Tuesday October 27, 2009, 2:26 pm
she is dead on, it's has been and will for so long be denied, are they yet teaching the offenses in the schools? didn't we as children grow up believing that Indians were savage people who deserved to die because we were taught that? In our schools, from history books no less. Nona wants the country to face the facts and print them, teach them. don't our children deserve to know all the truths about history? this is like saying slaves were not tortured and the Holocaust did not happen, no different.
ty T great article

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 2:29 pm
Racism is everywhere, I was so shocked when I experienced it first time-- but I have a thicker skin nowadays.....

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 3:00 pm
Actually, we weren't taught that Native Americans were savages, we were taught that early settlers sometimes believed that about them. We were also taught, in history classes in school, that Native Americans saved the lives of the first settlers. We were also taught that Native Americans and the first settlers came together to celebrate the harvest that would keep the alive through the winter and that we celebrate that now as Thanksgiving. We made construction paper costumes for pilgrims and Native Americans and had a play every fall, where we honored the interaction and relationships of early settlers and Native Americans - and all the good that came from them.
We learned that there were sometimes problems between the two cultures, even battles. We learned that eventually some white people in power did plenty of despicable and revolting things and too many Native Americans died because of those actions. We learned that Native Americans were sequestered on what was considered the poorest land and we learned that even when oil and other resources were found on that Native American land, the Native Americans were often cheated out of the proceeds from the lands.
We also learned that white people did all sorts of damage to the land and the wildlife that Native Americans had so carefully protected - I remember learning about the wasteful settlers and whites who thought it was great to shoot buffalo out of the windows of trains. I learned about how Native Americans used all of the animal parts when they hunted, sinew to sew together clothes and covers and even roof linings, bones for tools, skins for wearing and staying warm, meat that they dried to keep through the winter, horns for tools and other things - literally nothing ever went to waste. Some white people learned those lessons for awhile, to only take what is needed and to use all we take.

Now, almost no white people behave as if they remember. We've done a lot of damage because we thought, wrongly, that we were superior. I grew up in an all white community, in the midwest, but I learned the important lessons.
Racism and prejudice are real and they go in every direction. It may be taught in some schools, but I never learned any of that in school. We were shown video of the German concentration camps too. We learned about slavery, about Jim Crow laws and lynching, about the Civil Rights movement, and about bad government decisions regarding the Vietnam War. I remember all sorts of lessons we learned in school - a small country school of all white students who were taught the truth about our nation rather than the exceptionalism beliefs that so many push today.
We have local control over our public schools, and parents have children for years before they are school-age. WE are responsible for what our children learn - WE ARE. There's no blaming schools or anyone/anything else at all. Racism and hatred are not innate, even to humans (prejudice toward those identified as different and discrimination are a little different); Racism and hatred are taught. Children are racist and hateful because they have learned , by teaching or example or submersion or all three, to be so.

Tuesday October 27, 2009, 7:45 pm
Thanks Terry

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 6:17 am
Racism is a live and well.. much like a thorn in the side... Mindsets regarding racial issues should be changed and from early learning ages.. we should be taught to love one another as God loved us.. then we would not have wars and all the horrors in the world today

Wednesday October 28, 2009, 2:56 pm
Amen, Chaz... =)