from its original wild state. Because history is
change, they were people without history."
Mann, a science journalist and co-author of four previous books on
subjects ranging from aspirin to physics to the Internet, provides an important
corrective - a sweeping portrait of human life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus
Nearly everything about the Indians is currently a matter of
contention. There is little or no agreement about when their ancestors first
came to the Americas
Mann navigates adroitly through the controversies. He approaches
each in the best scientific tradition, carefully sifting the evidence, never
jumping to hasty conclusions, giving everyone a fair hearing - the experts and
the amateurs; the accounts of the Indians and their conquerors. And rarely is
he less than enthralling. A remarkably engaging writer, he lucidly explains the
significance of everything from haplogroups to glottochronology to landraces.
He offers amusing asides to some of his adventures across the hemisphere during
the course of his research, but unlike so many contemporary journalists, he
never lets his personal experiences overwhelm his subject.
Instead, Mann builds his story around what we want to know - the
"Frequently Asked Questions," as he heads one chapter. He moves
nimbly back and forth from the earliest prehistoric humans in the Americas to
the Pilgrims' first encounter with the Indian they (mistakenly) called
"Squanto"; from the villages of the Amazon rain forests to Cahokia,
near modern St. Louis, the sole, long-vanished city of the North American Mound
Builders; from the cultivation of maize to why it was that the Incas apparently
developed the wheel but never used it as anything but a child's toy.
Mann remains resolutely agnostic on some of the fiercest debates.
What he is most interested in showing us is how American Indians - like all
other human beings - were intensely involved in shaping the world they lived
in. He is sure that "many though not all Indians were superbly active land
managers - they did not live lightly on the land." Just how they did live,
so long uninfluenced by the vast majority of the world's population in Africa
and Eurasia , forms the bulk of his fascinating
narrative.
What emerges
is an epic story, with a subtly altered tragedy at its heart. For all the
European depredations in the Americas New England coast, very
likely triggered one of the greatest catastrophes in human history. Before the
16th century, there may have been as many as 90 million to 112 million people
living in the Americas - people who could be as different from each other "as Turks
and Swedes," but who had cumulatively developed an incredible range of
natural environments, from seeding the Amazon Basin with fruit trees to
terracing the mountains of Peru. (Even the term "New World" may be a
misnomer; it is possible that the world's first city was in South
America .)
Then, disaster. According to some estimates, as much as 95 percent
of the Indians may have died almost immediately on contact with various
European diseases, particularly smallpox. That would have amounted to about
one-fifth of the world's total population at the time, a level of destruction
unequaled before or since. The exact numbers, like everything else, are in
dispute, but it is clear that these plagues wreaked havoc on traditional Indian
societies. European misreadings of America
In the end, the loss to us all was incalculable. As Mann writes,
"Having grown separately for millennia, the Americas Americas
Kevin Baker is the author of the
forthcoming historical novel "Strivers Row."
Dix
and Fitzpatrick, Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy
of U.S. Policy
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CONTINENTAL
NORTH AMERICA
INDIAN
DISPOSSESSION AND GENOCIDE
What’s at stake: WHO
TELLS THE STORY?
“. . .the
dominant interpretation of the past often enjoys its status not because of its
superior historical accuracy but because of its proponents’ social power.” Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History (p.
276).
GOOGLE
SEARCH
1. American Indian Holocaust
- United Native America
www.unitednativeamerica.com/aiholocaust.html
Smallpox Native American Plains Indian Genocide Pictures. line. The Effects of Removal on
American Indian
Tribes, Native
Americans and the
Land. line ...
2. Were American Indians the
Victims of Genocide? - History News ...
hnn.us/articles/7302.html
Jan 22, 2007 – It is a firmly established fact that a mere
250,000 native
Americans ...True, the
forced relocations of Indian
tribes were often accompanied
by ...
3. Native American Genocide -
Wicocomico Indian Nation
www.wicocomico-indian-nation.com/pages/genocide.html
NATIVE AMERICAN GENOCIDE. TRAIL
OF DEATH: after years of researching the Wicocomico Nation, it has led me to
various other sources of study ...
4. Native Americans in
the United States - Wikipedia, the free ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
American Indian and Alaska Native (2010 Census Bureau) ... They are composed of numerous, distinct Native American tribes and ethnic groups, many ..... from Europe ;genocide and warfare at the hands of European
explorers and colonists, ...
