Métis Nation of Ontario Congratulates Manitoba Métis on Historic Harvesting Rights Agreement

OTTAWA, Sept. 29, 2012 /CNW/ - 

Métis Nation of Ontario ("MNO") President Gary Lipinski offered congratulations to the Manitoba Métis Federation ("MMF") and the Manitoba Government on the signing of a historic harvesting rights agreement over the weekend. 

 "As the home of the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark Powley decision on Métis harvesting rights, the MNO is pleased to see the legal principles won in that case - on behalf of the the entire Métis Nation - finally be implemented in Manitoba. 

 We are also pleased that the MNO's existing Métis harvesting agreement with the Ontario Government now has a companion within the Métis Nation," said President Lipinski. Lipinski added, "I commend the MMF's President David Chartrand and Manitoba Métis for reaching this historic agreement. 

 The MNO knows very well how much time and effort goes into reaching these types of agreements. This agreement is a testament to the strength and resilience of the Manitoba Métis community and their elected leadership."

 Similar to the MNO's harvesting agreement, the MMF-Manitoba agreement relies on Métis-developed laws for the conduct of the Métis harvesting as well as a Métis controlled identification system for Métis harvesters. The agreement also sets out a process for the future collaborative research and expansion of the area where Métis harvesting rights are now recognized in Manitoba.

 For more information about the MMF-Manitoba agreement see: www.mmf.mb.ca. "This agreement demonstrates that the time has finally come for governments to respect Métis rights and deal with the democratically elected governments of the Métis people. It also demonstrates that real progress and results can be achieved when forward-thinking governments work together," concluded Lipinski. About the MNO The MNO represents Métis citizens and communities throughout Ontario.

 For more information about the MNO of Métis harvesting in Ontario visit www.metisnation.org. SOURCE: METIS NATION OF ONTARIO . . Contact:. . Gary Lipinski, MNO President Tel: (613) 798-1488 Mike Fedyk, MNO Communications Tel: (613) 798-1488 ..

Native schools funding falls short, budget critics say

$275M for First Nations literacy, buildings described as inadequate The Canadian Press Posted: Mar 29, 2012 8:55 PM ET Last Updated: Mar 29, 2012 8:50 PM ET Chelsea Edwards, spokesperson for the Shannen's Dream initiative to bring provincial standards to reserves, say the $275 million committed in the federal budget toward improving First Nation education is far from enough. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press) 

 The federal budget puts a down payment on improvements to First Nations schooling, but the young people who have led the charge for better funding in native schools say the $275 million is inadequate. 

 The education funding is the centrepiece of a First Nations package that includes renewal of money for clean water as well as a commitment to explore allowing private-property ownership on reserves that want it. It comes as Aboriginal Affairs' budget is cut by $166 million a year, or 2.7 per cent. "We will work with First Nations to … unlock the potential of Canada's First Nations children," 

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in his budget speech. The goal of the education money is to bring First Nations schools up to a high enough standard that they can participate in a new governance system — similar to school boards — to be in place in 2014. 

 The $275 million includes $100 million for early literacy programming and other supports, as well as $175 million for building and renovating schools on reserves. $500M needed to give students 'everything they deserve' But that's only a sliver of what First Nations need just to get started, said Chelsea Edwards, the 16-year-old who is the voice of the Shannen's Dream initiative to bring provincial standards to reserves. 

 "We need about $500 million a year to give the students everything they deserve," Edwards said in a telephone interview from Timmins, Ont. 'We as First Nations needed substantive commitments, not substandard contributions to known solutions'—Chief Isadore Day, Serpent River First Nation "(Aboriginal Affairs Minister John) Duncan seems to think we can get by with just 20 per cent of this." She noted it's costing about $30 million to build a school in nearby Attawapiskat alone, so $175 million for new buildings won't go very far. "This isn't right."

 The Conservatives recently backed an NDP motion in the House of Commons that committed the government to bringing First Nations schools up to provincial standards. But the funding falls far short of the $500 million the Assembly of First Nations says is necessary to set native schools on an equal footing with provincial schools. Nor does the measure lift the two-per-cent cap on funding increases that First Nations have decried as inadequate. Flaherty calls funding 'initial steps' First Nations young people are the fastest growing demographic in Canada, but only half of them graduate from high school — exacerbating the high unemployment and poverty that undermine many reserves. 

 But Flaherty, in his speech, suggested there may be more money to come, calling the new funding "initial steps" in improving First Nations education. For clean water, the budget renews funding for First Nations to build and renovate water infrastructure on reserves, putting $330 million over two years into the initiative. A similar amount was set to expire shortly. 

 But again, the funding falls far short of what experts say is necessary to supply reserves with clean, safe water. A national assessment commissioned by the federal government recently found that $4.9 billion over 10 years is what it would cost to improve and maintain water systems. The Conservatives have introduced legislation meant to ensure First Nations have access to safe and reliable drinking water, but no funding was attached to the bill. 

Critics have complained that there is no point in passing legislation that First Nations don't have the means to implement. As for owning private property, the budget reflects the belief held by many Conservatives that the key to First Nations prosperity is ending the collective ownership system that dominates reserves right now. The idea is controversial, however, since many First Nations believe it will erode their traditional hold on the land. 'Substandard contributions' The budget signals that the government will not force private property ownership on anyone. Rather, Ottawa will "explore with interested First Nations the option of moving forward with legislation that would allow for this." 

 The hodge-podge of measures amounts to a big let-down after Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised hopes and expectations in his summit with First Nations leaders in January, said Chief Isadore Day of the Serpent River First Nation, in southern Ontario. "A new fiscal relationship is not what this budget represents. We as First Nations needed substantive commitments, not substandard contributions to known solutions." 

 The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations applauded the new money for education, but said more is needed. "The investments in education in today's budget indicate that the voices of our youth are perhaps beginning to be heard but we must do more," Shawn Atleo said in a statement. "We will be relentless in our efforts to ensure sustainable and secure funding for education." © The Canadian Press, 2012

SWEAT LODGE CEREMONIES

The sweat lodge is a re-enactment of a return to our mother womb-like experience, which is the cleaning of the body, mind and spirit. People remove all accessories like watches, rings, and glasses, to remember that we came into this world without material possessions. It is a time of sharing our problems with other people and praying for the needs of our innermost self. 

Then after the rounds we re-enter creation reborn with New Hope and a changed attitude. The sweat lodge has been amongst our people long before the churches were built on our Reserves.

 This is where our people went to pray and come in contact with a Higher Power or Creator. There are four rounds to each ceremony. Four rounds in honor of four grandparents or four directions. Six Colors are used in the sweat lodge ceremony. Colour Red in honor of Red Race or First Nation people, the gift given to Red Man is the gift of vision to be able to look backwards in time or to be able to see into the future. Colour Yellow in honour of Yellow Race or Chinese people; the gift they were given is time. 

