Re: 18 Medals of dis-Honor

Terry Henkel (afn14768@freenet.ufl.edu)
Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:03:57 -0500


I agree with Jordan. The thought of a white-sponsored Wounded Knee
Memorial is sickening. To commemorate a spineless massacre of mostly
women and children as if it were some kind of gallant army battle shows
just how far the yuppie culture will go to purge its guilt-ridden
conscience. If the government wanted to make a REAL difference they
would start by returning several tens of millions of acres of high plains
country to the Lakota and Cheyenne Nations, including the tourist, biker,
and gold-mine -ridden Black Hills. Honor and amends will never truly be
possible for those of the "European mind", as Russell Means puts it,
because such a shameful past cannot be retributed.

And this is not all in the past. I work with Indians in South
America, with tribes who still have their lands, and for the most part,
traditional cultures, intact. Right now, multinational corporations,
trained in the exploitative capitalism which "built" this country, are
moving in on the Indian lands for timber and mineral resources, with or
without (usually) the consent of the tribes, but with total consent of
the nation-state govts artificially superimposed over the tribal lands.
Many of those selling off the Indian lands are people of color, which
shows, of course, that the anti-Nature, profit-oriented mindset is a
disease to which all cultures are susceptible.

All this makes me think ahead to a time when the Earth has no Wild
Nature, and no native people living close to the land, and all the
techno-people will have an aching longing, buried deep in their genes,
for a world that has been irreversibly lost. How will they make "amends"
for that?