RE slavery - Washington knew he could not change the hearts of proponents and so did the best he could to make slaves' lives more tolerable. It's easy to sit at my computer and say what I would have done about it, but I wasn't there, so I would be blowing air to offer anything.
Hatred for the Indians was built on and reenforced and still exists today. I don't understand how so many Americans can agree that Indians have been grossly mistreated and even brag about their own (often imaginary) Indian blood and then sit idly by while the mistreatment goes on just as brutally as before.
@edgarblythe,
Quote:... while the mistreatment goes on just as brutally as before.
This is a ridiculous statement.
It is safe to say that things have improved (at least a tiny bit) since the Trail of Tears.
@maxdancona,
Really maximillius, stop exhibiting such ignorance. The truth and the facts are easily accessed, so go and do some research.
@Sturgis,
Really Sturgis? Let me remind you of history...
Native Americans were routinely shot with no legal recourse. They were lynched. They had no ability to vote. They were restricted from owning property. They were run out of their houses by the US army.
I don't know if you are denying our brutal history... or if you are making the ridiculous claim that nothing has changed.
Either way, you are being ridiculous.
A discussion turns into an impassioned hijacking?
Let's be honest about what Edgar and Sturgis are doing here. I don't believe either one of them are Native American. They are using Native Americans as a political pawn.
Of course in reality, Native Americans are Americans. They became Americans in 1924 which was big improvement, and since then they have been increasing in power. That is not to say that Native Americans don't still face discrimination. But saying that they are facing the "same brutality" as they did in history is nonsense.
Liberals try to put Native Americans into a politically convenient stereotype. Of course they are Americans who are as diverse as any other group of Americans.
Tom Cole is currently the minority whip and the 4th most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives. How does he fit into the box that Sturgis and Edgar are trying to put Native Americans into?
I'm not aware of any great works art done by a horrible person. I know of some horrible works of art done by bad artists. Of those whose biographies are known, great artists are mostly exceptional people. Motzart is a notable exception. He immersed himself in immorality to such a degree that by his early 30s he was dead.
We have some great contemporary example: Chinatown is a great motion picture but Roman Polanski is a child molester. I watch Chinatown anytime I can and it was the first movie I ever went to the see the first run multiple times.
Woody Allen. I love a lot of his movies before he and Mia Farrow became a couple. I'd watch Bananas, Take the Money and Run, What's Up Tiger Lily, Annie Hall anytime. But later suff - especially films with Mia Farrow remind me of Woody's aledged crimes - not so much. Zelig and Broadway Danny Rose are exceptions.
Woody certainly seems to be a child molester.
@edgarblythe,
Edgar, have you read "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI".......It's an incredibly disturbing true-life story of the Osage in Oklahoma. To quote part of the review "it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice against native Americans in the 1920's". I'm embarrassed that I didn't know anything about this shameful thing....but it was buried deep, like most things one might be ashamed of...
By the way, it really wasn't the birth of the FBI....but it was a huge bungled murder investigation that forced J. Edgar to reach outside of the agency for help.
The Indians of the moment are not allowed to decide what happens on their own property if big business wants it. They get fire hoses, rubber bullets, and or jail for protesting it. Native American women simply disappear forever at a high rate. They are being told today they can't control the virus spread by having checkpoints onto their land. And that's just a few points that come readily to mind.
Wikipedia
The missing and murdered Indigenous women (MMIW) epidemic currently affects Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, including the First Nations, Inuit, Métis (FNIM), and Native American communities.[1][2][3][4] It has been described as a Canadian national crisis[5][6][7] and a Canadian genocide.[8][9][10][11][12] A corresponding mass movement in the U.S. and Canada works to raise awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) through organized marches, community meetings, the building of databases, local city council meetings, tribal council meetings and domestic violence trainings for police.[13]
Responding to repeated calls from Indigenous groups, other activists, and non-governmental organizations, the Government of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016.[14] According to the April 22, 2016 background of the inquiry, between the years 1980 and 2012, Indigenous women and girls represented 16% of all female homicides in Canada, while constituting only 4% of the female population in Canada.[15] A 2011 Statistics Canada report estimated that between 1997 and 2000, the rate of homicides for Aboriginal women and girls was almost seven times higher than that for other females.[16] Compared to non-Indigenous women and girls, they were also "disproportionately affected by all forms of violence".[15] They are also significantly over-represented among female Canadian homicide victims,[17] and are far more likely than other women to go missing.[18]
In the United States, Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience violence than any other demographic. One in three Native women is sexually assaulted during her life, and 67% of these assaults are perpetrated by non-Natives.[19][20][21][22][23][a] Lisa Brunner, executive director of Sacred Spirits First National Coalition states, "What's happened through US Federal law and policy is they created lands of impunity where this is like a playground for serial rapists, batterers, killers, whoever and our children aren't protected at all."[25] The federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was reauthorized in 2013, which for the first time gave tribes jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute felony domestic violence offenses involving both Native American and non-Native offenders on reservations.[26] In 2019 the Democratic House passed H.R. 1585 (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019) by a vote of 263–158, which increases tribes' prosecution rights much further. However, in the Republican Senate, its progress has stalled.[28] Law enforcement, journalists, and activists in Indigenous communities - in both the US and Canada - have fought to bring awareness to this connection between sex trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the women who go missing and are murdered.[29][30][31]
The RCMP's 2014 report "Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview" found that more than 1,000 Indigenous women were murdered over a span of thirty years. While homicides for non-Indigenous women declined between 1980 and 2015, the number of Indigenous women who were victims of homicide increased from 9% of all female homicide victims in 1980 to 24% in 2015.[12]:55[32]:24 From 2001 to 2015, the homicide rate for Indigenous women in Canada was almost six times as high as the homicide rate for non-Indigenous women, representing "4.82 per 100,000 population versus 0.82 per 100,000 population".[32]:22 In Nunavut, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and in the provinces of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, this over-representation of Indigenous women among homicide victims was even higher.[32]:22 In response to activists, the Canadian government-funded data collection on missing and murdered women, ending in 2010; the Native Women's Association of Canada has documented 582 cases since the 1960s, with 39% after 2000.[33] Nevertheless, advocacy groups say that many more women have been missing, with the highest number of cases in British Columbia. Notable cases have included 19 women killed in the Highway of Tears murders, and some of the 49 women from the Vancouver area murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton.[9]
