On Memorial Day, Remember the Ancestors...

Remember the Ancestors on Memorial Day.

Most people don't realize that Adolf Hitler got the idea for his "Final Solution" from America's treatment of the Original People...

--ryan



ICT [2005/05/27]??Deer Island Indian Concentration Camp Victims Remembered
© Indian Country Today May 27, 2005. All Rights Reserved
Posted: May 27, 2005
by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today

DEER ISLAND, Mass. - Standing on top of a hill on Deer Island where hundreds of Indians died of starvation and exposure more than 300 years ago, John Sam Sapiel recollected their suffering.

''I prayed in [my language] for all of them,'' Sapiel, Penobscot, said on May 24, following a commemoration ceremony to honor the Deer Island Indian concentration camp victims, who died on that desolate strip of land off Boston Harbor during the brutal winter of 1675 - '76.
May 24 marked the anniversary of the 1677 repeal of the law that established the Massachusetts concentration camp for Indians.
The law was signed into effect by the Massachusetts Council on Oct. 13, 1675, five months after the beginning of King Philip's War against the English settlers. The war was a devastating conflict that pitted tribes against each other, killed thousands of American Indians, and cleared the way for white settlement.

Sapiel, 74, organized the commemoration ceremony, which drew around 40 people including Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo. Arroyo placed a wreath on the site of a mass grave.

''I told [the attendees] what it felt like. I said, 'We're on top of this mound of bones here that was a mass burial ground for our people. You can imagine what our people went through when they were put over here on this island and left to starve to death. Today, we're just getting a taste of it,''' Sapiel said, referring to the slashing cold 60 mph winds.

The island, approximately one mile long by half a mile wide, was a smidgen of land cut off from the mainland by the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Until 1936, the only access to the island was by boat. At that time, the gap between Deer Island and the town of Winthrop, Mass. was filled and a road built. Now Deer Island is the site of a massive $3.6 billion sewer treatment plant and part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area, open to the public for recreation.

King Philip, whose Wampanoag name was Metacom (aka Metacomet or Pometacom), had lived peacefully with the settlers for several years as had his father, Sachem Massasoit. But after decades of fraudulent land sales and growing conflicts with the colonists' takeover, Philip launched a war to drive the settlers from New England.

Many Indians in the area were Christian converts who had lived among the English settlers all of their lives. But, like a precursor of what would happen to Japanese-Americans during World War II, the colonial government believed the Indians could not be trusted to resist joining Philip's efforts.

The 1675 law ordered that all Christian Indians be rounded up and transferred to Deer Island for the duration of the war. Months later, the ethnic cleansing expanded to include all Indians, Christian and non-Christian.

''The only thing my people were doing [during King Philip's War] was trying to protect our lands. This is what the settler thing was all about - trying to get the tribes to sign away their economy, their land, and their resources. They're still doing it today in Palestine and all through that area - stealing their land and trying to get their resources,'' Sapiel said.

These stories from the past need to be told, Sapiel said, particularly the little-known history of the Northeastern tribes who were the first to be impacted by European colonialism.

''I feel great about [the commemoration ceremony]. We're starting to get some of our history in there - what happened to us a long time ago. That's the first part of it. Now we're going to be working on a lot of other things to bring the history of the American Indians into focus,'' Sapiel said.

Part of the story that may reflect one of the most ironic projections in the history of the colonial settlers and the Northeastern tribal nations is the depiction on the 17th century seal of the Massachusetts colony - an image of an Indian juxtaposed with a quote from Acts 16:9: ''Come over and help us.''