Day One Hundred Forty Nine: Honour the Treaties

I just finished listening to a TED talk by Aaron Huey that I found while checking out a blog posting by Credenda president, Vince Hill. My Communications 20 class also viewed the photo essay and listened to Aaron Huey narrate some little examined U.S. history.

http://newadventuresatwilkes.blogspot.ca/2011/03/honour-treaties.html

Here's what my student, Maloree Keepness wrote after watching Aaron Huey's TED Talk:

"I saw people living in poverty; their homes are infected with black mold. These people live a very rough life, some suffer from alcoholism. There was a picture of a man wearing a scarf because he'd been scalped (by the U.S. army). I heard things that made me be thankful for the way I grew up. These First Nations people have been to hell and back.

"It's pretty sad; it hits me kind of hard to know what other First Nations people had to go through. They've got the very bad end of the stick with the massacre and everything. I most definitely have sympathy for these people and the ones living in poverty.

"We should share this information with anyone and everyone. This type of story and background need to be known around the world. I'm positive that this would catch a lot of attention from other people; this has a very strong impact emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.

What to do? What to do? What to do?

Huey says that the last act of genocide or colonialism is for the oppressor to throw his or her hands in the air saying, "Look what these people are doing to one another. They're killing each other." Huey's answer to What Should We Do? is that we should honour the treaties.

Hill reminds us in his blog post of Martin Luther King's words, "Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere." While camping in the Black Hills, Hill wanted to visit Wounded Knee. Unlike other famous sites in the U.S. Wounded Knee was hard to find, almost as though the government had something to hide.

Maloree Keepness says, "We should share this information with anyone and everyone."