5. New Documentary Tracks Cultural Genocide of American Indians
www.truth-out.org/new...genocide-american-indians/1322003627
Nov 23, 2011 – From 1879 until the 1960s, more than 100,000 American Indian ...cruelty and beatings,
all intended to strip them of their Native identity and culture. ... In 1999, the state of Maine
6. GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS
www.operationmorningstar.org/genocide_of_native_americans.htm
"By 'genocide' we mean
the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. .... As long as the American Indians lived in close proximity to non-Native
American ...
7. Indian Country
Diaries . History . Assimilation, Relocation, Genocide ...
www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/assimilation.html
Since first contact, Native Americans have been given three choices — which ... The government push to assimilate native tribes continued through the 1950s ...
8. Indian Country
Diaries . History . California Genocide |
PBS
www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/calif.html
Population estimates
range as high as 300,000 American
Indians speaking
80 ... In California, the genocide of Native tribes was done in the name of the church.
9. Thanksgiving: Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans ...
newsjunkiepost.com/.../thanksgiving-celebrating-the-genocide-of-nat...
Nov 25, 2010 – This grim reality is far removed from the
fairytale version of a nation that views ... massacre of thousands of Pequot Indian men, women and children. This event marked
the start of the Native
American genocide which
would ...
10.
Native American Genocide Still
Haunts U.S.
www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/native-americans.html
Still, what we mustn't
forget is that mass killing of Native
Americans occurred
in our own was an
important cause of the decline for many . "Removal" policy was put into
action to clear the land for white settlers.
Against the Grain
Elizabeth Fenn, the Mandans
http://www.thenation.com/article/178675/against-grain
Mandans gathering buffalo berries, 1908. Photograph by Edward S.
Curtis
Encounters at the Heart of the World
A History of theMandan
By Elizabeth A. Fenn.
Buy this book
A History of the
By Elizabeth A. Fenn.
Buy this book
. . . Elizabeth Fenn’s Encounters at the Heart of the
World is part of a small renascence in historical writing. Some of the
most interesting of these new counternarratives—most of them written by
women—move purposefully against the grain of popular history, much of which
seems to be consumed by men. These historians also seek a popular audience, but
they are uninterested in attracting readers with the usual bait. They write
about unusual and uncommon topics. They juxtapose people, places and events not
usually considered together, but whose pairing seems obvious once it is made.
They certainly do not claim omniscience. Their histories are often tentative;
they are persuasive because they acknowledge the limits of evidence, while
displaying a kind of virtuosity in their ability to work from fragments. The
authors often insert themselves into the narratives, so that the reader gets a
sense of how the history has been fashioned.
But for all their presence in the text, the history is never
about the historians. They are as interested in finding different ways to tell
a story as they are wary of claiming too much certainty. The authors I’m
thinking of have hit their stride, having already published more than one book.
The best-known and most prolific of their number, Jill Lepore, has written most
recently not about Benjamin Franklin but his sister Jane. In her book Plutopia,
Kate Brown juxtaposes the towns of Richland , Washington , and Ozersk , Russia —an obvious coupling, once it is made, of
the places that produced plutonium in the United
States and the Soviet Union .
Conevery Bolton Valencius writes not about the San Francisco
Americans know the Mandans, if they know them at all, as the people who hosted Lewis and Clark
during the first winter of their famous journey of exploration. By then, Mandan villages had been at the center of life on the
northern Great Plains for roughly three
centuries. Fenn traces them back even further in order to explore a millennium
of North American history. The Mandans
The past is a crowded place, and any historian has to answer two
basic questions: Why tell this particular story, out of all possible stories
about the past? And why tell it in this particular way? Fenn is explicit, if
brief, about the first. She goes to North Dakota ,
the middle of the Mandan Mandan
But Fenn avoids most of the traps of a pilgrimage to the Indians
because she is such a good historian and storyteller. What she wants to do is
use the Mandans Jamestown , or Plymouth , or
even St. Augustine Missouri Mandans rise; the Mandans fall; the Mandans Mandans
The writings of explorers, traders, archaeologists and
government officials account for most of Fenn’s sources, but she wants to take
her stance not with them as they “discover” the Mandans ,
but rather with the Mandans Mandan Mandan
She has written a profoundly spatial history rooted in a place
made by the Mandans Mandan
stories, when Lone Man encounters First Creator, the latter proclaims that the Heart River is “the heart—the center of the world.” And
it nearly is, at least if the world is confined to North
America . The confluence of the Heart and the Missouri ,
just west of the hundredth meridian, is 120 miles southwest of Rugby ,
North Dakota , which is the geographical
midpoint of North America . Today, it is a
different kind of center: the focus of the Northern Plains shale-oil boom.