They are an ancient people in their beliefs and religion. Colour Black in honor of Black Race or Black people; the gift they were given is reason to be able to reason with things. Colour White in honor of White Race or White people; the gift they were given is movement, to be able to move things like jets, planes, and cars. Colour Green in honor of Mother Earth, giver of new life to all creation, she gives life to all two legged, four legged, the one's that fly, ones that crawl, ones that swim, insects, trees, water, rocks and grass. 

 Colour Blue in honor of Father Sky - Creator and God/Great Spirit; the ultimate of all Universal Powers. Blue is a sacred colour. Round 1 - in this round we honor Mother Earth, the Fire, Rocks, Water, and Steam Spirits. Prayers of thanks said by all the participating individuals. Sacred songs are sung, people can either pray silently in your traditional language or English. 

We ask Mother Sweat Lodge to purify our minds, bodies, and spirits to take away all our bad feelings, hurts, anger and resentments. A sweat is a place where we can cry, pray, sing and be able to humble ourselves and cry for our people. Round 2 - in this round we honor all sisters, because women are the backbone of First Nation people and they have the gift of bringing new life into this world. 

We have to remember that some of our women got caught up in alcohol and drug abuse, they get weak and need our prayers and thanks. We pray for our Mothers, Sisters, Grandmothers, Nieces, Cousins, Aunts, Elders, Pipe Carriers, Spiritual Advisers and all Sisters pray for each other. 

We remember all our sisters that are in institutions, jails, battered women's homes and young sisters that are in foster homes. We ask the Creator to help them find their identities. Prayers are said and a sacred or sweat song is sung. Round 3 -in this round we honor all our Brothers. We remember our Fathers, Grandfathers, Uncles, Nephews, Cousins, Elders, Spiritual Advisers, Medicine People, Pipe Carriers, and if any of the above are in the Spirit world we still pray for them that their spirits are set free by their loved ones. 

We remember all our brothers in jails, institutions, jungles and skid row. We ask the Creator to forgive us and for our wrong doings,we humble ourselves and cry for our people. Sacred sweat lodge songs are sung. Round 4 -in this round we honor ourselves now that we have prayed for everyone else. We ask the Creator to help us with our daily living problems and to work on our character defects. We can use any amount of rocks that we want. ------------------------------------------------- The Native American Sweat Lodge A Spiritual Tradition The Sweat Lodge Ceremony, now central to most Native American cultures and spiritual life, is an adaptation of the sweat bath common to many ethnic cultures found in North and South America, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, and Africa.

 It was prompted by the influence of European culture with its corrupting effect on native culture. With the introduction of alcohol and the inhumane treatment of native people, the need to re-purify themselves and find their way back to traditional ways of living became evident, as they were becoming increasingly poisoned by European culture. The Sweat Lodge Ceremony was the answer. 

 With the help of Medicine Men and Women, they could repair the damage done to their spirits, their minds and their bodies. The Sweat Lodge is a place of spiritual refuge and mental and physical healing, a place to get answers and guidance by asking spiritual entities, totem helpers, the Creator and Mother Earth for the needed wisdom and power. 

 A traditional Sweat Lodge is a wickiup made up of slender withes of aspen or willow, or other supple saplings, lashed together with raw hide, or grass or root cordage, although in some areas the lodge was constructed of whatever materials were at hand, from a mud roofed pit house to a cedar bark and plank lodge. 

The ends of the withes are set into the ground in a circle, approximately 10 feet in diameter, although there is no set size for a Sweat Lodge. That is determined by the location, materials available and the builder. 

The withes are bent over and lashed to form a low domed framework approximately 4 - 5 feet high at the center. The pit in the center is about 2 feet in diameter and a foot deep. The floor of the lodge may be clean swept dirt, or natural grassy turf, or may be covered with a mat of sweet grass, soft cedar boughs, or sage leaves for comfort and cleanliness, kept away from the central pit. 

 The lodge in former times was covered with the hides of buffalo, bear or moose. In this day, the animal skins have been replaced with blankets, plastic sheeting, old carpet, heavy gauge canvas sheets and tarps to retain the heat and the steam. In many traditions the entrance to the sweat lodge faces to the East and the sacred fire pit. 

This has very significant spiritual value. Each new day for all begins in the East with the rising of Father Sun, the source of life and power, dawn of wisdom, while the fire heating the rocks is the undying light of the world, eternity, and it is a new spiritual beginning day that we seek in the sweat ceremony. 

 Between the entrance to the lodge and the sacred fire pit, where the stones are heated, is an altar barrier, beyond which none may pass except the lodge or fire keepers, to prevent participants from accidentally falling into the fire as they emerge from sweat. 

Traditionally this barrier altar is a buffalo or other skull atop a post, placed about 3 paces from the entrance and 3 paces from the fire, to warn of the danger. At the base of the post is a small raised earthen altar upon which are placed items sacred to the group or clan, sage, sweet grass, feathers, etc., bordered with the four colors, and a pipe rack for the chanunpa. 

 Common to all traditions, and the sweat, is the ideal of spiritual cleanliness. Many sweats start with the participants fasting for an entire day of contemplation in preparation for the sweat while avoiding caffeine, alcohol and other unhealthy substances. Prior to entering the sweat the participants usually smudge with sage, sweet grass or cedar smoke as a means toward ritual cleanliness. 

 Bringing personal sacred items is allowed but some rules apply. Items such as Eagle feathers, whistles and medicine pouches are allowed and welcomed. You should not bring anything that is not natural into the Sweat Lodge, such as: watches, ear rings, gold, silver, eye glasses, false teeth, etc. In many cultures a female on her moon is not allowed into the sweat, but in some they are. 

 A Sweat Ceremony in many traditions usually starts with the loading and offering of the sacred chanunpa ~ "peace pipe" ~ in prayer, that the participants may know and speak the truth in their supplications of Grandfather, Earth Mother and the spirits. 

In other traditions, when you are called upon to go into the sweat lodge you will have some tobacco to offer to the sacred fire, saying a prayer or asking a question, the smoke from the tobacco carrying your request to the Great Spirit. As you prepare to enter the lodge the sweat leader smudges you with the smoke of burning sage, cedar, or sweet grass, wafting the smoke over you with an eagle feather. You then crawl into the lodge in a sun-wise (clockwise) direction, bowing in humility to Great Spirit and in close contact with Earth Mother, and take your place in the circle, sitting cross legged upright against the wall of the lodge. 

