Talk:Native American/Discussion of changes to Native Americans in the United States

Below is the original text which was rejected... it was posted here: Native_American and worded to fit with the continuity of the surrounding text; amplifying on an existing theme.  The purpose of this page is to discuss how to rewrite it to the satisfaction of all parties. - original text    (please leave intact)

The Americian Indians were not allowed to learn their culture. The Boarding Schools were primarily run by Christian Fundamentalists, there are many documented cases of the girls being raped and the boys being molested. The Indians were denied their own religous beliefs and forced to accept the Christian religion. As recently as the 1970s, the BIA was continuing to activly pursue a policy of "assimilation". And as recently as the 60s Indians were being put into jail for the "crime" of teaching their traditional beliefs. The goal of assimilation is to eliminate the reservations and turn Indians into indistinct members of the white culture. Even now (2004) there are still attempts being made to steal Indian land for the coal and urainium it contains.

- revised text goes here okay, try this version on for size, if I don't get any objections in a resonable time period I will add this back into the article The Americian Indians were not allowed to learn their culture. The Boarding Schools were primarily run by Christian Fundamentalists, there are many documented cases of the girls being raped and the boys being molested. The Indians were denied their own religous beliefs and forced to accept the Christian religion. As recently as the 1970s, the BIA was continuing to activly pursue a policy of "assimilation". And as recently as the 60s Indians were being put into jail for the "crime" of teaching their traditional beliefs. The goal of assimilation is to eliminate the reservations and turn Indians into generic members of the white culture. Even now (2004) a major battle is being fought against the latest theft of Indian land for the coal and urainium it contains.

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Here Are some References in Support of these Statements
nuts I cant edit the top part of this page anymore - revised version The Americian Indians were not allowed to learn their culture. The Boarding Schools were primarily run by Christian Fundamentalists, there are many documented cases of the girls being raped and the boys being molested. The Indians were denied their own religous beliefs and forced to accept the Christian religion. As recently as the 60s Indians were being put into jail for the "crime" of teaching their traditional beliefs. And As recently as the 1970s, the BIA was continuing to activly pursue a policy of "assimilation". The goal of assimilation is to eliminate the reservations and turn Indians into generic members of the white culture. Even now (2004) a major battle is being fought against the latest theft of Indian land for the coal and urainium it contains. - Here is my basis for saying these things ''Besides the fact that I am part Indian... and have direct knowledge of some of these events'' And isn't it strange that all this Wikipedia stuff about Indians is being written, apparently only by whites??? -

In an unpublished interview with Beaver Chief, he confirmed what was common knowledge, namely that many Indian girls where raped in the Boarding Schools. He then surprised this author by going on to describe that many boys had been sexually abused as well. also this link about sexual abuse as a tactic of Christian Misionaries ........

In a conversation with "Johnny" a SiSi'Wis Medicine Man, this author was told that during the 60s Johnny's Uncle (also a Medicine Man) was imprisioned multiple times for the "crime" of teaching the Indian Religous Traditions. (see "outlawed" below)

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try this search, you will find plenty to support what I've said http://www.google.com/search?q=BIA+assimilation&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

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but especially

http://www.doiu.nbc.gov/orientation/bia2.cfm

For most of its existence, the BIA has mirrored the American public's ambivalence towards the Nation's indigenous peoples by carrying out federal policies that had helped or hurt them. But, as federal policy has evolved away from the subjugation and assimilation of American Indian and Alaska Native people and into one of partnership and service to them, so has the BIA's mission.

to the passage of landmark legislation such as the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and the Tribal Self-Governance Act of 1994 which have fundamentally changed how the BIA and its constituency do business with each,

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'''and this one... I stongly encourage you to read the whole article.'''

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570777_28/Native_Americans_of_North_America.html

H		Coercive Assimilation, 1900s to 1960s

Throughout both their histories, the U.S. and Canadian governments have used their dealings with Native Americans to increase federal power.