* * *
The book begins not with the Mandans
coming to their homeland, but rather with Fenn arriving in August 2002 at the
Fort Berthold Reservation, where the
Mandans, Arikaras and Hidatsas form the Three Affiliated Tribes. She has
gone there “just to see if it felt right.” In the narrative, Fenn’s journeys
within Mandan country become the spatial
equivalent of the Mandans
Once the Mandans reached the
Heart River around 1500, they remained largely in place, moving relatively
short distances up and down the Missouri
1
OSCEOLA AND THE GREAT SEMINOLE WAR
A Struggle for Justice and
Freedom
Thom Hatch. St. Martin 's
Press
At the time of his death in 1838, Seminole warrior Osceola was
the most famous and respected Native American in the world. Born a Creek, young
Osceola was driven from his home by General Andrew Jackson to Spanish Florida,
where he joined the Seminole tribe. Years later, President Jackson signed the
Indian Removal Act, which was not only intended to relocate the Seminoles to
hostile lands in the West but would force the return of runaway slaves who had
joined that tribe. Osceola—outraged at the potential loss of his people and
homeland—did not hesitate to declare war on the United States
Osceola and the Great Seminole War vividly recounts
how one warrior with courage and cunning unequaled by any Native American
leader before or after would mastermind battle strategies that would embarrass
the best officers in the United States Army. Employing daring guerilla tactics,
Osceola initiated and orchestrated the longest, most expensive, and deadliest
war ever fought by the United
States United States U.S.
Insightful, meticulously researched, and thrillingly told,
award-winning author Thom Hatch’s account
CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR
Jump to:
BOOK EXCERPTS
The Creek Refugees
Nine-year-old Billy Powell, the boy who would grow up to become the warrior Osceola, watched as his whole world went up in flames.
Billy was in the company of his mother and dozens of other members of the Creek tribe—mostly women, children, and old men—who crouched in the dense underbrush where they had fled from their homes. One by one they cautiously raised their heads to view great plumes of charcoal smoke furiously billowing upward into the distant sky. This fear-inspiring sight indicated that countless fires were raging in the direction
Nine-year-old Billy Powell, the boy who would grow up to become the warrior Osceola, watched as his whole world went up in flames.
Billy was in the company of his mother and dozens of other members of the Creek tribe—mostly women, children, and old men—who crouched in the dense underbrush where they had fled from their homes. One by one they cautiously raised their heads to view great plumes of charcoal smoke furiously billowing upward into the distant sky. This fear-inspiring sight indicated that countless fires were raging in the direction
REVIEWS
Praise for Osceola and the Great Seminole War
Praise for Osceola and the Great Seminole War
“It’s a fascinating history, touching on the complex relationships among white, black, and Native Americans in the contested territory we now know asFlorida
--Boston
“Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Crazy Horse are well known to every schoolchild. Hatch deftly brings Osceola to the pantheon of legendary Native American leaders.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“Engaging, well-researched… This important book adds to our understanding of the shameful mistreatment of Native Americans and their resistance.”
--Publishers Weekly
“The Seminole tribe of Florida had an origin as complex and tragic as the history of race inAmerica Florida
—Thomas Powers, Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner and National Book Critics Circle finalist for The Killing of Crazy Horse
“With admirable scholarship and fresh and exciting detail, Thom
“It’s a fascinating history, touching on the complex relationships among white, black, and Native Americans in the contested territory we now know as
--
“Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Crazy Horse are well known to every schoolchild. Hatch deftly brings Osceola to the pantheon of legendary Native American leaders.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“Engaging, well-researched… This important book adds to our understanding of the shameful mistreatment of Native Americans and their resistance.”
