Post by Okwes on Jun 13, 2006 13:39:16 GMT -5
"OZ" author Baum:a side you never knew
Posted by: "dorindamoreno" dorindamoreno@comcast.net cactusfruit_94520
Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:47 am (PST)
> Notes from Indian Country
> Gonzaga honors an editor who called for genocide of the Lakota
> By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) 6/5/2006
> © 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.
>
> www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7897&news
> <http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7897&news>
>
> I am often confounded by the antics of mainstream newspapers located in
> cities with large Indian populations that are so prompt in picking up
> Indian related news articles from newspapers as far away as California
> without checking them for facts or by not including the concerns of
> local Indians in the news releases.
>
> Last Saturday the local daily in Rapid City, SD published an article
> from the LA Times concerning an exhibit to honor the 150th birthday of
> L. Frank Baum, the infamous (at least in Indian country) author of the
> Wizard of Oz.
>
> The Foley Center Library at Gonzaga University opened the exhibit in the
> eastern Washington city of Spokane called, "Oz and Beyond: Highlights
> from the L. Frank Baum Collection of Currie Corbin." Of course, every
> American knows about the characters in the book from the movie with Judy
> Garland that featured the Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, The Scare Crow and
> the Wicked Witch of the West. The song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by
> Garland that was almost cut from the film has become an American standard.
>
> On the occasion of Baum's 150th birthday anniversary I would like to
> point out a few little known facts that I hope will take some of the
> glitter from this exhibit.
>
> Most Americans know about one horrible day, at least horrible to Native
> Americans, that occurred on December 29, 1890. It was the day when the
> officers and enlisted men of the 7th Cavalry, General George Armstrong
> Custer's old outfit, turned their Hotchkiss guns, their rifles and
> pistols on the nearly 300 Lakota men, women and children at a creek
> called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and
> slaughtered them in an orgy of bloodletting that was dreadful to behold.
>
> My grandmother, Sophie, was a teenage student at Holy Rosary Indian
> Mission, a school about 10 miles from Wounded Knee, on that day of the
> bloody massacre. She recounted how soldiers rode on to the grounds of
> the mission school visibly excited by their actions and talking loudly
> about their wonderful victory. The Jesuit priests at the mission school
> made the children bring water and hay to feed the hungry horses of the
> troopers.
>
> Grandmother Sophie said she could still see blood on the gloves and
> uniforms of the soldiers. But, of course, no one told the Indian
> children at the school of the events of that day even though some of
> them had relatives that were among the slaughtered.
>
> Six days after the massacre, while the frozen bodies of the Lakota men,
> women and children were being dumped into a mass grave, L. Frank Baum,
> the editor of a weekly newspaper in Aberdeen, SD, wrote an editorial
> calling for the annihilation of any Lakota still alive.
>
> His editorial read in part, "Having wronged them once perhaps we should
> wrong them again and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the
> face of the earth."
>
> Perhaps it was a sign of the times that the white settlers wanted to see
> all of the indigenous people destroyed but if any editor had called for
> genocide against any race of people other than Indians there would have
> been a huge public outcry. In an ironic way it reminds me of the
> millions who remained silent while Jews were herded into concentration
> camps in Poland and shoved into the gas chambers. The life of an Indian
> meant as little to the white settlers as the lives of the Jews meant to
> the Germans.
>
> Perhaps it is prophetic and ironic that L. Frank Baum is honored by
> Gonzaga University because it is also a Catholic run school as was the
> Indian mission attended by my grandmother. There certainly was no outcry
> by the Catholic missionaries at Holy Rosary Mission following the
> horrific slaughter of the innocent Lakota men, women and children at
> Wounded Knee.
>
> For chasing, running down, and slaughtering old men and women, and for
> firing point blank into pregnant mothers with children in their arms, 21
> men of the 7th Cavalry were awarded Medals of Honor, America's highest
> military award. The awarding of medals for these acts of bestiality is a
> blight on the integrity of America and is one mistake made at the height
> of impassioned and imagined patriotism that should never be allowed to
> stand. It is the equivalent of handing out Medals of Honor to the
> soldiers who murdered the innocent men, women and children at Mai Lai in
> Vietnam.
>
> L. Frank Baum believed these actions to be honorable and glorious. Not
> only did he publicly and proudly condone them, he went one step further
> and in his now infamous editorial called for the slaughter of the
> remaining Lakota people. Why should I care after more than 100 years? I
> care deeply because many of the Lakota people Baum wished to eliminate
> were my relatives. My grandmother and her parents (my great
> grandparents) and all of her brothers and sisters made Baum's genocidal
> list. L. Frank Baum's call for the slaughter of the Lakota people was no
> better than Adolph Hitler's call for the elimination of the Jewish
> people and yet Baum is honored on his 150th birthday. Are any newspapers
> in the state of Washington protesting this outrage?
>
> I am aghast that our local daily newspaper would run such an article in
> the land of the Lakota and never, not once, mention the genocidal
> editorial of L. Frank Baum. The frontier mentality of most white editors
> often blinds them to the truth.
>
> (Tim Giago is the president of the Native American Journalists
> Foundation, Inc., and the publisher of Indian Education Today Magazine.
