Are the media missing yet another genocide?

McGintrix
McGintrix, fortunately for the rest of us, you are a rare breed.

BBB

Why do you say that? That's what's happening with the Oneida Indians. The Mohawk Indians have started the same program in Niagara Falls.

The tribes have done well here, too. Interestingly enough, our very own tax-cut crusader, the man who has led initiatives to save money on schools, roads and other unnecessary expenses, is now leading a fight to let non-tribes open casinos. His rationale is that these could be taxed to provide $$ for the state.

I'm sure screwing the tribes has nothing to do with it...

This is a statement of dubious value--i'd suggest the Dutch concerned in swapping 60 guilders of trade goods for Manhattan Island were just making a deal, as they had done right across the world. The suggestion of deeper, darker, nefarious motives smacks of paranoia. That many white folks were out to cheat the Amerindians i do not doubt--that it was an eternal and universal policy is simply ludicrous.



This is late twentieth century propaganda mascarading as history. This is going to make me unpopular as Hell, but i can't keep silent on this. The Iroquois confederacy sold to the English the land claimed by the people we know of as the Delaware. They claimed it by right of conquest. Leather Lips and a group of four other village chieftains sold southern Ohio, southern Indiana and souther Illinois to William Henry Harrison for $250.00 in trade goods and the promise of an annuity. The Amerindian may not have had the elaboration of title deeds and other products of literacy, but that does not mean they did not understand property ownership and alienation.

In the mid-17th century, the Iroquois decided to engross the entire fur trade of the Great Lakes. This would impoverish the French, against whom they had sworn eternal emnity, and they would trade the fur to the Dutch at Albany, and finance their war of conquest against the French. To accomplish this end, they determined to exterminate all the tribes of the region. They failed, but not for a lack of effort. They wiped out entirely a sept known as the Cat People, about whom nothing else is known, as the Jesuits had not yet established a mission, which would have recorded their language and culture, something they did with all the other tribes with whom they established a mission. The Hurons lost at a conservative estimate 60% of their population, and they were the linguistic and cultural "first cousins" of the Iroquois. I could go on in detail of the slaughter wreaked on other tribes by the Iroquois, but i think my point is made.

At York factory on Hudson's Bay, an Indian could trade 23 made beaver pelts for a Hudson's Bay musket, a cleaning kit, patch cloth, five pounds of lead, a bullet mold and a five pound keg of fine grain black powder. Early in the 18th century, HBC hired a young coureur du bois to explore to the west. He made it as far as the Bitterroot in what is now Idaho. By the time an HBC musket made it that far, it sold for 200 made beaver pelt, just the musket alone, no extras. No one seems to have needed to teach capitalism to the tribes.

There's no denying the horrors of war between the red man and the white. There is also no denying that Indians kept black slaves, slaughtered one another with glee, and knowingly made deals to sell land to the white man. No race has a corner on greed, deceit, murder, theft and falsehood; and no race has a lock on innocent virtue. The myth of Amerindians living in harmony with nature and with each other is just that-a myth. It is not politically correct to point this out; it is playing fast and loose with the truth to contend that this were the case.

Setanta,

You don't happen to work for the BIA do you? :wink: We've all heard these arguments or similar ones, yours and mine. I just like to get points of view from other people. keeps everyone thinking. Besides, I am a professional instigater. I like your facts though, even if I disagree with some. Nice research. Unfortunately, much of mine isn't from books, since we have an oral tradition. Besides, I think you'll agree that the ones in power write or rewrite history books.

BTW, got fed up with the other avatar. I thought I needed a "Kinder and gentler " approach. (This one looks more like that on my DL.

No, Mr. Hintler- You are incorrect. I have no knowledge of guilder from gulden since it is "A silver coin and monetary unit of the Netherlands--a former gold coin of the Netherlands."

I do not both myself with the monetary units of nations that are have puny GDP's.

Well I guess the Indians got their revenge by giving tobacco to the white man. :wink:

So you don't call your monetary unit "dollar" (Etymology: Dutch or Low German daler, from German Taler, short for Joachimstaler, from Sankt Joachimsthal, Bohemia, where talers were first made)?

Finally CNN has taken note of the events in Sudan. The news hasn't reached their front page yet, but you can find it by clicking on the "World" link and scrolling down.

Sudan's hellish humanitarian crisis

From CNN's Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour
Thursday, May 13, 2004 Posted: 10:09 PM EDT (0209 GMT)

BAHAI, Chad (CNN) -- The hellish scene in northern Chad where people are fleeing the vicious but little-publicized war in western Sudan's Darfur region has been called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

The stench of dead animals resonates among the thousands of refugees who have nowhere to live but makeshift huts and have no health care.

Children are dying of diarrhea and malnutrition and U.S. officials are desperately trying to solidify a cease-fire and get aid to the people there.

The small village of Bahai is so poor it can barely sustain itself, but for more than a year it's been sharing its meager resources with 15,000 refugees.

The U.N. and other international agencies only turned up a few days ago and are in a race against time now to keep people alive.

"The rainy season is coming end of May and all this will be completely flooded. We will try to move them before," Helene Caux, of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, told CNN.

"But no one really thinks that'll be possible. Children are dying of preventable causes, like diarrhea for lack of water and health care."

Chad has just 271 doctors for a population of what's estimated at more than 9 million.

