Manataka American Indian Council
Who are illegal immigrants??
By
David House, Star-Telegram Staff Writer,
Associated Press Archives
Whether illegal immigration issues stir brilliant debates or cries of fear and
intolerance, one historical fact is always overlooked: America's own holocaust,
carried out by (guess who?) illegal immigrants from (guess where?) Europe --
uninvited foreigners who came to these shores and took everything they could.
That's not getting much mainstream attention. I'm taking off my reader advocate
hat to offer some personal thoughts about this matter out of love for my mixed
Cherokee/Scots-Irish heritage.
Somehow the deaths of a guesstimated 11 million Native Americans at the hands of
attacking, manipulative immigrants during a 400-year span seems worth bearing in
mind as Americans respond to alarms about porous
borders, jeopardized healthcare and threats to justice and quality of life posed
by "illegals."
Americans can say, surely not with pride, that our country knows from centuries
of personal experience how unchecked immigration devastates life and why it's an
issue that deserves the best of our thinking and empathy.
Our history brims over with examples -- brutal, bloody instances of inhuman
immigrant actions that are far removed from the basic aspirations so often
associated these days with "illegals."
Most "illegals" might dream of a better life, but it's doubtful that, like the
earlier immigrants and the perpetual forces they
set into motion, they're plotting to seize others' property, kill babies and
earn bounties based on body parts brought back from raids.
Consider that, in the late 1630s, the British wiped out every man, woman
andchild of the powerful Pequot tribe of southern New England in retaliation
related to conflicts arising out of fur-trade struggles. A few years later,
Dutch authorities in charge of the settlement of "New Netherland" on the island
of Manhattan carried out unspeakable actions
against a local tribe they feared.
Russell Shorto's national bestseller, The Island at the Center of the World,
examines Dutch Manhattan and includes a pamphlet account of one nighttime raid
by Dutch soldiers against that local tribe: "[I]nfants were torn from
their mothers' breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents."
More graphic detail is included, and as Shorto noted, the account probably
involved some exaggeration, but there's no reason to doubt that the bloody raid
occurred and that soldiers were as lavishly praised as documentation says.
Immigrant authorities were just beginning in their efforts to obliterate "the
savages," as American history chronicles. One tiny detail includes legislation
approved in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England in the 1700s that
authorized bounty payment for scalps or heads of Indians, young and old.
READ MORE....
This is not to detract
from the good -- friendships, sympathies, exchanges of knowledge and
philosophies -- that flowed between Indians and foreigners, but the
relationship's bottom line is what we have today: a shameful record of attempted
extermination, abuse and destruction that accompanied virtually every
aspect of the immigrants' taking of North America.
Some of the best-known names in American history are soiled with prejudice and
arrogance aimed at Native Americans.
As lovely a patriot as Thomas Jefferson, who spent months with the Iroquois
learning about their Great Law of Peace and later writing their philosophy into
his draft of the Constitution, was convinced that the best solution in dealing
with Native Americans was to drive all of them west of the Mississippi.
That earthy war hero-president, Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson, is one of the most
despicable Indian-haters on record -- and not just because he made no bones
about his racism and championed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Even today, some
Native Americans hate the sight of a $20 bill because it bears Jackson's image.
The 19th century in particular was dark with accounts of foreign intruders'
invasions of Indian country, especially in the Southeast and West, and the
carnage that resulted.
Among the overwhelming number of accounts of that horrible period are the
killings of legendary Oglala warrior Crazy Horse and famed Hunkpapa Lakota chief
and spiritual leader Sitting Bull.
To make long stories short:
In 1877, Crazy Horse was fatally bayoneted from behind while struggling in
custody at Fort Robinson, Neb.
In
1890, Sitting Bull was dragged from his cabin on the Standing Rock reservation
in South Dakota by Lakota policemen appointed by white authorities. One of the
officers killed the defenseless chief with a shot to the head.
A few weeks later, the St. Louis Republic in Missouri editorialized:
"So when Sitting Bull was surprised and overpowered by the agents of the Great
Father, he set his greasy, stolid face into the expression it always took when
he was most overcome by the delusion that he was born a native American from
native American ancestry. Disarmed and defenseless [sic] he sat in the saddle in
which he had been put as a preliminary to taking him to prison, and without a
change of countenance urged his handful of greasy followers to die free. This
idiotic proceeding he kept up until he was shot out of the saddle.
"So died Sitting Bull. So was removed one of the last obstacles in the path of
progress. He will now make excellent manure for the crops, which will grow over
him when his reservation is civilized."
Sitting Bull might have been one of the last obstacles to Anglo settlement of
the West, but his killing wasn't the last abuse of Native Americans by any
means.
Abuses of property and rights continue to this day, and they spring from the
same destructive immigrant practices such as greed and elitism that were brought
here by foreigners long ago, which help to explain why illegal immigration is of
special, if grim, interest among some Indians.
JoKay Dowell, a media consultant and Quapaw-Peoria-Cherokee activist based in
Park Hill, Okla., has been closely following developments related to illegal
immigration. She views the matter from a Native American perspective.
"The immigrant nation that is the U.S. has a short memory," she said, "and is in
denial of their own historical facts: they are descendants of immigrants who
came here and took, either by force, coercion or dishonesty, lands and resources
and banned the religions, languages and cultures of the original indigenous
peoples of this continent.
"Now those descendants of Uncle Sam's immigrant children fear the
karma of their ancestor's actions. But those they fear do not come to
take, destroy and claim. They have always been here and always will be."
These are thoughts that cross some of our minds when we hear rhetoric
about the so-called invasion of illegal immigrants (many of whom are --
gasp -- Indians) and calls to protect "our" land. If we smile in response,
it's not so much out of agreement. We see a payback coming home to
roost.
David House is senior editor/reader advocate for the
Star-Telegram. He is a member of the Native American Journalists Association.
His email address is:
dhouse@star-telegram.com
"FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492"