Ongoing Injustice: The American Indians

In the modern world we are bombarded by others’ teachings. Being constantly surrounded by the ideas of computers, televisions and books we are influenced, we are shaped. We accept what we’ve been told and avoid discovering the truth because we know no better, and it’s safer. Too often “We fail to step outside of that safe sanctuary defined by what other’s wish us to know.”1 If the general population of the United States of America were asked what they knew of the Indians, common replies would be of romantic visions of the once free roaming, free spirited peoples of the nine-teenth century, the melodrama of the conflicts between the pioneers and the Indians, the scalpings, painted bodies decorated with feathers, reservations, and other familiarities of their past. Many would speak of the

Indians as if their legacy was simply a chapter in the history books. Therefore when

“...they occasionally hear a word or two about the descendants of Sitting Bull and

Pocahontas protesting for casino or against Chief Wahoo, in the name of those same arcane treaties, then it is a little saddening to them to see the final deterioration of the memory of the once glorious and romantic and tragic old Chiefs, who were the last real Indians.”2 Many think along the lines of their past being simply an old and unpleasant chapter in the history book that is over and done.

They feel it is time to move on. The problem is that they cannot, for the very simple reason being that what is considered to be the past and history, is not really over--it continues. Like salt on an open wound, the revealed horrors replace the horror stories of the past. The injustices that continue throughout this hemisphere, and in the remaining places in the world where indigenous peoples survive are for the most part, unknown. Over and over again the Indians have been forced to struggle with the evil to preserve their rights, culture, environment and people. One question arises-why are there still conflicts concerning the indigenous people still a threat in today’s’ highly “advanced” society? Unfortunately, the scars of these injustices are ever present and are reopened again and again through more betrayal by the government(s). The memories of the wrong done builds onto one another, and every new injustice creates more distrust and aversion. It’s an ongoing picture of cause and e...

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...the immense problems aboriginals confront in trying to assert their rights, particularly when those rights clash with the development objectives of industry.”29

In conclusion, the governments’ hand in the massacres of the Indians, the many broken treaties, a disregard for the land and people, the effects of wage labor, education, the effects of Christianity, and the crooked politics that took place are all injustices done to the Indigenous Peoples. Their effects are everlasting and the continuation of injustices builds more and more distrust and aversion. The Indians are simply trying to survive but are overshadowed with the remembrance of their heritage, the atrocities of long past, recently past and today. Chief Abel Bosum of the Ouje-Bougoumou Cree Nation states:

“...Today many indigenous peoples are endangered...Respect for our rights does not threaten existing states, but failure to protect our rights will have disastrous consequences for many indigenous

people.”30