The Battle for Freedom - A Few Thoughts on Behalf of the Losers

I celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with mixed emotions. While I’m elated to live in a world where we enjoy the fruits of equality, where we no longer segregate and oppress men and women of color, where we seem to have taken giant steps in righting the wrongs of our forefathers – I cannot help but remember that there those for whom MLK’s “dream” has yet to become reality.

America often celebrates its heroes while wearing rose-colored glasses:

- We declare a holiday to commemorate Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of a world that was anything BUT “new” to the 12 million native inhabitants who flourished in freedom before 1492.

- We honor the “pilgrims” with a day of Thanksgiving – forgetting those who deserved thanks the most – the native people who gave of their food and land so that the ill-prepared settlers could survive. Of course, the settlers gave them a nice case of smallpox as a “Thank You” gift.

- We commemorate Andrew Jackson on our currency, but do we remember The Indian Removal Act of 1830 (a/k/a “The Trail of Tears”) whenever we pull a twenty from our wallets? Or that Jackson’s inaugural speech referred to the “rude savages” standing in the way of expansion West (and we think Bush was a stinker)?

- We name towering redwoods after General William Sherman, while conveniently ignoring his popular credos: “The only good indian is a dead indian.” And “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children."

- We moan over the current woes of the economy and cry for massive bailouts, but how many of us realize that in 1862 the American government refused to honor treaty obligations to the Dakota Sioux Indians during a time of widespread starvation. When tribal leaders, desperate for relief, asked for food on credit because the U.S. government had failed to provide moneys owed, the local Indian agent replied, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung.”

- We fear foreclosures and falling home values, not giving a moment’s thought to those living (if you can call it that) on America’s reservations. We ignore the fact that our country’s worst rates of poverty, unemployment, suicide, alcoholism & drug abuse, infant mortality, and lack of health care can be found within a single race of Americans.

As we celebrate Dr. King’s legacy of civil rights and President-elect Obama’s promise of change, let’s not forget that the long battle for freedom was lost by America’s indigenous peoples. Let’s not forget that starvation and forced migration were effective weapons of mass destruction. Let’s contemplate – just for a moment – that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” was NOT the intention of our founding fathers with regard to Native Americans. Extermination was.

I have a dream, too. I hope that one day we will add “Crazy Horse” Day to our roster of National holidays, and we will see another great freedom-fighter’s words inscribed in granite in Washington, DC:

"In 1868, men came out and brought papers. We could not read them and they did not tell us truly what was in them. We thought the treaty was to remove the forts and for us to cease from fighting. When I reached Washington, the Great Father explained to me that the interpreters had deceived me. All I want is right and just. ....I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”

-- Red Cloud (Makhpiya-luta) , April, 1870