There is a lot of talk now about "America's original sin" being slavery, but at best, that is America's third sin.
No one will ever comprehend the true nature of racism in America without first acknowledging that America's original sin was genocide.
It was rooted in racism, specifically white supremacy.
Racism is too mild a term to describe the mental state of the Colonies and later America. Racism can be anything: there can be anti-white racism as well as anti-black. But white supremacy is a more particular and vicious brand of racism: it is responsible for the genocides and ethnic cleansing of North America, slavery, the global evils of colonialism, the death camps of Hitler and much, much more.
White supremacy has always used terrorism as a studied tactic, targeting women, the elderly and children specifically, and have exalted white supremacist terrorists.
As one horrific example, Franklin, Tennessee is named after the Franklinites. This is the white version of that history:
One person among the Franklinites, however, provided a much-needed charismatic leadership: John Sevier. He was a leader of the Watauga Association, and his popularity and influence had increased during the Cherokee offensive of 1776. But it was at the Battle of King’s Mountain that Sevier established his reputation as a leader. It was only natural that Franklinites turned to him once again. At the first meeting of the Franklin Assembly in March 1785, Sevier was appointed governor, four new counties were created, and William Cocke was dispatched to Congress to request for admission as the 14th state. Sevier met with Cherokee leaders in June 1785 at Dumplin Creek in hopes of gaining additional land south of the French Broad River.
https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/state-of-franklin/
This is the reality of the Franklinites:
On Friday, August 10th 1810, the Great Cherokee Children Massacre took place at Ywahoo Falls in southeast Kentucky ...... the Cherokee village leaders of the Cumberland Plateau territory from Knoxville Tennessee to the Cumberland River in Kentucky was led by the northern provisional Thunderbolt District Chief Beloved Woman - War Woman "Cornblossom", the highly honored daughter of the famous Thunderbolt War Chief Doublehead. Several months before this date, Beloved Woman - War Woman Cornblossom was preparing the people in all the Cherokee villages of southeast Kentucky and northern Tennessee to bring all their children to the sacred Ywahoo Falls area of refuge and safety.
Once all the Cherokee children were gathered they were to make a journey to Reverend Gideon Blackburns Presbertearian Indian School at Sequatchie Valley outside of Chattanooga Tennessee in order to save the children of the Cherokee Nation remaining in Kentucky and northern Tennessee on the Cumberland Plateau.
This area of Sequatchie Valley was very near to Lookout Mountain at Chattanooga, the once long held Chickamauga National capital of the Thunderbolts. And near Lookout Mountain just on the other side in northeast Alabama was the rendezvous point for the Chickamaugan Cherokee and their allies the Creek Nation. For by this time, many Creek and Chickamaugan Thunderbolt Cherokee were defending the rest of the Indian Nations there as well. The arrangements to save the Cherokee children thru Gideon Blackburns white protection Christian Indian Schools had been made earlier by Cornblossoms father War Chief Doublehead, who had also several years earlier been assassinated by non-traditionalist of the southern Cherokee Nation of the Carolinas and far eastern Tennessee.
A huge large gathering area underneath Ywahoo Falls itself was to be the center meeting place for these women and children to gather and wait, then all the children of all ages would go as one group southward to the school to safety from the many Indian fighters gathering in the neighboring counties of Wayne and Pulaski in Kentucky.
These Indian fighters were led by an old Franklinite militiamen from Tennessee named Hiram "Big Tooth" Gregory who came from Sullivan County Tennessee at the settlement of Franklin and had fought many Franklinite campaigns under John Seveir to eliminate all the traditional Thunderbolt Cherokee totally and without mercy. Big Tooth Gregory, sanctioned by the United States government, war department, and governor of the territory, carried on the ill famous Indian hating battle cry of John Seveir that "nits make lice".
Orders were understood by these Cherokee haters that nits (baby lice) would grow up to be adults and especially targeted in all the campaigns of John Seveirs Franklinites were the Cherokee women, pregnant women, and children of all ages. John Seveir, Big Tooth Gregory, and all the rest of the Franklinites philosophy was that if they could destroy the children of the Cherokee, there would be no Cherokee and no Cherokee Nation to contend with in their expansion of white settlements, the white churches, and the claiming of territory for the United States.
