Like the Mayan calendar the Hopi Prophecy breaks down man’s timeline into phases or worlds. According to interpreters the Hopi believe that the world has been created and destroyed three times. The first three worlds were wiped out by violent natural forces: volcanoes, a great ice-age and flood. They believe we now inhabit the fourth world. Nostradamus Effect: Extinction, History 2009
Hopi traditions predict that towards the day of the Great Purification man will bring home pieces of the moon, and in the sky will be cobwebs through which we travel and communicate. All disrupting the delicate cosmic balance. ibid.
What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red, because I am Sioux, because I was born where my fathers lived, because I would die for my people and my country? Sitting Bull, to Major Brotherton, recorded July 1881
The Black Hills belong to me. If the whites try to take them, I will fight. Sitting Bull
The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. Sitting Bull
Brothers – My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun. Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a struggle, give up our homes, our country bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is dear to us? I know you will cry with me, Never! NEVER! Tecumseh, speech to council of Choctaw and Chickasaw nations 1811
The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we unite in one common cause against the common foe. ibid.
Sitting Bull: the legendary American chief. Popular myth has him leading his people to great victory: The Battle of the Little Bighorn. But archaeological evidence from the battle site, military analysis of how the conflict unfolded, and oral history passed down the through generations, paint a dramatically different picture. Mystery Files: Sitting Bull, National Geographic 2011
The Dakota’s land is invaded by white prospectors. ibid.
The US comes up with another plan: they will incite a war and take back the Black Hills as part of the spoils. ibid.
Sitting Bull and his people now become military targets. ibid.
Custer is left facing the full force of the Indian firepower. ibid.
New evidence suggest Sitting Bull was never on the battlefield at all. ibid.
Sitting Bull is a spiritual man, a sun-dancer, as well as caretaker or leader of his people. ibid.
Why can Indians have casinos on their land, and other people of the same state can’t? It’s a result of treaties signed hundreds of years ago. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s4e7: Reparations, Showtime 2006
In 2004 Indian casinos brought in revenues of $18.5 billion dollars. ibid.
Most of that $18.5b annual take-in being enjoyed by a tiny percentage of the Indian population. ibid.
There’s no doubting Native Americans had already settled in north America by the time Columbus arrived. The Bering Strait land-bridge theory suggests their ancestors crossed over from Asia some eighteen thousand years ago during the last ice years when a strip of land connected the two continents. Who Really Discovered America? History 2010
A voyage by ancient Hebrews even before the time of Christ is the foundation for an entire religion ... Israel 600 B.C. 2,092 years before Columbus ... So strong is the Central Band’s [Cherokee] belief that they have Jewish ancestry and origins in ancient Israel they set out to prove it by blood ... New Mexico state archaeologist David Eck has led more than his share of people into the Los Lunas desert etched with the ten commandments in what appears to be Paleo-Hebrew ... The stone has been subject to vandalism. ibid.
It was the worst slaughter of Indian peoples in United States’ history. Ken Burns, The West III, PBS 1996
‘Son, when I am gone, you are the chief of this people.’ Ken Burns: The West VI, Fight No More Forever, pow-wow
Most soldiers never met an Indian in battle. Some never saw an Indian at all. ibid.
By 1877 the American conquest of the West was nearly complete. For every Indian in the West there were now nearly 40 whites. Ken Burns: The West VII: The Geography of Hope
Between 1877 and 1887 four a half million more people came West. ibid.
There was less and less room for those who didn’t conform. ibid.
‘The white people are wicked. I want you to teach my people to read and write. But they must not become white people in their ways. It is too bad a life.’ ibid. Sitting Bull
The Dawes Act, meant to help Indians, devastated them instead. Ken Burns, The West VIII: One Sky Above Us I 1887-1914
Finally, after a heavy snowfall, a burial party arrived at Wounded Knee, dug a pit and dumped in the frozen bodies. ibid.
In this place [Lake Pyramid] late last century two decisive battles were fought between the US Army and the warriors of the Paiute tribe. The official version of what happened lauds the courage of the noble savage ... The truth of course is that the Indians have never won, and their struggle today at Pyramid Lake is one of hundreds of battles still being fought – battles of water rights, land rights, mineral rights, the right to survive. John Pilger, Pyramid Lake is Dying, ITV 1976
In Vietnam more Indians died proportionately than other Americans. ibid.
‘We’re native gangster doing our own gangster stuff.’ Gangland s7e4: Wild Boyz, History 2010
South Dakota ... The Badlands ... Home to the Sioux tribe ... Pine Ridge ... A fertile breeding ground for gangs. It’s estimated that up to 10% of the population on the Reservation are gang members. ibid.
One gang is home grown, born and raised on the Reservation – They call themselves the Wild Boyz. More than 200 strong, the Wild Boyz are the largest gang in Pine Ridge. ibid.
A new problem hit the Reservation: cocaine. ibid.
In 1969 nearly one hundred Native American activists seize Alcatraz ... They hold the island for nearly two years. Alcatraz: Defying the Rock, PBS America
In the heart of downtown Miami between the skyscrapers and hotels lies a mystery. Something extraordinary was recently discovered here. Strange holes in the ground. These holes are worth $27 million. They don’t contain oil or gold. But something much more intriguing. These holes could be the most exciting find in America for decades. Or they could be a costly mistake? Horizon: The Mystery of the Miami Circle, BBC 2001
Below the fill was a layer of ancient refuse, or midden. It was evidence of prehistoric life. But this was just the start. What they were about to find would exceed their wildest expectations. As they carried on digging, a bizarre feature came to light. They had found strange round holes pock-marking the surface of the limestone bed-rock. The rock is porous and easily eroded, so these could be normal erosion holes. Or could they be man-made? ibid.
Riggs was right: underneath his line was a complete circle of basins cut into the rock. The archaeologists believed they may have found something truly remarkable. The remains of a mysterious ancient monument. Perhaps it was the legacy of a long-lost people. ibid.
Was the circle two-thousand years old? Or the most expensive mistake in archaeology? ibid.
Was it really the Tequesta who built the circle? ... Perhaps this was a place of religious significance. So what kind of structure was the circle? ... A building on stilts made perfect sense ... It is possible to reconstruct what this Tequesta village looked like. ibid.
The remains of shellfish once eaten on the site were carbon dated. The results were sensational. The earliest date is 730 B.C. This means that the settlement could have been founded 2,700 years ago. What has been discovered has changed our entire view of the people who once lived here. ibid.
They (the Mormon townspeople) sent messengers requesting that the Paiutes go into town and hear a letter read to them. Many did. They gathered in the meetinghouse to hear Bishop William Allred address them. According to a previous plan, the Circleville men who outnumbered the Indians three to one came in unarmed and intermingled with them. The bishop read the message from Fort Sanford, stressing that the settlers wanted only peace with their band, but the Indians would have to help by lending them their guns. In return, the Paiutes could work for the whites and be paid in goods. When the Indians showed reluctance to give up their weapons, the settlers acted: ‘Each man knowing his place and what was expected of him, grabbed hold of his Indian … to disarm [him]. They all showed resistance but their bows and arrows and knives were taken from them’. Next, ‘their arms were tied to a stick which was passed behind their backs and under their arms’. Bishop Allred would later put his own twist to the incident in his report to LDS church authority George A Smith, writing that it took some time to convince the Indians, but they ‘reluctantly surrendered their weapons’. Captain James Allred (Mormon army) and his men went to the camp to apprehend those who had earlier refused the ‘invitation’.