Native Elder And The White Man
A white man and an elderly Native man became pretty good friends, so the white guy decided to ask him: ‘What do you think about Indian mascots?’
The Native elder responded, ‘Here’s what you’ve got to understand. When you look at black people, you see ghosts of all the slavery and the rapes and the hangings and the chains. When you look at Jews, you see ghosts of all those bodies piled up in death camps. And those ghosts keep you trying to do the right thing.
But when you look at us you don’t see the ghosts of the little babies with their heads smashed in by rifle butts at the Big Hole, or the old folks dying by the side of the trail on the way to Oklahoma while their families cried and tried to make them comfortable, or the dead mothers at Wounded Knee or the little kids at Sand Creek who were shot for target practice. You don’t see any ghosts at all.
Instead you see casinos and drunks and junk cars and shacks.
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Well, we see those ghosts. And they make our hearts sad and they hurt our little children. And when we try to say something, you tell us, ‘Get over it. This is America. Look at the American dream.’ But as long as you’re calling us Redskins and doing tomahawk chops, we can’t look at the American dream, because those things remind us that we are not real human beings to you. And when people aren’t humans, you can turn them into slaves or kill six million of them or shoot them down with Hotchkiss guns and throw them into mass graves at Wounded Knee.
No, we’re not looking at the American dream. And why should we? We still haven’t woken up from the American nightmare.
And now they want to wipe history of all they have done completely out of the history books. When I was growing up watching western movies they always portrayed Native Americans as the villains. Once I got old enough to read the truth, I found out who the true villains really are and it wasn’t the Native Americans. So sad how they try to turn truth around to suit their desires.
Truth
I’m very sorry that greed destroyed these magnificent people. Most people are sorry about it regardless of their color. By design most people don’t know the truth of this tragedy. Unfortunately it was the way of the world at that time a primitive smash and grab. I would like to change the way Native American people are treated. I want them to be treated fairly by our government. Now more than ever I want all of us to be treated fairly by our government. We could do it but it would take all of us standing together or all of us are about to experience what Native Americans have experienced for past 250 years or so. For my part I’m very sad that history has happened the way that it has. I would like to see criminals responsible punished for their crimes but it can’t be done as they are already dead. Unless we have a great change in the morals of people that govern us it will never change so we need to change those people. We need to quit electing criminals. We need to change our hearts to be bigger. We need to care about the wrongs that have been committed. We need to have Jesus in our lives. I hope for the best but I fear for the worst.