"Into the West" / Iraq Situation

[IdaBriggs]

My husband and I have been watching "Into the West" on TNT. It is extremely well done, and very depressing. Anyway, we were watching the part where the soldiers massacre everyone in the Cheyenne camp despite the white flag, and a "new" treaty, and it was making us ill. It is/was very upsetting.

My husband commented that unfortunately, we conducted the "war on the indians" the only way it can be won -- by wiping out the indigenous peoples. My husband said its the only way we will win the war in Iraq -- by killing everyone who already lives there.

By his logic (which has a lot of historical truth, unfortunately), whenever one country invades another, it only ends when one side is wiped out completely, or the two cultures merge, and since our culture will never merge with that of Iraq, it doesn't leave much hope.

God curse Bush and his minions to hell.

P.S. My husband and I both have a small portion of Native American blood in our veins. Sometimes living is the only victory left....

[Mika]

1. Technically, we are living in "occupied America". eom

[bridgit]

2. we felt the similarly, however...

http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/sandcreek.htm the sand creek massacre, among far too many, is flat-out painful; couldn't finish: 'bury my heart at wounded knee' for the flush of similar emotions, it's all just too sad :cry: although i like the production, the 'in the west' rendition was antiseptic by comparison, the level of deceit & duplicity on the part of the u.s. gov, only lightly brushed

[newswolf56]

3. I had a similar reaction to "Bury My Heart," not just...

...because reading it caused me to focus hard on the implications of the fact I am a small part American Aboriginal -- implications I had not before acknowledged -- but because the story has that same dreadful echo of infinitely tragic Loss that I as a Celt associate with the methodically destroyed cultures of pre-Christian Europe -- cultures that (like their Native American counterparts) were seemingly built to human (rather than Yehvehistic) scale and which (despite their alleged barbarity) somehow managed to provide for every one of their peoples.

And -- yes -- though what is presented on "Into the West" is radically sanitized (in that we are spared the images of cavalrymen methodically braining Cheyenne children with carbine-butts), it nevertheless suffices to introduce the American public to the reality of our very own national genocide. Even so, I cannot watch "Into the West" without getting tears in my eyes.

Perhaps because lately I have been thinking about the astonishing number of mentally ill people in my neighborhood and city who are cursed to permanent homelessness, I could not but reflect that in American Indian culture, what we call "mental illness" was
considered direct contact with infinity, the Great Holy Mystery (so often deliberately mistranslated by Christians as "great spirit"). How different would be the lives of the mentally ill -- and as a consequence our own lives too -- were we to honor them rather than subjugate them in degredation and banishment.

But I cannot equate Iraq or Afghanistan with the 200-year Indian War. The former are battles in a worldwide clash between two equally hateful patriarchies whose god, Yehveh, demands of his followers that they seek global domination by whatever means possible: hence the macrocosm of thermonuclear weapons and the (symbolically and psychological identical) microcosm of suicide bombers. Native Americans merely wanted to preserve their own lands and their own (innately socialist) economies against invaders who sought their utter extermination.



Edit: last sentence in second paragraph, entire final paragraph added for clarity.

[manic expression]

4. That doesn't usually happen

It's hard to see all THAT much American culture in Vietnam, or Mexico, or the Philippines, or a lot of other places the US has invaded. Even Tibet isn't merging with Han culture. There is some mixing most of the time when one country occupies another, but this depends on the situation: for example, the only traces of England in India is that English is widely spoken as a second or third language, Cricket and the boundaries between Pakistan/India/Bangladesh; besides that, you will be unable to find too much significant British influence.

The onset of genocide is rare, but when it does occur, the prospects are indeed revolting.

[BlueStateGirl]

5. I was thinking the same thing while watching it last night. n/t