 When all are inside the sweat leader calls upon the doorkeeper to drop the flap covering the lodge opening. The lodge becomes dark, and at this point the lodge leader announces that all are free to leave the lodge at any time if they cannot endure. (If you must leave, speak out "Mitakuye Oyasin," "All my relatives, open the door." The other participants will move away from the wall so that you may pass behind them as you leave in a clockwise direction.) 

 He then asks for a short, contemplative silence. After the brief silence the flap is raised, and the leader calls upon the fire tender to bring in the heated stones from the sacred fire. The Stone People spirits are awakened in the stones by heating them in the sacred fire until red-hot. 

They are swept clean with a pine or cedar bough to remove smoking embers which would cause irritating discomfort in the lodge. One at a time they are placed in the shallow pit inside the sweat lodge, placing first the stone on the west, then north, east, south, and in the center to Grandfather.

 Additional stones are then placed to Grandmother and The People. After four to seven stones are in the pit, depending on tradition (and probably the size of the stones), the entrance is closed and sealed by the Sweat Lodge Keeper, who generally is also the fire tender. 

 Aglow with the luminance of the red hot stones, the ceremony begins in the lodge. The sweat leader sounds the Water Drum and calls forth the spirit guides in prayer from the Four Directions. 

The sweat leader then dips water and pours it onto the hot stones in the pit, producing large amounts of steam, usually one dipper for each of the four directions, or until he is told by the spirits to stop. Then he begins his prayers, songs and chants.

 A typical prayer might be: Grandfather, Mysterious One, We search for you along this Great Red Road you have set us on. Sky Father, Tunkashila, We thank you for this world. We thank you for our own existence. We ask only for your blessing and for your instruction. Grandfather, Sacred One, Put our feet on the holy path that leads to you, and give us the strength and the will to lead ourselves and our children past the darkness we have entered. Teach us to heal ourselves, to heal each other and to heal the world. Let us begin this very day, this very hour, the Great Healing to come. Let us walk the Red Road in Peace. During the purification of one's spirit inside a sweat lodge, all sense of race, color and religion is set aside. As in the Mother's womb and the Father's eyes, we are all the same, we are One. Each of us has the ability to sit with the Creator himself.

 Healing begins here for dis-ease, physical, emotional, directional and spiritual. As the steam and temperature rises so do our senses. Messages and vision from the Spirit World are received through the group consciousness of the participants. One at a time, as a talking stick is passed, all the people inside get an opportunity to speak, to pray and to ask for guidance and forgiveness from the Creator and the people they have hurt. As they go around the circle, they tell who they are, where they are from, and what is their clan, so the Creator, the Spirit People, and all there can acknowledge them. 

 A sweat is typically four sessions, called rounds or endurances, each lasting about 30 to 45 minutes. The round ends when the leader announces the opening of the door. The first round is for recognition of the spirit world which resides in the black West where the sun goes down, and the Creator may be asked for a "spirit guide" by some of the participants. 

 The second round is for recognition of courage, endurance, strength, cleanliness, and honesty, calling upon the power of the white North. The recognition of knowledge and individual prayer symbolize the third round, praying to the direction of the daybreak star and the rising sun that we may gain wisdom, that we may follow the Red Road of the East in all our endeavors. 

 The yellow South stands for growth and healing. Thus, the last round centers on spiritual growth and healing. From our spirit guides from the west, from the courage, honesty and endurance of the north, from the knowledge and wisdom obtained from the east, we continue the circle to the south from which comes growth. It is from growth and maturing that healing comes. 

 At the completion of each round, the participants may emerge, if desired, to plunge into an adjacent pool or stream if one is available, or roll in the snow if the sweat is held in winter. In arid areas the participants roll in the sand to cool off and remove the sweat. 

Many participants maintain their places in the lodge until completion of the fourth round, while the cooled stones in the pit are removed and replaced with hot stones. There are many different forms of sweat ceremonies in Native country. Each people has their own tradition and this is especially clear when it comes to the sweat lodge ceremony.

 Many differences, depending on the people participating, occur during each ritual. For instance, many times rounds are held in complete silence and meditation as the participants feel the need. At other less intense times, a round may be devoted to story telling and recounting of the clan's creation stories. This is all part of spiritual and emotional healing and growth.

 Respect, sincerity, humility, the ability to listen and slow down are all keys in the way you approach a ceremony. Who Sweats and Why? The sweat lodge ceremony usually occurs before and after other major rituals like the "Vision Quest" for example. The aim of the ceremony is to purify one's mind, body, spirit and heart. It is also a "stand alone" ritual that it occurs whenever it is needed. 

Sweat lodge essentially translates into returning to the womb and the innocence of childhood. The lodge is dark, moist, hot and safe. The darkness relates to human ignorance before the spiritual world and so much of the physical world. 

Traditionally it was only the men who would sweat. As time has passed and the lodge has evolved, other levels have been shown. The sweat lodge has given many gifts and shown itself as a way to not only cleanse, but to release anger, guilt and shame in a safe way, and to bring people together as ONE ( unity). 

These days women sweat also, provided they are not on their moon time or cleansing time already. Men can sweat separately and women can sweat separately, or there can be mixed sweats where men and women both participate. The Elder or Lodge Keeper running the ceremony according to their teachings will determine this. Observing very strict protocols while in ceremony are the key. 

Men and women must both practice modesty in their dress when they come to ceremony. Sweat lodge is not a fashion show, nor is it a place for vanity or to get a date. This is a sacred place to pray, meditate, learn and heal, and that must be the focus. Unlike "New Age" sweats we do not go in naked when men and women are present. 

It has nothing to do with being uncomfortable with our bodies, as some would have us believe. Rather it is about not confusing spirituality with sexuality, and creating a safe place where all people feel comfortable. 

Men, women, boys and girls can all benefit from the lodges. Modesty is to be practiced in our dress, meaning that men wear shorts and bring a couple of towels to cover themselves and the women wear modest dress or long skirt with a loose T-shirt and a couple of towels. 

 We must always walk the Red Road in a way that honors others' views and teachings without sacrificing our own. All of these ways are good, none is better or worse than the other.

 We need to unite all of the races and both of the sexes if we are going to be strong and the Sacred Hoop is to be mended. Every form of spirituality goes through change. 

This evolution reflects the changing needs of the community and of our environment. Anything that will not change risks isolating itself from the people. Water is life and changes everything, even the hardest stone. 

The change that is needed is turning towards each other instead of away from one another. If we ceremony together, we heal together, we laugh together, live and love together. 

 If you are invited to a sweat, the 24 hours previous to the sweat should be spent in cleansing, fasting, prayer and meditation on the intended purpose of the sweat, and you should be free from drugs and alcohol. 

