Unlearning the Language of Conquest
I recently read Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America by Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs). This is an important book and I wish every politician, policy-maker, and teacher in America would read it. It's available from Amazon.com and has enough ideas to furnish food for thought for years. Four Arrows has gathered together a number of essays concerning colonialism and its effect on America, especially the Indigenous People.
America the Beautiful has been constructed on some very ugly tenets and, as a nation, we will never reach our full potential until we change the way we treat the Indigenous Nations. The American People, as distinct from the American government, are basically good. Individually, we do not wish to be war mongers or to steal resources from other nations. Yet, by our individual silence we abet our government in everything from cultural genocide to planetary mayhem. The people we have elected to represent us and lead us have mistaken our will to be world leaders and to be prosperous to mean that maximizing profits is the only thing we care about and that if we must oppress everyone, including our own citizens, and destroy the earth in the process, so be it.
It is imperative that the citizenry pressure the government to take the right action. We must foster cooperation among nations, rather than exploitation; we must offer a helping hand to those in need, rather than a crushing boot. We must take immediate and special action in regard to the Indian Nations. We have treaties with many of them and it is a sad and despicable fact that we have broken every one of them. How can we expect to prosper and to hold up our heads as a leader among nations until we rectify the damage we continue to do to the Indigenous citizens among us? History cannot be rewritten but we can and must cease to publish lies about European and Euro-American actions toward the Indigenous Peoples. We must repay the billions of dollars stolen from the tribes, whether by the government or condoned by the government. We must cease speaking the language of conquest and let our Indigenous citizens help us to heal the breach.
America the Beautiful has been constructed on some very ugly tenets and, as a nation, we will never reach our full potential until we change the way we treat the Indigenous Nations. The American People, as distinct from the American government, are basically good. Individually, we do not wish to be war mongers or to steal resources from other nations. Yet, by our individual silence we abet our government in everything from cultural genocide to planetary mayhem. The people we have elected to represent us and lead us have mistaken our will to be world leaders and to be prosperous to mean that maximizing profits is the only thing we care about and that if we must oppress everyone, including our own citizens, and destroy the earth in the process, so be it.
It is imperative that the citizenry pressure the government to take the right action. We must foster cooperation among nations, rather than exploitation; we must offer a helping hand to those in need, rather than a crushing boot. We must take immediate and special action in regard to the Indian Nations. We have treaties with many of them and it is a sad and despicable fact that we have broken every one of them. How can we expect to prosper and to hold up our heads as a leader among nations until we rectify the damage we continue to do to the Indigenous citizens among us? History cannot be rewritten but we can and must cease to publish lies about European and Euro-American actions toward the Indigenous Peoples. We must repay the billions of dollars stolen from the tribes, whether by the government or condoned by the government. We must cease speaking the language of conquest and let our Indigenous citizens help us to heal the breach.
posted by Barbara J. Olexer @ 6:32 PM
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