When Indians meet
…An Encounter with the Native
America
Ramasubramanian
 |
During Oct-Nov 2018, I
visited the USA for 2 weeks. In addition
to delivering a few lectures, I interacted with Indigenous American leaders and
thinkers for a dialogue that I call the ‘Indian – Indian Dialogue’. I was
trying to understand their world view, current situation, their struggles and
how they see the world in the context of today’s climate change crisis. In this
article, I highlight some of the salient aspects of the dialogue with the Native
Americans whom I got to meet. This article is informed by my dialogues
with native leaders, my own research, and my extensive conversations with my
colleague and host, Reverend Sara Jolena Wolcott, Director of Sequoia Samanvaya,
who is actively engaging in changing the way Americans see their history. A
version of this article was first published in the April 2019 issue of The
Vedanta Kesari, monthly Vedantic magazine published by the Ramakrishna Math,
Chennai.
America has been a great country and presents
itself today in a glorious manner and has become the aspiration for
hard-working people throughout the world.
The entire world has been impacted by American commerce, thinking,
culture, language, and its way of living and working and shared this “American
Dream.” Yet what is this dream, the
“American Way of Life,” really built upon? The reality behind the “American Dream” story
is incomplete without the mention of the original inhabitants of the land.
These diverse peoples whose ancestors have lived on the North American
continent for millenia[2] are
alternatively described as “Native Americans,” “Indigenous people,” “American Indians,” or
just “Indians” within America; the term “Indian Country” is often used by
Native Americans to refer to their own communities. In Canada, they are referred to as “First
Nations.” In this article, I will use
the term Native American and, where appropriate, refer to individuals by their
tribes, or nations, of which they are a part.
Growing up in India, for me the Native
American story is limited to the few images of ‘Red Indians’ that were copied
from Hollywood movies in India and a few
other comic strips. The little that I
got to read about the wisdom of the Native American people as a young person
and later with the advent of the search engine, led me to want to understand
them more. After my conversations with
them, I find that under the surface of false histories and deep historical
wounds, America is also a land of myriad spiritual wealth and deeply generous,
open hearted indigenous peoples who are still offering their wisdom, the
possibility of sustainable lifestyles and their hospitality to visitors,
immigrants, and settlers. It seemed to
me that there is much in resonance in their culture to our own. It also occurred to me that we in India never
get to read the real story of the Native Americans, their encounters with the Europeans, their repeated
suppression, near annihilation, slavery, and their current situation, including
their challenges as citizens of the new American State, their land, farming and
food practices, sacred sites, wisdom, knowledge, livelihood, or any other
aspect of their lifestyle.
With some understanding of the traditions of my
own land, I wanted to experience and understand the American land from the
Native American view point. It was particularly interesting for me to meet with
them considering the harsh treatment of immigrants being meted out in the USA
and the State’s policy towards refugees. Meeting several of the Native American
leaders, discussing larger challenges today, whether it be continued status of
neglect, suppression and marginalization in their society or their deep pride
and wisdom about their past and spiritual tradition, was an insightful learning
experience. That is what I outline in the rest of the article here.
Vivekananda never got a chance to meet with
Indians in America
 |
| Swami Vivekananda in the Parliament of World Religions, Chicago, 1893 |
During the famous Parliament of World
Religions in 1893 when Swami Vivekananda’s universal inclusive message of
harmony of religions gained global attention, it is said that there were no
Native Americans present or invited to speak: ‘… despite sentiments of
universal fellowship expressed at the Parliament, there were no Native
Americans present except in the curiosities display of American Indians on the
fair’s midway. For many visitors, these Indians were as exotic as Vivekananda.
But no native elder or chief was invited to speak at the Parliament. Native
American lifeways were not yet seen as a spiritual perspective. Just three
years earlier, one of the great Native American leaders, Chief Sitting Bull, had
been arrested and killed, the Ghost Dance had been suppressed, and 350 Sioux
had been massacred at Wounded Knee Creek.’[i]
What was not discussed in 1893 was the extent
to which the Christian colonial legacy of America remained an unquestioned
ethos of the land. To understand this omission, we need to perhaps go back
another 400 years in history, wherein the Christian project of ‘enlightening
the world’ (apart from quest for wealth
of coruse) set sail from Europe with the singular mission of conquering all the
lands that were not ruled by Christians and converting all ‘heathens’, or
non-Christians, to Christians. Columbus was one such who set sail westward in
search of India with a faulty understanding of the global navigation.[ii] He came from a family of slave-traders and
entered what we now call the Carribean (he never set foot on the American
mainland) with a worldview that saw darker skinned people as inferior to white-skinned,
Christian Europeans. He was known for his arrogance and his greed. We can only
wonder what our people, our ancestors, in India would have done with him had he
actually come to our land.
