I have long maintained that one of fundamental issues that US society has to confront if it is to deal with the present is its past and that until it does so, it is doomed to allow the state to repeat its crimes, over and over.

A comrade sent me the following poem by the poet Michael Rosen. The parallels should be obvious but please follow the link and read the document that was the catalyst Rosen’s poem.

Ed.

Ariel Sharon Studies History

At a meeting in Chicago General William Sherman
and other leading military men decided to break the
1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie and clear the plains of
most of the Plains Indian tribes. They decided to put
all the Plains Indians tribes onto two reservations, one
in the north and one in the south, clearing a giant swath
through the plains for the railroad. To make the tribes
more ready to sign, they attacked village after village
on various pretexts—sometimes for stealing cattle,
sometimes for attacking homesteads. The military attacks
were against the provisions of the Fort Laramie Treaty
which pledged that violations would be punished in a
court of law and not by military occupation.

[from Washita on www.tolatsga.org/wasvo1b.html]

Michael Rosen