> He can be reached at najournalists@rushmore.com
> <mailto:najournalists%40rushmore.com> or by writing him at
> 2050 W. Main St., Suite 5, Rapid City, SD. He was also the founder and
> former publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers)
>
>
Posted by: "dorindamoreno" dorindamoreno@comcast.net cactusfruit_94520
Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:47 am (PST)
> Notes from Indian Country
> Gonzaga honors an editor who called for genocide of the Lakota
> By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) 6/5/2006
> © 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.
>
> www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7897&news
> <http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7897&news>
>
> I am often confounded by the antics of mainstream newspapers located in
> cities with large Indian populations that are so prompt in picking up
> Indian related news articles from newspapers as far away as California
> without checking them for facts or by not including the concerns of
> local Indians in the news releases.
>
> Last Saturday the local daily in Rapid City, SD published an article
> from the LA Times concerning an exhibit to honor the 150th birthday of
> L. Frank Baum, the infamous (at least in Indian country) author of the
> Wizard of Oz.
>
> The Foley Center Library at Gonzaga University opened the exhibit in the
> eastern Washington city of Spokane called, "Oz and Beyond: Highlights
> from the L. Frank Baum Collection of Currie Corbin." Of course, every
> American knows about the characters in the book from the movie with Judy
> Garland that featured the Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, The Scare Crow and
> the Wicked Witch of the West. The song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by
> Garland that was almost cut from the film has become an American standard.
>
> On the occasion of Baum's 150th birthday anniversary I would like to
> point out a few little known facts that I hope will take some of the
> glitter from this exhibit.
>
> Most Americans know about one horrible day, at least horrible to Native
> Americans, that occurred on December 29, 1890. It was the day when the
> officers and enlisted men of the 7th Cavalry, General George Armstrong
> Custer's old outfit, turned their Hotchkiss guns, their rifles and
> pistols on the nearly 300 Lakota men, women and children at a creek
> called Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and
> slaughtered them in an orgy of bloodletting that was dreadful to behold.
>
> My grandmother, Sophie, was a teenage student at Holy Rosary Indian
> Mission, a school about 10 miles from Wounded Knee, on that day of the
> bloody massacre. She recounted how soldiers rode on to the grounds of
> the mission school visibly excited by their actions and talking loudly
> about their wonderful victory. The Jesuit priests at the mission school
> made the children bring water and hay to feed the hungry horses of the
> troopers.
>
> Grandmother Sophie said she could still see blood on the gloves and
> uniforms of the soldiers. But, of course, no one told the Indian
> children at the school of the events of that day even though some of
> them had relatives that were among the slaughtered.
>
> Six days after the massacre, while the frozen bodies of the Lakota men,
> women and children were being dumped into a mass grave, L. Frank Baum,
> the editor of a weekly newspaper in Aberdeen, SD, wrote an editorial
> calling for the annihilation of any Lakota still alive.
>
> His editorial read in part, "Having wronged them once perhaps we should
> wrong them again and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the
> face of the earth."
>
> Perhaps it was a sign of the times that the white settlers wanted to see
> all of the indigenous people destroyed but if any editor had called for
> genocide against any race of people other than Indians there would have
> been a huge public outcry. In an ironic way it reminds me of the
> millions who remained silent while Jews were herded into concentration
> camps in Poland and shoved into the gas chambers. The life of an Indian
> meant as little to the white settlers as the lives of the Jews meant to
> the Germans.
>
> Perhaps it is prophetic and ironic that L. Frank Baum is honored by
> Gonzaga University because it is also a Catholic run school as was the
> Indian mission attended by my grandmother. There certainly was no outcry
> by the Catholic missionaries at Holy Rosary Mission following the
> horrific slaughter of the innocent Lakota men, women and children at
> Wounded Knee.
>
> For chasing, running down, and slaughtering old men and women, and for
> firing point blank into pregnant mothers with children in their arms, 21
> men of the 7th Cavalry were awarded Medals of Honor, America's highest
> military award. The awarding of medals for these acts of bestiality is a
> blight on the integrity of America and is one mistake made at the height
> of impassioned and imagined patriotism that should never be allowed to
> stand. It is the equivalent of handing out Medals of Honor to the
> soldiers who murdered the innocent men, women and children at Mai Lai in
> Vietnam.
>
> L. Frank Baum believed these actions to be honorable and glorious. Not
> only did he publicly and proudly condone them, he went one step further
> and in his now infamous editorial called for the slaughter of the
> remaining Lakota people. Why should I care after more than 100 years? I
> care deeply because many of the Lakota people Baum wished to eliminate
> were my relatives. My grandmother and her parents (my great
> grandparents) and all of her brothers and sisters made Baum's genocidal
> list. L. Frank Baum's call for the slaughter of the Lakota people was no
> better than Adolph Hitler's call for the elimination of the Jewish
> people and yet Baum is honored on his 150th birthday. Are any newspapers
> in the state of Washington protesting this outrage?
>
> I am aghast that our local daily newspaper would run such an article in
> the land of the Lakota and never, not once, mention the genocidal
> editorial of L. Frank Baum. The frontier mentality of most white editors
> often blinds them to the truth.
>
> (Tim Giago is the president of the Native American Journalists
> Foundation, Inc., and the publisher of Indian Education Today Magazine.
> He can be reached at najournalists@rushmore.com
> <mailto:najournalists%40rushmore.com> or by writing him at
> 2050 W. Main St., Suite 5, Rapid City, SD. He was also the founder and
> former publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers)
>
>