Upon Columbus’ return to Europe, Spain and
Portugal sought to gain wealth from land they did not previously know existed.
The Pope of the time agreed, writing a decree, known as a Papal Bull. This Bull
is worth quoting at length. It commended voyagers who:
‘intended to seek out and discover certain
remote and unknown lands, to the end that you might bring to the worship of our
Redeemer and the Catholic faith their inhabitants… By the authority of Almighty
God and of the new land that has been discovered shall belong to you and your
heirs. Furthermore, under penalty of excommunication, we strictly forbid anyone
else to visit these lands for the purpose of trade (or for any reason) without
your consent. Should anyone attempt this, be it known to him that he will incur
the wrath of almighty God.’[iii]
This Bull thus gave Spain and Portugal legal
and moral permission to steal and enslave the people and the natural resources,
(or, to use less Western terminology, the human and non-human beings). The
language is deeply theological, and imparts a religious and cultural
superiority that may seem shocking to us today, but which has shaped our world
ever since.
Columbus himself is supposed to have said this
about the natives: ‘They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see
that they say very quickly everything that is said to them; and I believe that
they would become Christians very easily,….’[iv].
The Papal Bull, became a key document in what
is today referred to as the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine has a sway over the American
land even today. As the noted elder from
the Onondaga Nation in northern New York state, Betty Lyons, stated in a recent
article, “the Doctrine of Discovery,…granting European nations sovereignty over
non-Christian lands “discovered” by their explorers …continues to provide the
legal underpinning of the denial of land rights to our peoples.”[v] With
the denial of land rights comes the denial of ways of life, including caring
through the earth via traditional ways of farming, rituals for water bodies and
health for the people. This is not new
to us in India, we have seen how the denial of land rights, both individual and
collective was the beginning of the loss of traditional knowledge in our
context as well.
The vast “American” land that Columbus
‘discovered’ was inhabited by deeply spiritual communities. The image of the “savage Indian” that was on
the cartoons I watched as a kid is utterly false. Instead, they revered their
land as sacred, worshipped the spirits of the land, paid homage to their
ancestors and had diverse rituals and customs associated with all of this
across their many diverse cultures – just as in India. They were self-organized
into Nations or regions inhabited by different tribes that were clearly
demarcated and where the tribes and their customs ruled. The area had been a
homeland to numerous groups of Native Americans with their own thriving
societies, songs, and histories. Many in the Northeastern region, especially in
Maine, called themselves People of the Dawn. For thousands of years, these peoples had
managed to maintain their unique culture and lifestyle and to make their
living. They were tall and healthy: every early colonial report remarks on
their physical strength and beauty; their diet was far superior to the
Europeans at the same time. They had
complex political arrangements, vast trade networks, cities, arts, and had developed many of the foods we
eat today, including corn and tomatoes. The New Jersey airport where I landed,
not far from where many Indians from India who work in the tech industries
today, was the land of the Lenape people.
Instead of concrete, there were rich wetlands, with some similarities to the
area around what is now Chennai.
‘The arrival of the Europeans meant a drastic
change for the Native Americans. Together with diseases which decimated the
native population, the English settlers also brought an alien culture and
religion.”[vi] As Betty Lyons puts it, “we know that supposed
discovery of the so-called New World has had its greatest negative impact on
the tens of millions of indigenous peoples who lived here.” The colonial
invaders looked at most of the landscape as “commodified” products that could
be shipped back to Europe. Historian William Cronon cites the way the ecology
of the land was viewed by the colonizers in the New England area, “Visitors
inevitably observed and recorded greatest numbers of “commodities” than other
things[vii]”. The
Native peoples did not look at the other beings, from the fish to the land
itself, as “commodities”. Their worldview was much more similar to the Indian
village pre-colonial worldview. While
trade certainly occurred, all beings existed in a sacred web of life, and
“ownership” and “commodification” of living beings, be they animals or humans,
was not the norm. Obviously, the worldviews of the English and Native Americans
differed significantly.
