And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
February 24, 1999
Governor needs a lesson in
American Indian history
http://www.duluthnews.com/today/dnt/opinion/wedkol.htm
It's back to the drawing boards. Just when you thought it
was safe to go back into the water, out pops a ferocious
``Seal'' waiting to tear down what has been built up.
I thought that when former Gov. Arne Carlson and his faux
pas regarding American Indians left the governor's mansion,
we were looking toward an insightful, new, gregarious head
of the state who would have read up on his history and
recent laws regarding treaty rights.
Gov. Jesse Ventura, in the Sunday Duluth News-Tribune,
says he sometimes questions what Indians mean when they
call themselves sovereign nations, while continuing to
rely on
federal and state handouts. ``What's the definition of
sovereign nation?'' asked Ventura, adding that he sees
sovereignty as taking care of oneself. ``Either you are or
you're not.''
Hello? Jesse ``The Mind'' Ventura! Is anything in there? I
hope that when he dined at the Japanese ambassador's
residence in Washington he looked across the table at that
Japanese man and a light turned on in his head. Does
Ventura remember Nagasaki or Hiroshima, two cities of a
country that were literally wiped off the map? Japan was a
sovereign nation, ``taking care of oneself,''[JU]
that was defeated during World War II, much like the
American Indians were defeated in many battles against the
U.S. government.
Japan was a sovereign nation, ``taking care of oneself,''
that
was given millions of dollars in aid to rebuild its country.
This was a sovereign nation whose Japanese American
counterparts held in internment camps have or will be
compensated for the way they were treated during World
War II. How many other sovereign nations around the world
have been getting billions of dollars from the United States?
Does this sound familiar Gov. Ventura? Do you remember
people called American Indians, ``sovereign nations taking
care of oneself,'' whose lifestyle the U.S. government is
still
trying to destroy? Do you ever remember reading about
American Indians native to this country being given millions
of dollars to rebuild their nations after the wars they
fought
on their own land? Do you remember these sovereign
nations, decimated by the white man's diseases and wars,
being interned on reservations after being stripped of their
land? Have you read your history lesson?
Then again, that stuff wasn't written in history books in the
past. It took American Indian authors to write about the pain
that our forefathers had to suffer for fighting for our land.
Yet, in the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish-American
War and World War II, there were American Indians who
were not yet even allowed to be citizens of the country that
they were fighting for under the auspices of the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution.
This was in the history books: ``We hold these truths to be
self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.''
Apparently they didn't mean American Indians because we
haven't had anywhere near the ``just compensation'' the
Constitution talks about when taking someone's land.
Ventura needs to think before he speaks.
He made the statement on the case before the Supreme
Court in which the Chippewa Indians are asserting their right
under an 1837 treaty to fish in Minnesota free of state
regulations: ``If those rules apply, then they ought to be
back
in birchbark canoes instead of 200-horsepower Yamaha
engines with fish finders.... Then it comes back to this: How
can one person be allowed to do this and another can't?''
That has to be one of the most senseless, ignorant
statements continuously used by treaty rights opponents.
Let's ALL go back to using the means our forefathers did.
How about everyone traveling on foot or horseback. How
about non-Indians using the muskets and ball and powder
weapons they used in the past to hunt? Would the Pilgrims
have made it? Would Lewis and Clark have made it without
Sacajawea? Would George Washington have defeated the
British without Indian help?
Governor, that's like saying let's put the non-Indians on
reservations and give the Indians back their 90,000,000
acres of land!
I think Ventura took one too many forearm smashes to the
head by that Indian wrestler Wahoo McDaniel. Just when
you think Jesse ``The Brain'' Ventura is coming in knowing
what he is talking about, he comes in thinking he is Bud
``The Treaty Fighter'' Grant running the Vikings defense
against the Washington Redskins (my own faux pas, but I
hope you see my point).
Diver is an instructor at Fond du Lac Tribal and
Community College and a member of the Fond du Lac
Band of Chippewa.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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