Post by blackcrowheart on Mar 18, 2008 11:13:39 GMT -5
A sorry attempt at apology
Shannon Francis never sought an apology from a country that yanked her
mom and grandma off their reservations, forced them into white foster
families and barred them from speaking their native Hopi and Navajo
languages.
So the Denver resident was unaware Tuesday that her government had
decided to say, "Sorry."
"I had no clue it was coming," the 38-year-old mother of six said with a
shrug. "So much for making history."
Like Francis, you probably missed it when the U.S. Senate quietly
apologized for centuries of "violence, maltreatment and neglect
inflicted on Native Peoples."
The unprecedented resolution acknowledges that the government forced
indigenous people off their land, stole their assets and was responsible
for "official depredations, ill-conceived policies and the breaking of
covenants" with tribes.
When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized two weeks ago for
policies that degraded that country's Aborigines, he blared his
pronouncement live on giant screens throughout Australia.
U.S. senators instead buried their "Oops, our bad" in an amendment to a
bill for American Indian health care.
Well, that certainly makes up for the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded
Knee.
So much for healing generations.
"White America can't afford to apologize too seriously because it would
threaten their ownership of Indian land," said Iliff School of Theology
Indian cultures professor Tink Tinker.
Tuesday's resolution came at the urging of Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.,
who reports a "deep resentment" among Native Americans in his state.
His colleagues aren't so big on apologies. Congress hadn't formally said
"sorry" since apologizing to Native Hawaiians in 1993 for overthrowing
their kingdom a century earlier. In 1988, lawmakers apologized and
compensated Japanese-Americans interned in World War II detention camps.
Brownback's resolution does not authorize or settle any claim against
the United States.
"We have a government that took our land and our children and physically
and emotionally abused them and forced them to assimilate into something
that they're not," said Francis, an accounting consultant by trade and a
longtime activist for American Indian causes. "We — I — live
with the pain of that every day. And for this they issue a bunch of
words, empty like their treaties, that mean nothing and nobody hears."
Who is the apology really for, Francis wonders?
Is it for her mother, grandmother and aunties who spent lifetimes trying
to forget the federal boarding schools that sought to strip away their
culture?
For her brother, plagued like their father and grandfather by poverty
and alcoholism?
For her son, who failed a 7th-grade history test when he refused to
check the box saying Christopher Columbus discovered America?
Or for Francis herself, who overcame years of shame about her dark skin
and accent to learn the ways of her ancestors that her own family had
failed to pass on: to honor her kids, hug them and root them deeply in
their heritage?
"If our people had been left alone, maybe things would have been
different," she said.
As Francis sees it, Tuesday's resolution does little to fix a sad
sequence of abuses that still is far from over.
"We don't need any more hollow words," she says. "What I want is for the
country to be honest, really honest, about what it has done and what it
continues doing to our people."
Shannon Francis never sought an apology from a country that yanked her
mom and grandma off their reservations, forced them into white foster
families and barred them from speaking their native Hopi and Navajo
languages.
So the Denver resident was unaware Tuesday that her government had
decided to say, "Sorry."
"I had no clue it was coming," the 38-year-old mother of six said with a
shrug. "So much for making history."
Like Francis, you probably missed it when the U.S. Senate quietly
apologized for centuries of "violence, maltreatment and neglect
inflicted on Native Peoples."
The unprecedented resolution acknowledges that the government forced
indigenous people off their land, stole their assets and was responsible
for "official depredations, ill-conceived policies and the breaking of
covenants" with tribes.
When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized two weeks ago for
policies that degraded that country's Aborigines, he blared his
pronouncement live on giant screens throughout Australia.
U.S. senators instead buried their "Oops, our bad" in an amendment to a
bill for American Indian health care.
Well, that certainly makes up for the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded
Knee.
So much for healing generations.
"White America can't afford to apologize too seriously because it would
threaten their ownership of Indian land," said Iliff School of Theology
Indian cultures professor Tink Tinker.
Tuesday's resolution came at the urging of Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.,
who reports a "deep resentment" among Native Americans in his state.
His colleagues aren't so big on apologies. Congress hadn't formally said
"sorry" since apologizing to Native Hawaiians in 1993 for overthrowing
their kingdom a century earlier. In 1988, lawmakers apologized and
compensated Japanese-Americans interned in World War II detention camps.
Brownback's resolution does not authorize or settle any claim against
the United States.
"We have a government that took our land and our children and physically
and emotionally abused them and forced them to assimilate into something
that they're not," said Francis, an accounting consultant by trade and a
longtime activist for American Indian causes. "We — I — live
with the pain of that every day. And for this they issue a bunch of
words, empty like their treaties, that mean nothing and nobody hears."
Who is the apology really for, Francis wonders?
Is it for her mother, grandmother and aunties who spent lifetimes trying
to forget the federal boarding schools that sought to strip away their
culture?
For her brother, plagued like their father and grandfather by poverty
and alcoholism?
For her son, who failed a 7th-grade history test when he refused to
check the box saying Christopher Columbus discovered America?
Or for Francis herself, who overcame years of shame about her dark skin
and accent to learn the ways of her ancestors that her own family had
failed to pass on: to honor her kids, hug them and root them deeply in
their heritage?
"If our people had been left alone, maybe things would have been
different," she said.
As Francis sees it, Tuesday's resolution does little to fix a sad
sequence of abuses that still is far from over.
"We don't need any more hollow words," she says. "What I want is for the
country to be honest, really honest, about what it has done and what it
continues doing to our people."