Posted by Alexander Gabis on October 1, 2004, 10:04 pm I'm looking over your site - Prince George's history - for the first time, and I see no reference to that era. Maybe I missed it, but I would think it's pretty hard to overlook an entire civilization. Have any of the society's members ever read "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn? How about "Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold", by Mark Cocker? You should if you haven't. I understand that a new museum of the American Indian has just opened up on the Mall. I suppose one could say, "It's about time." But truthfully, a culture on display in a museum is a dead culture. It's not so much a cause for celebration as it is for mourning - because, the destruction of native cultures is still going on. Yup. It won't be long before the indigenous peoples of today - that is, what remains of them - will be the museum pieces of tomorrow. Can folks in the historical arena grasp the import of this I wonder? -Al Gabis Jr.
Link: http://www.SpiritualNeighborhood.org
4.249.153.220
Patuxent, Mattaponi, Mattawoman, Accokeek, Chesapeake, Piscataway .... just a few of the names that we read on street signs and roads maps in this county - names that were once part of an indigenous civilization that thrived for centuries before the arrival of the European on the coastal Chesapeake plain. The names are all we have left - like hollow ghosts they whisper of an age that we can't even imagine now. What happened to those people? That culture? Those traditions - the warriors and the shamans? A few museum displays - dusty artifacts in a glass display case. Not even the graves are left. Wiped out by our ancestors - the Christian conquerors from England, France, Italy, Spain ... exterminated they were.
agabis@capaccess.org
Formerly of Camp Springs, now floating
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