The Indians were treated badly by the the US Government. We essentially lied to them and stole from them. Took their way of life away.
On the other hand the US treated them a whole lot better than they treated each other. Where I live, we hear a lot about how the Sioux were mistreated. Perhaps rightfully so. But the Sioux were a hell of a lot worse to the Crow and other tribes. Tribes were constantly killing and stealing from each other.
The thing is, North America was going to be conquered by an outside power, and in a lot of ways, the natives here are fortunate who their conquerors are. How many other conquered nations are treated as well as they are currently?
I certainly understand that it would suck to look at all this land now that once belonged to your ancestors. On the other hand, spend some time at Pine Ridge and consider how much they care about the land. As things are now, we are probably too good to them for their own good and we are enabling a broken cycle.
We often look at things from a moral or Christian perspective, and rightfully so. But from a historical perspective, seeing the wrongs of the past and where the world is today, sometimes things happen for a reason and sometimes good comes from bad. I suspect that we all have ancestors from the past who were mistreated by some other group and that is how they ended up here. I don’t think Europe was always as genteel as it is currently.
One thing is for sure, not one of us here today has owned a slave or gunned down a bunch of native women and children in their winter camp. Nor is there a native born black who was ever a slave. And native kids have more opportunity available to them than my kids, if they so choose to take advantage of it.
There comes a point where you have to let go of the things that happened to you, even more so what happened to your ancestors, and take responsibility for your own life.
Agreed.
