Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans

[seemslikeadream]

NOVEMBER 26, 2014

Thanksgiving
Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans
by GILBERT MERCIER
The sad reality about the United States of America is that in a matter of a few hundreds years it managed to rewrite its own history into a mythological fantasy. The concepts of liberty, freedom and free enterprise in the “land of the free, home of the brave” are a mere spin. The US was founded and became prosperous based on two original sins: firstly, on the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their land by European colonialists; secondly, on slavery. This grim reality is far removed from the fairytale version of a nation that views itself in its collective consciousness as a virtuous universal agent for good and progress. The most recent version of this mythology was expressed by Ronald Reagan when he said that “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”

In rewriting its own history about Thanksgiving, white America tells a Disney-like fairytale about the English pilgrims and their struggle to survive in a new and harsh environment. The pilgrims found help from the friendly and extremely generous Native-American tribe, the Wampanoag Indians, in 1621. Unfortunately for Native Americans, the European settlers’ gratitude was short-lived. By 1637, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop ordered the massacre of thousands of Pequot Indian men, women and children. This event marked the start of a Native-American genocide that would take slightly more than 200 years to complete, and of course to achieve its ultimate goal, which was to take the land from Native Americans and systematically plunder their resources. The genocide begun in 1637 marks the beginning of the conquest of the entire continent until most Native Americans were exterminated, a few were assimilated into white society, and the rest were put in reservations to dwindle and die.

When Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Americas in 1492, on his quest for gold and silver, the Native population, which he erroneously called Indians, numbered an estimated 15 million who lived north of current day Mexico. It was, by all considerations, a thriving civilization. Three hundred and fifty years later, the Native American population north of Mexico would be reduced to less than a million. This genocide was brought upon the Natives by systematic mass murder and also by disease, notably smallpox, spread by the European colonists.

Columbus and his successors proto-capitalist propensity for greed was foreign to Native Americans. They viewed the land as tribal collective ownership, not as a property that could be owned by individuals. “Columbus and his successors were not coming to an empty wilderness, but into a world which, in some places, was as densely populated as Europe, and where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations between men, women, children and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps in any other places in the world.” wrote Howard Zinn in his masterful A People’s History of the United States.

In many ways, the US’ celebration of Thanksgiving is analogous to setting aside a day in Germany to celebrate the Holocaust. Thanksgiving is the American Holocaust. The original crimes of genocide and slavery are not limited to US early history but have found an extension in the policies of modern-day US. The systematic assault on other nations and cultures still goes on under various pretenses or outright lies. United States wars of empire are going on today more than ever before. These wars have left millions of people dead across the world in the course of American history, and they are still fought for the same reasons behind the Native American genocide and slavery: namely, to expand the wealth of the US elite.

Defenders of Thanksgiving will say that whatever the original murky meaning of the holiday, it has become a rare chance to spend time with family and show appreciation for what one has. For most Americans today, however, it is hard to be thankful. As matter of fact, unless you belong to the 2 percent who represent the US ruling class you should not be thankful at all. How can you be appreciative for what you have if you have lost your house to foreclosure, don’t have a job and can’t feed your family? How can you be appreciative if you are a homeless veteran? How can you be appreciative when you are poor or sick in a society without social justice? On this Thanksgiving day, rich celebrities and politicians will make a parody of what should be real charity by feeding countless poor and homeless. This will ease their conscience, at least for a while. Charity, however, should not be a substitute for social justice. Just to ruin some people’s appetites before they attack that golden turkey: keep in mind that today we are celebrating a genocide.

Remember, we can not exist without the sun,
so protect the world where you live.

You're only a guest on mother nature!

[DrEvil]

Thanksgiving: celebrating genocide by fisting a dead turkey.

[jingofever]

Yow, I was going to say Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. But I guess we can do it like this.

[Belligerent Savant]

.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.

The Aztec civilization of Mexico came out of the heritage of Mayan, Zapotec, and Toltec cultures. It built enormous constructions from stone tools and human labor, developed a writing system and a priesthood. It also engaged in (let us not overlook this) the ritual killing of thousands of people as sacrifices to the gods. The cruelty of the Aztecs, however, did not erase a certain innocence, and when a Spanish armada appeared at Vera Cruz, and a bearded white man came ashore, with strange beasts (horses), clad in iron, it was thought that he was the legendary Aztec man-god who had died three hundred years before, with the promise to return-the mysterious Quetzalcoatl. And so they welcomed him, with munificent hospitality.

