Another Dayum Apology?

AMERICAN INDIANS: Apology, and much needed assistance, in order

http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/eapology6e_20050606.htm

June 6, 2005

The atrocities inflicted on the indigenous people living in this land when European settlers arrived are well known. Finally, Congress is considering bills to create an official national apology to Native Americans.


American Indian Movement (AIM) Conference
February 2002, Malibu, California

It will take more than an apology to assist them, especially those on reservations in impoverished conditions. Heartfelt repentance should be combined with increased funding for Native American programs.



While gambling casinos have brought a measure of prosperity to some tribes, Native Americans as a whole have long ranked at or near the bottom of nearly every social, health and economic indicator, according to U.S. Census data. They are more likely than whites to die from a host of illnesses and they have the highest prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in the world. About 30% of the 538,300 Native Americans on reservations live in poverty.

But being sorry isn't enough. If the government cares about the citizens that predated this country's creation, it must address the conditions in which too many of them now live.

Read for yourself of the atrocities committed against the indigenous people of these united snakes and tell me if you think an apology is sufficient.



American Indian Movement



The American Indian Movement (AIM), is a Native American civil rights group in the United States that burst on the national scene with its seizure of Alcatraz Island in 1968, the BIA headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. AIM was cofounded by Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, and many others in 1968. Russell Means would later become its most famous spokesperson.

In the decades since AIM's founding, the group has led protests advocating Native American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities and coordinated employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States. AIM often has supported other native interests outside the United States, as well.

http://www.physicsdaily.com/physics/American_Indian_Movement

American Indian Movement of Colorado



http://www.coloradoaim.org/blog/2004_09_01_coloradoaim_archive.html

The Life and Times of Dennis Banks

He was once called one of the most dangerous men in America; today he's called upon by politicians, industrialists and artists from around the globe. The same government that once vowed to hunt him down now routinely seeks him out for advice. Has Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement, changed -- or has the rest of the world simply caught up to him?



Banks was born on the Leech Lake reservation in northern Minnesota 68 years ago. At age five Nowa Cumig (Banks' Ojibwe name) was removed to a boarding school, where he was beaten and humiliated whenever he was caught speaking the language or practicing the religious customs of his people. He eventually drifted to Minneapolis, where drink, despair and crime landed him in the state prison system. While there he met other native people who'd undergone similar trials, and from these meetings the American Indian Movement (AIM) was born.



http://www.dreamkeepersmedia.com/inproduction.html

Letters from Leonard Peltier--
Reminder of genocide against Native Americans
By Saeed ShabazzStaff WriterUpdated Dec 22, 2003, 03:54 pm



NEW YORK (FinalCall.com) - The United Nations defines genocide, under principles of the convention on Human Rights, as: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group through five types of criminal actions, such as killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting 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; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

In two recent letters, Native American activist Leonard Peltier, 58, reminded those who received them that the 500-year genocide against his people continues.





http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1181.shtml

Redemption
A striking and moving cartoon about prisoner Leonard Peltier.

http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no9/prison_peltier_cartoon.htm

An Apology ????