Native Americans: 500 years of Racism and Oppression.

             "In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." This little saying is something that I'm sure we all learned as children, to help us remember the year that Columbus discovered America. However, Columbus did not discover America, it has been here as long as Spain, England, and the rest of the countries in the world at that time. Although not as nearly technologically advanced as the countries of Europe, the Native American nations functioned as well, if not better, as these advanced nations of Europe. However, because the Native Americans were viewed as inferior savages when Columbus set foot on America, he saw it fit to take their land and life. Columbus was the beginning of a long history of racism and oppression against all Native Americans living in the Americas. Through this course of time, there have been many different areas in which racism has shown itself: through now forgotten wars, environmental racism, and the forcing of beliefs upon these nations.

             Most people have heard the saying "history repeats itself." There is another saying that is not as well known, written by the author of Wa*censored*a: Genocide on the Great Plains, James Horsley: "History is only the past when we choose to do nothing about it" (Gibson 7). These two sayings could be molded together to say "History repeats itself when we choose to do nothing about it," or "The past repeats itself because we choose to do nothing about it." Although Horsley was referring to the Wa*censored*a massacre and the Marias River incident when he wrote his quote, it is true in all cases. Racism has constantly been repeated since the beginning of time, and will always exist because people are different and have different ways of life; from racism comes fighting, which, in the past, has led to massacres and wars.

             Although some people think that racism is gone, it surely is not.