American Indians

AMERICAN INDIANS

A couple of weeks ago I read this article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about the American Indians. It reminded me
Of an article I had written previously November 9, 2009,
Immigrants, Slaves, Immigrants and Christians. A History of the Underdogs that no one likes to talk about.

This article states:
Protestant church apologizes for massacres, displacement.
Members of one of America’s oldest Protestant churches officially apologized Friday---for the first time---for massacring and displacing American Indians 400 years ago. “We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarding your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land,” the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. “We the Collegiate Church remember our part in these events.”

The minister spoke at a reconciliation ceremony of the Lenape tribe with the Collegiate Church, started in 1628 in the then-New Amsterdam as the Reformed Dutch Church. This week, President Barack Obama declared Friday the first Native American Heritage Day. The reconciliation ceremony was held in front of the Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan, where Dutch colonizers had built their fort near an Indian trail now called Broadway, near Wall Street. (The Associated Press). Wonders never cease it took 400 years to apologize for all those dastardly deeds.

Now today another big headline: U.S. to pay billions to settle Indian trust fund claims. The federal government announced Tuesday that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds, (which isn’t enough-when old Bruce Babbitt was handling this years ago, it was over $5 billion, if my memory serves me) potentially ending one of the largest and most complicated class action lawsuits ever brought against the United States. The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed spending more than $3 billion to settle claims dating back more than a century (how about 3 centuries) that American Indian tribes were swindled out of royalties for oil, gas, grazing and other leases (like gold, silver, copper and other ore’s). I am not going to copy all the article. But in my opinion if we furnished all the ancestors of the Indian tribes free everything for the next million years it would not be enough to make up for the inhuman treatment that their ancestors and they have endured at the hands of “Christians”.