History

History is in denial when any social scientist, policy maker or lay person does not primordially and prioritizedly recognize the tragic genocidal and terroristic policies and campaigns which have shaped and created the current nation-states of the Americas, their social systems and their demographics. From the Indian massacres of colonial times, to the Indian massacres during the prolonged period of U.S. ‘manifest destiny’ through 1890, to the deliberate genocidal under-funding of Indian health programs and the statistical manipulations of tribal memberships today, U.S. soil is permeated with the blood, and (recoverable) bones of the original peoples of this continent. Lost in history and national discourse, they are not lost in the soil. Their remains are recoverable, analyzable, and re-buriable, if Indian nations so desire.

History has a heartbeat. History has a life of its own. History lives on in the heart of every man, woman, child and scholar who cares, and dares, to remember it, and face its present-day consequences. When history is traumatic, the traumas live on, shaping, often in deplorable ways, the lives of those of subsequent generations.

And the United States is not the only country, though it is certainly the major terrorist culprit, in the long, sad history of the oppression of original peoples. In Guatemala, U.S.- and Israeli-backed military and militarized civilian regimes killed 250,000 persons in 20 years or less, the vast majority of them Mayan Indians, and the vast majority of them slaughtered via the same means as those utilized by euro-descendant settlers and federal troops in the U.S. generations before. In Peru, a U.S.-backed government, and to apparently a nearly-equivalent extent, “Maiost” guerrillas of the communist Shining Path insurgency headed by a now-incarcerated Peruvian philosophy professor who preached austerity while caught on video drunkenly dancing “Zorba the Greek” at a party, 50,000 Peruvians, mostly Quechua and Aymara-speaking Indians, were brutally slaughtered, or disappeared, like the thousands also disappeared and presumably killed in Guatemala. The five thousand estimated disappeared in Peru are still waiting to be unearthed and identified, along with the vast majority of the 50,000 Guatemalan disappeared, potential “communists” who ‘deserved’ to be eliminated for the sake of freedom and democracy.

Native peoples were not the only victims in the anti-insurgent, Cold War, campaigns of the 1960’s. ‘70’s and ‘80’s, spearheaded by the United States and its puppet governments in the Americas. However, due to white liberal political solidarity identification processes, and European donor preferences, the original peoples victims were certainly the most ignored in “human rights” discourse throughout the West.

Forensic Anthropology

History can be best served by uncovering it, documenting it, discussing it, and breathing new life into it. Forensic anthropology teams are busy at work in Argentina, in efforts to uncover the 'disappeared', and document the perpetrators of massacres of their bodies. Such teams are equally busy in Guatemala, despite death threats, data theft, and all kinds of intimidations by the very perpetrators of the massacres. While skin is no longer recoverable, evidence in mass graves such as shell casings, boot prints, uniform buttons which came loose, and other evidence, including skull fractures, and bullet holes or other wound signs in bones and skulls, are suitable evidence for courts of law. No, not those Western “human rights” courts which only try Third World peoples and ex-communists for human rights crimes…. Real people’s courts which will impartially deduce genocide and seek reparations, truth-telling, and symbolic remembrances, such as national holidays. Instead of celebrating “Thanksgiving”, which Muslims should do every day anyway, travel to Plymouth, Massachusetts the last Thursday of November, fast all day, and take part in the International Day of Mourning for Native Peoples at the foot of the statue of Chief Massassoit, sponsored by the Wampanoag, and other, nations. Instead of celebrating Columbus Day, in honor of an Indian rapist and murderer, demand that another pro-native peoples holiday or day of remembrance be celebrated in your locale, or demand that Columbus Day be cancelled. Get in the streets and on the air waves, and cancel it yourselves.

Mass Graves in the Americas: The Christopher Columbus Sickness, 1610-1890, or 1492-now

From colonial through U.S. history, knowledge of a series of major massacres against original peoples by British subjects and their descendants in what is now the U.S. allows us to construct a timeline from 1610 through 1890, with the Massacre at Wounded Knee being the last, major, recorded massacre of original peoples that I have come across, occurring in December, 1890. Columbus and his men established a sickness through the lands which became the Americas, which spread the bacterias of racial supremacy, terrorism, cultural chauvinism, rape and genocide to all subsequent descendants from European lands.

The Mass Graves of my Homeland: Death and Deception in the United States of America

One example of many massacre sites which are now mass grave sites is that of the Sand Creek Massacre, which was perpetrated in 1864, in the state of Colorado. Here is what a euro-descendant witness had to say to Congressional representatives at the time:

Question: Were the women and children slaughtered indiscriminately, or only so far as they were with the warriors?

Answer: Indiscriminately.

Question: Were there any acts of barbarity perpetrated there that came under your own observation?

Answer: Yes, sir; I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces.

Question: How cut?

Answer: With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors.

Question: Did you see it done?

Answer: Yes, sir; I saw them fall.

Question: Fall when they were killed?

Answer: Yes, sir.

Question: Did you see them when they were mutilated?

Answer: Yes, sir.

Question: By whom were they mutilated?

Answer: By the United States troops.

Such Congressional testimony by this interpreter, and other information on Cheyenne nation efforts to deal with this history and to make historical use of the massacre site are available at www.sandcreek.org. The leader of the U.S. troops, Chivington, “later appeared on a Denver stage where he regaled delighted audiences with his war stories and displayed 100 Indian scalps, including the pubic hairs of women” (http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/sandcreek.htm).

Another massacre, which must also certainly be a mass grave site, is that of the Bear River Massacre, in what is now Washington state:

“This massacre also took place during the Civil War. The massacre was conducted not by trained military, but violent and most times drunken militia.

Like Sand Creek, the militia broke the arms and legs of women so they couldn't fight back while they were raped. Bayonets cut open the wombs of pregnant women and pulled out the fetus. Some of the militia wrapped the fetus around their hats as war trophies. After the women were raped the militia men split their skulls open with hatchets. Babies and Toddlers were grabbed and their heads bashed against trees. Chief Bear Hunter was beaten, kicked, stripped and whipped bloody. When he did not cry out in pain or anguish to his tormenters, a soldier heated his bayonet and ran it through Bear Hunter's ears” (http://www.lastoftheindependents.com/
bearriver.htm).

Conclusion

On Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, each year, Unitedstaters honor their dead, and their military dead. I have never heard a president speak of these atrocities. I have only seen presidents go to Arlington National Cemetery, a place where Chivington might even be buried. I have never seen a U.S. president take a plane to Denver, and a car to Sand Creek, to host a press conference there. While I commend former president Clinton for signing a bill into law regarding recognition of the Sand Creek Massacre, and subsequent efforts by the National Park Service to develop the site, and for Clinton's apologizing to the Guatemalan people for the U.S. role in state-sanctioned terrorism which bashed Mayan babies' heads against rocks, or stole them to have their organs sold for transplants in the babies of rich Westerners, or sold them for adoption to sterile military families, his efforts are nowhere near enough.

It is past time for those of us who are social scientists, and who are not native peoples, to approach native nations, to find out about the projects and campaigns on which they are working, to support them in the recovery and dissemination of historical memory, and, whenever possible, work with them through respecting their wishes and belief systems, to open the mass graves, gather the forensic evidence, give a proper burial to the dead, and to sue the U.S. Army and the U.S. Federal Government for the war crimes and genocide and terrorism on which this nation is built.