Joanna
info at pulpculture.org wrote:
> At 05:50 PM 5/26/2006, jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
>
>> This is why Jews that died of starvation and disease in concentration
>> camps are rightly considered to have been murdered but NA's who die
>> of starvation and disease after having been put onto a reservation
>> that is under the command of someone who has openly stated that "the
>> only good Indian is a dead one" are considered victims of a tragic
>> accident.
>
>
>
> I was just thinking that there's a woman who I read because she annoys
> the crap out of me. Recently, she said that it is pure misogyny that
> there is a court system that requires that it's not good enough for
> women to say that they were raped for it to be seen as rape. She
> thinks that a woman's word about this is enough. Others don't go that
> far, such as Pandagon, and say that the reason why the right advances
> abortion policy the way it does is because it is about woman=hating:
> misogyny. These men hate women and that's why they want to get rid of
> abortion, get rid of contraception, etc. Other women say that the
> whole of scientific research is based on misogyny and is part of a
> concerted effort of men as a class to suppress women as a class. Etc.
>
> There's a woman who repeatedly tells me and others that the problem
> with us is we don't understand: it's the nature of men to band
> together over women, so talk of class and racial and ethnic divisions
> are just so much bull. When push comes to shove, men of all races will
> band together to keep women down. the evidence is plain to her and
> you can look at films, books, history, advertisements, everything to
> see men out to oppress and dominate women.
>
> These women say: it's the nature of male privilege to demand proof
> because you are expecting women to prove it while you're are assuming
> men couldn't hate women. And there's a lot of evidence that this is
> true, they say, for otherwise, you wouldn't have a history of the
> world where, in virtually all societies, women are second class
> citizens, women are oppressed and treated as property, etc. etc. If
> that's the case, then what could explain this other than men's deeply
> rooted misogyny -- misogyny that's inculcated in them from birth and
> is inculcated in virtually all societies.
>
> There is no need to prove that men are misogynists and they act, in
> concert with other men, to keep women oppressed. Having to prove this
> means having to assume that, in the context of a global history of
> women's oppression, that men naturally don't want to oppress women or
> that they are neutral to the issue. The assumption is that it's an
> aberration when men oppression women, not the other way around.
>
>
> At any rate, to answer the question about the report. This is what is
> wrong. Churchill cites scholars who do not say what he said they say.
> I don't know about you, but I would be really annoyed were I someone
> who didn't say what was attributed to me.
>
>
>
>
> 1. In "Bringing the Law Home" (published in 1994), Professor Churchill
> writes: "Such tactics [deliberate spread of disease by the British
> among American Indians during the colonial period] were also continued
> by the United States after the American Revolution. At Fort Clark on
> the upper Missouri River, for instance, the U.S. Army distributed
> smallpox-laden blankets as gifts among the Mandan. The blankets had
> been gathered from a military infirmary in St. Louis where troops
> infected with the disease were quarantined" (p. 35).
>
> He does not give a year for when this happened and provides no
> references for those sentences, but at the end of the paragraph, he
> provides the following note: "The Fort Clark incident is covered in
> Thornton, op. cit. [American Indian Holocaust and Survival], pp. 94-6."
>
> That wording indicates that his account was based on Thornton, whereas
> in fact Thornton says something quite different about the Fort Clark
> situation. On pp. 95-9 (not 94-6), Thornton discusses the Mandan
> situation in some detail. He says that that the disease was spread by
> people on the steamboat who had smallpox and/or by Indians who came in
> contact with them after the boat had first stopped at Fort Clark and
> then gone on to the Mandan villages. He says that this started a
> "pandemic," but he does not mention blankets or suggest deliberate
> infection on the part of the U.S. Army or the American Fur Company.
> Professor Churchill therefore misrepresents what Thornton says.
>
>
> 2. In "Since Predator Came" (published in 1995), Professor Churchill
> writes (after mentioning Amherst in 1763): "In a similar instance,
> occurring in 1836, the U.S. Army 62
> knowingly distributed smallpox-laden blankets among the Missouri River
> Mandans; the resulting pandemic claimed as many as a quarter-million
> native lives[10]" (p. 28).
> Note 10 says, "The dispensing of small-pox-infected blankets at Fort
> Clark is covered in Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and
> Survival, pp. 94-96. As above, that is a misrepresentation of Thornton.
>
> By saying that the Army "knowingly" distributed the blankets,
> Professor Churchill has intensified the accusation.
>
>
> 3. In "Nits Make Lice" (published in 1997), Professor Churchill
> writes: "Only slightly more ambiguous [than Amherst's order in 1763]
> was the U.S. Army's dispensing of 'trade blankets' to Mandans and
> other Indians gathered at Fort Clark, on the Missouri River in
> present-day North Dakota, beginning on June 20, 1837. Far from being
> trade goods, the blankets had been taken from a military infirmary in
> St. Louis quarantined for smallpox, and brought upriver aboard the
> steamboat St. Peter's" (p. 155).
> He provides no references for those sentences.
>
> 4. In "That 'Most Peace-Loving of Nations'" (published in 2003), when
> describing several different events in 1836 (again the wrong year),
> Professor Churchill says: "At Fort Clark, on the upper Missouri River,
> army officers distribute as 'gifts' blankets taken from a smallpox
> infirmary among Mandan leaders assembled at a parlay requested by the
> military" (p. 48).
>
> He provides no notes for any of his chronological statements, although
> the general opening pages of the essay are referenced. At the back of
> the book is a list of "Sources Used in Preparing the Chronologies"
> (pp. 302-09). It does not include works that discuss Fort Clark.
>
> 5. In "An American Holocaust?" (published in 2003), Professor
> Churchill presents a narrative that is very similar to previous
> statements (including the wrong year), but it contains several new and
> more extreme claims:
>
> (a) "In 1836, at Fort Clark, on the upper Missouri River, the U.S.
> Army did the same thing as Amherst. It was considered desirable to
> eliminate the Mandans, who were serving as middlemen in the regional
> fur trade, and, by claiming a share of the profits in the process,
> diminishing the take of John Jacob Astor and other American
> businessmen. So the commander of Fort Clark had a boatload of blankets
> shipped upriver from a smallpox infirmary in St. Louis, with the idea
> of distributing them during a 'friendship' parlay with the Mandans"
> (pp. 54-5).
>
> Professor Churchill provides no specific reference for those
> statements, which go beyond his earlier essays in saying that the goal
> was to "eliminate" the Mandans so as to remove middlemen payments in
> the fur trade.
>
> (b) "There's a bit of confusion as to whether they [the U.S. Army
> and/or the commander of Fort Clark, subject unclear] actually started
> passing them out, or whether some young Indian men 'stole' a couple of
> blankets, but it really doesn't matter, because the army was planning
> on distributing them anyway" (p. 55).
>
> No reference is given here, but at the end of that paragraph, four
> sentences later, Professor Churchill cites Stearn and Stearn, The
> Effect of Smallpox on the 63
> Destiny of the Amerindian, 89-94. On pp. 89-90, Stearn and Stern
> reproduce the unidentified letter written from New Orleans the
> following year, apparently by someone who had been at Fort Union.159
> That letter provides no support for Professor Churchill's account. Nor
> do the later pages cited in Stearn and Stearn, which discuss the 1840s
> and total numbers who may have died.
>
> The Committee therefore finds that Professor Churchill has
> misrepresented the sources he cites and that they do not support his
> claim.
>
>
>
> Bitch | Lab
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