 For the greatest spiritual benefit, these conditions should be met. If you would like to know more of what happens in a sweat lodge ceremony the answer is quite simple: Attend one. It will be different than the last one you attended. And so it is . . . Hokh! Mitakuye o’yasin. Hecetu welo !! . . . All my relatives, it is indeed so..!! A ho! Love and Peace, Barefoot Windwalker -------------------------------------- The Process of the Sweat Lodge Ceremony Once the rocks are heated and all the preparations are done then people are ready to enter the Sweat lodge and sit around the hole in the earth.

 The hole in the center of the structure inside is where we are going to place the hot rocks and splash water on them along with placing special herbs also called medicine. We are going to bring rocks four times and each time this is called a door, and or an endurance or the first round. First Endurance or First Door or First Round is dedicated to the East The recognition of the spirit world is symbolic of the First Endurance. For some, it is time to ask the Almighty for a Spirit Guide. 

 The first round also known as the first endurance, according to the teaching of Dancing Two Eagle Spirit, also known as Yellow Moon Singing and Butterfly woman, acknowledges the woman spirit of all creation, including the woman spirit that is present in the male energies. 

It is the color yellow for the yellow nation. We therefore invite the Ancestors of the yellow nations of the world to come and teach us. This direction is in the east where the sun rises and represents a new day or a new beginning. It is the spirit of the Eagle that I call upon to come in and help us. 

The Eagle is one of the birds that fly high in the sky and we Native people believe that the Eagle carries our prayers to Creator. We thank the Eagle for all its representation and the ability to see far and beyond what is in front of us. 

This is where one would begin to focus on why they are at the lodge, the healing they are seeking, and how they can go beyond what is in front of them. Many other spirits can be placed in that direction by other healers. 

Remember that it is just one way and is not representative of all the different meanings that Medicine People and lodge leaders assign to this direction or any other directions.

 If you have any spirit helpers then call upon them to come in during the ceremony. Once songs and prayers are made, the elder calls for the door to open. Some Elders may allow water to come in and allow the people to drink. Some Elders may even allow people to take a break and leave the lodge. 

 Second Endurance or Second Door or Second Round is to the South The flap is closed and the second endurance begins. The cleansing steam and the recognition of courage symbolize the second endurance. The second endurance is in recognition of the male spirit including those present within the female energies. 

We call upon the spirit of the Jumping Mouse, the Wolf or the Hawk to come and help us with our prayers. We acknowledge the color red for all the red nations of the earth. 

 By this time, all the participants should be sweating, getting rid of their bodily toxins through their pores, the slight deprivation of air and the exposure to extreme heat have combined to help alter their state of consciousness. Depending on the state of people present, there might be an invitation to say prayers, sing songs, or the release of energy through an exercise within the lodge. 

The fire tender or doorkeeper is then called upon to lift the flap. As the flap is raised and held open, the leader asks the participants how they are feeling. Most respond enthusiastically that they are doing well at this stage, some though, are suffering from the extreme and have shortness of breath, and some are having an out of body experience and we say that they are in the spirit world.

 If this is the case then the Elder invites the people to stay and focus on their prayers while they bring the person back in a safe manner, usually working with the fire keeper on this. Water may be passed to those participants who desire to pour the water over their heads or to drink it.

 A longer break is taken to mark the half way of the ceremony. Third Endurance or Third Door or Third Round is to the West Usually more rocks and a new bucket of water are needed before the third endurance. 

After the new stones have entered, the Elder instructs the people on how this round will go. He or she also invites people for doctoring or physical and emotional healing, instructing everyone else as to what to do and how to focus. 

The flap is then closed and the round begins. In this round and direction we call upon the Brown Bear, the Owl, and many others, including the Thunder Bird, to help us go deep within. I acknowledge the color of dark blue (Cree/Ojibwa/Algonquin colours) or black (Lakota colour) for the black road and also for the black nation of the earth. 

The black road is the road where people are being hurt or hurting themselves through different means. The black nation of the world and their ancestors are also invited in. The recognition of deep meditation and the ability to go inwards for the answers and to develop the ethereal intuition is what I encourage people to focus on in this round. 

Sometimes praying individually or out loud is done, but most of the time I encourage people to simply pray silently and go into the foetal position, and I then guide them through a meditative exercise.

 This is what symbolizes the third endurance for me. I encourage people to try to look within and gaze upon the stones in silence, hopefully viewing images within the red glow of the rocks. After a while, water is poured upon the rocks and the leader begins to sing a healing song.

 If an elder has brought in a pipe into the lodge, it is usually during the beginning of this round that the pipe is smoked. 

 Fourth Endurance or Fourth Door or Fourth Round is to the North The last endurance centers on specific personal healing. The fire tender is thanked for all of the hard work, and the last endurance prayer may begin. 

The North stands for wisdom and knowledge, for the White Calf Buffalo Woman, Blue Heron, and others as well. We acknowledge the color white for the white nation of the earth. The leader may point out some specific areas of prayers for an individual to pray or work on and ask for the Great Spirit's wisdom regarding them.

 When the steam has subsided, the leader will usually offer a summarizing prayer in this final round, or one or several of the participants may pray out loud in respect to a particular area of healing. 

Usually the leader will have briefed certain individuals regarding preparing, to some degree, a prayer regarding healing; or the individuals are free to request time to voice their healing prayer. 

The leader concludes the ritual with a short final prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving for a successful Sweat lodge ceremony and acknowledges that we have welcomed all of the Nations of the world to be with us. 

The fire tender or doorkeeper is called and the door is opened, the participants leave the lodge one by one in a clockwise manner, beginning with the first person to the right of the entrance. 

 At the end of a sweat every one's clothing is soaked through with sweat, and participants usually change into a dry set of clothes to be comfortable when they gather once again to smoke the peace pipe that was loaded earlier if they hadn't smoked it before.

 After the pipe has been smoked, there is sharing of food around the fire and a closing circle where all the people are invited to say a final word of gratitude. The hot coals are excellent for metal boiling pots loaded with stews, which usually have been cooking while the ceremony was in progress. Coolers of juice, mineral water or soda are consumed in quantity by thirsty participants after the ceremony. 

A plate of food is placed at a distance from the lodge as an offering to all the spirits that entered the ceremony, or is put in the fire to send up to the spirit world.

 The ceremony is very refreshing activity, and many participants will linger to sit around the fire in peace and serenity, appreciating and remembering their moving spiritual experiences that just occurred. Physical-Psychological-Emotional-Spiritual Healing aspects of the Sweat Lodge Ceremony Neuro-theological approaches provide an important link between the scientific and religious perspectives. 

