American Indians vs. Native Americans

“NATIVE AMERICANS MARCH TO THE MUSEUM OF THEIR LIVES” headlined Page 1 of the Washington Post, which devoted two more full pages to the dedication of the National Museum of the American Indian.

That title for this $219 million edifice on the Mall is surely more accurate than that politically correct term “Native American,” which rightfully belongs to all of us who were born here.

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But the Post’s extensive story had no mention at all of what the Associated Press reported from South Dakota on the same day as this great Washington, D.C., pow-wow:

A group re-enacting the Lewis and Clark expedition were confronted in South Dakota by American Indian leaders who questioned the legacy of the 200-year-old trip and its effects on native culture.

An American Indian delegation greeted the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles over the weekend with protest signs, including one suggesting the original expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led to genocide of their people and destruction of their culture. The re-enactors were asked to go back home.

“I went as a peaceful emissary and asked in a kind way if they would leave,” said Alex White Plume, a Lakota from Pine Ridge, S.D., who led the protest. “They should go home and rethink what they did to the native population.”

Jon Ruybalid, a spokesman for the re-enactors, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the group expects more dialogue with the American Indians they met Saturday near Chamberlain, S.D.

“It wasn’t easy listening,” Ruybalid said. “What they said was filled with a lot of pain.”

And what you might say to them Mr. Ruybalid is:

• “Do you people regard Sacagawea as a traitor?” and

• “Do you justify the warriors of Crazy Horse at Little Big Horn torturing to death and mutilating the bodies of Custer and all who were overrun by your at least 5-to-1 advantage?” and

• “If the United States had really been bent on genocide, as is often claimed by some of your extremist spokesmen, why would there have been any reservations – or any survivors – at all?”

White Plume, reported the AP, “said he was ‘saddened that some tribes welcome them with open arms,'” referring to the Lewis & Clark re-enactors.

Of course he was saddened … that many American Indians reject the militant American Indian Movement of Dennis Banks, Russell Means and company, founded in the Minnesota State Prison, which so trashed the Battlefield of Wounded Knee that they were denounced even by South Dakota’s liberal Sen. George McGovern.

These ethnic hoodlums also tried to tear up the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, just as Russell Means so desecrated the Battlefield of Little Big Horn.

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Along with their apparent decision not to report this AP story from South Dakota, the Post published yet another Change-The-Name-of-The-Washington-Redskins tirade by columnist Courtland Milloy.

Milloy wrote: “By many accounts (none of whom he identified), ‘redskin’ was a term used by bounty hunters to describe the scalps taken from Indians they had killed.”

If columnist Milloy is aware of the thousands of white scalps lifted by Indians, who also burned people at the stake, along with other insidious tortures, he does not mention these historic facts.

Instead, he quotes Washington Redskins team owner Dan Snyder’s address to the National Press Club in 2001:

Number one, we’re never going to change the name of the Washington Redskins. And I think, from a bottom-line perspective, what it means is tradition, what it means is competitiveness, what it means is honor. It is not meant to be derogatory.

That ought to be pondered by all of those who demand a name-change for the Skins.

If the term were really derogatory, why on earth would any owner ever have named his team derogatorily, thus insulting all the players?