Lakota Sioux Nation Leaves America ~ by Stephen Lendma http://piazzadcara.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/lakota-sioux-nation-leaves-america-by-stephen-lendman/
America betrayed them and all Native Peoples. Throughout US history and earlier, genocide was policy.Historian Ward Churchill explained four centuries of systematic slaughter. It went on from 1492 – 1892. It continues today against Native culture.Churchill estimated around 100 million Native People throughout the Americas “hacked apart with axes and swords, burned alive and trampled under horses, hunted as game and fed to dogs, shot, beaten, stabbed, scalped for bounty, hanged on meathooks and thrown over the sides of ships at sea, worked to death as slave laborers, intentionally starved and frozen to death during a multitude of forced marches and internments, and, in an unknown number of instances, deliberately infected with epidemic diseases.”Destruction of their culture continues in new forms. “The American holocaust was and remains unparalleled, in terms of its scope, ferocity, and continuance over time.”Silence and denial suppress what happened and goes on today. Try finding coverage anywhere by America’s major media. Virtually nothing is said, let alone explained.Survivors represent a tiny fraction of original numbers. They also symbolize a longstanding US tradition of butchery and viciousness.After centuries of systematic slaughter, Census Bureau data estimated around a quarter-million US survivors. Those living struggle to get by.Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as:“the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group” that corresponds to other terms like “tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc.” (It) does not necessarily mean the destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings….It is intended….to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy) the essential foundations of the life of national groups” with the intent to eradicate or substantially weaken or harm them.”“Genocidal plans involve the disintegration….of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and” human lives.The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Convention defines it legally as:“any (acts like those above) committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the national, ethnical, racial or religious group (by) killing (its) members; causing (them) serious bodily or mental harm; (or) deliberately inflicting (on them) conditions” that may destroy them in whole or in part.Destroying peoples’ cultures, preventing them from practicing their religion, speaking their language, and/or passing on their traditions to new generations are genocidal acts.Constitutional provisions don’t let government abuse people or deny them their rights. They don’t authorize genocide, either within or outside the country. They don’t permit theft and occupation of their lands or any others.Nonetheless, binding principles are spurned. America, Israel, and rogue NATO partners violate them with impunity. Crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide are official policy. Millions of corpses bear testimony.On December 17, 2007, a delegation of Lakota people went to Washington. They declared independence. They called it “the latest step in the longest running legal battle” in history.It’s not a cessation, they said. It’s a lawful “unilateral withdrawal” from treaty obligations permitted under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. “We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us.”“We offer citizenship to anyone provided they renounce their US citizenship.”“United States colonial rule is at an end.”Signed documents were delivered to the State Department. Sovereignty was declared. From 1492 to today, they experienced promises made and broken. Disenfranchized people remain. Most are bereft of hope.On reservations or assimilated, they’re out of sight and mind. Once they lived peacefully on their own land. White settlers changed things. Western civilization destroyed their way of life. There’s nothing civilized about it.They’re either ignored, mocked, or demonized in films and society. They’re called drunks, beasts, primitives, and savages. America always was a white supremacist society.Rich powerful elites run it. Native People and most others don’t matter. They’re systematically used and abused. They’re not served. It’s the American way.
[ED NOTES;JUST CITING FEW EXCERPTS CLICK LINK FOR REST...THEN ALSO READ.. Russell Means of the Republic of Lakota on Palestine ...
No comments:
Post a Comment