More than 150 years after brutal slaughter, a small tribe returns home | Al Jazeera America

The more I learn about the whitewashing of American history concerning the (mis)treatment of Native Americans, the more appalled I become. Regretfully it is an aspect of history that none of us boomers were taught. Even as a "child" of the 70s we didn't hear of incidences such as this, we were still focused on the evils of Russian Communism.

For three days, beginning March 28, the Wiyot plan to perform a world renewal ceremony on the island. It will be the first time since the massacre that the ceremony — which once stood at the center of the tribe’s cultural life — has been performed, healing a gap of more than a century and a half.

For the tribe’s current members, it’s especially meaningful that the ceremony will take place on the very land where so many of their ancestors were killed.

“We need to complete the ceremony of 1860 for the ones who were lost,” said Ted Hernandez, chairman of the 645-member tribe.

The ceremony will act as a marker on a long and unlikely journey of survival. It is not easy to recover from a massacre, and that year the endured one of the worst ethnic slaughters in U.S. history as they danced and sang at a world renewal ceremony on Indian Island.

How fucking arrogant! What right did our Government have to determine the tribal status of First Nation people,,,

The tribe was at first shunted into a local Army fort known to the Wiyot as “jouwuchguri,” which translates as “lying down with your knees drawn up.” The Wiyot were forbidden to use their own language. The last fluent speakers eventually died off, and in 1958 the U.S. government, intent on mainstreaming Native Americans, stripped the Wiyot of their tribal status. Despair set in, along with alcoholism and drug abuse.

Just as the media back in the 50s refused to report on this travesty, the media of today will ignore this renewal.

More than 150 years after brutal slaughter, a small tribe returns home | Al Jazeera America