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The Trail of Tears --- not us.
The Reservations --- not us.
The Residential Schools --- not us.
The Blue Coats --- not us.
Little Big Horn --- not us.
Wounded Knee -- not us.
That was all the British Territorial U.S. Government. The same British Territorial U.S. Government that stole our identity, stole our credit, stole our courts, taxed us, put mortgages on us, all of it.
The same criminals attacked your people and mine.
That's why we are here, trying to sort all this out and obtain justice for everyone.
If you think about it, all these foreign "powers" came over here from England, from France, from Spain, from the Netherlands.... and they kept coming by the hundreds of thousands.
There is no way that the Native people could win. The Europeans won by sheer numbers, by advanced technology, by guns against arrows, by organized warfare.
The Lakota victory at Little Big Horn was the biggest win the Native people ever had. That wasn't for lack of valor, or lack of skill, or lack of wisdom --- it was for lack of numbers and material to push back.
So when it came to facing off the British Empire stretching out its greedy fingers, we were the ones who did that, who won that war --- and it was a war, not a mercenary conflict. That's why we have a right to be here and why we have valid land claims here.
That's all history more than a hundred years in the rearview mirror.
There's no point in trying to rewrite history or circumstance. It was what it was.
What remains is the Truth, and the Truth is the only thing that can bring and build lasting peace for all men. It's the one thing we need to build a solid foundation for a new and better world.
I am expressing my Truth, and our History, and you know it, too.
So, let's admit what happened and go on, unified in our desire for peace and kindness and justice.
Anna Maria
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