In the north there isn't even a doctor or a nurse, just one medical technician who is only qualified to hand out basic drugs.

Dr. Camilo Valderrama works for the International Rescue Committee and is trying to plug the health care hole.

One baby, whose parents say is just 22 days old is not growing and has the face of an old man.

Valderrama diagnoses severe malnutrition, but says the only answer is to drive at least five hours to the nearest newly set-up international health facility.

These people say they had a decent life in Darfur until the Arab Sudanese government went to war against the region's indigenous African people.

"They sent in aircraft to bomb our villages," says Ahmed Saleh. "Then the militias come on horseback, burn down our houses and take all our possessions."

Adam Suleyman told us they killed the men and brutally attacked the women and young girls.

"They attack women, they rape, they rape older and young women," he says.

Every week about 300 people are crossing the riverbed that forms the border between the Darfur region of Sudan and Chad.

They are fleeing what amounts to a campaign of ethnic cleansing conducted by the Sudanese army and its marauding militia, called the janjaweed.

According to American and other human rights officials, thousands of Sudanese villagers have been killed.

About one million are displaced within Darfur itself and another 125,000 are fleeing to exile in Chad.

Darfur is barely accessible to outsiders. Some pictures have emerged of burned down villages and overhead aircraft on bombing raids.

With great effort, the U.N. and Human Rights Watch gained access to Darfur and paint a picture of appalling human rights abuses that match the testimony of survivors.

The U.S. and Europe have brokered a fragile cease-fire yet say the militias continue their reign of terror.

Back across the border in Chad, the International Rescue Committee is burning the refugees' only wealth, which are dying of exhaustion and lack of food and water.

"Donkeys are their transport, goats are food so without these animals they really have no resources left," Gillian Dunn, emergency coordinator for the International Rescue Committee in eastern Chad, told CNN.

In the northern border area of Karfour, the U.N. is making its first food delivery since refugees arrived a few months ago.

Until now, those who didn't have anything else were surviving on the seed of a tree that they would normally feed their goats.

Link

CNN, like other media worlwide, has reported about this frequently, both on tv as online.

Tarantulas, I really don't get what your point is. Go to CNN and search the site for "sudan war". I got 294 hits.

The war in the Sudan has been going, on and off, since 1962-3.

You might have missed it until now. The media certainly have not.

Off to a good start, with a snotty, insulting question.



Unfortunately? Not at all--by referring to an oral tradition (which doubtlessly dates back as far as the ancient mists of the early 1960's), you avoid any messy issues of actually substantiating your dubious claims. You generalized about people who represent dozens of linguistic and cultural groups, with hundreds of distinct dialects and significant cultural variations, and representing millions of people. That has nothing to do with history, oral or not. In short, i consider what you wrote describing Amerindians to be nothing more than politically correct propaganda--and tripe.



Another point of view convenient to the argument you advance. No, i know too much about historiography to ever agree with such a facile statement, usually made by those dissatisfied with what they find in the historical record, as being incompatible with their rant.

I cannot imagine why you address your remarks to me about your avatar, as it is something upon which i have never commented.

You do not "both" yourself? For someone who is so quick to jump on errors in the texts of others, you are ridiculously careless. How exactly does one "both" onself?

Making writing errors is often defined as that which brings harm to oneself, to others or .... to both oneself ........ and others.






Okay, wasn't that good, I know.

Walter
Walter, you woke up on the rascal side of the bed today, didn't you?

BBB

I thought that stopped during the morning - but it's obviously still to notice at afternoon :wink:

It's often amazing that people to whom English is a second language speak and write it better than those who speak it natively. One obvious difference is the school system.

Impressive!

Nice. Four days I'm away and immediately people start to talk about the Dutch. Nice.



Ehm...OK I confess: we Dutchies do everything for the money :wink: But I do think that Setanta has a point with his arguments: Manhattan was a very well-located place to use as tradepoint. But there could also have been deeper reasons, to get the native Americans off their land.

In that time, the Dutch weren't really tolerant to everything that wasn't white. I have to say, as a Dutchman, that the suggestion the Netherlands were and are tolerant is relatively speaking. Sometimes I get the idea some people give the Netherlands to much honour considering this.

I must apologize to Mr. Setanta for my typing mistake. I assure you that I know how to spell "bother" but it would appear that Mr. Hinteler does not how to spell "Statistical".

Very well then, Mr. Setanta. since it is a spelling contest you are looking for, that is precisely what you shall have. I assure you I can find dozens of spelling errors in Mr. Hinteler's offerings. My allusion to his spelling error is to show that if he is careless enough to make mistakes in spelling, I submit, a fortiori, that he must then be careless enough to make mistakes about a culture he knows little or nothing about--the culture of the USA. Upon reading Mr. Hinteler's posts one gets the distinct impression that he knows all about the USA, its policies and the reasons that those policies are put in place.

Of course, he may criticize whatever he wishes, but I submit that as a person who does not live in the USA he can scarcely be acquainted with the essential nuances involved in policy making.

So, I will be quite sensitive to spelling from here on in, Mr. Setanta.

Mr. Hinteler is also evidently fan of what might be called extremely clumsy phrasing:


He wrote: "I didn't know you had such a big knowledge of this office"

big meaning "large in size" is, to best of my knowledge rarely used to modify knowledge.

Or else we come up with--"large in size knowledge"