The resulting conflict is sustained till
today, this was echoed by Chief Perry, one of the Native American leaders I met
in the Lenape land outside New Jersey, “Rich people everywhere are afraid of
the spiritual people, we show the truth you see”, he said sharing the story
of struggle to sustain their sacred prayer site
with country houses expansion for
millionaires all around that threaten him and his tribe from accessing their land. As we walked with him in the ground just
outside New Jersey, it was interesting to observe a large new Hindu temple just
a few hundred meters away.
 |
| Author author with Chief Perry and Ms. Ramona Ferreyra, who works with the heritage of the Native Taino peoples of Domincan Republic, where her ancestors are from. |
To continue the history, the visitors and the
natives discovered the vast differences in the world view resonate in various areas
of life. The Natives not only had an active production and commerce, they also
had systems of governance and methods to resolve conflicts coming from their
wisdom and respect for the land. A few
hours north of the Lenape land is situated the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee land
(northern New York). It is here that
five Native American nations came together. They taught the US government how
to be democratic. ‘The Gayaneshakgowa, The Iroquois Great Law of Peace, is… the
earliest surviving governmental tradition … based on the principle of peace; it
was a system that provided for peaceful succession of leadership; it served as
a kind of early United Nations; and it installed in government the idea of
accountability to future life and responsibility to the seventh generation to
come.... All of these ideas were present prior to the arrival of the white man.’[ix]
Among the several stories regarding the
peaceful aspiration of the people is the story of the Peacemaker and the
Kanien’keha:ka. One of the Native American leaders narrates the same as follows:
‘Centuries ago a Natural World people gathered
together at the head of a lake in the center of North America’s then virgin
forest, and, there they counselled. The principles that emerged are unequalled
in any political document that has yet emerged. They evolved a law that
recognized that vertical hierarchy creates conflicts, and they dedicated the
superbly complex organization of their society to function to prevent the rise
internally of hierarchy. The authors continue to establish laws around hunting
and fishing that eased conflicts and ensured freedom and a right to protection
for anyone entering the country of the Haudenosaunee, under what the peacemaker
called the “Great Tree of Peace” which was a white Pine tree. [x]
Coming from southern India, I was struck by
the similarity of justice being provided under a tree. In many of our villages,
we do the same thing. Our version of the White Pine tree is our native pipal tree. The sacredness of the tree itself
provided the authority for the decisions as much as it bound the community to
protecting and living with the natural order.
However, these nuances of understanding and living with the Natural
order was lost on the new arrivals from Europe, who wanted to make a quick
profit.
There are several narratives of the first
encounter from the Colonizers point of view. We ask, how did the natives see the
Colonizers? What did they perceive to be the motives and the intentions of the
new arrivals? Unfortunately, only a few narratives are available from the
Native American point of view and these are only oral traditions; but, some imageries
that are perhaps passed on through oral tradition, presented by one of the
authors, who illustrates the nature of the first encounters -
‘On the coast…Native hunters find that several of the traps
that they had set are missing…in the place where these items had been is
smoothly polished upright timber crossed near the top by a second piece of
wood, from which hangs the carved effigy of a bleeding man. …In the Indian dwelling, a women tells
her granddaughter about the first meeting between the Natives and Europeans.
One day, she says, a floating island appeared on the horizon. The beings who
inhabited it offered the Indians blocks of wood to eat and cups of human blood
to drink. The first gift the people found tasteless and useless; the second
appallingly vile. Unable to figure out who the visitors were, the Native people
called them ouemichtigouchiou, or woodworkers.’[xi]
Americans
tend to originate their own nation on the east coast of what is now the United
States. They act as if Columbus was one of their Founding Fathers, although he
never set foot upon America. However, as Sara Wolcott explained to me, between
1492, when the Taino people first encountered Columbus, and 1620, when the
Algonquin-speaking people first met the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, were 128
years and much happened during that time which significantly influenced the
development of the United States. While initially friendly and hospitable,
Native peoples throughout the Carribbean, meso-America, South America and North
America came to be highly suspicious if not outright resist the colonial
invaders. The colonists often enslaved, raped, pillaged and massacred the
peoples of the islands and meso-America. They turned the rich, bio-diverse
landscapes of the Caribbean into the monoculture of what became sugar
plantations. The horrific transatlantic slave trade brought Africans to forced
labor work in the plantations, which, combined with gold that was stolen from
the native people in Mexico, created a surplus of wealth for Europe, which is
part of what enabled the capital for the global colonial expansions and the
industrial revolution that subsequently shaped the global colonial enterprise.
