124 years ago today, one of the last and most egregiously violent acts in the always-violent campaign of the United States to eliminate the native North American population — a brutal genocide hidden behind the name of Manifest Destiny — took place at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Almost 300 Lakota — 200 of them women and children — were massacred by the US 7th Cavalry. In celebration, the US Congress awarded two dozen soldiers the Medal of Honour.
Frank Baum, who would later write the Wizard of Oz, wrote with sadness the following in response to the massacre: “Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.” Luckily, some of them survived
We should never forget that the strength of the United States was built on the genocide of its native peoples, and the slavery of another race, and when American statesmen complain about ISIS or Al-Qaeda or other so-called “terrorists”, they are mouthing an unspeakable hypocrisy.
Jak's View of Vancouver v.3 