Aboriginal Massacres
Similarities Between Australian and American Massacres
Tyson Yunkaporta, Aboriginal Rights, examines common themes between Australian and American Aboriginal massacres
Black Elk, Oglala Holy Man...on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee
"I did not know how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream... The nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."
International Assimilation And Genocide
The "One America" campaign, hatched during the US's Clinton administration, is very similar to other assimilationist movements worldwide, such as Australia's infamous "One Nation" Party. Note the similarity of discourse revealed in the titles of these movements. This kind of "we are one" propaganda is very sneaky, as it hides genocidal aspirations behind protestations of love and brotherhood.
This is very similar to the supposedly humanitarian ideology behind the original invasions - notions of "rescuing" the natives from ignorance and sin, bringing "civilisation" and Christianity. But this facade of "brotherly love" did little to hide the reality of hot lead and poison blankets. The same principle applies today.
Black Armband History, Americas
Assimilatory pushes for homogeneity are always accompanied by calls to forget the "black armband version of history". This means forgetting nation-defining events such as:
- The Cherokee Trail of Tears, when in the winter of 1838 thousands of people either froze to death or died of starvation.
- Sand Creek and the murder and mutilation caused by Col. Chivington and his men, and the Washita River, where Black Kettle was murdered in his sleep along with his wife and many of his people.
- The Long Walk to Bosque Redondo, where thousands died while being herded like animals from Dineh land in Northern Arizona to Southern New Mexico.
Black Armband History, Australia
In Australia, it was the same, with a long history of massacres ending with the last official (government funded) ones in the late 1920's. Most towns were built on blood, then swept clean with new names, new plants and new peoples.
Let's just look at one small town as an example. Marriba (Marri - kangaroo, ba - there) in the late 1800's had a remnant community of Aborigines who had made a niche for themselves in the new "settlement", helping the invaders learn about their new land. One day an officer and his men rounded them all up and shot them in the middle of the town. The community pitched in to buy him a ceremonial sword to commemorate the event. Marriba was then Anglicised to "Maryborough" and the colonisation was complete.
This is just one story of thousands in Australia. There were about four million of us when the Europeans arrived, and now there are only about a quarter of a million, even though our numbers have increased steadily over the last half-century. Can you imagine the extent of the slaughter? It rivals that of the Jewish holocaust.
How can such a stain be ignored?
To read about the first ever Government-mandated massacre in Australia, see my article Terrorist Attack On Aborigines.
