Red Haircrow

Yesterday I was browsing through a literary portal, casually perusing magazines and  journals open for submissions, some of which I pass along if they sound interesting or unique. I came across Reed Magazine, which proudly bills itself as the oldest such “west of the Mississippi”. After I read more about their “history”, the inevitable appeared, although I’d been hoping it wouldn’t. This all reminded me of a meme that’s been heavily circulated the past week, and what Decolonization movements are about:

Mr. Reed, a survivor of the Donner party, had “made a Gold Rush fortune”, a key reason hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were slaughtered in California other areas of the west, but it was particularly vicious and systematic in Cali. He later “donated” land to the city of San Jose, a comment made with especial pride and though factual, ignored pertinent additional facts that any land “owned” (then and now) was stolen, and during that era the slaughter of indigenous peoples was still actively on-going. Genocide due to the greater presence of gold and prime land craved by Europeans and new Americans at any cost. This is just another way natives are erased from “American” history under the guise of Anglo accomplishments.

Continue reading “The #Psychopath’s Logic of #NativeAmerican Erasure & the Need for #Decolonization”