Revisionist history turned the Wounded Knee Massacre into a battle where soldiers were awarded medals of honor and peaks in the Black Hills were named after murderers like George Armstrong Custer.
The mountain was made taller than South Dakota's highest natural point, Odakota Mountain, by white people with concrete and stone. It is not the highest US point east of the Rocky Mountains, either: Guadalupe Peak in Texas is.
South Dakota: red state collapse on parade.
Public comment hearings before the State Board of Geographic names are being held throughout the state as a result of a petition drive to change the name of Harney Peak to Black Elk Peak or something more culturally sensitive. Custer resident Leola McAfee says she doesn’t favor changing the name, but if it is changed she would like to see a more neutral name, "Black Elk was really not that much better than Harney. He also committed massacres, the only difference was he was an Indian massacring white people", said McAfee. [KOTA teevee]Harney Peak's Lakota name is “Hinhan Kaga” or the place of owls.
The mountain was made taller than South Dakota's highest natural point, Odakota Mountain, by white people with concrete and stone. It is not the highest US point east of the Rocky Mountains, either: Guadalupe Peak in Texas is.
South Dakota: red state collapse on parade.
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ReplyDeleteIn the 1868 treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in Sioux country, the United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. No Anglo has standing in naming any part of the Black Hills. The Lacotah could name it Mt. Snivelin' Whitey and use a cartoon caricature of an American prisoner of war in a cell in Hanoi the way sports teams and High School mascots ridicule NDN people. That might raise awareness of what the derision of a nation (that lost a war) by the victor of that war can inspire and what consequences can arise among it's youth. (i.e. The Lacotah nation lost a war to the USA just as the USA lost a war to North Viet Nam). When native youth are raised with the awareness that their people's land can be stolen and not a thing is done about it or any acknowledgement/apology made of it by the Anglos, it's no wonder their self-esteem has fallen to suicide levels. What my native friends demand is this, "No image of Native Americans ever, for any reason without their permission."
ReplyDeleteMr. Lansing: what is the best way to rename all the geographical features on the lands within the Fort Laramie treaty boundaries?
ReplyDelete