December 22, 2002
The Last Days?
Ghost Dance: The Winter Solstice of a Species by John Kaminski, posted at Unknownnews.net, is one of the most powerful statements I've come across in a time of many eloquent cries for sanity in a time of mass madness.The Ghost Dance Kaminski refers to is a ritual that was engaged in by the Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890. At the beginning of a journey that will chill your soul, Kaminski says,
It was the Ghost Dance that had made the white man nervous, they said. A five-day paroxysm of ritual that united the living with their deceased ancestors was what totally freaked out the Bible-thumping whites, who, like Christopher Columbus, could not understand why these savages refused to accept the Almighty Power of Jesus Christ. In this acceptance, it must be remembered, the natives were required to give up the lush lands they had gently tended for generations, and were expected to move to areas that were of no use to anyone else. This was the will of God, and the American government. As a result, just like Columbus, just like the Israelites in the Old Testament, the jittery American heroes felt justified and holy when they slaughtered the hapless pagans...
Killed was the last great American Indian leader, Sitting Bull, and the faded remnants of once a great nation of hunter/gatherers, who exhibited a respect for nature and the land that has not really been seen since. This paltry, starving group took its place among the nameless corpses of 60 million human beings eradicated from the sacred Earth in the drive by "the greatest country the world has ever known," the United States of America, on the way to fulfilling its date with manifest destiny. A manifest destiny of mass murder, repeated over and over, forever and ever, Amen.
I'm just offering a sample that I hope will inspire you to read the whole thing for yourself. It may hurt -- but no pain, no gain. I agree with Kaminski's conclusions that we are no longer just dealing with relatively mild questions like whether to be a decent country or a murderous menace. Now our own survival is really on the line.
Kaminski: The ghost dance, which after the massacre at Wounded Knee soon faded from widespread Indian practice — but not consciousness — accurately foreshadowed what was to come for the luckless Lakota. Surely, some of innocent souls must have known they were dancing with their own ghosts. We all must surely realize that now, at this very moment, we too are dancing with our own ghosts.
Go to the original and find out how he comes to his conclusion.