Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
Because we too were victims at one time (India - the Portuguese for sure). We reject any apology of those who oppressed us. BTW, the European natives were also oppressed ruthlessly. Their culture also was destroyed.
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Too little too late?
- Thread starter pearl
- Start date
One thing that may be overlooked is the Canadian governments involvement in the treatment of the indigenous people. It is not the Church who hunted these people down and turned them over to the missionaries to convert them. Whether Canada or the US it was a sign of the times. Whatever the Church or government does in the form of compensation will never be enough to right such a grievous wrong.
Good question.
In 2015, Junipero Serra was controversially canonized as a saint, which resulted in statues being toppled and graves being damaged at the Carmel Mission, where his remains are buried.
Who Was Father Junipero Serra? Statues of California Missionary Removed (newsweek.com)
Good question.
In 2015, Junipero Serra was controversially canonized as a saint, which resulted in statues being toppled and graves being damaged at the Carmel Mission, where his remains are buried.
Who Was Father Junipero Serra? Statues of California Missionary Removed (newsweek.com)
I was being playful, as an "April fool" myself for 74 years.
stvdv
Veteran Member
Nice, you got me thereI was being playful, as an "April fool" myself for 74 years.
What to do, you are the Master
74 years...laughing, jokes keep you young
stvdv
Veteran Member
Great news
A few years ago I prayed to Jesus, (normally I pray to Sai Baba), but I had a special Jesus related prayer "Jesus, you should tell the Pope to publicly apologize for all the wrong done by the Church". And I also wrote an e-mail to the Pope telling Him the same, plus explaining why
So, I am double happy to read that the Pope finally apologized. Next time I will tell Jesus to not wait another 5 years. But indeed "better late then never". My Master told us "If you make a mistake, and don't apologize, then all your prayers are useless". Poor Pope..unless He didn't know
How come it's only Christians who are expected to apologize and grovel over past misdeeds? When are the Muslims going to start apologizing? Or the Marxists?
Some Native American tribes have formally protested the recent sainting of Father Junipero Serra. Reading further, Serra wrote messages asking that they don't torture or kill the Native American slaves that were building their missions.
But, Serra had horrors happen while he was in charge, and he kept horrible people under him. Ultimately, Serra greatly harmed Native Americans. They started out with land and plentiful animals, and freedom to roam about. They ended up enslaved by religion (fearful constantly), and beaten, some killed, and the military hunted them. They ended up on reservations, and often the land was terrible.
Even in modern days, Native Americans have been abused.
The Barona casino (San Diego County, California) was built next to tthe tumbled down (collapsed roofs) of inhabited trailers. Their menu (at their casino restaurant) told of San Diego needing water in 1974 (within many people's lifetimes), so they took the reservation from the Native Americans (Barona tribe), by eminent domain, dammed up their valley, and used the water for San Diego. They moved the Barona tribe to a new (nearby) location. It was on top of a mountain, very rocky (with huge bolders, the size of houses, which is the current site of the casino), and told them to farm that land. Water had to be trucked in 35 miles (for drinking or farming). Their buried ancestors (fathers, grandfathers, et al) were buried under the new reservoir. Do we treat White people in the same way and flood their graves? Do we put White people's bones on display in museums (oh, look, there's aunt Sally's skeleton)?
When I got my real estate sales licence in 1976, Native Americans were not allowed to own land in America, unless they partnered with a non-Native America. This law was designed to keep Native Americans on reservations.
Some reservations were designed to keep Native Americans from using their own land. The Pechanga reservation/casino is one of the big four in California. It's land is intentionally laid out like a checkerboard. They own this tiny square, they don't own the tiny square next to it, they own that tiny square, they don't own the tiny square next to that....etc. You can see that on Google maps. The idea is that they will not be able to "easily" farm the land. Nor can they buy the gaps of land (not allowed to buy land outside of their reservation).
At the Pala reservation (San Diego County, California), the 1310 members of the tribe were listed as owners of virtually all of the land on the reservation. So, if someone wanted to do something with it, it wasn't just a matter of most of them wanting it, it was a matter of all of them agreeing. Since when do all members of a tribe (or town) agree on anything? It took a Herculean effort to decide to build a casino (one of the big four in California). Some of the land was forcibly sold to non-tribe members (including White people). My parents owned some of it, so I was in contact with the attorney for the tribe. Since non-Native Americans own part of it, they, too, must have 100 percent cooperation to do anything with the entire reservation. The government ran out of money to fix the reservation land (and hardly fixed anything)--prior to running out of money, they were willing to buy back the missing land.
