In an instant, an image captures my attention and my imagination wanders back hundreds of years to the time of Columbus, when America’s indigenous people first began to be exploited by white colonizers, sickened by foreign disease, swindled, pilfered, raped and tortured, their families ripped apart, enslaved and slaughtered in a five-hundred year genocide of tens of millions meant to erase any memory of their culture.
Even today, our Native American brothers and sisters are oppressed, scorned, mocked and marginalized, their children unjustly snatched from them and given to white folk to raise, their tribal names and images grotesquely exploited in the interest of greed and the sake of white man's sport.
Today, rather than commemorate another hateful, greedy powermonger who laid waste to a kind and peaceful people, I choose to honor our Indigenous for their beauty, their wisdom, their spirt, their courage, their service and, thankfully, their tenacity.
Even today, our Native American brothers and sisters are oppressed, scorned, mocked and marginalized, their children unjustly snatched from them and given to white folk to raise, their tribal names and images grotesquely exploited in the interest of greed and the sake of white man's sport.
Today, rather than commemorate another hateful, greedy powermonger who laid waste to a kind and peaceful people, I choose to honor our Indigenous for their beauty, their wisdom, their spirt, their courage, their service and, thankfully, their tenacity.
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| Photographer unknown |
That's beautiful. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that, Christy; the history that never gets told - of course only the winners can write history books - of the worst genocide perpetrated in human history (even Adolf took inspiration for his later work from how the Americans had 'solved' their 'Indian problem').
ReplyDeleteI wish our so called educational system adopted, as mandatory reading for all students, Howard Zinn's brilliant "A people's history of the United States'.
Maybe, only maybe, we would stop celebrating murderers and "Thanksgiving" and stop believing those pilgrims and founding fathers were so great, and finally address our history and see it for what it is.