Leaders who call their people apathetic because there is too little
response to their leadership are likely pointing in the wrong direction.
There is
no single Trail of Tears that can be drawn on Canadian maps as it must be drawn
for the Cherokee Nation. We were not
banished from our land. It is as though
the land was moved from under us.
It had
been estimated that the average European at the time of Columbus was five feet
tall. One out of ten Europeans in those
days was deformed in some way due to insufficient diet. … At that time North
American Indians were cultivating 600 different types of corn; all the
different kinds of beans know today (except horse and soy beans, which came
from China); potatoes; peanuts; and a host of other foodstuffs…. East Coast
Indians taught Europeans to enjoy such dishes as clam chowder, oyster stew,
baked pumpkin, cranberry sauce, and popcorn, and introduced them to squash,
celery, buckwheat, maple sugar, pepper, chocolate, and tapioca. … If our
instruments of war had been as highly developed as our social structures, our
agriculture, and our medicine, the result might have been still different
again.
At this
point in our struggle for survival, the Indigenous peoples of North America are
entitled to declare a victory. We have
survived. If others have also prospered
on our land, let it stand as a sign between us that the Mother Earth can be
good to all her children without confusing one with another. It is a myth of European warfare that one
man’s victory require another’s defeat.
The fact of the matter is that there was never
a time since the beginning of colonial conquest when Indian people were not
resisting the destructive forces besetting us: the state through the Indian
agent; the church through the priests; the church and state through the
schools; the state of industry through the traders.