That was Hernando Cortes, come from Spain with an expedition financed by merchants and landowners and blessed by the deputies of God, with one obsessive goal: to find gold. In the mind of Montezuma, the king of the Aztecs, there must have been a certain doubt about whether Cortes was indeed Quetzalcoatl, because he sent a hundred runners to Cortes, bearing enormous treasures, gold and silver wrought into objects of fantastic beauty, but at the same time begging him to go back. (The painter Durer a few years later described what he saw just arrived in Spain from that expedition-a sun of gold, a moon of silver, worth a fortune.)

Cortes then began his march of death from town to town, using deception, turning Aztec against Aztec, killing with the kind of deliberateness that accompanies a strategy-to paralyze the will of the population by a sudden frightful deed. And so, in Cholulu, he invited the headmen of the Cholula nation to the square. And when they came, with thousands of unarmed retainers, Cortes's small army of Spaniards, posted around the square with cannon, armed with crossbows, mounted on horses, massacred them, down to the last man. Then they looted the city and moved on. When their cavalcade of murder was over they were in Mexico City, Montezuma was dead, and the Aztec civilization, shattered, was in the hands of the Spaniards.

All this is told in the Spaniards' own accounts.

In Peru, that other Spanish conquistador Pizarro, used the same tactics, and for the same reasons- the frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call "the primitive accumulation of capital." These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries.

In the North American English colonies, the pattern was set early, as Columbus had set it in the islands of the Bahamas. In 1585, before there was any permanent English settlement in Virginia, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships. The Indians he met were hospitable, but when one of them stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village.

Jamestown itself was set up inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the chief, Powhatan. Powhatan watched the English settle on his people's land, but did not attack, maintaining a posture of coolness. When the English were going through their "starving time" in the winter of 1610, some of them ran off to join the Indians, where they would at least be fed. When the summer came, the governor of the colony sent a messenger to ask Powhatan to return the runaways, whereupon Powhatan, according to the English account, replied with "noe other than prowde and disdaynefull Answers." Some soldiers were therefore sent out "to take Revenge." They fell upon an Indian settlement, killed fifteen or sixteen Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the queen of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard "and shoteinge owit their Braynes in the water." The queen was later taken off and stabbed to death.

Twelve years later, the Indians, alarmed as the English settlements kept growing in numbers, apparently decided to try to wipe them out for good. They went on a rampage and massacred 347 men, women, and children. From then on it was total war.

Not able to enslave the Indians, and not able to live with them, the English decided to exterminate them. Edmund Morgan writes, in his history of early Virginia, American Slavery, American Freedom:

Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their com wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them, killing as many as possible and burning the corn... . Within two or three years of the massacre the English had avenged the deaths of that day many times over.
In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it:

I have seen two generations of my people die.... I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must die soon; my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitehapan, Opechancanough and Catatough-then to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters-I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out "Here comes Captain Smith!" So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner.

[Nordic]

You dudes are harshing my food coma.

[seemslikeadream]

Emma Best
‏
As a result of my #FOIA appeal, DOJ has ordered FBI to search for more records relating to Les Whitten, a former FBI informant who was later investigated (along with Jack Anderson) for theft of government documents https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-sta ... 820/#files …

Background:
https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek

The journalists and the case of the stolen BIA documents
Emma Best
January 7, 2019
The journalists and the case of the stolen BIA documents
FBI investigation into Jack Anderson and Les Whitten reveales Whitten’s role as a confidential informant

The occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building by the American Indian Movement resulted in lost and damaged property, and a number of documents being stolen from the building. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated some of these thefts, including an alleged plot by journalists Jack Anderson and Les Whitten to pay for these records. The FBI file on the affair describes how a retired Justice Department senior official contacted the Bureau’s current staff to vouch for Whitten, referencing his history of cooperating with the FBI as a confidential informant.



According to the files, a Metropolitan Police Department officer working undercover in Washington D.C. developed a relationship with the National Director of the Survival of American Indians Association, Henry Adams. The undercover officer reportedly learned from Adams that stolen BIA documents were being distributed around the United States. Several months after the building’s occupation and “sacking,” the officer was allegedly informed that Anderson was going to buy some of the stolen documents for either $100,000 or $200,000 through Whitten, an associate of Anderson’s. The officer was with Anita Collins, news editor for the AIM when they went to retrieve the documents for Whitten.



The two took the documents to Adams’ residence, where Adams said they were going to go through the documents to decide what to give to Anderson and Whitten. The undercover officer reportedly recognized some of the materials as very similar to ones he had personally removed from the BIA Building in his capacity as an undercover officer. The officer asked Adams what would later be a key question for the investigation - were they going to give Anderson the original documents, or copies? Adams reportedly answered that they would give Anderson the originals, ‘unless copies could be made.’



