Without permission from the Denver Post, Monday, August 16,1993.
Cherokees call land run their 'Holocaust'
By The Associated Press
Oklahoma City - On a sizzling September day in 1893, a volley of
gunshots sent more than 100,000 people surging across imaginary
lines in the biggest scramble for free land the world had ever
seen.
They came on foot and horseback, in wagons, on bicycles and by
train, hoping to stake a homestead in the fabled Cherokee Strip,
7 million acres that were home to bison and Indians.
Oklahoma's bison are mostly gone now, except for a small herd in
a government refuge.
But the Indians remain - the last census showed Oklahoma with
the largest Indian population od any state - and many are outspoken
in their criticism of the current commemoration of the land run.
"To us, it's analogous to the German's celebrating the
Holocaust," says Sherman Bold Warrior, administrative assistant to
Ponca Chairman Genevieve Pollak. "It amounts to the same thig. In
the western movement of the domnant culture, 95 percent of the
native population was wiped out."
Dr. John Ogle, president of the Cherokee Strip Centennial
Foundation, says the point of the centennial was to mark history,
not celebrate.
"History is history," Ogle says. "We can't change it. We need to
make sure it is told as accurately as it can be, and now we need to
go on and deal with issues today that would help our citizens."
The 226-mile-wide Cherokee Strip, technically the Cherokee
Outlet, had been set aside by the federal government to give the
Cherokees a way to get to the bison-rich plains.
At noon Sept.16, 1893, the sound of cavalry guns opened the
strip to homestedaers. Trains packed so full that men rode on the
rooftops and hung from the sides, puffed southward from Kansas.
By evening, tent cities had sprouted on the plains and the
40,000 to 50,000 lucky participants were lined up at nine land
offices to register their claims.
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Michele Lord + If you have come here to help me,
+ you are wasting your time.....
+ But if you have come because
+ your liberation is bound up with mine,
milo@scicom.alphacdc.com + then let us work together.
Aboriginal Woman
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