[A-List] Native Perspective on Virginia Tech Headlines

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Kat Teraji

Gilroy Dispatch (April 19 2007)


Bury my heart at Wounded Knee, Deep in the Earth, Cover me with pretty lies -
bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Didn't we learn to crawl, and still our history
gets written in a liar's scrawl. They tell 'ya "Honey, you can still be an
Indian d-d-down at the 'Y' on Saturday nights". - lyrics to "Bury My Heart 
at Wounded Knee", written by Buffy St Marie


"The worst shooting rampage in American history ..." "Massacre and Mourning, 33
die in worst shooting in US History", and "Rampage called worst mass shooting in
US history". "What first appeared to be a single shooting death unfolded into
the worst gun massacre in the nation's history". You've seen and heard these
headlines and reports all week as the media provided non-stop coverage of the
tragic shooting of 33 people at Virginia Tech University on Monday.

"The worst in US history ..." Really? It is certainly the worst shooting on a
college campus in modern US history. But if we think it is the worst shooting
rampage in US history, then we are a singularly uneducated nation.

"I can't take one more of these headlines", said Joan Redfern, a member of the
Lakota Sioux tribe who lives in Hollister. We met at First Street Coffee to talk
while we scanned Internet stories. "Haven't any of these people ever heard of
the Massacre at Sand Creek in Colorado, where Methodist minister Colonel
Chivington massacred between 200 and 400 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, most of
them women, children, and elderly men?"

Chivington specifically ordered the killing of children, and when he was asked
why, he said, "Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice".

At Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, the US Seventh Cavalry attacked 350
unarmed Lakota Sioux on December 29 1890. While engaged in a spiritual practice
known as the "Ghost Dance", approximately ninety warriors and 200 women and
children were killed. Although the attack was officially reported as an
"unjustifiable massacre" by Field Commander General Nelson A Miles, 23 soldiers
were awarded the Medal of Honor for the slaughter. The unarmed Lakota men fought
back with bare hands. The elderly men and women stood and sang their death songs
while falling under the hail of bullets. Soldiers stripped the bodies of the
dead Lakota, keeping their ceremonial religious clothing as souvenirs.

"To say the Virginia shooting is the worst in all of US history is to pour salt
on old wounds - it means erasing and forgetting all of our ancestors who were
killed in the past", Redfern said.

"The use of hyperbole and lack of historical perspective seems all too
ubiquitous in much of the current mainstream media", Redfern said. "My intention
is not to downplay the horror of what has happened this week in any way. But we
have a 500-year history of mass shootings on American soil, and let's not forget
it."

This is only the most recent mass shooting massacre in a long history of mass
shootings in a country engaged in a long love affair with firearms and very
little interest in gun control.

Let's not forget our history and the richness of our Native roots. While
spending time on the 1.5 million acre Hopi Reservation in Arizona, I met
families living in homes they have occupied for over 900 years. On the surface,
it looks like a third world country: you will observe many homes without running
water, travel unpaved roads, and notice that there are no building codes. But
sitting in a Hopi home being served a delicious lunch cooked by a proud Hopi
working mother, I experienced so much more: the continuity of a long and deep
heritage, a sense of the sacred, an artistic expertise, and wisdom about many
things that remain a mystery to my culture.

Most of all, may we never forget all those innocent civilian men, women, and
children who lost their lives simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong
time, just as the students happened to be this week in Virginia. May we always
remember the precious humanity of these students, but may we also never forget
the humanity of those who lost their lives simply for being born people Native
to this country ...

_____

Kat Teraji is communications coordinator for a large non-profit organization
that benefits women and children. Her column appears every Thursday in the Take
2 section of the Dispatch. You can reach her at kattoy@xxxxxxxxxxxx


http://www.gilroydispatch.com/news/contentview.asp?c=212045


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