Comments

1
About time, yes Seattle do this, then U.S. Government (by which I mean all of us non First Peoples) owe reparations and not just to the people we stole this land from, but to the descendants of the people we enslaved here as well.
2

It's also cultural erasure (and racist) to deny the impact of the Italian navigator Columbus and to misrepresent the early history of discovery and settlement by Europeans. It's a greater omission to deny that we live, work and procreate in a society, and with technology, largely developed by Europe and European-Americans.

3
Shorter @2: The dead white guy rulez.
4
@2: first off Columbus was wrong, and he lied about it, and the first Europeans in North America were the Norse.

The history of the conquistadors was one of genocide and theft.

No one is "erasing" the history of Europeans in North America, only trying to get the history right, and to atone for past wrongs.

I you knew any history you would know how heavily European culture was influenced was by Asian culture and how much of what you think of as "American" culture is actually African culture
5
@1
"people we stole this land from" .... "people we enslaved here as well"

speak for yourself Mercunt Semen, and start paying up you loser.
i stole, enslaved nuttin...
6
@3,4

Start by reading:

Columbus and his men realized that the Indian tribes they encountered often lived desperate, fear-ridden lives as they preyed on one another in an unending struggle for dominance...


Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504
by Laurence Bergreen

https://kindle.amazon.com/work/columbus-…
7
@6: So...

You think in 1492 Europe was a happy, disease, war and famine free set of democratic countries?

Really?
8
I think it is extremely important that we learn about our countries past. We should learn about the poor treatment of the Indians, the camps used for the Japanese, and the fight to end slavery. We should also learn about the Indian tribes. Most people don't know about the indigenous peoples that walked America before the European settlers arrived. They don't know how the native tribes helped settlers. Most people don't know the Chief Sealth had slaves. Native tribes would fight for land and power and take slaves of the neighboring tribes. Many people don't know that a lot of African slaves were sold to Europeans by other African tribes. We all have unfortunate pasts is the lessons. We have evolved and must continue to evolve.
9
Fine, but we should also pass a resolution condemning the enslavement and treatment of war captives by PNW native peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_am…
Warrior captives were sometimes made to undergo ritual mutilation or torture that could end in death as part of a grief ritual for relatives slain in battle. Some Native Americans would cut off one foot of captives to keep them from running away.
Other slave-owning tribes of North America included Comanche of Texas, the Creek of Georgia; the fishing societies, such as the Yurok, who lived in Northern California; the Pawnee, and the Klamath.
The Haida and Tlingit who lived along southeast Alaska's coast were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California.[8][9] In their society, slavery was hereditary after slaves were taken as prisoners of war.[8][9] Among some Pacific Northwest tribes, as many as one-fourth of the population were slaves.
10
I learned about indian boarding schools a few years ago. I certainly learned nothing about it in high school many years ago.

Part of what is so distressing to me is not the horrid policy that was started back in the 1800s, but that it continued through part of my lifetime. This isn't part of our distant past. It was still going on when I was somewhere in middle school. There are still lots of Native-Americans alive today who were subjected to this mistreatment (an understatement).

I don't see how you can deny that we owe these living survivors and apology and reparations, even if you want to brush aside the misdeeds of the more distant past.
11
Who cares? Why are we living in the past? Those who dwell on the past are doomed to stay in it.
12
My grandmother on my mothers side was forced into such a boarding school and forced to live with foster parents at about age three. Apparently it was horror show that was so traumatic it even effected her children (my mother). Eventually she was rescued by a decent and loving Irish family when she was about 13.

Though she lived to be nearly 97, before she died she suffered from severe dementia relived the terror and horror of her childhood abuse all brought back because of the institutional care she was getting reminded her of the schools in Kansas and Oklahoma. The poor woman's last years were a nightmare.

Also because of this we know absolutely nothing about that side of the family and the history of the native part of our family was completely and totally erased. We're not even sure of her tribe. And she was completely uninterested in finding out. It was far too painful.
13
@10 & @11 it continued until the 1970's.

That why it isn't exactly the far flung past.
14
#12

So we'll just ignore all the killing by Northern European settlers because of one kind act late in the game. Northern Europeans who rampaged across most of the American West and Northwest.

And Ed "Murray" can retain St. Patrick's Day while squeezing out Columbus Day (not a big Italian voting block so no harm done, right Ed?)
15
JBITDMFOTP
16
@14 what the fuck are you talking about, you demented logorrhea motherfucker.
17
@11, +1
18
What about acknowledging the trauma of 'no excuses charter schools' of today. Long bus rides that isolate students from their families and a culture of STFU all day long? What's the dif?
20
JBITSMFOTP
24
Indians up here are Soft. Cry about this, cry about that. You guys need to Man Up and move on. Wah-Wah-Wah..... Bunch of little girls.

Back in 1900....., back in 1880.......bunch of Apples. Stop being like whitey.
25
"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. “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."

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