Indian law of the United States government is much different than White people's laws. This is because reservations (and Native Americans) are on land reserved to them by treaties. So the land is, in some ways, considered not a part of the United States, but a sovereign nation of it's own. Thus, the 11th Amendment of the United States Constitution "sometimes" applies to Native Americans (they can't sue the state that they are not living in--a part of states rights). This means that Native Americans were sometimes deprived of the unalienable right of redress of grievances. Unalienable means "can't take it away." Notice that the HMOs can't be sued now (fearing frivolous lawsuits that drove up insurance costs, the government allowed HMOs to make rules that everyone must take their complaints to arbitration, with the HMO as the arbitrator--that is, the HMO, itself, decides if the HMO is guilty or not--since that change in law, few HMOs have been sued, and most not successfully).
It takes a specialist in Indian law to handle legal issues concerning Indians, and those specialists are very few and far between. Most of those specialists are, themselves, Native Americans.
Recently, a Native American from Oklahoma murdered someone. They argued (successfully) that originally, the entire state of Oklahoma was an Indian reservation. They went through courts to get their land back, and the courts agreed that the treaties were valid, so they were granted the land. This put the murder trial under Native American authority, and they dropped the charges.
It is a dicey situation to enforce White law on Indian land. They often don't have to pay taxes, so special fees have to be imposed to pay for such things as schools, roads, firemen, and policemen.
At Fort Independence, California, the Piute land was resurveyed, showing that the ancient survey, with antique equipment, was off by over 100 feet, so the houses of White people built on the edge of the reservation were no longer theirs. The White people had paid for their houses, and got no compensation when they were taken away. Oddly, the houses were bulldozed. It seems to me that the Native Americans could have used the houses, and there was no reason to bull doze them.
At the Campo reservation (San Diego County, California), the tribe voted to make their reservation into a dump for trash, for toxic waste, and for nuclear waste. Mexico sued, claiming that the US had signed a treaty not to have that so near the border (Campo is almost on the border). The US argued that the Campo tribe had a treaty, making it almost like a sovereign nation, and Mexico had no such agreement with the tribe. The US could always make laws regarding the transport of waste on US roads, essentially isolating the tribe. And they say that Native Americans are unlike White people, that is, always looking out for their land. The famous picture used on TV was an Indian (Iron Eyes Cody) shedding a tear over pollution. Cody was Italian, not a native American.
Native Americans around Ridgecrest, California, used to have a sacred mud spring at Coso Hot Springs (now a part of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, and heavily guarded and fenced). They felt that the mud had curative properties. A lab tested the water and found that it contained natural penicillin (so it really was an antibiotic).
Pyramid Lake (Nevada....just over the border with California near Lake Tahoe) is thought to be a very spiritual place (to the Native American Piutes who live there). Hot water springs emit mist. A power company wanted to make geothermal power plants there, but the Native Americans blocked their efforts. So, the power company drilled nearby. The pumps put trace amounts of oil in the water, and the Native Americans feel that they are contaminating their sacred waters.
The Harrahs-Rincon casino (San Diego County, California) advertises that it makes almost all of its food itself (casino owned farms), and buys the rest from local farmers. Their food is delicious. The tomatos taste vine-ripened. Their meat is from contented grass-fed cows. . .tender. Cows are butchered at the age of 8 months, because it is too expensive to allow them to get older. Harrahs is presumably a Mafia owned casino from Nevada. The Rincon tribe felt that they lacked the experience in running a casino, so they partnered with the mob. Many people think that Indian casinos are preferable to to mob casinos, but they might be wrong.
It is rumored that Indian casinos are not under strict laws of a gaming commission (such as the California Gaming Commission). In Nevada, that commission made sure that the slot machines were fair. Dollar slot machines were regulated to pay out a minimum amount (on the average). So, most casinos have penny slots which only let you play if you put in a large number of pennies (such as 40 pennies per turn). It is rumored that pay out in Indian casinos is no longer the Nevada 95% or higher, but due to non-regulated penny slots on Indian land, they payout has been reduced to about 40%. Since that is roughly 40 cents back for each dollar spent, money disappears rapidly. And we thought that the Indians were chumps for accepting beads for land.
It is rumored that the slot machines at the Barona Casino (Indian reservation, San Diego County, Califorlnia. . . one of the big four) are controlled by a central computer, which could cause any slot machine to pay a jackpot immediately, or to not pay at all. It is rumored that Native American shills make it seem as though slots are winning, just to entice non-Indians to play, then they make them lose.
