Atrocities abound in the history books concerning treatment of Native American Indians during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations with disease and warfare, and the Catholic mission system in California enslaved Native American Indians.
After the Civil War, the United States military was sent west to drive North American native Indians from the land they had lived on for thousands of years and slaughtered men, women and children—millions died.
Today, many of the surviving American natives live in horrible poverty on reservations.
Then the American government grabbed Hawaii from the native Hawaiian people against their will. (There is a native Hawaiian nonviolent separatist movement asking for freedom from America.)
After the Spanish American War, America took possession of the Philippine islands and waged war against the native people killing
more than two hundred thousand. This went on until America entered World War II.
In fact, the treatment of American Indians has not changed much. The United States government might not wage brutal war against Native American Indians today as they did in the past, but in recent times billions of dollars slated to support Native American Indian tribes on reservations went missing, and no one seems to care where all that money went—except the native Indians.
It would appear that the era of lies and broken treaties has not ended.
If you want to learn more about native American Indians, I suggest you read what the New York Times said about the work written by Vine Deloria Jr., and check out Native American Literature worth reading.
Nearly a quarter of the Cherokee Nation froze or starved to death on the trail to Oklahoma Indian Territory. This video explores America’s darkest period: President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma in 1838.
It is best to stay away from Hollywood movies if you want to discover the truth.
When I brought this topic up in a 2010 E-mail conversation with a conservative, evangelical Christian friend, he said what happened in the past does not count today.
I disagree. History always counts. Jesus Christ said, “Let he who has no sin, cast the first stone,” and, “Go and sin no more”, and investigations in Iraq revealed that under President George W. Bush, the CIA was torturing prisoners.
Errol Morris examines the incidents of abuse and torture of suspected terrorists at the hands of U.S. forces at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Most in the West and America have heard about Tibet and the demands by Tibetans in exile that Tibet be free from China to rule itself. We hear claims of human rights violations taking place without much evidence to support the claims, and people that fear and hate Communism (the word not the reality) will believe anything.
The American media recently revealed that tens of thousands of illegal aliens in America (some seeking political asylum) were locked up in detention centers and were not getting proper medical care and were dying because of it.
Unlike Mao’s time, today’s Chinese leaders must answer to the seventy-million Party members scattered throughout China. These people listen to the 1.3 billion Chinese that do not belong to the party. The result: if an elected official is not doing his or her job, that person usually isn’t reelected.
Continued on October 14, 2011 in History Counts – Part 2
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top right-hand side of this page and then follow directions.
Note: This revised and edited post first appeared in February 2010 as An American Genocide, An American Shadow Over the Philippines, In a Dark Mirror Without Reflection, and After Mao.