--Publishers Weekly
“The Seminole tribe of Florida had an origin as complex and tragic as the history of race in
—Thomas Powers, Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner and National Book Critics Circle finalist for The Killing of Crazy Horse
“With admirable scholarship and fresh and exciting detail, Thom
In the Press
OSCEOLA
AND THE GREAT SEMINOLE WAR by Thom Hatch | Kirkus Book Reviews
Read the Kirkus Review of OSCEOLA AND THE GREAT SEMINOLE WAR A Struggle for Justice and Freedom. Plains Indians expert Hatch (Encyclopedia of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution, 2007, etc.) applies his expertise to the man who led theFlorida
- Kirkus Reviews
Read the Kirkus Review of OSCEOLA AND THE GREAT SEMINOLE WAR A Struggle for Justice and Freedom. Plains Indians expert Hatch (Encyclopedia of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution, 2007, etc.) applies his expertise to the man who led the
- Kirkus Reviews
Reviews from Goodreads
THOM HATCH is an award-winning author and historian who
specializes in the American West, the Civil War, and Native American conflicts.
AMERICAN CANOPY: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a
Nation
by Eric Rutkow
KIRKUS REVIEW
An appreciation of how much American history was shaped and
defined by trees.
From the earliest “plantations,” as colonial settlements were
known in the 17th century, to our understanding of today’s climate change,
forests have been a driving force in both national development and
consciousness, writes Rutkow in this impressive survey. Although the book
suffers from a lack of material on the Native American experience with the
forests, Rutkow is in command of a prodigious amount of material, which he
carefully keeps in forward motion. The author unhurriedly wends his way from
the “marketable commodities” of timber-trade–based colonization, through the
political symbolism of the Liberty Trees and the Charter Oaks, to the rise of
the ornamental-tree business and Benjamin Franklin’s efforts to catalog
American trees. As he chronicles the importance of hard cider on the frontier
(“the first great American drink”), the rise of the transcendentalists and the
citrus industry, rail and telegraph, the denuding of the Lake States and the
excitement generated by Arbor Day and Earth Day, Rutkow knits numerous
vest-pocket biographies into the picture. These include both high- and
low-profile actors, from Johnny Appleseed to Henry David Thoreau, Gifford Pinchot
to Gaylord Nelson, William Levitt to Teddy Roosevelt, who helped fashion “an
overarching philosophy that all natural resources ought to be managed with an
eye to sustainability and efficient use.”
A meaty history of the American forest and a convincing
testament to its continued political, cultural and environmental importance.
[Needed is a history
which connects the westward assault on Native Americans and native
forests. –Dick]
Westward the Course of
Empire Takes Its Way (mural study, U.S. Capitol) 1861 http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=14569
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze
Born: Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany 1816
Died: Washington, District of Columbia 1868
oil on canvas 33 1/4 x 43
3/8 in. (84.5 x 110.1 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Leutze's mural study for the Capitol in Washington celebrated the idea of Manifest Destiny
just when the Civil War threatened the republic. The surging crowd of figures
records the births, deaths, and battles fought as European Americans settled
the continent to the edge of the Pacific. Like Moses and the Israelites who
appear in the ornate borders of the painting, these pioneers stand at the
threshold of the Promised Land, ready to fulfill what many nineteenth-century
Americans believed was God's plan for the nation.
Railroaded: THE
TRANSCONTINENTALS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA
Richard White (Author, Stanford University
Overview | Contents | Formats
"A powerful book, crowded with telling details and shrewd
observations." —Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review
This original, deeply researched history shows the transcontinentals to
be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of
the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism
all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly
funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.
BOOK DETAILS: Paperback, April 2012
·
5.5 × 8.3 in / 720 pages
CONQUERING
THE PACIFIC (go to OMNI
Newsletters on US Imperialism, Pacific Ocean, E. Asia)
Time
of Fear (PBS), WWII Japanese-American Internment Camps in Arkansas
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A Time To Fear
A Time to Fear(2004) This PBS documentary gem tells the story of 16,000 Japanese Americans who,
during World War II, were interned in a poor, remote area of Arkansas Arkansas Arkansas
A
massive camp was hastily built for soon-arriving internees. The traditional
family lives of these Japanese Americans were severely disrupted. The men were
no longer the providers and the unquestioned authority. The lack of privacy
impinged on the way these families conducted themselves. One got the impression
of thousands of uprooted people seeking to maintain some dignity in an
artificial and hostile environment.
