Native american Indians try to reclaim land

RolandTD20Kdrummer

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep. Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says,

"Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see?"

The Lone Ranger replies, "I see millions of stars."

"What that tell you?" asked Tonto.

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, "Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.

Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, it's evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant.

Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What's it tell you, Tonto?"

Tonto is silent for a moment, then says, "Kemo Sabe, you dumber then buffalo chip. Someone has stolen tent."




ahhh..oh well you really had to be there....

Byrnzie

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep. Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says,

"Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see?"

The Lone Ranger replies, "I see millions of stars."

"What that tell you?" asked Tonto.

The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, "Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.

Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, it's evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant.

Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What's it tell you, Tonto?"

Tonto is silent for a moment, then says, "Kemo Sabe, you dumber then buffalo chip. Someone has stolen tent."




ahhh..oh well you really had to be there....

He sure told pale face that time!

surferdude

hippiemom wrote:

I support them being able to govern themselves on their own land and decide for themselves whether gambling is something that they want to have in their society. A race-based law would be one that said we can have a casino in downtown Cleveland, but only native Americans could run it and profit from it. What they do on their own territory should of course be up to them.

It's race based because it makes "Indian" land different than mine or yours. I can't govern myself on my land and decide to open a casino based solely on my race. It's a race based law any way you want to slice it.

mookie blaylock 10

Restless Soul wrote:

Don't know if this has been posted already but I thought this was interesting:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/05/08/indians.land.reut/index.html?eref=rss_latest

Don't know how you guys feel about this but I think they have every right to take back the land their forefathers owned - I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner! I've never understood how people can think that being left to rot on a reservation is ok for one group of people, especially in this day and age.

I wonder if it could happen in the states?

thanks very much for sharing the article, restless soul. i agree with your sentiment.

...how do you live when the lawmakers are the lawbreakers?

rigneyclan

onelongsong wrote:

someone said that reservations are like prison camps but i live between several here in arizona. they have nice houses and drive nice vehicles. if they live on the reservation they get a monthly check. i'm not saying they have it good but deffinately better than a lot of americans living in campers because they can't find work.
i don't know how they'd deal with all the money paid to the american indians over the last couple hundred years. surely it was enough to buy the country several times over.

The United States Government owes the Lakota tribe alone over $300 million to this day, and they have yet to pay them back.

Did you know that on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation that the rate of unemployment is over 75%? And did you know that the average family income on that reservation is roughly $3,300? Doing well my ass.

Did you also know that US soldiers gave Native Americans blankets, laced with smallpox, as gifts of "friendship"?

For years the Bureau of Indian Affairs purposely sent Native American foster children to homes where they would get stripped of their culture and beliefs.


Smallpox champion, U S of A
Give Natives some blankets
Warm like the grave
This is the pattern cut from the cloth
This is the pattern designed to take you right out
This is the frontier with winter's so cold
Greed informs action where action makes bold
To take all the cotton that's cut from the stalk
Weave the disease that's gonna take you right out
What is good for the future what was good for the past -
Won't last
Bury your heart U S of A, history rears up to spit in your face
You saw what you wanted
You took what you saw
We know how you got it
Your method equals wipe out
The end of the frontier and all that you own
Under the blankets of all that you've done
Memory serves us to serve you
Yet memory serves us to never let you wipe out
Champion
You'll get yours
Wipe out

RolandTD20Kdrummer

wait for it....

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=861945d654

.

Scubascott

Wow. I thought we were bad down here. . . .

Have you guys ever heard of Mabo? (http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aar/aarmabo.htm)

Maybe you've heard the Midnight Oil song 'Beds are Burning' ? This issue has been around for a long time in Australia.