Once these facts were established and relayed to the FBI, the Bureau sought and received approval from Assistant U.S. Attorney William Collins (no relation to Nita Collins), to arrest those involved with the documents and seize the relevant evidence. On the morning of January 31st, 1973, FBI officials watched as Adams and Whitten met outside of Adams’ residence. They were arrested and three cartons of materials taken from “the November siege of the BIA Building” were seized as evidence.



The Bureau noted that Anita Collins had reportedly planned to claim they intended to return the materials to the FBI in the event they were caught, according to the undercover officer. The cartons were marked in a way consistent with this, as the Bureau noted. Whitten reportedly claimed the FBI would make this information disappear.



The officer requested permission to wear a wire to record these conversations, though the files released so far don’t clarify whether or not it was granted. It is worth noting, however, that the Bureau seemed to plan on relying on the officer’s testimony, rather than recorded conversations.



Anderson presented the same version of events that Whitten did. In one phone call to Special Agent Hyten, Anderson rather politely threatened the man with his journalistic chops.



Adams’ version of events also conformed with Whitten’s, adding that he had previously returned some of the information to Hyten at the FBI. Hyten acknowledged receiving one envelope from Adams following the siege, containing what the FBI’s file described as “fragmentary bits and pieces of brown paper which were generally illegible.” There was no note of explaining, leading Hyten to conclude “they were not pertinent.”



The FBI was apparently able to reconstruct more of the files’ travels than Whitten expected, identifying the busbill, the place of origin and the person who picked up the packages..



In contrast the undercover officers’ statements about returning the documents having been a cover explanation, several pieces of evidence do offer some support for the innocent explanation. In one instance, the Acting Director of Communications for BIA had received word that Adams and Whitten believed the documents would be returned to BIA by February, a timeline consistent with Adams and Whitten’ arrest date. According to FBI interviews with BIA personnel, no specific arrangements were made, however.



Others, however, were less consistent with the denials. Anita Collins, for instance, pleaded ignorance. She knew of the cartons, but not their contents. She was present for the occupation, but neither took any documents nor knew of anyone who had. She had been there to help negotiate in a meeting and in her capacity as news editor for AIM. The occupation hadn’t been planned by her or any of the others present for it.



A key point of the investigation was determining the monetary value of the documents. The two sums that Anderson and Whitten had reportedly been willing to pay for it provided an upper bound of $100,000 and $200,000 (just under $600,000 and $1,200,000 in 2018 after adjusting for inflation). The BIA had trouble establishing a “recovery value,” which only had to be $100 or more for the matter to be a felony.



The Bureau eventually determined that the cost of the papers and binders themselves “would be valued at approximately $100.” According to the FBI’s file, the approximate cost could be as high as $100 per page “if binding, preparation, distribution, and other administrative handling of same was considered.” The threshold for a felony was easily exceeded, according to the FBI’s understanding. If they had been copied instead of stolen, the government’s case likely wouldn’t have existed.



The matter seemed relatively straightforward - it would boil down to Adams and Whitten’s word against the MPD officers’ and FBI personnel involved. With the MPD and FBI extensive paper trail, it likely seemed easy to build a case more convincing than Adams’ illegible bits of paper and Whitten’s claims. However, the matter became more complicated when former FBI Assistant Director Robert Wick called the FBI to give them context about Whitten.

According to Wick, Whitten was honorable and “completely honest.” Moreover, Whitten had worked as an informant for the Bureau. According to Wick, “Whitten in the past furnished information to the FBI and was of great assistance in utilization of information.” Moreover, Wick believed Whitten was the one directing Anderson, rather than the other way around.



Wick had spoken with Whitten about the matter, and believed he was telling the truth about his intention to return the documents. Whitten admitted that his interest wasn’t purely selfless, however. He was going to provide transportation for the documents, but would “look at the documents for a scoop before they were returned.”



The FBI noted that, contrary to Adams and Whitten’s claims, it was not necessary for Whitten to transport the documents if the intent had been to return them. The Bureau specifically pointed to the use of the MPD officer and their transportation to retrieve the documents, as well as their availability on the day in question, as evidence that that Whitten “was not essential for transportation purposes.”



The resolution of the case isn’t described in the documents released so far, though it may have involved a retaliatory leak that was used as insurance for Whitten. MuckRock has filed several new FOIAs to obtain more documents on this and related matters. In the meantime, you can read the first 235 pages below, including a transcript of Anderson’s and Whitten’s version of events.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... ia-stolen/