THE AGE and AP US agency says sorry to Indians By MATT KELLEY Sunday 10 September 2000 The head of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs has apologised for the agency's �legacy of racism and inhumanity�, which included massacres, forced relocations of tribes and attempts to wipe out Indian languages and cultures. �By accepting this legacy, we accept also the moral responsibility of putting things right,� Kevin Gover, a Pawnee Indian, said in an emotional speech marking the bureau's 175th anniversary on Friday. Mr Gover said he was apologising on behalf of the bureau, not the federal government as a whole. Still, he is the highest-ranking US official to make such a statement regarding the treatment of American Indians. The audience of about 300 tribal leaders, bureau employees and federal officials stood and cheered as a teary-eyed Mr Gover finished the speech. �I thought it was a very heroic and historic moment,� said Susan Masten, chairwoman of California's Yurok tribe and president of the National Congress of American Indians. �For us, there was a lot of emotion in that apology. It's important for us to begin to heal from what has been done since non-Indian contact.� Although Mr Gover's statement did not come from the White House, President Bill Clinton's chief adviser on Indian issues, Lynn Cutler, said Mr Gover had sent her a copy of his speech late yesterday and the White House did not object to it. Canada's government has formally apologised for abuses in government-run boarding schools for Indians but has rejected calls for a broader apology. Australian Prime Minister John Howard also has rebuffed repeated calls for an apology to the Aboriginal population for similar abuses. Mr Gover recited a litany of wrongs the bureau had inflicted on Indians since its creation as the Indian Office of the War Department. Estimates vary widely, but the agency is believed responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Indians. �This agency participated in the 'ethnic cleansing' that befell the western tribes,� Mr Gover said. �It must be acknowledged that the deliberate spread of disease, the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the use of the poison alcohol to destroy mind and body, and the cowardly killing of women and children made for tragedy on a scale so ghastly that it cannot be dismissed as merely the inevitable consequence of the clash of competing ways of life.� The misery continued after the bureau became part of the Interior Department in 1849, Mr Gover said. Children were brutalised in bureau-run boarding schools, Indian languages and religious practices were banned and tribal governments were eliminated, he said. The high rates of alcoholism, suicide and violence in Indian communities today were the result, he said. Now, 90 per cent of the bureau's 10,000 employees are Indian and the agency has changed into an advocate for tribal governments. AP -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
