The victims of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee are loaded up on carts for burial. Photo from Wikipedia

500 years of American terrorism
By Tim Giago
Editor Emeritus
Native Sun News
www.nsweekly.com

Living in a world of violence and terrorism brings reflections of the 500 year assault upon the Indian people of the Americas and it is something all Americans should read about. Most Americans have short memories, but the Native Americans of today will always remember the terror that stalked them for five centuries.

The Indian people never knew what act of violence or terror would befall them from the invaders. But death did come. It came in the form of biological warfare when small pox tainted blankets were distributed to the unsuspecting victims. It came from the diseases from which they had no immunity.

It came to them from the muzzles of guns that did not distinguish between warriors, women, elders or children. It came to them in the ruthless name of Manifest Destiny, the American edict that proclaimed God as the purveyor of expansion westward.

Indian people were often slaughtered like animals often while waving the American flag in pitiful efforts to convince their killers that they were not bad people.

At Wounded Knee in 1890, a slaughter took place that the white man often called the last great battle between Indians and the United States Army. It was not a battle. It was one of the last heinous acts of terror against innocent men, women and children. The attack by Islamic terrorists on Americans on 9/11 was another.

Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: 500 years of American terrorism

(Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the former editor and publisher of Indian Country Today. He is the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. His book “Children Left Behind” is available at harmon@clearlightbooks.com)

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