The
internees were diligent and resourceful. This the local Jerome residents found
disturbing and even threatening. One of many interesting vignettes related to
teachers. Under Civil Service regulations teachers hired to teach at the
internment camp were paid $2,000 annually. This prompted many of the best local
teachers to leave their $900/year public school positions.
A
heavy-handed U. S.
Some
of the internees provided insightful narratives as to how they felt and what
they did during their two years of internment. Evidently, many of the younger
internees flourished. Also, in part to escape the boredom of camp life, young
men in Jerome joined about 10,000 other Japanese Americans in the 442nd
Regiment, which won more battle decorations than any other U. S.
Reference
was made to a late 1944 Supreme Court ruling that declared that these internees
were no longer ‘dangerous.’ This prompted a swift dispersal of Arkansas California
Somebody else's wealth
Winona La Duke, All Our
Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
South End Press, 1999).
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From:
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Louis Proyect
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Date:
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Tue, 21 Dec 1999 14:13:52 -0500
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Review of Somebody Else's
Wealth
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Where does the vast wealth of the
To this prevailing, romanticized perspective, Winona LaDuke
offers a jolt of reality: Many
of the great
somebody else's wealth
-- the natural resources of Native Americans.
In her eloquent new book, All
Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: South End Press, 1999), LaDuke documents the historic -- and
ongoing -- process of Native American
dispossession.
LaDuke, a member of the Anishinaabeg nation, lives on the White
Earth Reservation, in northern
and converted commonly held Anishinaabeg land into individual
parcels, with much of it soon alienated from Anishinaabeg (and a huge chunk
taken by the state of
The big winners in the process were Frederick Weyerhaueser and
the company he created. "Some are made rich and some are made
poor," LaDuke writes. "In 1895,
White Earth 'neighbor' Frederick Weyerhaueser owned more acres
of timber than anyone else in the world." Today, descendant
companies of Weyerhaueser continue to clearcut what remains of the
In upstate
scattered reservations -- a tiny fraction of their former
possessions. The
Akwesasne Mohawk Reserve borders the
once relied on fishing and farming have been forced, she writes,
to
abandon their livelihoods because the river is so polluted with
PCBs
dumped by General Motors and air pollution depositions have
poisoned the
land.
"Many of the families used to eat 20-25 fish meals a
month," LaDuke quotes
an Akwesasne environmental expert as saying. "It's now said
that the
traditional Mohawk diet is spaghetti."
All Our Relations features another half dozen case studies of corporate and
governmental assaults on Native American land and livelihoods.
Dispossession of Native American lands has led to what LaDuke
calls "structural poverty." Structural poverty, she told us,
"ensues when you do not have control over the land or any of your
assets."
"It is not a question of material wealth, but having
conditions of human
dignity within the reservation," she says, citing a litany
of devastating
statistics on Native American poverty rates, crime rates and
access to
health care. "You can throw whatever social program you
want at this, but
until we are allowed to determine our own destiny, these are the
problems
we are going to face."
Dispossession has inflicted on Native Americans an intertwined
spiritual
poverty as well, she says. "You have some [Native
Americans] whose whole
way of life are based on buffalo, but we have no buffalo. This
loss causes
a kind of grieving in our community."
But LaDuke's All Our
Relations is as much a hopeful as depressing book. She chronicles Native American resistance to incursions from
multinational corporations, government agencies which frequently act to
further corporate interests and a white-dominated society which too often
maintains a settler mentality.
She profiles women like Gail
Small, "the kind of woman you'd want to watch your back at a meeting
with dubious characters." An attorney, Small runs a group called Native Action, which has led the
strikingly successful fight
against coal company strip mining on the Northern Cheyenne and
other
and helping establish a
LaDuke herself is an inspiring
figure, working with her
Recovery Project not only to pressure states and the federal
government to
return Native American lands (which because they are government
held,
would not require the displacement of any individual property
holders),
but also trying to enact a sustainable forest management plan
for White
Earth, supporting the development of wind power on the
reservation and
establishing a project, Native Harvest, to "restore
traditional foods and
capture a fair market price for traditionally and organically
grown foods"
such as wild hominy corn, organic raspberries, wild rice,
buffalo sausage
and maple syrup.
