Here’s my post on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I need to go into more detail and will in a future post, but this has some of the basic details.

Here’s my post on polygamy with Indians.

Both of my posts are based on research by historians.

I understand that Indians in western Utah want to make money by storing Nuclear Waste on their reservation. On the one hand, they could earn a lot of money to do such a thing. On the other hand, there is a potential for disease and cancer not only to their people, but to surrounding Utah and Nevada citizens.

I admit that I don’t want Utah to be the world’s dumping ground for nuclear waste. On the other hand, if the Indians want to make money and don’t care about storing nuclear waste, then I guess they should have that option. But when a leak contaminates the ground water and sickens people off their land, then I think the neighbors should have a say in the matter as a principle of public health. In my mind, public health trumps monetary gain. But once again, I can hear the argument that the US isn’t letting them be sovereign over their own land. So, what say you?

The question “would I agree…” I am not Indian nor can I speak for them. It would be a good question to ask them.I certainly can’t agree on or support genocide, do you?

Let me put this in layman terms. Let’s suppose the Chinese invaded the United States, and they first kick you out of your home, and take your land from you. They then tell you that you can no longer speak English, you must speak Chinese by law. Then you are required to eat Chinese food, ware Chinese clothes and attend Chinese churches. You no longer can worship your own God. Next they take from you your children for six years and place them in Chinese schools, and you are not allowed to visit them. Now after they do all this to you they decide to put you on a reserve of land to keep you away from the Chinese society. The Chinese government then tells you that you can’t farm on the reservation, you can’t sell the land, you can’t barrow against it, and you can’t build any businesses on it or homes without permission from the government. In other words the Chinese set you up to fail.

Does this answer your question? This is what our government did to the American Indians. And Brigham Young paid his private militia to assist in the removal of the Indians, and in 1866 the United States government reimbursed Brigham 1.5 million dollars to cover costs. (Source Church Archives)

Now the rub. Not just the Indian people have been duped. Indian history has been ignored and left out of school curricula. The United States government owes the Indian people billions in royalties from mineral and land lease use. For over 20 years the Indian peoples have been in lawsuits trying to get the government to pay them money that is owed to them. And we say, “We have given the Indians every chance to succeed yet they chose to life in poverty, it’s their own damn fault.” We think this way because our government has created the illusion that they are treating the Indians fairly and looking out for their best interests. (Source BIA)

So we grossly misunderstand what exactly is going on between our government and the Indian peoples. And the media ignores Indian problems and so the general public is never informed of the injustices. (Source Division of Indian Affairs)

Personally I feel we all should not assume things are well in Indian country, I think we should ask hard questions and expect truthful answers. I think it’s outrageous how fellow human beings in our own country are treated. Good grief it’s been 150 years now, can’t we see the injustices? I can’t name another people in the United States that are treated this way, can you? Who else do we keep on reserves, oh of coarse…we have animal reserves to protect them from us!

The United States government signed 350 treaties with the Indians and not one has been honored by them.

Thank you for letting me rant.

Phil G.

The discussion of your mirror post of this thread on Mormon Matters is really fascinating. I recommend it to anyone not following it.

I was particularly interested in the “threadjack” that started talking about the error of assuming that the state of Africans somehow had to do with their behavior in the pre-existence. Terry Givens has a new book coming out in September “When Souls Had Wings” that talks about the concept of pre-existence in world religions, and I assume he’ll dwell heavily on the Mormon concept given his expertise there.

I’ll have to read it and give it a review.

Would you agree, that when all is said and done, that the Utah Indians benefited greatly by their contact with the more enlightened Mormon settlers?

Frontierlands and the “wild west” days were clearly a different world than what I can understand from my Internet-based, air conditioned, refridgerated food, car-driving world I live in.

I hesitate to make any judgments on Mormons or Indians or Gentiles and their motives. They were in survival mode…I’m in analyzing meaning of life mode…worlds apart!