These approaches have for most part neglected the implications of a Neolithic form of spiritual healing - shamanism. Every Medicine person leading a Sweat lodge ceremony and every tribal group has its own traditions and ways of conducting a Sweat lodge ceremony (Running Wolf). 

In general, there is no right or wrong way to perform a sweat lodge ceremony, other than to enter the lodge with an open mind and be prepared for cleansing of negative emotions, healing of physical ailments, the clearing of mental concerns and/or the releasing of energetic or spiritual blockages. 

 One of the immediate effects of a Sweat lodge ceremony is the cleansing of undesirable toxins from the body. Bacteria and viruses cannot survive at temperatures much higher than 98.6 degrees, and the sweat can get up to 120 or 130 degrees.

 The rise in temperature also stimulates the adrenaline, noradrenalin and cortisol response to stressors on the body called flight or fight response are released into our bloodstream (Cannon).

 It also helps bring blood flow to the skin. The Heart beats faster and the impurities in the vital organs are flushed out. Clogged respiratory passages are opened by heat, this gives relief from colds or minor respiratory problem.

 A fundamental way our brains function is through the attraction and pushing of negative and positive ions along the neuropath ways. The endocrine glands facilitate the release of negative ions into the air, inducing relaxation.

 The splashing of water on superheated rocks in a sauna or Sweat lodge facilitates such process and produces an abundance of negative ions, which promotes profuse sweating; an altered state of being accompanied by feelings of refreshment and well-being. 

 The alleviation of the following physical and emotional symptoms has been reported by many participants at our lodge: *some of the cramping pain during menstruation and removal of excessive water caused by retention of sodium *following childbirth, the sweat lodge relieves aching muscles and cleanses the body. *repeated exposure to sweat lodge ceremony helps alleviate depressive symptoms by enhancing sense of self and identity. 

It helps people to bond with others, providing a sense of belonging, and also removes the feeling of isolation *helps relieve tension and stress *reduces pain for rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, lupus, neuralgia, tendonitis and some cancer pain *endurance through the ceremony has helped people to cope with feelings of claustrophobia *high blood pressure *improved sleep patterns *due to the opening of the skin pores with the intense heat of the lodge, some skin diseases such as psoriasis, eczema and neurodermatitis are improved [Studies by M.I Hannukesela and S. Ellahham, published in The American Journal of Medicine [110,118-126], indicate that saunas activate the sympathetic nervous system, the rennin-angiotensin-aldosteronesystem and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal hormonal axis. This causes releases of hormones including adrenocorticotropic, aldosterone, angiotensin II, argininevasopressin, atrial natriuretic peptide, beta-endorphin, cortisol, epinephrine, glucose, growth hormone, norepenephrine, prolactin, renin activity, thyroid and thyroid-stimulating. 

These increases return to normal within a few hours and have no permanent negative effects but many positive effects being reported by the participants(Reprinted from the Internet)] I am of the belief that if the effects of the sweat lodge were studied further, and over a longer time period by the different professionals, a more exhaustive list of health benefits could be accrued. It should be noted that people with severe medical or mental health issues, including acute psychosis, acute episodes of schizophrenia, 2 or 3rd trimesters of a pregnancy, chronic and severe heart problems, and people with major post-surgical conditions should avoid using the Sweat lodge.

 In conclusion, I believe that the Sweat lodge is a significant ancient tool of my people which is now fast becoming a modern manifestation of shamanism. The ceremony helps us enhance our deepest respect for one another, for our ancestors, for our Medicine people, and for our Sacred Mother Earth and all of God's creations.

The North American Indian Holocaust

By Kahentinetha Horn

 The “final solution” of the North American Indian problem was the model for the subsequent Jewish holocaust and South African apartheid Why is the biggest holocaust in all humanity being hidden from history? 

Is it because it lasted so long that it has become a habit? It’s been well documented that the killing of Indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere since the beginning of colonization has been estimated at 120 million. Yet nobody wants to speak about it. 

 Today historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are revealing that information on this holocaust is being deliberately eliminated from the knowledge base and consciousness of North Americans and the world. A completely false picture is being painted of our people as suffering from social ills of our own making.

 It could be argued that the loss of 120 million from 1500 to 1800 isn’t the same as the loss of 6 million people during World War II. Can 6 million in 1945 be compared to 1 million in 1500? School children are still being taught that large areas of North America are uninhabited as if this land belongs to no one and never did. 

The role of our ancestors as caretakers is constantly and habitually overlooked by colonial society. Before the arrival of Europeans, cities and towns here were flourishing. Mexico City had a larger population than any city in Europe. The people were healthy and well-fed. The first Europeans were amazed. 

The agricultural products developed by the Indigenous people transformed human nutrition internationally. The North American Indian holocaust was studied by South Africa for their apartheid program and by Hitler for his genocide of the Jews during World War II. 

Hitler commented that he admired the great job Americans had done in taking care of the Indian problem. The policies used to kill us off was so successful that people today generally assume that our population was low.

 Hitler told a past US President when he remarked about their maltreatment of the Jewish people, he mind your own business. You’re the worst. Where are the monuments? Where are the memorial ceremonies? Why is it being concealed? 

The survivors of the WWII holocaust have not yet died and already there is a movement afoot to forget what happened. Unlike post-war Germany, North Americans refuse to acknowledge this genocide. Almost one and a quarter million Kanien’ke:haka (Mohawk) were killed off leaving us only a few thousand survivors. 

 North Americans do not want to reveal that there was and still is a systematic plan to destroy most of the native people by outright murder by bounty hunters and land grabbers, disease through distributing small pox infested blankets, relocation, theft of children who were placed in concentration camps called “residential schools” and assimilation. 

 As with the Jews, they could not have accomplished this without their collaborators who they trained to serve their genocidal system through their “re-education camps”. The policy changed from outright slaughter to killing the Indian inside. Governments, army, police, church, corporations, doctors, judges and common people were complicit in this killing machine. 

An elaborate campaign has covered up this genocide which was engineered at the highest levels of power in the United States and Canada. This cover up continues to this day. When they killed off all the Indians, they brought in Blacks to be their labourers. 

 In the residential schools many eye witnesses have recently come forward to describe the atrocities. They called these places “death camps” where, according to government records, nearly half of all these innocent Indigenous children died or disappeared as if they never existed. 

In the 1920′s when Dr. Bryce was alarmed by the high death rate of children in residential schools, his report was suppressed. The term “Final Solution” was not coined by the Nazis. It was Indian Affairs Superintendent, Duncan Campbell Scott, Canada’s Adolph Eichmann, who in April 1910 plotted out the planned murder to take care of the “Indian problem”. “

It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem”. (DIA Archives, RG 10 series). In the 1930′s he brought German doctors over here to do medical experiments on our children. 