The aboriginal people here had similar beliefs to the native americans in that they didn't have any concept of land ownership until europeans showed up. Even if you'd never considered the land you lived on as your property its not that hard to understand how pissed off you'd be if a mob of foreigners barged in, shot half your family, rounded up the other half and sent them off to live in a shitty mission where they were forced to wear white-mans's clothes, speak english, and pratice christianity. Being able to return to the land their ancestors have lived on for thousands of years seems like only partial compensation for the shit they've been through. Its a complicated issue, because much of the land is now occupied by white familes, who have also been there for several generations now and feel a strong connection to the land. Anyway, several large tracts of land in Australia, especially in the northern territory, are now owned by the local aboriginal people. Outsiders have to have special permission to travel into these areas.

Ahnimus

What happened in the past is of no concern to me.

All the land around here is owned by white and Chinese families, none of which are mine. This issue is a non-issue IMO. I'm sure there are natives who own property, even a reserve is more than I have.

Byrnzie

Ahnimus wrote:

What happened in the past is of no concern to me.

No man is an island.

hippiemom

surferdude wrote:

It's race based because it makes "Indian" land different than mine or yours. I can't govern myself on my land and decide to open a casino based solely on my race. It's a race based law any way you want to slice it.

Europeans came over here, committed genocide and stole all the land that was once theirs. In return, what they finally got was to be "allowed" to govern themselves on patches of land that were deemed relatively worthless by the government. You don't really begrudge them that, do you?!

Byrnzie

Scubascott wrote:

Wow. I thought we were bad down here. . . .

Have you guys ever heard of Mabo? (http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aar/aarmabo.htm)

Maybe you've heard the Midnight Oil song 'Beds are Burning' ? This issue has been around for a long time in Australia.

The aboriginal people here had similar beliefs to the native americans in that they didn't have any concept of land ownership until europeans showed up. Even if you'd never considered the land you lived on as your property its not that hard to understand how pissed off you'd be if a mob of foreigners barged in, shot half your family, rounded up the other half and sent them off to live in a shitty mission where they were forced to wear white-mans's clothes, speak english, and pratice christianity. Being able to return to the land their ancestors have lived on for thousands of years seems like only partial compensation for the shit they've been through. Its a complicated issue, because much of the land is now occupied by white familes, who have also been there for several generations now and feel a strong connection to the land. Anyway, several large tracts of land in Australia, especially in the northern territory, are now owned by the local aboriginal people. Outsiders have to have special permission to travel into these areas.

Thanks for posting that. I really want to learn about Australian aboriginal culture one day. I read a book in my teens on the Dreamtime e.t.c, which was fascinating.
To be honest, most white Australians that I've met have, in my experience, been very racist towards the Aboriginals. Respect to you for being an exception.

Ahnimus

Byrnzie wrote:

No man is an island.

I only exist for 80 years if I'm lucky.

I don't want to be responsible for 80% of what I do. I don't have the knowledge of the universe man. I'm lucky to know as much as I do with a good history of knowledge to draw from. But when it comes down to it, I am a human mammal and I just want to be a mammal. I don't want to be responsible for what a fucking Macaque monkey does because we are part of the same family tree.

I was born on this side of the fence. I don't really have a choice in the matter. I'm a white guy. There is nothing I can do about it. Well I could pack up and move. Contribute more of my earnings to someone else's gain. Be a fucking slave. I could get a sex change operation and have my skin colour changed like Michael Jackson, but only if I can become a rich pop-star first. I mean, what the fuck am I? I'm just a dude living in a one bedroom apartment, scraping by like most other people. I am doing more than many people that sit back and complain about not having enough, about their ancestors getting burnt in some deal. Cut down the fence and there is no more issue.

We have room for people to live any way they want. Let people of any race live on a reserve and get into culture. Let the rest live in the cities. What's so complicated about it? Why have this "circumstances of birth" argument?

Byrnzie

Ahnimus wrote:

I'm just a dude living in a one bedroom apartment, scraping by like most other people. I am doing more than many people that sit back and complain about not having enough, about their ancestors getting burnt in some deal. Cut down the fence and there is no more issue.

When Carlito de Oliveira returned to the ancestral lands he was forced to abandon 50 years ago in southwestern Brazil, he found the forest had been turned to pasture land.

