In your recent post to me you said that Americans are not trigger-happy people. I find it hard to believe that you believe that to be true.
By the way, below are some positive reviews of the famous book, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" which leaves no doubts at all that white Americans have been trigger-happy people who relentlessly robbed the native Indians of their properties and perpetrated much much more evil against them. I tend to believe that a nation with a psychic biography of having been ruthless Indian killers, rustlers, horse thieves and stagecoach and bank robbers and bounty-hunters are still very much trigger-happy today despite their modernity. Just take a look at the large number of Americans killed in N. America every year by trigger-happy folks!!! And yet you say they are not trigger-happy! It seems to me you must be a dyed-in-the-wool American-lover, eh? <G>
From the reviews you will see that much negative and harmful propaganda had been generated against the native Indians since Day 1. Ah! the American propaganda machine today is such a mighty colossus that it is very easy for it to convince lots of folks that black is indeed white and vice versa and much much more........... Just consider the implications of this in the political scene and in international relations!
==================================================
====================================================
Editorial Reviews of the book, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee":-
Amazon.com
First published in 1970, this extraordinary book changed the way Americans think about the original inhabitants of their country. Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos in 1860 and ending 30 years later with the massacre of Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, it tells how the American Indians lost their land and lives to a dynamically expanding white society. During these three decades, America's population doubled from 31 million to 62 million. Again and again, promises made to the Indians fell victim to the ruthlessness and greed of settlers pushing westward to make new lives. The Indians were herded off their ancestral lands into ever-shrinking reservations, and were starved and killed if they resisted. It is a truism that "history is written by the victors"; for the first time, this book described the opening of the West from the Indians' viewpoint. Accustomed to stereotypes of Indians as red savages, white Americans were shocked to read the reasoned eloquence of Indian leaders and learn of the bravery with which they and their peoples endured suffering. With meticulous research and in measured language overlaying brutal narrative, Dee Brown focused attention on a national disgrace. Still controversial but with many of its premises now accepted, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has sold 5 million copies around the world. Thirty years after it first broke onto the national conscience, it has lost none of its importance or emotional impact. --John Stevenson --
===================================================
A Book That Does Not Angelize, January 19, 2000
The typical reaction is to angelize a people that our nation has oppressed for over a century. This is not the truth, although demonizing the native Americans went hand in hand with the systematic extermination of their culture.
Dee Brown takes an even-handed tone in this well-crafted narrative, journeying through the American West with the advancement of the United States, each step a broken treaty. As the world of the Native Americans is rapidly erroded, reactions are mixed: to treat the invaders as other Indian populations always fails, as this is a new enemy unlike any ever seen in tribal societies. Raids and skirmishes do not deter aggression--they only invite punishment. The invasion of civilization is inexorable, and when this becomes obvious Brown does an excellent job of covering the various attempts Native Americans make to assimilate with the invaders.
Our nation is by no means innocent. We are imperialists by history just as other nations have been. The only difference is that we took a mass of land contiguous with our nation, while Europeans sought patches of land on other continents. Manifest destiny is revealed for what it is--and the Native Americans are revealed for the human victims they were.
=======================================================
Reviewer: Ed Womack Minneapolis, MN USA
If you're looking for a narrative of the struggles between the various native tribes of North America and european settlers, there probably isn't a better place to go.
I read this book on my way to Wounded Knee this summer. There was so much I didn't know about the expansion of the United States (and much I still don't know, I'm sure) that my mouth gaped with horror throughout every chapter. The account of how the very laid back friendly tribes of California were mowed down by settlers without a second thought was particularly chilling. As the book itself says, no one remembers these tribes of California because they didn't put up a fight. They were simply swept aside.
Reading this book also filled gaps in the stories I had heard: Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, The Trail of Tears, the Lakota Uprising, Little Big Horn and of course Wounded Knee. All of these and other stories you probably haven't heard before are put together in chronological order. It is a very comprehensive and readable book, but it does tell of an unreconcilable tragedy.
When I finished this book, one day before arriving at Wounded Knee, I was overcome with the feeling that europeans can never make up for what they did to the people who were here before them. What happened is forever unreconcilable. But self-flagellation and reproach will not undo anything, nor help either side as they currently stand. What most european descendants can do is read this book to know what happened, and then visit Wounded Knee to see where it all ended and observe. Only then will one be on the road to understanding, as inevitably incomplete as that understanding must be and remain. --
==================================================
A good place to start to learn more, February 20, 2003
Reviewer: Robert Harwood from Bristol, Sth Glos United Kingdom
I read this book way back in 1977 when I was a student. I'm half English and knew little of American History. It was a very profound read then and I felt an enormous amount of sympathy in reading it for a culture that was doomed by the arrival of Europeans. I have looked at some of the reviews and those that criticise it seem to dislike the one-sided approach that portray's Indians as Good and White man as Bad. To them I would point out that for a long time we have had the image of Indians as Bad thrust at us by movies and TV shows. I don't think I'm wrong in believing that there was already a stereotype that potrayed Indians as murderous savages, and that is from looking at it in England. So, I thinks it's ok to have something that discriminates so postively in favour of a race that was vilified at so many levels. However, nobody should rely on just one source as the whole story.
If you really care, you will read more than one book and find out as much as possible. I'm sure doing so will show that as with everything it is never a simplisitc black and white picture, there is always good and bad on sides and there is always something right and wrong in both too.
Whatever your views, I think it would be hard to deny that their culture and race was overwhelmed and almost completely destroyed by the immigration of Europeans. We will never know if the cultures could have co-existed peacefully and the fact they didn't probably proves they couldn't.
That doesn't make either side right or wrong. It does show that we find it easier to go to war with foreign cultures than embrace them and that has been a fact throughout history. It seems that in human relations one side has to be defeated and broken rather than respected and equal.
The book made me sad way back then when I was young and very idealistic. Today I have had a lot of reality woven into my views but I still believe in ideals and I haven't forgotten how I felt when I read the book. However it seems that nations, cultures, races and religions still don't know how to live in peace.
My mother is Armenian and my granparent were refugees from Turkey in 1914, I learnt of their history first hand. My family lived in Cyprus when the island experienced war and division. What I have seen and learnt is that we all lose through war and hatred. What I don't understand is how we can read and learn about the past and then repeat it so often again. |
