History confirms the truth of “Man has dominated man to his injury,” Ecclesiates 8:9. A reminder of this kind of suffering came in a speech by the Assisitant Secretary for Indian Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs said that rather than a celebration it was “a time for sorrowful truths to be spoken, a time of contrition.”
He addmitted that the first mission of the institution in the 1830’s was to remove the southeastern tribal nations—the Cherokee, the Creek, the Choctaw, The Chickasaw, and the Seminole—from their lands.
“By threat, deceit, and force, these great tribal nations were made to march 1,000 miles to the west, leaving thousands of their old, and their young and their infirm in hasty graves along the Trail of Tears.”
The Assistant Secretary for Indian Affiars continued: “Yet in these more enlightened times, it must be acknowledged that the deliberate spread of disease, the decimation of the mighty bison, the use of poison alcohol to destroy the mind and body, and the cowardly killing of women and children made for tragedy on a scale so ghastly that it cannot be dissmissed as merely the ineveitable consequence of the clash of competeing ways of life.”
He admitted: “this agency forbade the speaking of indian languages….and made Indian people ashamed of who they were. Worst of all, the Bureau of Indian Affairs commited these acts against the children entrusted to its boarding schools, brutilizing them emotionally, psychologically, physically, and spiritually.”
(Vital Speeches of the Day, October 1, 2000)
[Awake November 8, 2001]
The admission of these acts only stands to remind me that it is true. Man does injure man; but, all the nations mentioned in this article were, are ,and will always be, matriarchal societies.
The past Will always show us the truth in time. It continues to be true that societies that hold the balance between men and women, and listen to those that are entrusted with the ability to give life will invariably be less violent, more loving, and kind.
Remember those lost, but take wisdom from the lessons. The seeds of tomorrow lie with the generation of today.
Teach what was given to those that went before us. Our children deserve the right to live in peace and balance, by giving them the stories, legends, and wisdom of those that walked the Trail of Tears we ensure that future generations will have the option to live in peace and balance as those before us have.
