You are discrediting this struggle with claims that are overblown to the point of silliness. Many leftists try and lend themselves credibility by attaching their arguments to the suffering of brutally-treated people, using that terrible suffering to try and make their arguments somehow unassailable. I don't buy into it.
The suffering of Native Americans doens't make YOUR arguments any more credible.
boddi
On 11/27/05, peacenow at theofficenet.com <peacenow at theofficenet.com> wrote:
> Black Mesa may be an unconscionable rip-off of the Hopi and Navajo
> people, but it's hard for me to equate it with "genocide" given what
> is going on in other parts of the world. We have to make reparations
> to and reconciliation with native people but I don't think
> Thanksgiving is what stands in the way of that process. -boddi
>
> Thanksgiving is a fine example of revisionist history, failure to even consider
> making amends to Indigenous peoples, the perpetration of american oblivion
> to all those harmed by our way of life from inception.
>
> What concerns me is how easy it is for intelligent, yet uninformed, people to
> make blanket statements feeding into the prevailing self imposed ignorance
> that so afflicts this country.
>
> Thayer Scudder, a respected anthropologist, wrote "No Place To Go" about a
> forced relocation of 3,000 Dineh (Navajo) people in the 60's. At the time i
> read
> the book, he said only of third of those relocated remained alive due to
> depression
> leading to death. A stark lack of understanding infuses even most activists
> when
> it comes to the plight of Indigenous peoples. I actually am sick of it.
>
> Over 16,000 Dineh have been relocated from Black Mesa/Big Mountain since 1986.
> More than half are already dead. The suicide rate is the highest in the nation
> among
> the youth. Most have been relocated to cluster track housing in the middle of
> barren
> land which uses the contaminated Rio Puerco as the water source. People cannot
> grow corn, nor keep their livestock. Many have died of broken hearts as well as
> a
> high rate of cancer.
>
> In 1979, United Nuclear's Church Rock dam burst, spilling 97 million gallons of
> highly
> radioactive contaminants into the Rio Puerco. It is the second worst nuclear
> accident
> after Chernobyl. But who cares about the excessively high rate of concer among
> Dineh people? Not americans and not many activists.
>
> Homelessness is also a major fate impacting thousands of relocatees. Many of
> them
> are victims of murder in racist border towns like Farmington, Gallup, Winslow
> and even
> Tuba City and Shiprock. Torture serial killings have been a rite of passage for
> bigoted
> white youth in Farmington and Gallup where occasionally killers have been
> convicted, tho
> most of these killings go unsolved.
>
> Genocide includes the loss of land, language, ceremony and customary survival
> practices.
> In retrospect, the atrocity of the Big Mountain relocation will be seen as a
> major human
> rights violation of the 20th century within US borders. Ah, retrospect.........
>
> The treatment of Native Americans by the US government and it's military has
> been a
> blueprint for many fascists including Hitler and the Apartheid regime of South
> Africa.
> South Africa displays many of the same problems that Native Americans experience
> all
> over this country, alcholism, drug addiction, despair, destruction of family and
> tribal
> relationships, orphans, disease, suicide, murder and no hope.
>
> But we happily go on and celebrate when we have not even come close to any kind
> of
> reparations, much less acknowlegement of the extent of the problem and the
> deaths
> directly resulting from nonstop genocidal policies that in the end harm us all.
>
> (I wish to point out that the Department of Interior, in charge of reservations,
> is also in charge of prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, including Abu Grhaib.
> Does anyone ever check out conditions in the reservation prisons or notice the
> highly disporportionate number of Native American prisoners or inhabitants of
> death row? I could go on and on, but you can educate yourself. You really
> should.)
>
> Increasingly, the american untoucables, of which i am one, face murder in a
> climate
> that dehumanizes homelessness, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, prostitutes, homo
> sexuals, women and others who do not fit into what is acceptable. It does not
> take
> much effort to verify what i am writing.....
>
> Again, i say, we will not succeed in stopping genocide anywhere else as long as
> we fail
> to end it here and in all the americas, where the deathly impacts of
> globalization and
> it's narco free trade capitalism are quickly turning Mexico, Central and South
> America
> into another ruined Africa all in the name of profit. It will get us too. It
> already is...
>
> In peaceful struggle, swaneagle
>
> I have written two other responses that i lost on my failing computer. I am
> attempting
> now to address your deeply disturbing comment. I suggest you check out the
> Black Mesa
> website, www.bmis.org and even take the time to go down and talk to Dineh
> resisters
> still clinging to the remnnants of a precious, unique and illuminating way of
> life. Sadly we are losing more than most will ever know. It just asounds me.
>
>
>
>
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