Following the Massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, the Commander of the Army in the West, General Nelson A. Miles condemned the U. S. militarys handling of the incident and tried unsuccessfully to have the officer in charge court-martialed. Almost three hundred Lakota people died at Wounded Knee, compared to thirty-one of the four hundred seventy soldiers. Less than one week after the Wounded Knee Massacre, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer published yet another editorial advocating genocide: The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. ... The PIONEER has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past (Venables: online). The present day media have generally refined their commentary toward political correctness. The genocidal rhetoric has essentially disappeared. The film and literature industry is more attuned to sensitivity levels in ethnic matters, largely because of another holocaust in Europe a few decades ago. It is no great secret that the United States is a racist society, and well it should be after five hundred years of thorough indoctrination. Todays modus operandi seems to be one of total avoidance of the fact that negative stereotyping of American Indians exists, as well as one of highly stylized mockery under the guise of honoring indigenous peoples. In a statement about baseballs Cleveland Indians mascot, Paul D. Gonzales, a San Ildefonso Pueblo, said, I dont think I want my daughter and her people honored this way. The image of Chief Wahoo looks too much like a drunken Uncle Tomahawk with a big red nose. Not exactly a hero for any child (Gonzales: online). The war-hoops of the fans were deafening, as the Seminoles scalped the Volunteers, 49 to 7. The tomahawk-chopping spectators went wild when the Redskins massacred the Forty-Niners. Imagine a new sports franchise starting up and naming its team the New Orleans Negroes, the Riverside Rednecks, or the New York Jews? Sorry coach, the Indians, Redskins, Bucks, Braves, and the like are not complimentary gestures to American Indians. Employing derogatory nicknames of a particular group of people, as mascots of a sports team, should no longer be acceptable. Major League Baseball suspended a baseball team owner in Cincinnati for comments like, ...my million-dollar niggers. The residents of Arizona impeached their governor for several reasons, one of which was his poor choice of words in referring to a young minority group as piccaninnies. Most recently, the Professional Golf Association censured one of its members for making racially tinged comments. A television broadcasting company fired a golf commentator for his remarks about lesbians and boobs. With current social pressures at the point where society can bring down governors and celebrities, why is it that we allow the continuing defamation of American Indians? Its time to give it up, white America, five hundred years of hate crimes, stigmatizing, and stereotyping is enough. Vine Deloria, Jr. encourages socio-economic goals rather than legal adjustments by writing: dickshovel/jank.html
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:57:10 +0000
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