Accepting the Call from the Nation of Islam
for Unity of the Black and RedThe Seven Creeds Society responds to Minister Louis Farrakhan Message of July, 1986
HATEFUL ABUSE FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS & UNIVERSITIES
The despair of being an outsider builds the cycle of abuse that we see at work today in America. Poor physical health, under achievement, little economic opportunity, broken families, battering, child abuse, crime, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and no meaningful connection to the people among whom this child spends his life, no understanding or caring for the connection of this physical world to the very source of life.
Public schools, entrusted with the precious gift of giving our children an education, have joined with sports teams who use Native Americans as mascot animals. Vulnerable young children, easily influenced adolescents and adults mired in the despair of a racist system have their cultural identity trampled on by those who have no understanding or respect for the spiritual connection of a people to the creative source of life.
A cruel nation is taking Native American religious beliefs and playing with them at games, reducing them to a mockery with no more significance than a supremacist's hideous laugh at a people who have been hunted down in America. A people who have been starved and imprisoned on barren ground with cries of, "EXTERMINATE THEM". A nation of cruel supremacists who still say,
"Get them out of here" when we ask,
"Why do you hate us"?The dead at Wounded Knee Massacre.
250 women and children were murdered.Native Americans, seeing this day after day know the people who are doing this belittle their ancestors, their parents and loved ones, they know it destroys the self esteem of children and adults. It eats at their hearts and builds despair as they realize they do not have the resources to stop this hatred.
University of Illinois
Chief IlliniwekThis onslaught against the Native People affects the growth of a child, the child comes to believe they are the only ones who must live in a long lost time. This educational system pulls children away from schools, away from society, away from their own families. This ridicule takes them away from the modern day educational system because it excludes them when they try to hang on to their religions and cultural identity. Schools run a campaign to push Native children out, statistics show this, just as they show Black and Hispanic children are pushed out of schools. Schools say that Native American students must give up their religious beliefs in order to be mocked in the schools.
This breaks down the child who sees he is unwanted for who he and his family really is. His despair builds and hate takes a grip on him. He is smothered with a defense of anger for self, anger for society, anger for school, for adults, for everybody and everything. Among the Native American community the stereotyping by the dominant, racist society serves to divide the Native American from his culture, just as America has divided the Black American from his culture.
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copyright by Clem Iron Wing & Matthew Richter, 1999
Wichita Kansas, "REDSKINS"