I was at the first meeting of the various tribes across the country to discuss the possibility of making casinos (held at the Ava Casino, Nevada). I spoke with the Navajo/Hopi representative who asked me to speak at the meeting. I declined. She was concerned that a reservation might cause them to drink more, gamble away their money, and get lured into prostitution. I suggested that perhaps the extra income from the casino might keep them from getting depressed and drinking, and the casino might pay for the Betty Ford clinic or Indian cultural centers to preserve the rapidly disappear culture (dances, dress, etc). I argued that they have to be careful that the fat-cats who run the Indian casinos might grab all of the loot for themselves. But she assured me (wrongly, as history shows) that Native Americans are different, they are very sharing (no. . . they are not).
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (body builder, actor) forced an agreement for taxes with the state of California and what became the four big casinos (Barona, Pechanga, Pala, Morongo). This prevented the deal that the various Indian tribes had to use the casino money to better all of the tribes (even ones without casinos, or ones that were too isolated to have good casinos), and make cultural centers to preserve their languages, customs, dress, and foods).
Many of the native American foods are unusual. The Kutzadika (means brine fly eaters) Piute, who live on the shores of Mono Lake, California, gather the brine flies, that form a ring around the lake. In the old days (mentioned by author Mark Twain. . . Samuel Clemmons), the flies formed a 6 inch band around the lake. The Kutzadika would gather them up, dry them, mix them with dried meat (pemican), and sell the protein rich foods to other tribes. They also gathered pine nuts (from pinion pines) and brine shrimp unique to the waters of the Mono Lake (artemia Monica).
Atrocities happened at the hands of White people, non-White people, and Native Americans. Many battles were fought over sold land, stolen land, fenced land, scared off game, rustled cattle, stolen horses, etc. All sides were injured (some Whites were burned out, or shot by arrows). In the end, the land that had belonged to Native Americans, was not longer theirs, and the land was owned by Americans (mostly White).
Many worry that compensation of Native Americans, today, will help the current generation, but not help future generations (they will spend the millions on themselves).
I asked Native American workers at the Barona Casino if it was true that Indian casinos share the wealth with tribesmen. They said that it is true that some tribes give thousands of dollars per month to each member of the tribe, but the Barona Casino gives nothing. They merely offer minimum wage jobs for menial labor.
A few years ago, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) which controls the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) funded a project to restore the land, but they ran out of funds.
What would you like them to apologize for?
Their own tyranny, conquering and enslaving others, genocide and oppression. How do you think the Middle East became majority Muslim? It wasn't because they were peacefully converted. Those places used to be Christian, or Christian, Jewish and a mixture of other pre-Islamic traditions. What happened to them?
I don't ever expect an apology, but the guilt tripping of Christians and Westerners is nauseating and needs to end. Those native tribes were commiting atrocities towards each other before the Europeans arrived, as well, including genocide. In what is now Latin America, the natives were literally eating each other and wearing their flayed skin in ceremonies. No one is innocent.
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I may be mistaken but remember reading that the head of Land Management is now a Native American herself. I was also under the impression that much of Native American land is held in a trust, but no longer remember the details.
stvdv
Veteran Member
There still is being done lots of atrocities by governments...better straighten those out.
Sooo many crimes,how can you even begin to to look for atonement.
In 1990, then the grand chief of the assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, Chief Fontaine was among the first to publicly break the silence around the abuses he had experienced. Today, his perspective of the entirety of his school experience has altered somewhat. “I sometimes—maybe too often—forget to say clearly that the people that ran these schools were not terrible people; they were not monsters. They were not deliberately causing harm,” he said.
Chief Fontaine’s admission of some of the good done at the schools, he said, is “not to say that I’m being an apologist here for the Catholic Church.” Rather, while he recognizes that the church “caused a lot of damage,” he said, “the church itself, at residential schools, were also victims because they were caught in a situation where they were administering and implementing bad public policy. We’ve had a tendency to tar everyone with the same brush, but that’s not fair.”
“That’s what our people are looking for. They want to hear the Holy Father say it was the Catholic Church that was ultimately responsible for what descended on the peoples of our country, the first peoples,” he said. “We take full responsibility for those awful experiences, these tragic moments, this dark part of your history. And we are sorry for the church’s complicity in this period of our history together.”
Analysis: Pope Francis apologized to the Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Was it enough? | America Magazine