This week’s Text, in observance of National Native American Heritage Month, is a reading on American imperialism with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This seems like a pretty good place to begin considering the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
This is the first year Mark’s Text Terminal has observed, with posts, National Native American Heritage Month. I can plead extenuation only through ignorance; I really hadn’t been aware that the month existed. For me, that is especially shocking, because Native American History was a surpassing interest of mine in high school. Indeed, my entire crowd took an interest in those days, the mid-to-late 1970s. We kept up with Akwesasne Notes (available in those days at numerous outlets in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin), owned copies of Seven Arrows by Hyemeyohsts Storm, and kept up with the American Indian Movement’s affairs. We cheered the Wounded Knee occupation retrospectively, since we weren’t a crowd back in those days. Similarly, we supported the Menominee Warrior Society in its seizure of the Alexian Brothers Novitiate in Gresham, Wisconsin, with attendance at their trials (I seem to remember one at held at Juneau, Wisconsin, for some reason).
Personally, I carried a Free Leonard Peltier petition around in my book bag for several months, gathering just over 3,000 signatures before sending it, to no avail, to President Jimmy Carter. I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown twice by my fifteenth birthday–which then and now exercised an enormous effect on my consciousness. So, I have no excuse neither for my ignorance of this holiday, nor the paucity of materials I currently possess related to it.
Henceforth, I seek to remedy this oversight.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Mark's Text Terminal 