posted May 16, 2007 04:49 PM              

Tribal Indians condemn pope
A Roman Catholic advocacy group for tribal Indians criticised Pope Benedict's speech [AFP]

Indian leaders in Brazil have reacted angrily to comments by Pope Benedict that they had been purified by the Roman Catholic church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492.

In a speech to bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil on Sunday, Benedict said indigenous people of the Americas had welcomed European priests after conquest.

"It's arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs," said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief co-ordinator of Coiab, an Amazon Indian group.

The pope had said the peoples of the Americas had a "silent longing" for Christianity and welcomed European priests' arrival.

He said the church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Colonisation

Since Colombus's landing, millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonisation backed by the Roman Catholic church through murder, disease or enslavement.

"To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening"

Sandro Tuxa, leader of the movement of northeastern tribes
Many Indians today struggle for survival, stripped of their traditional ways of life and excluded from society.

Indian groups sent a letter to Benedict last week asking for support in defending their ancestral lands and culture.

The letter said the Indians had suffered a "process of genocide" since the first European colonisers had arrived.

Priests blessed conquistadors as they waged war on tribal Indians.

'Poorly advised'

Other tribal leaders also voiced their criticism on Monday.

Dionito Jose de Souza, a leader of the Makuxi tribe in northern Roraima state, said: "The state used the church to do the dirty work in colonising the Indians but they already asked forgiveness for that ... so is the pope taking back the church's word?"

Pope John Paul II spoke in 1992 of mistakes in the evangelisation of native peoples of the Americas.

"We repudiate the [pope's] comments," said Sandro Tuxa, leader of the movement of northeastern tribes.

"To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening.

"I think [the pope] has been poorly advised."

The Roman Catholic church's own Indian advocacy group in Brazil also criticized Benedict's speech.

posted May 16, 2007 11:48 PM              

*rolls eyes

He's dumb and so is the person who wrote it

Everyone knows Christopher Columbus was an Indian murderer.

Just asked the Tainos from the Carribean who he wiped out.

Also you might want to ask the Native Americans who dislike him as well.

posted May 17, 2007 02:55 AM              

Pope John Paul in speaking to the Brazilian natives apologized to them for the things the Church did in the past. He asked for their forgiveness.

Pope Benedict may not be dumb, but he suffers from foot in the mouth disease and well, I just don't think he is going to make a very good pope because so far he has done nothing but offend people and that reflects on the RC Catholic Church as a whole. He's not a very good representative of the Church.

The bad thing about his election to the papacy is that pope's don't retire, they are popes until they die. While Pope John Paul did so much for the Church and was truly a good man, I have a feeling that Pope Benedict will take the Church back in time to the strict dogmatic ways of the past.

He definitely needs to get a speech writer.

posted May 17, 2007 06:29 AM            

quote:

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Everyone knows Christopher Columbus was an Indian murderer.

---

You think I don't know that as well? Come on you remember me,right? The cynic?

I myself have scratched my head over why people celebrated a holiday in his honor. That would be the equivalent of us back at home celebrating Lourenço Marques day. Truthfully, I don't know much about that guy [Lourenço] but I don't believe there was ever a such thing as a saintly Portuguese explorer.....or any European one for that matter.

But back to the pope, I don't believe he is dumb but I do believe he makes serious errors of speech (foot-in-mouth as said above). I was offended by the idea that the Conquistadors and their priests were "purifying" us and did us a great service.

posted May 18, 2007 01:57 AM              

In fact from what I do know, Columbus had good relations with the Native American peoples. All of the early settlers did. The killings and genocide of Native Americans came later as more and more Europeans came to this country and along with the demand for more and more land came the demand for less and less Native people.

No, I don't think that Christopher Columbus personally murdered anyone. I don't think he hung around long enough to do any of that. He set sail again after his discovery of what he thought was the West Indies. Thinking this was the West Indies Columbus is responsible for the term "Indians" though because that is what he erronously called the Natives.

posted May 18, 2007 07:25 AM            

I've actually read of documents that prove Columbus to be the complete opposite of the saintly explorer that everyone thinks he is. In fact, I remember one that said Columbus' conduct with the Natives makes Hitler look like a Juvenille delinquent.

I read a document posted by Day Dreamer once when I just browsing here along time ago actually. Here it is....

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/002508.html

And here's something else I found....

quote:

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Most Americans do not know the murderous history of Christopher Columbus. Examining primary historical sources by Bartolome de las Casas, the biographer of ColumbusÂ’ son, Columbus made four voyages to the New World. He encountered the Arawaks, who occupied Haiti. An early census of the Arawak was 1.1 million, not counting children. According to a conservative estimate over 3 million Arawak lived on Haiti in pre-Columbian times. Columbus kidnapped , enslaved, and murdered the Arawak people. He ruled with severe discipline ordering the cutting off of ears or nose as punishment for minor crimes.

