Uncovering Wisdom of the Past

Uncovering Wisdom of the Past
I have been reading a book that is giving me more insight into the outrageous treatment that the government of the United States dispensed to the Native Americans. The book is titled, “The Dull Knives of Pine Ridge A Lakota Odessey.” In the annals, the facts and stories of the history of the original people of our country were fed a multitude of lies. The lies did little to feed their stomachs and the stomachs of their families. Treaties were broken one after another. The Native chiefs signed negotiated treaties in good faith. Promises for no further expansion into Indian deeded lands were disregarded almost as soon as the ink was dry. The indigenous people were herded onto reservattions that had soil so poor that little could be grown there. Cattle barely had anything to graze on. The promised herd numders of cattle were slashed with no thoghts at all on how it would affect these untrained people. They were used to hunting and gathering and had little insight on how to plant crops and how to manage animals. For the most part, the hunter wariors cared for their horses and ponies.
Slowly the government wrested the weapons from them. Bows, arrows, lances, and even their knives were seen as weapons, not as items of necesity. The young braves secreted their rifles away from the prying eyes of the Indian Agents.
I am almost half way through the reading of this book and discovered two insightful quotes that I thought that I needed to share. The ability of the Indian chiefs to see though the horror of the situation and view the crux of these matters in just these two quotes is quite remarkable.
On February 10, 1890 after much haggling with the Lakota men, General George Crook took their signatures to cede their land on the Pine Ridge to Washington D.C. The government slashed their issue of beef by one million pounds and President Benjamin Harrison opened the ceded territory to white settlers. The aged chief Red Cloud said, “They made many promises, more than I can remember, but they mever kept but one; they promised to take our land and they took it.”
The other was made by Crazy Horse of the Ogalala Sioux. He sdaid, “A people without a history is like wind on the buffalo grass.”
What is happening in our schools today? History is being erased, covered with social idealism. Facts are being deleted and lies are being inserted. It is an attempt to destroy America from within. We see attacks daily on our borders, language, our culture, and our history. Return our schools to our local communities.