 |
| author with Rev. Sara Wolcott |
The
Spanish Spanish entered present-day New Mexico (1540), Texas
and South Carolina in 1540 – long before the English even began to sail
overseas. The settlement in South Carolina was overthrown by the black slave
rebellion. Natives continually worked to
oust the Spanish, cumulating in the successful 1680 Pueblo rebellion in Santa
Fe. The Dutch West Indies Company, a sister company to the Dutch East Indies
company, were in present day New York City before the English – they called it New Amsterdam. The Lenape peoples themselves called it Manhattana,
alternatively translated as the “place of many hills”, or the “place to gather
wood for bows and arrows,” or the “place of the meeting of many peoples”, from
which we have the present day term Manhattan.
While the steel, horses, guns and other forms of weapons certainly
impressed the Native peoples, it was the diseases which the Europeans did not
even really understand that they carried (at least at first) that decimated the
Native peoples. Estimates vary between
30% to 95% of the millions of people who lived in the Americas were decimated
by various European diseases, including small pox. By the time the famous Mayflower ship landed
in Plymouth, village after village had been decimated, vastly shifting the
local politics and the people’s capacity to engage (including to resist) the
foreigners, according to Rev. Sara Wolcott.
Symbols of the Native American tribals were
either usurped or slowly changed with the influence of the culture. ‘From
the 1500s to the early 19th century, the idealized image of ‘America’ was transformed from a
dark-skinned, full bodied woman wearing a feathered headdress and a skirt of
feathers or tobacco leaves, the symbol of fecundity, to a (white) Greek
goddess.’[xii]
Unlike the European arrival in India, where
the initial purpose was seeking trade relations and much later began the
colonization project, in the American land the purpose was conversion to
Christianity and rule over the Natives from the beginning. Hence any resistance
was put down violently. While estimates vary, several sources indicate that as
high as 50 million Native Americans were intentionally killed by the invading
Europeans between the 16th and 17th century.[xiii]
Indeed, when one looks at the values celebrated by Modern America and what the
modern Americans think they represent in the world, especially democracy,
equality, and fairness, one can resonate with the question raised by one of the
Native American writers, ‘North America had its own genocide against the First
People – violent, devastating, effective. It was driven by a sense of racial
and religious superiority, and the prize was land and resources. How could it
be that the people so dedicated to democracy and freedom could have been so
cruel to another people? What attitudes, beliefs, myths and misunderstandings
give rise to and fuel this kind of conduct?’[xiv]
Official records today place these number as
573 different tribes across the contemporary boundaries of the United States,
separate from Mexico and Canada,[xv] although
those boundaries are made by the colonists, not the indigenous peoples and do
not make sense to the Native mindset.
Thus, traditionally, some of the
drylands on the border of Mexico and the United States were homelands of people
who often travelled across those lands and did not treat them as wholly
separate places, as contemporary politicians insist that they are today.
The
Native Americans today constitute about 5 million people across the continent. They
are dispersed all over the region starting from Canada in the north all the way
to Mexico in the south. In the US, about half are on reservations: inhibit
smaller patches of what once was their own land. Many live in urban centers,
and you can’t necessarily tell by looking at someone if they are Native
American or not. Many of them have the copies of the documents that were signed
by the Europeans and keep reminding settlers that their land has been illegally
(according to their laws) taken over.
One study places the amount of land taken over between 1887 to 1934 at
about 90 million acres. Some of them have multiple citizenships today as the US
law permits them to have citizenship of their tribal nation apart from that of
the USA.