---

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/295.html

Like I said, there was NO such thing as a good European Explorer. Atleast not from my point of view.

posted May 18, 2007 09:36 AM              

Come the hell back to earth kid.

Seriously. Where the hell have you been?

posted May 18, 2007 05:10 PM            

How truly pathetic to keep showing up a dog going back to eat their own vomit, to a place where you are not wanted.

I can't even fathom how ugly your offline life it. If you act like this here, it has to spill into your daily encounters with other people.

Sounds lonely and desperate- which is why you have to keep reincarnating to frequent LL and insult people on a daily basis.

posted May 18, 2007 05:56 PM              

I was not familiar with what he did to the Haitian peoples. I was talking about the Native Americans. I stated I am no history expert which means I might be wrong. I have just never come across those accusations about Columbus regarding American Natives when he landed here in any of my readings about Native American history but I also could be wrong about that too and missed something.

Thanks for the articles, DL. I will read them later this evening when I have more time and look into this further and see what else I can find.

I was just really questioning what you said about Columbus, Blue Baby. Not saying that you are wrong.

posted May 19, 2007 03:24 PM              

Talk About It: Post Thoughts
Wilfred Greene, the 70-year-old chief of the Wampanoag Nation's Seaconke Indian tribe, says the stone mounds are part of a massive Indian burial ground, possibly one of the nation's largest, that went unnoticed until a few years ago.

"When I came up here and looked at this, I was overwhelmed," said Greene, a wiry former boxer, standing next to one of at least 100 stone piles -- each about 3 feet high and 4 feet wide -- on private land in this northern Rhode Island town of about 10,600 people.

"I know it has significance -- absolutely," he said.

But Narragansett Improvement Co. disagrees, and says it will press on with plans to build a 122-lot housing project over 200 acres in the area near the Massachusetts border.

The firm has hired an archeologist who studied the stones and concluded they were likely left in piles by early European settlers who built a network of stone walls in the area, said company president John Everson.

"I don't believe any of these Indian artifacts are on my land," he said. "The whole area is very stony."

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The case illustrates sporadic tension between developers and Native Americans in rural New England, where land disputes fester nearly 400 years after British Puritans sailed into Massachusetts Bay and settled the area.

Across state lines, the Mashpee Wampanoag Indians, who won federal recognition as a tribe on February 15, said this month they want ownership of a 22,000-acre military reservation in Massachusetts to create a free-trade zone.

Historians, state officials, private developers and tribal leaders in Rhode Island agree that Nipsachuck woods, where Greene identified the stone mounds two years ago, is culturally and historically significant for local Indians.

It was the scene of three battles in the King Philip's War -- a one-year fight between Indians and English settlers that killed an estimated 600 settlers and 3,000 Indians, said Frederick Meli, an anthropologist who has studied New England American Indian ceremonial sites for 20 years.

The war, the bloodiest conflict of 17th century New England, broke down Indian resistance and led to the westward push by Europeans. "The war here decided who was going to run this country," said Greene, gesturing toward the Nipsachuck woods.

Archeological Survey

Meli, a former University of Rhode Island professor who works with the local Conservation Commission, estimates the area could contain a burial ground spanning at least 230 acres. Already, the Wampanoags call it their version of Arlington National Cemetery, where U.S. soldiers are buried.

"There's lots of ceremonial stonework there," said Meli.

The local Conservation Commission is applying for a grant to help pay for an archeological survey of two plots of land owned by a family that borders the area slated for development. They will meet town officials on Monday to propose a survey.

They would dig the area, scan it for metal and possibly excavate it, said Meli. If the findings suggests a burial ground, the tribe would then use that as evidence for a case to try to block Narragansett Improvement's housing project, arguing their land could also contain ancient Indian remains.

State authorities are watching the process.

"What we do know is that it's an important area to a number of Indian tribes. Maybe the piles are related to that (tribal history). Maybe they aren't," said Paul Robinson, Rhode Island's state archeologist.

William Simmons, chair of Brown University's anthropology department, said the stone mounds were mysterious but could just as easily have been arranged by European settlers.

"Placing the rocks like that could have been a practical solution for farmers clearing fields or meadows or pastures or whatever they were clearing -- to get rocks out of the way by piling them atop one another," he said

"If you were to dig and find human remains then you would know for sure," he said.

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http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/rock-piles-spark-american-indian-mystery/20070519074709990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

posted May 20, 2007 12:26 AM            

quote:

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NORTH SMITHFIELD, Rhode Island (May 18) - In a thick forest of maple, willow and oak trees where 17th century European settlers fought hundreds of American Indians, algae-covered stones are arranged in mysterious piles.

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