According to the study the majority of the lives of these children was extinguished. School children are taught his poetry with no mention of his role as the butcher of the Indian people. Those who carried out this annihilation of our people were protected so they could declare full-scale war on us. North Americans as heirs of the fruits of this murderous system have blood on their hands. 

If people are sincere about preventing holocausts they must remember it. History must be told as it really happened in all its tragic details. It’s not good enough to just remember the holocaust that took place during the lifetime of some of the survivors. We have to remember the larger holocaust. Isn’t it time to uncover the truth and make the perpetrators face up to this?

 In the west there are a whole series of Eichmanns. General Amherst ordered the distribution of small pox infested blankets to kill of our people. But his name is shamelessly preserved in the names of towns and streets. George Washington is called the “village burner” in Mohawk because of all the villages he ordered burnt. Villages would be surrounded. As the people came running out, they would be shot, stabbed, women, children and elders alike. In one campaign alone “hundreds of thousand died, from New York across Pennsylvania, West Virgina and into Ohio”. 

His name graces the capital of the United States. The smell of death in their own backyard does not seem to bother North Americans. This is obscene. By Kahentinetha Horn, MNN Mohawk Nation News, kahentinetha2@yahoo.com First published in Akwesasne Phoenix, Jan. 30, 2005 

The American Indian Holocaust, known as the “500 year war” and the “World’s Longest Holocaust In The History Of Mankind And Loss Of Human Lives.”

Genocide and Denying It: Why We Are Not Taught that the Natives of the United States and Canada were Exterminated Death Toll: 95,000,000 to 114,000,000 American Holocaust: D. Stannard (Oxford Press, 1992) - “over 100 million killed” “[Christopher] Columbus personally murdered half a million Natives”

 “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history.

 He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination – by starvation and uneven combat – of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.” – P. 202, “Adolph Hitler” by John Toland Native Americans have the highest mortality rate of any U.S. minority because of U.S. action and policy. 

The biggest killers though were smallpox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. All imported by the Europeans colonists. Smallpox was instrumental in killing the American Indians GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS: A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW The term Genocide derives from the Latin (genos=race, tribe; cide=killing) and means literally the killing or murder of an entire tribe or people. 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group” and cites the first usage of the term as R. Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, (1944) p.79. “By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.”

 The U.N. General Assembly adopted this term and defended it in 1946 as “….a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.” Most people tend to associate genocide with wholesale slaughter of a specific people. 

However, “the 1994 U.N. Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, describes genocide beyond outright murder of people as the destruction and extermination of culture.” Article II of the convention lists five categories of activity as genocidal when directed against a specific “national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” 

 These categories are: ■Killing members of the group; ■Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of group; ■Deliberately infliction on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ■Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; ■Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

 Genocide or the deliberate extermination of one ethnic group by another is not new, for example in 1937 the Pequot Indians were exterminated by the Colonists when they burned their villages in Mystic, Connecticut, and then shot all the other people — including women and children — who tried to escape. 

The United States Government has refused to ratify the U.N. convention on genocide. There are many facets of genocide which have been implemented upon indigenous peoples of North America. The list of American genocidal policies includes: Mass-execution, Biological warfare, Forced Removal from homelands, Incarceration, Indoctrination of non-indigenous values, forced surgical sterilization of native women, 

Prevention of religious practices, just to name a few. By mass-execution prior to the arrival of Columbus the land defined as the 48 contiguous states of America numbered in excess of 12 million. Four centuries later, it had been reduced by 95% (237 thousand). How? When Columbus returned in 1493 he brought a force of 17 ships. He began to implement slavery and mass-extermination of the Taino population of the Caribbean. 

Within three years five million were dead. Fifty years later the Spanish census recorded only 200 living! Las Casas, the primary historian of the Columbian era, writes of numerous accounts of the horrendous acts that the Spanish colonists inflicted upon the indigenous people, which included hanging them en masse, roasting them on spits, hacking their children into pieces to be used as dog food, and the list continues. 

 This did not end with Columbus’ departure, the European colonies and the newly declared United States continued similar conquests. Massacres occurred across the land such as the Wounded Knee Massacre. Not only was the method of massacre used, other methods for “Indian Removal” and “clearing” included military slaughter of tribal villages, bounties on native scalps, and biological warfare. British agents intentionally gave Tribes blankets that were intentionally contaminated with smallpox. 

Over 100 thousand died among the Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee and other Ohio River nations. The U.S. army followed suit and used the same method on the Plains tribal populations with similar success. FORCED REMOVAL FROM HOMELANDS For a brief periods after the American Revolution, the United States adopted a policy toward American Indians known as the “conquest” theory. 

In the Treaty of Fort Stansix of 1784, the Iroquois had to cede lands in western New York and Pennsylvania. Those Iroquois living in the United States (many had gone to Canada where the English gave them refuge) rapidly degenerated as a nation during the last decades of the eighteenth century, losing most of their remaining lands and much of their ability to cope. 

The Shawnees, Miamis, Delawaresm, Ottawans, Wyandots, and Potawatomis watching the decline of the Iroquois formed their own confederacy and informed the United states that the Ohio river was the boundary between their lands and those of the settlers.

It was just a matter of time before further hostilities ensued. "Indian Boarding School" - Cultural Genocide FORCED ASSIMILATION The Europeans saw themselves as the superior culture bringing civilization to an inferior culture. 

The colonial world view split reality into popular parts: good and evil, body and spirit, man and nature, head and hear, European and primitive. American Indians spirituality lacks these dualism’s; language expresses the oneness of all things. 

God is not the transcendent Father but the Mother Earth, the Corn Mother, the Great Spirit who nourishes all It is polytheistic, believing in many gods and many levels of deity. “At the basis of most American Native beliefs is the supernatural was a profound conviction that an invisible force, a powerful spirit, permeated the entire universe and ordered the cycles of birth and death for all living things.” 

Beyond this belief in a universal spirit, most American Indians attached supernatural qualities to animals, heavenly bodies, the seasons, dead ancestors, the elements, and geologic formations. 

Their world was infused with the divine – The Sacred Hoop. This was not at all a personal being presiding ominpotently over the salvation or damnation of individual people as the Europeans believed.

 For the Europeans such beliefs were pagan. Thus, the conquest was rationalized as a necessary evil that would bestow upon the heathen “Indians” a moral consciousness that would redeem their amorality. 

The world view which converted bare economic self interest into noble, even moral, motives was a notion of Christianity as the one redemptive religion which demands fealty from all cultures.

 In this remaking of the American Indians the impetus which drove the conquistador’s invading wars not exploration, but the drive to expand an empire, not discovery of new land, but the drive to accumulate treasure, land and cheap labor. 