Orders were issued to the Franklinites to split open the belly of any pregnant Cherokee woman, remove the baby inside her, and slice it as well. To the Franklinites, the Cherokee baby inside the mother was the nit that would eventually make lice.
In all the earlier campaigns of the Franklinites in the late 1700s, the blood and screams of the Cherokee children were constantly heard thruout the Cumberland Plateau territory from todays Knoxville Tennessee to the Cumberland River in southeast Kentucky to all their adjoining territories. From afar in Kentucky as present day London Corbin and the lands within the present Daniel Boone National Forest the cries could be heard.
https://cherokeetear.blogspot.com/2007/10/cornblossom-beloved-war-woman.html
That pattern was repeated all the way to California, an endless war of terror.
One thing utterly lacking from these anti-racism protests is any mention whatsoever of the racism that effects Native Americans.
Yes, Black Lives Matter, and blacks are the victims of oppressive and deliberate racism, but however bad they have it Native Americans have it worse. Every statistic by which racism is measured is harsher for Native Americans, but we are never mentioned, never thought of.
But Native Lives Matter Too.
At least the blacks have strength in numbers.
Due to the genocide and constant attempts to extinguish not just sovereignty, but to finish the job of genocide via anti-Native involuntary sterilization and child-theft programs as recently as the 1970s, Native numbers are disproportionately low.
“Two young women entered an IHS hospital in Montana to undergo appendectomies and received tubal ligations, a form of sterilization, as an added benefit. Bertha Medicine Bull, a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, related how the “two girls had been sterilized at age fifteen before they had any children. Both were having appendectomies when the doctors sterilized them without their knowledge or consent.””
On November 6, 1976, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) released the results of its investigation into similar events at four of twelve IHS areas (Albuquerque, Aberdeen, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix). Records verified that the IHS performed 3,406 sterilizations between 1973 and 1976.[4]“Tip of the iceberg” is indeed an appropriate metaphor. Per capita, this figure would be equivalent to sterilizing 452,000 non-Native American women.[5] Albuquerque contracted out their sterilizations to local, non-IHS physicians; therefore their region inaccurately added zero procedures to the government count. Independent research estimated that as many as 25–50% of Native American women were sterilized between 1970 and 1976.[6] Independent verifications were critical. The GAO did not interview a single women subjected to sterilization. The GAO also admitted that “contract” physicians were not required to comply with any federal regulations (including informed consent) in the context of these surgical procedures. Study of consent forms utilized revealed that three different forms were in use. It also appeared the “consent,” in many instances, was obtained through coercion.
I fully support the protests and the black community, but my question is where is the recognition that Native Americans suffer the worst injustices and bigotry of all? There is no measure of racism that we don't have the worst of it.
The Wampanoags just had to go to court to stop yet another land grab by white America.
Yet we persist and try to do so peacefully, as we have always done. Nearly every first encounter between whites and Natives resulted in offers of hospitality and succor from Natives towards whites, to be repaid with slaughter, rape and betrayal. The Indian Wars were always wars of choice begun by whites to claim the lands they had no right to.
Still, we try our best to live without violence. This story illustrates an example of the difference between Native policing and white policing:
On Friday night, two community members notified AIM patrol members about looters at Skol Liquors, in the Seward neighborhood of south Minneapolis.The white teens, who were from Eau Claire, 100 miles east, were seen taking alcohol and groceries by Seward neighborhood residents, according to a widely circulated Facebook video posted by Bobby Headbird of Minneapolis.
The AIM members recovered the merchandise, took the teens’ names and numbers and called their mothers in Wisconsin to come pick them up.
The Leech Lake office is across the street. The Leech Lake Reservation is 200 miles north in the Chippewa National Forest, but its Minneapolis office provides housing, education and employment services to tribal members in the seven-county Twin Cities metro area.
The patrol said the liquor and groceries such as juice and cereal were returned to the store owners Saturday.
Yes, Natives stand in solidarity with blacks and anyone oppressed by white supremacy.
But when will anyone stand with us?