Tag: history

The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that “the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne – the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves,” and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we’ll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 120th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Every action has a reaction, every destructive action has destructive reactions!

This report is just a part of the legacy we’ve left to an entire small Country of innocent people, as well as their neighboring countries, whose doctoral leader was under our thumb, right up till his hanging, as to the policies of that whole region we push in the names of Freedoms and Democracy!

Dennis Banks spoke on the Tuscarora Reservation about the war on diabetes and what inspired him to fight diabetes. It was when he spoke to the Hopi, who were at least 90% in wheelchairs, that he realized diabetes must be defeated for the survival of the 7th Generation.

Chief Black Kettle:

I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.

The intent to commit genocide at Washita is hidden in plain view, unless key elements are brought together. These are: that the Cheyenne were placed on land where they would starve while promises to avert starvation were broken; that George Bent observed how Civil War soldiers did not harm white women and children by a “code of honor,” while Indian women and children were slaughtered; that Sheridan declared “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead;” and that the War Department did not differentiate between peaceful and warring Indians. Hence, the orders “to kill or hang all warriors.” As the consequence, the intent was to kill all men
of a specific race.

“The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment.”

 – David Brooks

 According to wealthy conservatives, class and wealth inequality has never been a factor in American history. Of course these are the same guys who believe that the Boston Tea Party was about high tea taxes when in fact it was a protest against government tax breaks for a huge multinational corporation.

   Can you imagine today’s Tea Party movement protesting corporate tax cuts? I can’t.

 Today’s Tea Party, which is largely ignorant about the event that it is named from, would be shocked to discover the revolutionary spirit of America was founded on class war.

Posted at Daily Kos and as “My Views from Last Week” at Star Hollow Gazette.

I have a few pleasant photography stories to tell from a week ago. Between the autumn color and the desperation of one last warm weather week, it was a good week for a photo buff. Now don’t go busting my bubble by just looking at the photos because you can learn a lot from a photographer. We see things.

Below you will find a Third Rock from the Sun brief encounter during an evening walk in the Village. I have several memories from a lecture I attended on photojournalism. There is a pleasant Veterans Day walk under the George Washington Bridge on the New Jersey side followed by a sunset from the New York side. Then a Friday afternoon walk in Central Park with some music videos I made and all day Saturday there too. There is even a little taste of Florence, Italy.  

and out of that heightened violence came the massacre for which Thanksgiving is named.

The clear origins of the Native American Flute date back several thousand millennia to flutes made of bone, to petroglyphs, and oral history. Unclear “origins” involve the Spanish Conquest insofar as the Spanish stealing the bamboo flute from Asia, and then introducing it to the Five Civilized Tribes. A Cheyenne Flute Maker relayed this to me. The idea goes, that the bamboo flute was made out of river cane by the Five Civilized Tribes after the Spanish “brought” the bamboo flute to the “New World.” Subsequently, river cane flutes then proceeded to be constructed out of cedar wood by the Plains Tribes; hence, its origins within this idea being called Asian – Spanish. However, the Cheyenne Flute Maker said that the tribes already possessed the flute prior to the invasion, and the Spanish may have introduced it to a few. That raises some questions, but the ultimate answer we shall see is one of mystery.

  I think a defining moment of the Tea Party movement happened when Glen Beck decided to take on Teddy Roosevelt. The quote that Beck focused on for his wrath was this: “We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used.”

 In Beck’s eyes, and in the eyes of the Tea Party followers, T.R. was speaking about some sort of “socialist utopia”. Apparently real men defend wealth that is dishonorably obtained and then wasted. It’s sort of like defending the right to commit evil. It’s really a hard sell for anyone outside of the cult.

  I don’t use the term cult lightly. The demonization of the word “socialism” (plus the obvious lack of understanding of what the word actually means) and the strict adherence to all things “free market”, not to mention the hyper-patriotic war-mongering, is a throw-back to the Cult of Reagan.

 These people are still fighting the Cold War. This also explains the average age of Tea Party members.