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FOURTH OF JULY HOLIDAY June 20, 2005 Susan Bates

The 4th of July Holiday is coming up. The roadsides are already crowded with fireworks stands. Happy childhood memories of fireworks displays and picnics in the park surface. But I am older now. I find this holiday, as are others, filled with mixed emotions. In my mind's eye I see Great Turtle Island the way it used to be before the coming of Columbus and DeSoto — before the massacres and plagues and forced relocation changed our people forever. I try to understand why a people who were searching for freedom to be and freedom to worship would so cruelly take these same things from the people they found here. This year we will celebrate the 229th birthday of the United States of America. On June 11, 1776, the Iroquois chiefs were formally invited into the meeting hall of the Continental Congress to lend their wisdom as the "Founding Fathers" hammered out the documents on which the new country would be founded. They were called "Brothers" and promised that the friendship between the Iroquois and whites would "continue as long as the sun shall shine" and the "waters run." An Onondaga Chief in attendance was so moved that he asked and was granted permission to give John Hancock an Indian name. From that day forward John Hancock was known as "Karanduawn," or the "Great Tree" by Native Peoples. What happened to the dream? Did it die in the rocket's red glare? Or is it still alive, waiting to be reborn? <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> "Now I know the government is going to break the treaty because when it was signed it was understood that it would last as long as the grass grew, the winds blew, and the rivers ran, and men walked on two legs--and now they have sent us an Agent who has only one leg." --Piapot (Flash In The Sky), Cree, 1895 <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> "The American Indian Holocaust Museum" A Poem By Sherman Alexie "What do we indigenous people want from our country? We stand over mass graves. Our collective grief makes us numb. We are waiting for the construction of our museum. "We too could stack the shoes of our dead and fill a city to its 13th floor. What did you expect us to become? What do we indigenous people want from our country? We are waiting for the construction of our museum. "We are the great–grandchildren of Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. We are the veterans of the Indian wars. We are the sons and daughters of the walking dead. We have lost everyone. "What do we indigenous people want from our country? We stand over mass graves. Our collective grief makes us numb. We are waiting for the construction of our museum." — Sherman Alexie

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