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Friday, February 5, 2010

The Truth about This Nation's Interactions with Native Americans

This is an essay, and as suh will have no links.

The Truth About this Nations Interactions with the Native Americans



Since the arrival of the first colonists ion Turtle Island, know to the Europeans and
others who later immigrated here, as America, the name being derived from the map
maker Amerigo Vespucci, Native Americans have been portrayed as lazy, unwilling
to work, ignorant, heathen savages.

The Spanish made slaves of Native Americans everywhere they went, the colonists
viewed them with distrust, even after the Wampanoag Tribe saved them from
starvation. The Plymouth Colony, after being fed by the Wampanoag, ended up
killing many of the tribe, and all of the chiefs.

The British and French treated the Native Americans more fairly, as it was more
profitable to trade with them for furs than to send in an army of fur trappers who
did not know the land.

After the American Revolution, conflict between the Native Americans and the
fledgling nation were theoretically solved by treaties, both parties being sovereign
nations, but the American Government always giving in to the demands of settlers
and reneging on every treaty, all of which had guaranteed the lands left after
the ceding of certain lands to the Americans. Every treaty guaranteed the lands left
to the tribes was theirs “in perpetuity”, as long as the rivers run and the grass grows,
and other phrases having the meaning of forever.

The tribes of the Northeast had retreated westward, while the tribes of the Southeast
remained on lands east of the peak of the Appalachians and the Blue Grass
mountains. The Cherokee had by this time already adopted the lifestyle of the
English, and in fact had sent many young men to be educated in England at the
finest schools. They had in fact, become more educated than the settlers who coveted
their lands, and more prosperous in their agricultural pursuits than many of these
settlers.

When gold was rumored to have been found in Georgia, American settlers coveted the
land and agitated for it vigorously, until at last the State of Georgia passed an
non-Constitutional law paving the way for the removal of the Cherokee. In spite of
a Supreme Court decision that this was not legal, and a subsequent law passed by
Congress under pressure from President Andrew Jackson, the removal of the Cherokee
and then the Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw, was under taken, and in a
most shameful way indeed.

All relations between this Nation and the Native American Tribes since then have
followed this pattern, with the exception that in more modern times, most battles for
our lands have been fought in court. In spite of the recognition in each treaty of each
Native American Nation as a sovereign nation, our government has since the 1800's
the tribes like children, having established the Bureau of Indian Affairs to manage
Native American Lands and resources for them, and always opening up the tribal
lands to mineral exploitation and forestry in violation of the wishes of the tribes.
This brief essay does not cover the whole history of all the tribes, in fact, not he whole
history of the tribes I have mentioned. The interference of the Federal Government
through its Department of the Bureau of Indian Affairs continues today. Funds that
belong rightfully to the tribes form land leases and mineral royalties are controlled by
the BIA, who sets a budget for tribal operations that is inadequate for tribal operations,
requests for additional monies for reservation improvement projects are tied up for
years at times, when the need is immediate.

The biggest betrayal of all in this management of tribal monies by the BIA is the loss
of and inability to account for billions of dollars in tribal and personal funds that
have vanished and are unaccounted for. For this reason alone, I propose that the
Bureau of Indian Affairs be eliminated, and all monies due the tribes be payed
directly to the tribes for their tribal councils to manage as they see fit and let
them be accountable to the tribal members as they are now, being the elected leaders
that they are.

It is also my contention that all leases of any kind on tribal lands not approved by the
tribes are null and void as they were entered into by the American Federal Government
in violation of the sovereignty of the tribes.

The time is now to end the mistreatment of the tribal nations, and to enforce the laws
in bordering States to end the murder, rape, and abuse of Native American women.
Please join us in correcting these wrongs as those of us whoa re also members of the Tea
Party Patriots seek to end to the general wrongdoing of the Federal Government
against all citizens of the United States of America.

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