 CULTURE 

 Culture is the expression of a people’s creativity — everything they make which is distinctively theirs: language, music, art, religion, healing, agriculture, cooking style, the institutions governing social life. To suppress culture is to aim a cannonball at the people’s heart and spirit. Such a conquest is more accomplished than a massacre.

 “We have seen the colonization materially kills the colonized. It must be added that it kills him spiritually. Colonization distorts relationships, destroys and petrifies institutions, and corrupts….both colonizers and the colonized.” 

 Strategies of targeting American Indian children for assimilation began with violence. Forts were erected by Jesuits, in which indigenous youths were incarcerated, indoctrinated with non-indigenous Christian values, and forced into manual labor. 

Schooling provided a crucial tool in changing not only the language but the culture of impressionable young people. In boarding schools students could be immersed in a 24 hours bath of assimilation. 

“The founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania , Capt. Richard H. Pratt, observed in 1892 that Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe and loyalty to the nation at large. 

More crudely put, the Carlisle philosophy was, “Kill the Indian to save the man.” At the boarding schools children were forbidden to speak their native languages, forced to shed familiar clothing for uniforms, cut their hair and subjected to harsh discipline. 

Children who had seldom heard an unkind word spoken to them were all too often verbally and physically abused by their white teachers. In short, “there was a full-scale attempt at deracination — the uprooting or destruction of a race and its culture.” 

A few American Indian children were able to run away, others died of illness and some died of homesickness. The children, forcibly separated from their parents by soldiers often never saw their families until later in their adulthood, after their value-system and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. When these children returned from boarding schools they no longer knew their native language, they were strangers in their own world, there was a loss, a void of not belonging in the native world, nor the white man’s world.

 In the movie “Lakota Women,” these children are referred to as “Apple Children [red on the outside, white on the inside]” they do not know where they fit in, they were unable to assimilate into either culture. This confusion and loss of cultural identity, leads to suicide, drinking and violence.

 The most destructive aspect of alienation is the loss of power, of control over one’s destiny, over one’s memories, through relationships — past and future. Jose Noriega’s well-documented historical account of the forced indoctrination of colonial thought into the minds of American Indian children as a means of disrupting the generational transmission of cultural values, clearly demonstrates the cultural genocide employed by the U.S. government as a means of separating the American Indians from their land.

 FORCED REMOVAL

 The “Indian Removal” policy was implemented to “clear” land for white settlers. Removal was more than another assault on American Indians’ land titles. Insatiable greed for land remained a primary consideration, but many people now believed that the removal was the only way of saving American Indians from extermination. 

As long as the American Indians lived in close proximity to non-Native American communities, they would be decimated by disease, alcohol, and poverty. The Indian Removal Act began in 1830. Forced marches at bayonet-point to relocation settlements resulted in high mortality rates. 

The infamous removal of the Five Civilized Tribes — the Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles — is a dismal page in United States history. By the 1820′s the Cherokees, who had established a written constitution modeled after the United States Constitution, a newspaper, schools, and industries in their settlements, resisted removal.

 In 1938 the federal troops evicted the Cherokees. Approximately four thousand Cherokees died during the removal process because of poor planning by the United States Government. 

This exodus to Indian Territory is known as the Trail of Tears. More than one hundred thousand American Indians eventually crossed the Mississippi River under the authority of the Indian Removal Act. STERILIZATION Article II of United Nations General Assembly resolution, 1946: 

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such: (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. 

In the mid-1970s a Choctaw-Tsalagi Indian Health Services doctor was approached by a 26-year-old American Indian woman who desired a “wonb transplant.” She had been sterilized when she was 20 at the Indian Health Service hospital in Claremont, Oklahoma. It was discoverd that 75 percent of the Claremont sterilizations were non-therapeutic, that women American Indians were being prompted to sign sterilization forms they didn’t understand, that they were being told the operations were reversible, and that some women were even being asked to sign sterilization papers while they had yet to come out of birthing sedation. 

Common Sense magazine reported that the Indian Health Service “was sterilizing 3,000 Indian women per year, 4 to 6 percent of the child bearing population…Dr. R. T. Ravenholt, [then] director of the federal government’s Office of Population, later confirmed that ‘surgical sterilization has become increasingly important in recent years as one of the advanced methods of fertility management’.” 

Ravenholt’s response to these inquires “told the population Association of America in St. Louis that the critics were ‘a really radical extremist group lashing out at a responsible program so that revolution would occur’.”

 From the beginning of European control there has been an unrelenting drive to commit genocide over another culture. The American Indians were a majority so the Europeans called them an enemy. 

One of the major facts the United States Government has failed to understand is that the spiritual aspect of life is inseparable from the economic and the political aspects. The loss of tradition and memory will be the loss of positive sense of self. 

Those reared in traditional American Native societies are inclined to relate events and experiences to one another, they do not organize perceptions or external events in terms of dualities or priorities. 

This egalitarianism is reflected in the structure of American Indian literature, which does not rely on conflict, crises, and resolution for organization. INTELLECTUAL RICHES American Indians felt comfortable with the environment, close to the moods and rhythms of nature, in time with the living planet. Europeans were quite different, viewing the earth itself as lifeless and inorganic, subject to any kind of manipulation or alteration. 

Europeans tended to be alienated from nature and came to the New World to use the wilderness, to conquer and exploit its natural wealth for private gain. But for American Indians, the environment was sacred, possessing a cosmic significance equal to its material riches. 

The earth was sacred — a haven for all forms of life — and it had to be protected, nourished, and even worshipped. Chief Smoholla of the Wanapun tribe illustrated American Native reverence for the earth when he said in 1885: “God said he was the father of and earth was the mankind; that nature was the law; that the animals, and fish and plants beyond nature, and that man only was sinful. You ask me to plow the ground! Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom?

 Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone! Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then When I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. 

You ask me to cut grass And make hay and sell it, and be rich like white men! But how dare I cut off my mother’s hair? American Indians’ agricultural and medical wisdom had been ignored by the European invaders. 

In their rush to control the land and people much has passed them by and much has been destroyed. Sadly, what seems to have been almost totally ignored is the American Indians’ knowledge that the Earth is their mother. 

Because their mother continues to give us life we must care for and respect her. This was a ecological view of the earth. “There are tens of millions of people around the world who, within only the last few centuries — and some cases only the last few years — have seen their successful societies brutally assaulted by ugly destructive forces. 

Some American Indian societies have been obliterated. Some peoples have suffered separation from the source of their survival, wisdom, power, and identity: their lands. Some have fallen from the pressure, compromised, moved to urban landscapes, and disappeared, but millions of American Indians, including tens of thousands here in the United States, have gained strength in the face of all their adversity. 

