What Is Your Heredity?

I think there a certain number of people that like to consider themselves politically correct and all knowing would feel this way.

Others, such as myself, abhor the history of how this nation treated the Native Americans.

I happen to have good reason to believe I have Native American in my bloodline, but no proof from written (or admitted) family history. Before I knew this, it made me sick and sad on a deep level how the "Amerindians" were treated. I think ALL children - and adults - in this country should be required to read the book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee".

and that is how this particular American feels about that.

 

Just giving an American perspective

 

Why that book?

 

I think, as a people, Americans should be aware of what we, this government and country did - and continues to do, in many ways, TO the original inhabitors of this land, the Native Americans. We all but extinguished them and gave them maybe a nickel on an acre for land we took from them.

We cannot, nay should not, consider ourselves a police of other nations until we accept and face what the United States has done to a race of people that did nothing wrong. They laid claim their to own land and suffered ultimately for defending what was their's, as well as for their beliefs. They understood "Stand your ground" before it was popular. I will not get into how the gubmint screws a rez or Native Americans now. This is not the place, I don't think.

Native Americans were living in harmony with the land when it wasn't popular and they have belief systems that most "religious" Americans could learn from.

That's why that book.

 

We did? I don't recall doing anything to the Indians. Either way, Indians are just this side if irrelevant when it comes to America today. Sucks to be them and all that.

Harmony? You mean they weren't warring over it either? We know for a fact that they did, and long before the "evil white man" arrived on the scene.

Still haven't answered me why. As a work of history Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee leaves a lot to be desired as a legitimate source of facts.

 

She specifcally clarified that with we she means the government and country, not you and her as individuals

 

As Americans we should be aware of All Parts of our very own American history...the real internal history...before we get too bloated with self-importance.

 

I'm afraid I don't remember the source ...

 

I haven't read it, although I have heard of it. I have read 'Black Elk Speaks', and found that both fascinating and harrowing. As I recall, some account is given of the massacre in that book.

Personally, I think it is wrong to blame Americans today for what was done in the 19th c. Just as todays Brits can't be blamed for slavery or the excesses of the empire in general, which include many massacres. Or Germans for the Nazis.

What I think is important though is that people should know the truth of history, and not hide from it, as many do, or so it seems to me, on both sides of the Atlantic.

If people don't care what happened, there's not much you can do about it. You have to wonder where their sense of humanity has gone though.

 

Indeed I do.

There is quite a large number of young people that are not exposed to facts, when learning about this nation. I guess it is in hope that some of that number have a conscience for the nation, that I would have all young read that book.

I have read of Black Elk, and I know he was contemporaries with those of Bury My Heart generation.

 

It's a really great book. Black Elk was a Lakota medicine man who fought at Little Bighorn.

I think that we have to see that the world was very different in past times than what we have today.
It's not good that young people are unaware of their history, both the good and the bad. There are good things in US history, just as there are bad things. Same is true of most countries. It's certainly true of Britain.
But the knowledge of past misdeeds doesn't make me ashamed. It just makes me think more deeply perhaps. And even throws the good things the Brits did into a more realistic framework. And of course, it was us who began taking away the land from the Native Americans.........along with the Dutch, French etc.

All this stuff is our common heritage I think.

 

Um ... if your ancestors were all Scottish, then you're not Anglo-Saxon (or Sassenach, as the Scots call it). You're Celtic. :sunny:

 

I think it is likely that the majority of scottish people have anglo saxon blood as well. It might not show in the records of the last 200 years but in the overall 2000 years not many european 'races', gens or ethnic groups remained unmixed. We can almost all be considered caucasian.

 

The American Indians made some blunders with wildlife management, but so did Europeans. Where are the Pleistocene mammals that used to roam Europe, Asia and the Americas? And the Maya experienced environmental collapse on at least two occasions when they used poor technique to farm the tropical soils of the Yucatan and nearby areas. I know this happened in Teotihuacan Valley as well just north of Mexico DF.

But consider what North America was like before and after European settlement and ask yourself if such ways of living are sustainable for the Earth and the people on it. My contention is that humanity cannot survive without learning limits to growth, sustainable yield in timber production, protecting species diversity, permaculture, organic farming, crop rotation, the list goes on...

I have the blood of both oppressors and oppressed flowing in my veins. I must choose to learn from the past and work with others to build a better way of life. I worry that there's a lot we still don't know, but I worry more that we as a people, as a culture are not even acting wisely with what we do know.

 

scandanavian

 

To Asmodean (back on page 16)
The Frisians are citizens of the Netherlands, but they are not ethnic Dutch. They moved away from the mainland maybe some 2,000 years ago, settling on offshore islands from what is now southwestern Denmark, North Sea coast of Germany down to what is now Netherlands. Their language is the closest in Europe to English, closer than German, closer than Dutch. There is an East and West Frisian dialect. Since their numbers are few, many speak Dutch as a second language, some have assimilated the Dutch language, but all remain proudly Frisian. I know all this because I count one of them as my friend.

 

As for the Scottish people, they are a mix like all of us, but perhaps more of some strains than others. I noticed that along the sea coast from Galicia, coastal France, Cornwall UK, Ireland and western Scotland, there was a common culture in Neolithic times, and we can see in some of their faces, traces of the ancient Atlantic peoples that preceded the Celtic arrival. Were they cousins to the Basque? Perhaps...Compare their villages, tombs and artifacts and you should see that they look remarkably familiar from one site to another along the entire coastline. Sometimes traces of the old language remain in the form of loan words and dialect in the language that replaces the old tongue. Apart from a few cases where tribes were killed off entirely, most people simply assimilate partially or entirely into the dominant group of the area. I love a good mystery, but I must rely on linguists, anthropologists and geneticists to help me make sense of it all.

Me: a typical mix of western European fortune seekers and a bit of native heritage.

 

When it comes to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, you must take it with a grain of salt and be highly skeptical.

 

I'll bear that in mind if I ever get around to reading it.

 

Yeah if you want to sleep at night.