But the Kaiowa Indian refused to give in. He invaded the ranch with his family in 2001, and has held on despite repeated clashes with police and gunmen.

"This is where my grandfather is buried; I give my life for this land," Oliveira said at the camp outside the farming frontier town of Dourados.

Like Oliveira and his family, more and more of the some 40,000 Indians in this area are abandoning overcrowded reserves where alcohol and drug abuse are widespread to reclaim the land they once inhabited.

Facing overt racism and with little or no political power to improve their plight, their traditional submissiveness is giving way to growing anger.

"They're not going to die like some endangered species without putting up a fight," says Zelik Trajber, chief physician in the nearby Dourados reservation. "If they could organize, they'd be a serious problem."

You may be 'just a dude living in a one bedroom apartment, scraping by' but this dude above sounds like he's got more of a struggle on his hands. He's not talking about his ancestors getting burnt. It was he himself who was driven from his land 50 years ago.
No one here's asking you or anyone else to give a shit. Most people are content to go through life not giving a second thought to the plight of others, or of the wider world. But this is a message board where we come to get some strange kick out of debating various topics, and where hopefully something resembling the truth can emerge. Some people here may be inspired to go on to try and effect change in some way or other. If you're not interested in anything other than being able to scrape by in your one bedroom apartment then great. But why bother contributing nothing but negativity to a thread such as this one, regarding the plight of people about whom you don't know anything?

Ahnimus

You are absolutely right Byrnzie. I may have incorrectly attributed this thread to a tension between aboriginals and european lineages in my 'world'. There is nothing I can do about this but speculate, so I'm out.

sicnevol

deadnothingbetter wrote:

exactly, hell, i ain't giving them my land. as far as i'm concerned they never lived in my house. maybe their great great great great great great great grandfathers did but not them.

i'm part ,cherokee some of the tribe, feel like living out in "the world" will seperate them from the old ways. So they choose to live on the reservation.


If anyone wants to set up "camp" on my back 15 have at it.

deadnothingbetter

Byrnzie wrote:

Thanks. Seems that the John Wayne notion of Native Americans sadly still persists to this day for many people.

ok, byrnzie. set the example for us ignorant folks and give your home and land away to a native american family.

deadnothingbetter

sicnevol wrote:

i'm part ,cherokee some of the tribe, feel like living out in "the world" will seperate them from the old ways. So they choose to live on the reservation.


If anyone wants to set up "camp" on my back 15 have at it.

not that i wanna be a prick here, but let's give back america to the natives... how's that gonna work for our lives that have been built and raised here? it doesn't make sense. i believe that native americans have every right to do their thing here in this land cause they certainly deserve it. but if you tell me that i gotta give my 15 acres of land that i worked hard for??? what the hell? i had no say in what the americans did back then to the natives.

sicnevol

deadnothingbetter wrote:

not that i wanna be a prick here, but let's give back america to the natives... how's that gonna work for our lives that have been built and raised here? it doesn't make sense. i believe that native americans have every right to do their thing here in this land cause they certainly deserve it. but if you tell me that i gotta give my 15 acres of land that i worked hard for??? what the hell? i had no say in what the americans did back then to the natives.

i have 30 that I don't use, I'll still own it, but they can set up camp if they want. aslong as they help me with the taxes I don't care. you can do whatever you want with your land. I was just saying that I'm cool with them using mine.

deadnothingbetter

sicnevol wrote:

i have 30 that I don't use, I'll still own it, but they can set up camp if they want. aslong as they help me with the taxes I don't care.

well, they certainly can set up camp in mine if they'd like... but it's still mine also.

i thought the taxes weren't included. i mean, they are deserving of this land afterall aren't they?

Byrnzie

deadnothingbetter wrote:

ok, byrnzie. set the example for us ignorant folks and give your home and land away to a native american family.

The apartment I own in a high-rise in England wasn't built on Native American sacred land. Although I could be wrong about this. I'll go check it out right now.