[Marxism] Native Americans in US Criticize Bush's Silence about School Shooting

["walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While the Commander-in-Chief of Washington's army
of occupation, and its army of fundamentalist
religious fanatics couldn't get off the plane in
enough haste to sign federal legislation for an
intervention into the Terri Schiavo case, Bush's
silence regarding the shootings on a Minnesota
Indian reservation has been deafening indeed.

Read William F. Buckley, Jr's comments on Schiavo:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/36089
====================================================

Native Americans in US Criticize Bush's Silence about School Shooting 

Minneapolis, March 26 (RHC)-- Native Americans across the United 
States -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe 
members -- have voiced anger and frustration that US President George 
W. Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in the 
country's history with silence. 

Several days after a 16-year-old boy killed nine members of his Red 
Lake tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians 
complained that the White House has offered little in the way of 
sympathy for the tribe situated in the uppermost region of the state 
of Minnesota. 

Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national 
director of the American Indian Movement, said that they are receiving 
letters of condolence from the around the world -- but not a word from 
the White House. Bellecourt said "the so-called Great White Father in 
Washington hasn't said or done a thing" -- adding that "when people's 
children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to 
life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences; if this was 
a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that." 

The shooting victims included the boy's grandfather and five 
teenagers; seven other students were wounded, and two of them remain 
in serious condition in a hospital in Fargo, North Dakota. 

The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his 
high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the 
brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over whether her 
feeding tube should be reinserted. 

David Wilkins, interim chairman of the Department of American Indian 
Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the North 
Carolina-based Lumbee tribe, said that "the fact that Bush preempted 
his vacation to say something about Ms. Schiavo and here you have ten 
native people gunned down and he can't take time to speak is very 
telling." 

Former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican from the state of 
Colorado, said that even more alarming than Bush's silence, is the 
president's proposal to cut $100 million from several Indian programs 
next year. 


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