by Monica_ICE » 18th Jul 08, 22:49
You're right, Sarc. "Native American" is any native of America. "Indian" is only what some of us are, and it's not an accutare term for legal work.
I know Iron Maiden wrote a lot of songs from movies like "Wickerman"; not sure which this was after. There'd be plenty to choose from.
After Christopher Columbus and the European explorers/settlers came, they killed 95% of the entire population of the Americas, all different kinds of Native Americans (we're not just one kind of person/ethnicity). "White men" is a term we still use today, although it's not pigment-based anymore. It's now about the mentality rather than your skin color. (I use the term "redskin" a lot which many others find horribly offensive; it just depends on who's offended about what [shrugs].) From the point-of-view of the United States - which this is based on - the white men came to our land, invaded, slaughtered us in genocide (which is still going on), took everything that was ours for their own without care, and pushed most of the Indians still alove out west to the wastelands onto "reservations" where they reside imprisoned (mostly) today. Others like my family were forced to hide their identity and assimilate to survive. In the assimilation, all traces of Indian culture and identity were forced and flushed out. Right now, many of us are scraping together what we have left and trying to relearn cultures, spiritualities, ways, and languages so we can preserve anything we can. The reference about taking our game is about hunting the animals we Indians ("redskins") lived on. We'd NEVER had "commerical hunting" until the Europeans came. European demand for aspects of our lush and plentiful animal parts, like furs and pelts, brought hunters who killed for non-food purposes for the first time. We always lived in peaceful, harmonious balance with our environment before. We killed only what we needed. Now, with the white men and European interference, our animal food supply nearly died, and our people with it. The animals couldn't reproduce in the short time frame of the mass hunting, so the death-to-birth animal ratio nearly killed the people. "White man took our game for his own needs." White people stole our food with no regard for us.
We fought long and hard for a very long time (still are, but in a different way, I have every right to say) through the 17- and 1800s to keep our sacred land and keep what was spiritually given to us, including the animals and food we lived on. "The Plains" is the middle part of our country that's flat land with very few trees and hellacious weather. It is suited for the nomadic Indian way of life, but the white people can't (to this day, really) handle it. We had many, many battles as the white felt they owned the entire continent just because they said so. They did not acknowledge our people as people or respect our land, our spiritual rights, or our ways. Of course we fought for what was ours - and our lives! If I got the lyrics right, they mention the Cree. That's one of the tribes that lives in the northern Plains between the US and Canada. The Indians of the west and in Canada were forced to live on their reservations - which the whites came back and took more land of just because they wanted to. (The US government has yet to honor ONE treaty they've made with the Indians. They don't care.) That's the imprisonment thing.
The whites don't appreciate the ecosystem of the Plains, and, yes, there are a lot of dustclouds and unfruitful grounds. On the redskin holes, they could mean one of several things. Not knowing the basis of this, I'm going to say it's the style of house the Plains Indians use. They dig a sort of half-deep hole and use wood timber as a framework. They cover it with mud then grass, leaving a hole in the top for fire smoke. The houses blend in with the scenery so you can't really tell they're there. To a white man out for genocide, it might look like a hole in the ground like a rabbit's. The Indians' "game" is guerilla warfare. When the original colonies fought the Brits for independence, they learned our normal fighting ways which were labelled "guerilla". We kicked Britain's ass. At this point in the white man's "manifest destiny" - their term for stealing all the land from ocean to ocean - they used the Indians' successful fighting tactics against us. That's what the song is referring to. I'm not sure the specific reference on the last line, but the whites wee ruthless about the redskin genocide (as they still are today). [NOTE: The US is one of 4 countries in the UN that voted AGAINST a recommendation treating indigeonous people equally/respectfully. the other 3 were Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, all British colonies.]
Run to the hills for your lives is the Indians finding places to hide, shelter, and GUERILLA ATTACKS BACK. It's not a coward thing; it's a strategy. The whites didn't know our land like we do. We trapped them in swamps, in forests, in mountains, hills, etc, and plucked them off.
"Blue" is a reference to military uniforms of the time. They came to our lands, wouldn't leave us alone. They were determined to kill us all. They DID rape and kill the women and children. The alcohol reference is a very small part of that big, important picture. Indians can't genetically hold our alcohol. It has effects on us whites don't have nor understand. The European men saw this in the east early on and brought over barrels and barrels of alcohol to poison the Indians with. (It's poison to a pureblood's system.) The Indians who fell for this trick - we fell for tricks if dishonesty because we don't have that in our cultures for the most part; our spirituality is core to honesty - would have drinking parties where the men with weapons would drink and fight while the women and children hide elsewhere away. In the morning, the women would see who among the men was still alive. Since our people didn't understand alcohol at all, they dubbed it a "mental illness' because it was beyond our comprehension. The white did this as a way to continue the genocide by setting the Indian men up to kill each other for them. The line about being tame is the hatred and prejudice of the whites. They can't STAND ANYONE who's different from them. Some of the tribes down south are what we call "civilized tribes". They lived in a way very close to the white European way of life. The white saw that and Christianized them, making them conform to their white ways and lifestyle. Then they had the Trail of Tears and stuck the conformed Indians on reservations as a reward for trying to be peaceful and willing to conform and change. That was white "justice". As part of the alcohol-genocide, the whites also wanted all the gold/money the Indians had from trade and raids. It wasn't enough to kill all our people, they had to steal everything we had, too, so they tricked some of our people into paying them for what was going to kill them. "Give us money to go kill yourselves for us." Many Indians were taken and sold as slaves alongside the African slaves. When Indians escaped, the white slavesellers/holders moved them all around on the continent and into the carribean so they wouldn't know the land to escape on. They sold women and children, who were raped, and they sent some Indian kids to white orphanages and church Missions, stripped all of their identity, and raised them white, a problem that's still going on today. As for old Indians, they were killed.
We couldn't stop the whites. I'm working on that now. That's why they hate me. There's a LOT of illegal stuff going on such as American Auschwitz, which I'm stuck in.
