Monday, February 28, 2011

How We the People screwed the Indians

Indianz.com brings this from Brian Hicks' revelatory Smithsonian article on the early evolution of reservation law:

John Ross made an unlikely looking Cherokee chief. Born in 1790 to a Scottish trader and a woman of Indian and European heritage, he was only one-eighth Cherokee by blood. To a degree unique among the five major tribes in the South, the Cherokees used diplomacy and legal argument to protect their interests. With the help of a forward-looking warrior named Major Ridge, Ross became the tribe’s primary negotiator with officials in Washington, D.C., adept at citing both federal law and details from a dozen treaties the Cherokees signed with the federal government between 1785 and 1819. Even as his health failed, Ross would not quit. In 1866, he was in Washington to sign yet another treaty—one that would extend Cherokee citizenship to freed Cherokee slaves—when he died on August 1, two months shy of his 76th birthday. More than three decades later, the federal government appropriated Indian property in the West and forced the tribes to accept land reservations.
As if ip wasn't pissed off enough already.

So, opium use is as historic in Deadwood as gambling.  The Gulch makes the logical location for a cannabis-friendly zone.  Who's with me?

2011 Planetary Defense Conference announced.

Inside Job on Here and Now.

For hipneck, Newland, and DDC.

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