Tsi-lu-gi

We welcomed you to our land many years ago!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   You came to our land from far away. You said, you came in peace and wanted to live in our land. You returned to your land and told your people, that you had discovered a new land. These words brought great harm to our people. This was not a lost land for you to discover. This was not a land without people living in it, as we have for centuries before the invaders came. We called you brother...you called us savages and uncivilized. You traded the best you had to offer for our lands. You gave us worthless beads, whiskey, lies and diseases. You raped and killed our women, murdered our children and men. You enslaved some of our people and cut off their hands
when they would not work for you. You do not respect the lives of people different from you.
   You do not respect nor do you obey your own laws. But you demand that we do so. The highest court you have, the United States Supreme Court said, the Cherokee lands were legally owned by the Cherokee according to your own laws. It was not what your so-called Chief, President Andrew Jackson, (may his spirit never have peace) wanted to hear. He, being the lying coward that he was, and his army stole our lands, and in the winter those they had not murdered, (over 2000), were force marched to what you call Oklahoma. Oklahoma, is a Choctaw word meaning Red Man. Over 4000 of our people died on The Trail of Tears. All of  this to the cheers of the dogs that were waiting to devour our lands. The ashes in the hearth were not yet cold when these dogs cowering, crawled into our homes. Gold is far more valuable to White people than human rights or human life.  Gold was found on Cherokee land and it had to be possessed by the Whites no matter what the cost to the Cherokee.  

    You slaughtered the great herds of  Buffalo in your effort to starve the Great People of the Plains. You shot them from your trains as you trespassed across our land, leaving them to rot in the sun. Your armies rode into our villages and murdered the people there. You called them Hero's and honored their great victories. But when your soldiers were defeated you called it a massacre and an ambush. You have poisoned the land, water, air and even your own people ever since. Today you cannot build your prisons fast enough as you already have over one million people in prison.  Your laws and your religion have long since failed you. Now you whimper and whine because your children have become predators upon their own kind.

    Remember, you traded the best you had, lies, rape, diseases, prison and death, for our lands. Now your children are reaping your best. And yet, you are still so very proud of yourselves.  It is quite clear you have learned nothing in the last five centuries!
    Your treaties are lies that you write upon paper for your ceremonies, celebrating your theft of the Red Mans land. The only promise in a treaty you have ever kept is the promise to take our land.  We are not so easy to rid yourselves of even when your health departments as late as1975 under the mask of Medical Care, sterilized our women by the thousands, without their knowledge or consent. We whom you still mistakenly call Indians, 500 years and you still cannot grasp that one! We are not from Calcutta or Bombay or any other place in the country of India! We are still a people of 500 different nations whose lands cover this hemisphere.

     You relish the use of the term "assimilate". You cut off our children's hair and beat them when they spoke in their own language, in your effort to demoralize them. What evil possesses you to presume that we would consider becoming as you? We are very proud of who and what we are. With absolutely no desire to be as you are! Our culture is alive and well, as it has been for thousands of years. Our ways are good ways, and have stood the test of time. Each day we are reminded by the morning light, just how precious the teachings of our ancestors are to us. Honor, respect, love of family and community, words that have no value in your culture.
Your Satan was portrayed as a white man until you felt it to your advantage to create hatred by portraying him as a red man to your people. Lies and deceit are not the ways of A-ni-yv-wi-ya . These were brought to us by a people that preached their religion to us, and ask their God to help them murder us.   A people that demanded laws to protect them from the same people whose homes and land they were stealing. You claim that you now own this land. But make no mistake. A thief can never own that which he has stolen. Not only is he a thief, but a liar as well, when he accepts his deeds as honorable.
  I am called Edudu, it means Grandfather in english. This, that I have written is true and it breaks an old heart to know it is so. But it will not change life for my people. Niether will this history be forgotten. If I had stolen your home and sold it to my people, you also would never   forget!
 

edudu@usa.net

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