Even from GOM's time, the normalization of the maltreatment of Native Americans was beginning to set deep within the cortex of the immigrants brain.
The French and English recognized GOM as a peace chief of her people at Doty Island, and recognized the Chiefs of other Nations, but still sought to rob and plunder our people and others of their lands and culture, while never understanding that we were a thriving people, complete with our own form of government, inter-tribal relations, and culture and traditions that provided every person with a purpose within their realm. Every person understood their place in the universe. They were placed here by the Creator himself, charged with specific responsibilities such that worship of the Creator was daily.
Yet, Native Americans were viewed as being incapable of realizing the full value of their land, minerals, and other resources. Furthermore, we were not spiritual beings, because we did not pray or worship as the colonists. This mindset was being carefully crafted as their consciences began to prick their hearts and such stories as being led by the hand of God; it is what brought them here, after all. This narrative of Native Americans formed deep within their psyche, as it was needed to justify their inhumane and unconscionable actions.
God isn't capable of lying, therefore, whatever we do to Native Americans is therefore sanctioned by a higher, divine power. This doctrine of discovery attitude began to take root and embraced by all those who came here under duress, strife, hunger, and by whatever means brought them here. They had a divine right to rob us, rape us, pillage, plunder, lie, steal, assimilate, kill, poison, drown, hang, and do whatever they can to us, because we were considered to be less than, because of the way we lived, dressed, looked and talked.
Today, the Dakota Access Pipe Line protestors and water protectors won their first victory when the Army Corps of Engineers refused to grant another illegal permit to the Oil Development Company from Texas, to continue its building of a pipe line that would run through the sacred lands of the Dakota, adjacent to their reservation, and possibly poison the water used by the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which I feel was given to us because of our veterans or warriors.
Now comes the postmortem of the entire event. The questions most supporters of the complete halt of the pipe line project is: Why didn't mainstream media cover the event in more detail? Where was justice? How could the local law enforcement water cannon, shoot rubber bullets and set attack dogs on the unarmed water protectors? How could the armed white militants who overtook a federal facility get full media coverage and away with their actions, while local law enforcement turned a blind eye?
I think the answer to this is as old as the first invasion of the colonist on our land. This is not a narrative that the US wants to hear about themselves. The treatment of the water protectors stirs up old memories of the atrocities the immigrants committed against us long ago. It stirs up remembrance of broken treaties, Chiefs made drunk, forced removals and assimilation to get gain and ease consciences. Broken treaties and social injustices committed against a people once, twice conquered do not fit the US's view of itself. The US and its immigrant people only want to hear stories that fit their narrative, stories that reaffirm their view of the US Nation, stories that are a part of the national conversation. Injustices against the water protectors or Native Americans do not fit in the national conversation.
The cultural brutality that is happening in this country TODAY against Native Americans, as clearly and overtly demonstrated in Standing Rock, against an impoverished, voiceless group of people, stripped of all they had through deviant treaties and then repatriated back again through limiting acts of broken congress, just doesn't fit into the US Nation's view of itself. No, it can't because it is deeply embedded within its conscience and to its subconscious, bubbling and oozing back and forth across the blood-brain barrier.
What is better to focus on by the water protectors is how to keep this rekindled Native American activism going. How can we keep this united force of indigenous peoples going? We need to wake up from our forced slumber and idle no more! Let us continue to regain our sense of being, our sense of purpose and prepare the way for our people to take full and complete charge of our original responsibilities as keepers of this land. We need to reach deep within our subconscious and remember who we were and then we can become who we were meant to be.
