A fellow American Indian points out that regardless of what the historical grudges exist – and the American track record is a lot worse than the Manifest Destiny apologists taught back in the day – the Clown World program is not and has never been in our interest.
Natives need to bear firmly in mind that if the demographics of this nation wildly vary from the traditional white majority, it won’t be some great development for us.
It will be the opposite. We share a history with the whites, good and bad, but it’s behind us now. The whites like and admire us, and as little as some of us want to admit it, they have helped us enormously.
The newcomers don’t give a damn about us. We have no history with Pakistanis or Afghans or whoever. They are coming to conquer, that’s it.
If we don’t stand with the whites, we will fall together. It’s that simple.
I don’t know that I would go so far as “helped us enormously” but reservations and casinos is a much better deal than many conquered peoples ended up with, although I do think that any state or federal agency who tries to play eminent domain games with Indian land should be treated in exactly the same way a soldier who independently wages war on a foreign power is.
But the point stands. And it really would behoove Americans to be honest about what was done to the American Indian, in order to learn from it and avoid meeting a similar fate. Because it’s all in the legalisms…