All Our Relations is a wonderful read,
and an important book -- both foretelling a story of plunder and exploitation
too often forgotten, and because, as LaDuke notes, "this whole
discussion is really not about the Seminoles and the panther" or other
particular problems facing particular groups of Native Americans -- "it
is really about
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Robert
Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The
Hunt for MegaProfits and
the Attack on Democracy (
Courage Press, 1999, http://www.corporatepredators.org)
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
|
GENOCIDAL
PARALLELS WITH MANY COUNTRIES: AUSTRALIA AND ISRAEL
Dear
friends,
I
see a lot of similarities between our history and red Indians story, in many
countries.
Dr.
Noah Salameh
VLAZNA:
Colonial partners in Israel
by
Vacy Vlazna - Intifada-Palestine
- 25 January 2014
“Imperialism after all is an act of
geographical violence” Edward Said
Is it
just me, or do you also see a thread of
colonial superiority and racism binding US, Australia, Canada to Israel?
Think about
it. All are ex-British colonies and like Israel, have a shameful history of
genocide committed against their respective Indigenous Peoples and all continue
to treat their First Peoples as third class citizens.
I can’t speak
for the US and Canada, but, apart from realpolitik and arms trade, an
underlying colonial arrogance goes a long way to explain why my ‘civilised’
‘democratic’ Australian government is complicit in granting Israel impunity to
daily perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity against generations of
Palestinian families.
The tragic
past and near narratives of the suffering of unspeakable colonial atrocities
against Indigenous Palestinians and
Indigenous Australians bear close resemblance and are written in blood and
great injustice.
Just as
Israel’s Independence Day and the Palestinian Nakba Day (in remembrance
of deportation and dispossession) have a bloody symbiosis,
Australia Day or Invasion Day, on the 26th January, is celebrated or
mourned according to the victors or the vanquished.
Both Israeli
and British colonists took the ‘terra nullius’ doctrine – empty land’
approach to justify their brutal occupations and wholesale land theft of
Palestine and Australia. Israel boasts it made the desert bloom though for
centuries Palestine traded in olives, oil, quinces, pinenuts, figs, carob,
cotton, dates, indigo, artichokes, citrus fruit, almonds, mint sumach and much
more. In Australia the Aborigines maintained their food supply with a sophisticated
management of the land with fire.
The island,
named Australia by British invaders and colonists, was home to almost a million
peoples of, at least, 200 nations that traced their ancestry back 60 millennia
along spiritual songlines of the land to the Dreaming – to Creation.
The imperial genocidal wars and massacres
(guns vs spears) such as those at Hawksbury, Nepean Richmond Hill, Risdon
Cove, Appin, Bathurst, Port Phillip, Swan River (Battle of Pinjarra),
Gravesend, Vinegar Hill, Myall Creek, Kinroy, Rufus R, Long lagoon,
Dawson River, Kalkadoon, Cape Grim, The Black war, McKinley River, West
Kimberely resisted by Aboriginal warriors like Pemulwuy, Winradyne,
Multuggerah, Yagan, Jandamarra as well as starvation and western diseases
decimated the dispossessed Aboriginal population to about 70,000 by 1920.
By then
violent genocide was replaced by the more covert
cultural genocide, or the genocide of indigeneity, through the government
policy of assimilation intended to eradicate indigenous identity by
cruelly and systematically destroying connections to family, the tribe and
ancestral lands.
Australia’s First Peoples were
marginalised onto
reservations and missions, restricted entry into white towns, exploited as
unpaid slave labour, their indigenous languages and sacred rituals forbidden,
and mixed blood children (The Stolen Generations) were forcibly kidnapped from
their parents for resocialisation – ie to be made ‘white’.
Assimilation
is where Australia, USA and Canada differ with Israel. The assimilation of
Palestinians for Israel is an anathema. The Zionist goal is a pure Jewish
state, rid of all Palestinians from the river to the sea. The whole of
historic Palestine, home to the Chosen People is a goal pursued with,
ironically, an ideological fervour akin to Hitler’s Herrenrasse and
Germanisation aspirations. Ergo, Israel perpetrates a slow motion brutal
genocide and a relentless push of Palestinians over the exile cliff.
Until the
1967 Referendum, Aborigines were government
property: “The right to choose a marriage partner, to be
legally responsible for one’s own children, to move about the state and to
socialise with non-Aboriginal Australians, were just some of the rights which
Aboriginal people did not have.”
