Ethnic Cleansing in the United States, Historic & Contemporary

. I tried to keep up with posting while in Nebraska last week, but then the pace of the workshop – the NEH Legacies and Landmarks of the Plains Native Americans, conceived and hosted by Central Community College – was fourteen-hours-a-day relentless, with lots of travel and a couple of times, by night, I confess, […]

Six Pawnee Scouts: a Homecoming

. The history of Indigenous-European relations in North America is sometimes simultaneously complex and simple. We find complexity in the clash of cultures and world views and the intersecting cultures, including among the Indigenous tribes themselves. Simple, too often, was the sheer racist betrayal and barbarism. Pawnee were shrewd and fierce warriors, often in conflict […]

The Navajo Concentration Camp at Bosque Redondo

The premise from which I write about American Indian issues is that while some Americans are ignorant, callous, and self-justifying about the nation’s history with Native America – and sometimes, still, clearly racist – most people are ignorant in the innocent sense of simply lacking knowledge. Most Americans, one can learn merely from raising the […]

Apologizing to Native America – in a Whisper

Reader Yuras Karpau, from Belarus, asks in the comments section what I think of Wednesday’s official apology by the United States government to American Indians. Yuras has an interest in Native American issues and is an ardent advocate of the cause of Leonard Peltier. My first answer to such questions is always that it doesn’t […]