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8278c6b
|
And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.
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|
war
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
usa
delusions
united-states
cruelty
race-relations
theft
|
Colson Whitehead |
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e4d787d
|
If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now. Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.
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|
slavery
america
us
united-states-of-america
white-people
possessions
native-americans
usa
united-states
ownership
race-relations
|
Colson Whitehead |
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be19cb6
|
It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World.
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evolution
native-americans
epidemics
|
Jared Diamond |
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9d6724f
|
En 1492, los nativos descubrieron que eran indios, descubrieron que vivian en America, descubrieron que estaban desnudos, descubrieron que existia el pecado, descubrieron que debian obediencia a un rey y a una reina de otro mundo y a un dios de otro cielo, y que ese dios habia inventado la culpa y el vestido y habia mandado que fuera quemado vivo quien adorara al sol y a la luna y a la tierra y a la lluvia que la moja.
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|
conquista
columbus-day
native-americans
|
Eduardo Galeano |
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920c4b7
|
Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. [...] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.' I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid. 'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.' [...] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.
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|
irony
humor
reservations
native-americans
usa
invasion
parody
|
Adam Rex |
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84dff39
|
Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people.
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equality
morality
dispossession
extermination
subjugation
native-americans
environment
suppression
values
|
Jared Diamond |
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81ae5c8
|
"In the preface of "The Rifles" "Another rule we followed was never kill an animal that we were not going to use for food or clothing." Barnabas Piryuaq "Well, in those high latitudes we found such quantities of seals and walruses that we simply did not know what to do with them.There were thousands and thousands lying there; we walked among them and hit them on the head, and laughed heartily in the abundance which God had created." Jan Welzi 1933. "
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violence
native-americans
slaughter
environment
hunters
|
William T. Vollmann |
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dceb4ae
|
With the snow piling up outside, the warm dry cabin hidden in its fold of the mountain felt like a safe haven indeed, though it had not been such for the people who had lived there. Soldiers had found them and made the cabin trailhead to a path of exile, loss, and death. But for a while that night, it was a place that held within its walls no pain nor even a vague memory collection of pain.
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pain
native-americans
|
Charles Frazier |
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f18118f
|
When I was fifteen, a companion and I, on a dare, went into the mound one day just at sunset. We saw some of those Indians for the first time; we got directions from them and reached the top of the mound just as the sun set. We had camping equiptment with us, but we made no fire. We didn't even make down our beds. We just sat side by side on that mound until it became light enough to find our way back to the road. We didn't talk. When we looked at each other in the gray dawn, our faces were gray, too, quiet, very grave. When we reached town again, we didn't talk either. We just parted and went home and went to bed. That's what we thought, felt, about the mound. We were children, it is true, yet we were descendants of people who read books and who were, or should have been, beyond superstition and impervious to mindless fear.
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|
fear
mound
native-americans
indians
superstition
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William Faulkner |
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f450561
|
...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91]
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|
nature
native-americans
|
Margaret Atwood |
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6ef16c6
|
The Native Americans know that wolves are mirrors for humans. What they show us are our strengths and weaknesses... When I lived with the wolves, I was proud of the reflection of myself. But when I came back, I always paled in comparison.
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|
mirror-of-my-soul
native-americans
wolf
philosophy-of-life
|
Jodi Picoult |
|
d4fca67
|
Where, indeed? Captain Vincent Reed had been born in the city of Richmond, Virginia, of northern parents who were stationed there by the telegraph company. He had attended West Point and he thought he knew something about warfare, having served under General Pope in his long and futile struggle against General Stonewall Jackson. Those men were fighters who would face the enemy till the last bullet was fired, but neither would participate in such a slaughter. Reed had had his troops in position. He was quite prepared to rush in for the kill, and he had positioned himself so that he would be in the vanguard when his men made their charge against the guns of the young braves threatening the left flank. But when he saw that the enemy had no weapons, that even their bows and arrows were not at hand, and that he was supposed to chop down little girls and old women, he rebelled on the spot, taking counsel with no one but his own conscience.
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|
native-americans
slaughter
|
James A. Michener |
|
7b8afa1
|
"This is not your land," William Lobb said. "Oh, it is, it is. I got the papers. I can show you, back at the camp." "This is Indian land, if it's anyone's." William Lobb spoke as if he hadn't heard Billie Lapham. "Those Miwoks encamped just south of here - they've been here longer than you. It's theirs, or it's God's land - take your pick."
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|
native-americans
|
Tracy Chevalier |
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9f1a72b
|
Nothing, however, bemused the Indians more than the European habit of blowing their noses into a fine handkerchief, folding it carefully, and placing it back in their pockets as if it were a treasured memento.
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|
handkerchief
native-americans
|
Bill Bryson |
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14d5abe
|
Juet's journal frequently records how only a tiny quantity of alcohol was needed to get the Indians drunk, 'for they could not take it'; and tales of the drunkenness that greeted Hudsons' arrival persisted among the native Indians until the last century. Indeed Heckewelder claims that the name Manhattan is derived from the drunkenness that took place there, since the Indian word 'manahactanienk' means 'the island of general intoxication'.
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|
henry-hudson
native-americans
indians
new-world
hudson-river-expedition
manhattan
|
Giles Milton |
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33f7512
|
If some saw the Indians as living in prelapsarian innocence, there were others who judged them to be savage beasts, devils in the form of men. The discovery of cannibals in the Caribbean did nothing to assuage this opinion. The Spaniards used it as a justification to exploit the natives mercilessly for their own mercantile ends. For if you do not consider the man before you to be human, there are few restraints of conscience on your behavior towards him. It was not until 1537, with the papal bull of Paul III that the Indians were declared to be true men possessing souls.
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|
carribean
spanish-colonial-period
native-americans
indians
|
Paul Auster |
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c5fa88d
|
We do not admire their president. We know why the White House is white. We do not find their children irresistible; We do not agree they should inherit the earth.
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|
poems
poetry
us
united-states-of-america
native-americans
whites
usa
united-states
race-relations
|
Alice Walker |
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10509bb
|
The Indians' insistence on clinging to their customs had to be the work of Satan there was no other explanation which is why the friars went out to hunt down and lasso the deserters and then whipped their doctrine of love and forgiveness into them.
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racism
native-americans
|
Isabel Allende |
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7bddb4f
|
As Rachel ran with her 18-month-old son James Pratt, she was knocked down to the ground by a hoe, dragged by her hair, and separated from her child. She found herself taken to the area where her uncle Benjamin had been mutilated; arrows had been stuck in his body, and passing warriors thrust spears into it.
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|
parker-s-fort
true-stories
southwest
native-americans
western
texas
|
Noel Marie Fletcher |