Sound
familiar? Israel’s apartheid policies
similarly impact on Palestinians. Israel has passed racist laws
that impose severe movement restrictions dividing families, preventing
family reunification and obstructing the marriage of couples who come from
different zones. At least a third of Gazans have relatives in Israel and the
West Bank. The personal pain of such enforced separations which deny
Palestinians the shared and cherished moments we enjoy freely is immeasurable…grandparents
have never seen their grandchildren who may live 5 kilometres away… adult
children are denied the right to be with a dying
parent…births…weddings…funerals ..are overshadowed by painful absences.
The Native
Title Act, 1993, finally acknowledged that some Indigenous Australians ‘have
rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws
and customs.’ But, as mining boomed on resource rich indigenous lands,
corporate colonialism reared its greedy head undermining this landmark act with
the Northern Territory Intervention.
It was
initiated by the Howard government in 2007 and maintained by successive
governments including that of Kevin Rudd who made the historic apology to the
Stolen Generations even though indigenous communities were suffering the
humiliation of quarantined welfare payments and struggled to survive in third
world conditions.
The
Intervention was imposed “on the pretext that paedophile gangs were operating
in Indigenous settlements. Troops were sent in; townships were compulsorily
acquired and native title legislation ignored. Yet no prosecution for child
abuse resulted, and studies concluded that there was no evidence of any
systematic child abuse.” Marcus Waters, Review: Pilger’s Utopia shows
us Aboriginal Australia in 2014
As the Prawer
Plan was debated in the Israeli Knesset, the sound of the Australian government
salivating with envy must have been deafening while imagining the power to
evict, from their ancestral lands, 40,000 pesky Bedouins hindering Israel’s land
expansion or the power to simply bulldoze Palestinian villages to build
settlements for Zionist colonists.
Notorious for
her death stare, Julie ‘Medusa’ Bishop, the Australian Foreign Minister, on
January 15, speaking for her government, with colonial panache dismissed
Israeli settlements as war crimes with this vacuous statement,
“I would like
to see which international law has declared them illegal.”
Not a good
look coming from the FM of a nation privileged to have a seat on the UN
Security Council, when even the gardener at Parliament House has heard of the
Geneva Conventions.
Like its
mate, the rogue state of Israel, Australia doesn’t give a toss for honouring
its obligations under international law.
It tossed
aside its obligations to the Refugee Conventions with its inhumane offshore
asylum seeker policy, forcing asylum seeker boats back to Indonesia,
refusal to compensate people who have been held for prolonged periods in
mandatory detention, ‘breached its international anti-race discrimination obligations
by continuing for almost three years it’s intervention
policies with indigenous communities of the Northern
Territory.’ the high instance of Aboriginal deaths in custody, the
breaching of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in the
matter of Guantanamo inmate, David Hicks, the unresolved allegations that
Australian intelligence officers were complicit in the torture of Mamdouh Habib
when he was held in Pakistan Egypt and Guantanamo Bay, the Queensland bikie
laws that fail to meet international fair trial standards.
Then there is
the present case in the International Court of Justice against Australia
spying on Timor Leste during the oil and gas treaty negotiations in an
alleged attempt to rip off the poorest nation in Asia.
Colonial
terrorism, disguised as civilised democracy, is not only perpetrated by the
hollow men and women in authority. They are the monsters for whom you and I
vote and without us they are powerless.
Until our moral conscience, intelligence and compassion determine how we
vote, we too are their accomplices.
Recent
OMNI Newsletters
US Capitalism
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9-10
Police USA
9-3
Labor Day 9-1
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8-26
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Equality 8-26
Contents CONTINENTAL WESTWARD
(and SOUTH AND NORTH) EXPANSION #1
CONTINENTAL
Stannard, Holocaust
Churchill, Genocide
Anderson, French and Indian War
Gwynne, Fall of the Comanches
EXPANDING OUTWARD SOUTH AND NORTH
LaFeber, Economic Expansion
McCoy and Scarano, Expansion South and West
Sprague, Haiti
Gabriel, Arctic
(Go to US Imperialism Pacific/E. Asia
WESTWARD MOVEMENT Newsletter)
END US CONTINENTAL IMPERIALISM NEWSLETTER #2
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