The Nation of United States of America as it
stands today was fundamentally land leased from the Native Americans through
treaties. Today 374 such treaties govern the
nation of USA.[xvi]
Much of these treaties have never been respected by the American government who
signed them. Often land was violently taken and retained by the governments (US
and Canada). The Native Americans were restricted to ‘reservations’ set-up
exclusively as captive spaces for them and their sacred spaces violated
completely. For five consecutive generations, from roughly 1880-1980, Native
American children in the United States and Canada were forcibly taken from
their families and relocated to residential schools. In these schools, they
were ‘educated’ and ‘civilized’ so that they no longer dress, behave or
remember the culture of the Native American tribes and instead adopt the
European lifestyle. The stated goal of this government program was to ‘kill the
Indian to save the man.’ Half of the children did not survive the experience,
and those who did were left permanently scarred. The resulting alcoholism,
suicide, and the transmission of trauma to their own children has led to a
social disintegration with results that can only be described as genocidal.[xvii]
Alluding to the educating of their children
and the shift in their mind-sets subsequently, Chief Perry summarized the
plight of the youth in the community when he said, ‘Our children could
narrate the history of 10 generations; then they were forced into school and
today they don’t know anything about their past.’[xviii] The
image of what a Native American child looks before being ‘schooled’ and after
is a striking testimony of what happens in schools, where ones’ own traditions
are shown in poor light and that of alien in better light. The most absurd length to which to which this
can be extended is when even the “conquest” of the Native is celebrated even
today. The modern American holidays such
as ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘Columbus Day’ are being increasingly opposed by people
who are aware of its historical background; they want the Colombus Day to be
commemorated as day of mourning and day of Indigenous people respectively. Today about 90 cities across the United
States have already declared the national holiday of Columbus Day as Indigenous
People’s day.
Creating better futures through honouring the
past
 |
| author with Mr. Mindahi at UN Church Centre where they both spoke |
One of my first engagements was with Mr. Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Munoz,
Director of the Original Caretakers Programme and also Director for the Centre
of Earth Ethics in Union Theology College, New York. Hailing from the Otomi people, an ancienti
indigenous community in Mexico, Mr. Mindahi, after a brief ceremony to sanctify
the meeting of our two civilizations, invoked the holy
spirits of his civilization through the blowing of the sacred flute (whistle)
and invoking the ancestors of the two civilizations to guide the process of
dialogue and engagement. He explained the salient components of the indigenous
view. Among other things, he acknowledged that one of the key aspects of the culture is the honouring of the ancestors;
according to him, ‘honouring the past is important to create the future.’[xix] Having
just left India after the month of Mahlaya when families in Tamilnadu and
elsewhere make offerings to their elders, this sounded familiar to me.
This was one of the
key aspects reiterated by Chief Perry whom
we meet in the Lenape Sacred land outside the city of New Jersey. A longstanding Chief of his community and a
voice of wisdom, when he talks of what needs to be done in the current world,
he talks not from the sense of anger or frustration of being denied access to
his own people’s land, but, with a sense of responsibility towards all of humanity.
He says, ‘the important ways to change things
today are –
·
Honour the
lineage
·
Strengthen
the local communities
·
Perform
ceremonies that honour nature and elements, accommodate and accompany others’
ceremonies as well
·
Cleanse the
earth
·
Think beyond
our lives.’[xx]
After an evening walk around the sacred site
and prayers, we asked him before leaving, what was the one thing that he liked
to see changed in the world today. After a pause, he replied, ‘If there is
one thing that I would like to change in the world with which I think many
things can change, I will change the world from the Patriarchal one to one of
Matriarchy.’[xxi]
The denial of access to their land and natural
resources resonates in utterances of many of the Native American leaders
whether it be in personal conversations or in larger gatherings. Chief Stacey Laforme highlights this
in his statement, ‘I was born into a generation of abuse: alcohol abuse; abuse
of your spouse, abuse of your children. It was just sort of a common way of
life when I was born — I'm sure a lot of it had to do with losing our place in
society, losing our sense of who we were. It was rampant and everybody knew
about it, but they also didn't say anything.’ This, ‘not saying anything’ or
not having the courage to stand up to injustice is a recurring discussion as
well whether it be the engagement with the Native Americans or even in the
Parliament of World Religions in Toronto in early November 2018, which had the Indigenous
People as one of its theme.
 |
| author with Chief Phil Lane Jr. at the Parliament of World Religions, Toronto |
But there is always hope in these dialogues.
The people I spoke to had a strong sense of looking forward to a better world,
and the possibility of things improving for the better. This optimism is in
contrast to the general sense of frustration and defeated mind-set of many
non-Native Americans and also many other European countries. Chief Alina la Flamme, a Chief who
evokes response through drumming, calling herself the ‘daughter of the drum’,
says, ‘We are in this womb world, we are preparing ourselves to come into
the sacred life, it is a tough journey to be born there, it is not easy.’ The same sentiment is resonated in another
dialogue with the Hereditary Chief Phil
Lane Jr.: ‘Now is the time for everyone to work together, it is not
time for divisions, the earth mother calls us all to work together.’