Their strength is rooted in the earth and deserves to succeed.”

How many Native Americans were killed by the US government?

In:US History, Native American History?

 Answer: . Native Americans killed in service for the United States and killed defending their Indian country is listed below in rough estimated numbers. 

A likely total of 100,000-500,000 Native Americans in the U.S. have died since 1776. The high end would be around a million.

 Native Americans are the have the highest mortality rate of any U.S. minority because of U.S. action and policy.

 Indians Conflicts & Removals 1776-1973 (1973) Wounded Knee II - 2 (1890) Wounded Knee - 178 (1864) Sand Creek Massacre - 200 (1862) Dakota War of 1862 - 38 prisoners executed (1876) Battle of Little Big Horn - 136 (high estimate) (1838) Cherokee Removal - 4,000 (1817-58) Seminole Wars I,II, & III - 1475 (likely high as 10,000) (1831) Choctaw Removal - 2,500 (1812) Red Stick War of the Muscogee or Creek- 3,000 (1791) Battle of the Wabash - 21 (1830) Indian Removal Act [Original answer truncated as it contained no useful data] Estimates:

 Two studies have been conducted that attempt to number the natives killed by the United States. The first of these was sponsored by the United States government, and while official does not stand up to scrutiny and is therefore discounted (generally); this estimate shows between 1 million to 4 million killed. 

The second study was not sponsored by the US Government but was done from independent researchers. This study estimated populations and population reductions using later census data.

 Two figures are given, both low and high, at: between 10 million and 114 million Indians as a direct result of US actions. Please note that Nazi Holocaust estimates are between 6 and 11 million; thereby making the Nazi Holocaust the 2nd largest mass murder of a class of people in history. 

 REF: American Holocaust: D. Stannard (Oxford Press, 1992) - "over 100 million killed" "[Christopher] Columbus personally murdered half a million Natives" God, Greed and Genocide: The Holocaust Through the Centuries: Grenke (New Academia Publishing 2006) Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies: Cesarani, (Routledge 2004)

 Thousands even as me being half native they mostly killed us because they owed us land and didn't want to give it to us so they gave us beer even though they owe us millions in land .

My great grand parents had to hide out from the government they had to move place to place they never got an education and they were on warfare because the government used them. Thanks to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, it was illegal for Indians to live in Georgia. 

They could travel through Georgia, with proper papers. This law was not repealed until March, 1980. Officially not 'many' in Indian Wars, but murdering Red Indians was daily practice for white Colonists. 

And this genocide was happily tolerated by American Government and US Army almost 20 million Red Indians died, say 10 per day , which should be general American knowledge. By far the biggest killers though were smallpox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. All imported by the Europeans.

Native American Genocide Still Haunts United States

By Leah Trabich Cold Spring Harbor High School New York, USA In the past, the main thrust of the Holocaust/Genocide Project's magazine, An End To Intolerance, has been the genocides that occurred in history and outside of the United States. Still, what we mustn't forget is that mass killing of Native Americans occurred in our own country. 

As a result, bigotry and racial discrimination still exist. "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" . . . and made the first contact with the "Indians." For Native Americans, the world after 1492 would never be the same. 

This date marked the beginning of the long road of persecution and genocide of Native Americans, our indigenous people. Genocide was an important cause of the decline for many tribes. "By conservative estimates, the population of the United states prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. 

Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand. In 1493, when Columbus returned to the Hispaniola, he quickly implemented policies of slavery and mass extermination of the Taino population of the Caribbean. 

Within three years, five million were dead. Las Casas, the primary historian of the Columbian era, writes of many accounts of the horrors that the Spanish colonists inflicted upon the indigenous population: hanging them en mass, hacking their children into pieces to be used as dog feed, and other horrid cruelties. 

The works of Las Casas are often omitted from popular American history books and courses because Columbus is considered a hero by many, even today. Mass killing did not cease, however, after Columbus departed.

 Expansion of the European colonies led to similar genocides. "Indian Removal" policy was put into action to clear the land for white settlers. Methods for the removal included slaughter of villages by the military and also biological warfare. 

High death rates resulted from forced marches to relocate the Indians. The Removal Act of 1830 set into motion a series of events which led to the "Trail of Tears" in 1838, a forced march of the Cherokees, resulting in the destruction of most of the Cherokee population." 

The concentration of American Indians in small geographic areas, and the scattering of them from their homelands, caused increased death, primarily because of associated military actions, disease, starvation, extremely harsh conditions during the moves, and the resulting destruction of ways of life. 

 During American expansion into the western frontier, one primary effort to destroy the Indian way of life was the attempts of the U.S. government to make farmers and cattle ranchers of the Indians. In addition, one of the most substantial methods was the premeditated destructions of flora and fauna which the American Indians used for food and a variety of other purposes. 

We now also know that the Indians were intentionally exposed to smallpox by Europeans. The discovery of gold in California, early in 1848, prompted American migration and expansion into the west. 

The greed of Americans for money and land was rejuvenated with the Homestead Act of 1862. In California and Texas there was blatant genocide of Indians by non-Indians during certain historic periods. 

In California, the decrease from about a quarter of a million to less than 20,000 is primarily due to the cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early settlers. Indian education began with forts erected by Jesuits, in which indigenous youths were incarcerated, indoctrinated with non-indigenous Christian values, and forced into manual labor. These children were forcibly removed from their parents by soldiers and many times never saw their families until later in their adulthood. 

This was after their value systems and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. One of the foundations of the U.S. imperialist strategy was to replace traditional leadership of the various indigenous nations with indoctrinated "graduates" of white "schools," in order to expedite compliance with U.S. goals and expansion. 

  Probably one of the most ruinous acts to the Indians was the disappearance of the buffalo. For the Indians who lived on the Plains, life depended on the buffalo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were an estimated forty million buffalo, but between 1830 and 1888 there was a rapid, systematic extermination culminating in the sudden slaughter of the only two remaining Plain herds. 

By around 1895, the formerly vast buffalo populations were practically extinct. The slaughter occurred because of the economic value of buffalo hides to Americans and because the animals were in the way of the rapidly westward expanding population. 

The end result was widescale starvation and the social and cultural disintegration of many Plains tribes. Genocide entered international law for the first time in 1948; the international community took notice when Europeans (Jews, Poles, and other victims of Nazi Germany) faced cultural extinction. 

The "Holocaust" of World War II came to be the model of genocide. We, as the human race, must realize, however, that other genocides have occurred. Genocide against many particular groups is still widely happening today.

 The discrimination of the Native American population is only one example of this ruthless destruction. Credits: Sharon Johnston, The Genocide of Native Americans: A Sociological View, 1996.

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