...from ground they consider holy, "especially Lincoln who was such a great Emancipator."
Let us review the Four False Faces:
George Washington: Speculated heavily in Native lands, allied with some Native nations and groups, and practiced brutal retaliation against other Native nations and groups - not just those allied with the British, but any not specifically allied with his military. After the Revolution, as President, he sold Native lands to generate cash to clear the military debts - payments owed to soldiers and financiers. Above all, he supported cultural genocide under the guise of "assimilation" and "assistance' to Natives under treaty - encouraging them to depend on cash annuity payments by treaty, learn to farm the shitty lands allocated to them, and abandon their "barbaric practices" by welcoming missionaries and white culture. While he never formally abrogated any treaties, he allowed them to be broken and effectively become dead letters, whenever political convenience dictated.
Lincoln: See above. Also broke treaties, confiscated Native lands, supported Indian Removal as government policy, and denied redress for U.S. Army atrocities practiced on Native peoples.
Jefferson: Grand architect of many of the cultural genocide practices and policies the U.S. and State governments used to "civilize" the "savages", promoter of Manifest Destiny, and backer of the Lewis and Clark expedition to survey lands for white settler expansion and laid the groundwork for the largest and longest invasion and appropriation of Native lands in American history.
T. Roosevelt: Regarded Native peoples as "inferior" races and referred to the lands stolen by white settlers as having been "the hunting ground of squalid savages". He believed "the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian" and vigorously pursued policies of Native removal and appropriating Native sacred sites to integrate into national parks, monuments, and forests.
To leave the Four False Faces intact is an ongoing insult to Native culture, history and sovereignty. It is as though a monument was placed in the Vatican to honor Nero, Decius, Domitian and Diocletian.
American history is not a two-dimensional tale on a single heroic story arc. It is a living complexity that should be studied, contemplated, learned from, and honored not as a victory but as an ongoing struggle to make our future better than our past.
sadly,
Bright
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