I’m on the way out the door to go on a trip with my father. We go when we can to things like the Washita Battlefield Massacre, the Quartz Mountains, and so on. We’re going to McAlester next on a father – son – no – hurry – type – trip, and I’m going soon. Just wanted to pass this on; I just found it.
Gover recited a litany of wrongs the BIA inflicted on Indians since its creation as the Indian Office of the War Department. Estimates vary widely, but the agency is believed responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Indians.
“This agency participated in the ethnic cleansing that befell the Western tribes,” Gover said. “It must be acknowledged that the deliberate spread of disease, the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the use of the poison alcohol to destroy mind and body, and the cowardly killing of women and children made for tragedy on a scale so ghastly that it cannot be dismissed as merely the inevitable consequence of the clash of competing ways of life.”
The misery continued after the BIA became part of the Interior Department in 1849, Gover said. Children were brutalized in BIA-run boarding schools, Indian languages and religious practices were banned and traditional tribal governments were eliminated, he said. The high rates of alcoholism, suicide and violence in Indian communities today are the result, he said.
And here’s some more links that solidify it. Talk after we get back.
Peace.
http://scholar.google.com/scho…