Beginning mainly in the 1880s in the United States and shortly thereafter in Canada, these government agencies instituted programs that aimed to reconfigure the fabric of Native American life. Known as the assimilation campaigns, these policies attempted to transform Native Americans into “citizens” by stripping them of their lands, cultures, languages, religions, and other markers of their ethnic identity. Assimilation brought continued challenges to Native Americans, many of whom had only recently been confined to reservations and reserves.

For many Native Americans, such cultural attacks were as painful and difficult as the previous generations of war. Native American communities lost their children, who were sent to U.S. boarding schools and Canadian residential schools where families were prohibited from visiting and children were punished for speaking their languages. Some Native American religious rituals, such as the Ghost Dance and Sun Dance, were outlawed.

The bitter irony of so many of these coercive policies was that those who developed them believed they were acting in the best interests of Native Americans. Many of America’s leading religious leaders and progressive reformers helped lead this assault to “kill the Indian, but save the man.

Tens of millions of acres of reservation lands passed into the hands of non-Native Americans. Large reservations, such as the Ute and Blackfeet reservations that in 1880 were sizable portions of Colorado and Montana, became by 1900 shadows of their former selves.

Canadian Indian affairs followed similar assimilation designs. Indian dances and ceremonies, such as the potlatch of the Northwest Coast peoples, were outlawed. Indian movements were heavily policed through a notorious pass system in which individuals had to have a pass to leave their reserves.

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'''on the subject of the ongoing/current land theft... you can find that here''' http://www.google.com/search?q=big+mountain+coal+mine+indian&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

specifically

http://www.shundahai.org/bigmtbackground.html The Black Mesa Syndrome: Indian Lands, Black Gold

Until 1969, the coal lay untouched and so close to the surface that the walls of the dry washes glistened with seams of shiny black. With a long- term value estimated as high as $100 billion, it lies completely under Indian reservation lands

Today, thirty years after the strip mining for coal began, the cities have the energy they were promised, but the Hopi and Navajo nations are not rich—that part of the plan proved ephemeral. Instead, Black Mesa has suffered human rights abuses and ecological devastation; the Hopi water supply is drying up; thousands of archeological sites have been destroyed; and, unbeknownst to most Americans, twelve thousand Navajos have been removed from their lands—the largest removal of Indians in the United States since the 1880s.

And yet, for twenty-five years, the American press, with few exceptions, has presented the Black Mesa story as a centuries-old land dispute between two tribes. The story that has not yet emerged is about the syndrome in which transnational corporations take and exploit indigenous lands with the cooperation of host governments. I want to hold up Black Mesa as a domestic example of that global syndrome, and I want to ask why our free press has largely been unable to tell the truth about Black Mesa.

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http://www.prop1.org/caravan/coj08.htm

In 1974 Congress, after being financially coerced by special interest lobbies, including lawyers hired by Peabody Coal Company(PCC), passed Public Law 93-531. This law authorized the partitioning of the Hopi-Dine Joint Use Area and the removal of 10,000 Dine (Navaho) people from their sacred and ceremonial lands where they have lived for thousands of years. The Dine who oppose relocation face livestock confiscation, water diversion,fencing of previously open land, the discontinuation of road and educational improvements, clearing of land and the threat of destruction of their ceremonial grounds.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the designated land to where these people are to be relocated is the scene of the worst radioactive spill in North America. Miners have been poisoned and homes and schools built out of the radioactive waste. This is one more indication that the US Government is still involved in INDIGENOUS GENOCIDE!

In remote areas of northern Arizona, the traditional Dine attempt to continue their way of life on lands where their families have lived for thousands of years. Enter PCC--a British owned corporation which operates the Black Mesa mining complex and has for years ignored all laws regarding environmental regulations.

The mine operates without the necessary permits for the slurryline, access road, and railroad, and without posting the reclamation bonds required for strip mining. A few hundred traditional Native Americans still live in the communities around the mine on disputed Hopi Partition Land. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), together with Wackenhut Security (the "hiredgun slingers of PCC"), and Hopi tribal police and BIA officials, continue to confiscate their livestock, wood and wood cuttingtools.