In each
of these dialogues and discussions, there is a reverence when they speak of the
East Indian land, of our land: ‘You
come from a sacred land’, ‘We are honoured that someone from your country is
coming to meet us’, ‘Your civilization and ours needs to work together to
create a better world, these two have a great wisdom within them’ – all
statements made with great sincerity and gratitude. During these conversations, I often remembered
Swami Vivekananda’s words that every word is uttered with blessings behind it.
In times of difficulty, every civilization
retains that which is core to itself, its fundamental ethos as though
protecting it for a future time on behalf of all of humanity. Human history is the history of dominance of
the world culture by people of various ethos. In the current times, when the
accelerated destruction of natural resources and its consequences on human life
has become a major concern of all thinking people, the unconscious collective
mind seems to be reaching out to those people and ethos that hold in their
midst the possible solutions for these times. Creative solutions are held by
the indigenous people everywhere. I felt that perhaps some of the Native
American leaders sense this invocation and have started to articulate their
wisdom with a keen sense of responsibility for all of humanity.
 |
| the tepee at Toronto where the Parliament of World Religions had its inaugural ceremony |
It was a fitting tribute to their wisdom and
Canada’s recent efforts towards Truth and Reconciliation, that the Parliament
of World Religions 2018 started with a ceremony by the people of the First
Nations. As the sacred fire was lit and tobacco, sage and other sacred
materials offered to the fire next to a traditional tepee in the middle of the
cloudy, drizzling and crowded city of Toronto, all Religious leaders joined the
Native Americans.
[1]
More about Rev. Sara Wolcott’s work here - https://www.sequoiasamanvaya.com/
[2]
Comment by Rev. Sara Wolcott, “At least 20 thousand years ago – far older than
previously thought. They created their own agrarian revolution separate from
the creation of agriculture in india and mesopotania.”
[i]
http://pluralism.org/encounter/historical-perspectives/parliament-of-religions-1893/
[ii]
Several sources: ttp://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/2012/03/27/columbuss-voyage-was-a-religious-journey/
- Columbus and Pierre d’Ailley, Imago Mundi, how the circumference of the earth
was under estimated by Columbus based on the works of the theologian
http://www.caltech.edu/news/columbus-dailly-are-we-there-yet-36981
- why did Columbus put his faith on the d’Ailley more than the contemporary
knowledge on the circumference of the world?
[iii]
Letter from Pope Alexander VI to the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, dated
May 4th, 1493
[iv]
Several sources: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/why-did-columbus-sail; https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-35/columbus-and-christianity-did-you-know.html; http://catholicism.org/columbus.html
[v]
This is not Columbus Day, Betty Lyons, source: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-indigenous-peoples-day-20181004-story.html
[vi]
Relations between English Settlers and Indians in 17th Century New
England, Diploma Thesis by Bc. Richard Tetek
[vii]
Cronon, The Ecological Transformation of New England, pg. 20
[viii]
Statements made during conversation with the Author by Chief Hawk Storm
[ix]
Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S.
Constitution. Ed: Chief Oren Lyons and John Mohawk (1992), pg. 33
[x]
Basic Call of Consciousness, Ed. By Akwesasne Notes, Introduction by John
Mohawk, pg 81
[xi]
Facing East from Indian Country – A Native History of Early America, by Daniel
K. Richter, p 12
[xii]
Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations and the U.S.
Constitution. Ed: Chief Oren Lyons and John Mohawk (1992), pg. 44
[xiii]
Several sources: https://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html
http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/native-americans/
http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-3
[xiv]
“The North American Genocide” by Nemattenew (Chief Roy Crazy Horse) –
Introduction verses
[xv]
Several sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federally_recognized_tribes
https://www.usa.gov/tribes;
https://www.historyonthenet.com/native-american-tribes-nations;
https://www.bia.gov/tribal-leaders-directory
[xvi]
https://americanindian.si.edu/nationtonation/
https://www.bia.gov/sites/bia.gov/libraries/maps/tld_map.html
[xvii]
https://www.amazon.in/Kill-Indian-Save-Man-Residential/dp/0872864340
[xviii]
Conversation between the author and Chief Perry, Oct 2018 New Jersey
[xix]
Conversation between the author and Mindahi, Oct 2018, Manhattana, New York
[xx]
Conversation between the author and Chief Perry, Oct 2018, Lenape land, New
Jersey
[xxi]
Conversation between the author and Chief Perry, Oct 2018, Lenape land, New
Jersey
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