The BLM and other government agencies refuse to allow the indigenous people to use or dig wells for water but allows PCC to ILLEGALLY PUMP ONE BILLION GALLONS OF PRECIOUS DRINKING WATER PERYEAR, WITHOUT A PERMIT, from the aquifer for the purpose of sending their coal through slurry pipes. This action has dried up springs and wells and has done serious and possibly irreparable damage to the semi-arid desert.

The BIA was established to protect Indian people and Indian lands from exploitation. However, the BLM supervises the BIA, and many times in the past, the BLM has instructed the BIA to withhold that protection.

Hence, since the BLM has licensing authority for lands, the BIA is unable to protect the concerns of the Indian people and a clear conflict of interest exists in which the Indian people lose.

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Update 2001 -- DINEH PERSPECTIVE ON HOPI SOLIDARITY http://www.spiritwheel.com/Blackmesa1.htm

So basically, the Hopis having no treaty status with the U.S. have no lands, now. All of northeastern Arizona that once encompassed Hopi religious and migrations sites, including the present village areas and the 1977 partitioned areas has been officially SOLD.

The new way of peace is the systemically-improved BIA-Hopi police force. This particular law enforcement agency is to serve and protect the State and its energy companies by exterminating the lives of the Dineh and traditional Hopi resistors.

The ultimate results is to severe all traditional and ancestral ties to the Mother Earth.

...............

http://www.worldfreeinternet.net/news/nws32.htm

THEFT OF INDIAN LANDS EXPOSES SHAM OF INDIAN SOVEREIGNTY UNDER U.S. LAWS

In 1979, Katherine Smith, a Navajo grandmother, confronted tribal police and Bureau of Indian Affairs crews with a shotgun, firing a blast over their heads. This was the first shot in a resistance to the forced relocation of 12,000 Navajo from their traditional lands on Big Mountain in northern Arizona. "The Federal Government took me to prison because I wouldn't relocate, Smith says, "but I will go to prison again if they try to take me from my land." And that fate is precisely what Smith and 200 holdout Navajo families are facing this spring, climax to the most savage forced relocation of Americans since the internment of the Japanese Americans in World War II.

The whole affair has been played in the press as a century-old land dispute between the Navajo and the Hopi. The truth is somewhat different and has to do with coal. The coal lies in the richest 100 square miles in North America. The ardent desire of mining and oil companies to extract it was thwarted by Navajo refusal to lease the land and the fact that the Hopi had no central government.

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http://www.aics.org/BM/bm.html This final solution - the Navajo-Hopi Settlement Act, was sponsored by Senator John McCain. Senator McCain comes from a very wealthy family, and has some very close personal and political ties to; the mining industry (coal, uranium, etc.), the power generating industry, and at the time he sponsored this genocidal bill - he was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs! To state the facts in plain blunt english, he sold out the lives of these Indian people, relocating them to radioactive contaminated lands, so that his "friends" in the mining and power generating industries would profit. Genocide for profit.

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well, that ought to be enough references... now we just need to come up with a wording that will be sufficently NPOV...  for that, I need your help because I am a wikipedia newbee.

Thank You,
 * ErikFP 17:02, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

-- The reference to Christian Fundamentalists is incorrect. Schools were run by the government, Protestants, Catholics, etc. In Canada especially the Catholic schools were notorious. The section also need an more explicit timeframe. And "to steal Indian land" is not NPOV.

Probably we should separate this into two paragraphs - one on cultural supression - not forgetting to include non-US countries' policies. And one on crimes against Native Americans.

I am not sure that something general like boarding schools, or denial of native religion need sources, while something controversial and specific like arrests in the 60's should have a source. I personally dislike that method of in-line references. It makes it less obvious that an external site is meant especially with the new colors. for example, I would prefer policy of assimilation [. to policy of "assimilation". [[User:Rmhermen|Rmhermen]] 20:58, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

--- to steal indina land IS NPOV, in that it is the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might make you, if it is a fact, it is not POV.

(gabrielSimom)