Mass shootings in Texas and Ohio from a Native American perspective

What do the mass shootings that occurred in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio have to do with Native Americans?   Everything.

White-European history filled with mass murdering

When Europeans first came to America in 1492, the land was filled with Native Americans of all different tribes.  At that time, Native Americans believed that the immigrant Europeans were good honorable people.  Because Native Americans believed that, the Native Americans helped the first Europeans survive some of their harshest first winters.  (We celebrate this every November.)

Then everything went downhill.  The White Race started their mass shootings on Native Americans and massacred millions of innocent lives.  From Wounded Knee to the Apache Massacre, tribe after tribe after tribe. (List of Indian Massacres)  For Navajos, Kit Carson was the mass shooter that killed thousands of innocent Navajos especially in Canyon De Chelly about a century and a half ago.  So mass shootings were already in the White Race's history from the beginning.  The Europeans also released deadly diseases which decimated the Native Americans throughout the continent.  (Much of this history is deleted from the history books in public schools across America today.)

Manifestos part of European massacre tradition

Today, White Americans fear what happened to the Native Americans is going to happen to them.  Our European brothers and sisters are scared of bio-terrorism and being taken over.  The recent Texas massacre is an example of this.

The El Paso mass shooter wrote a manifesto called the "The Inconvenient Truth" in which he expressed his ultimate fear of the Mexican "invasion" into Texas.  He uploaded the document on the internet moments before targeting the Mexican Race and killing twenty-two people at the El Paso Wal Mart.  Interestingly, here is a direct quote concerning Native Americans from that manifesto:

“I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion. Some people will think this statement is hypocritical because of the nearly complete ethnic and cultural destruction brought to the Native Americans by our European ancestors, but this just reinforces my point. The natives didn’t take the invasion of Europeans seriously, and now what’s left is just a shadow of what was.”

When Christopher Columbus and other Europeans first landed on America and saw the land was filled with Native Americans, those first Europeans also read a "Manifesto" to the Native Americans before mass shooting them. So announcing a "manifesto" before killing a group of people seems to be the European tradition from centuries ago that continues. The Native Americans at the time of Columbus did not understand the document nor the European language, but they died just the same, just like the victims at Wal Mart and the Ohio night club this past weekend. Similar to the surviving Native American tribes today experiencing inter-generational trauma caused by European colonization, the families of the 80+ victims in the two deadly shootings are in mourning, in grief, angry, and scared. The devastation that we see on TV reminds us of our ancestors, the millions of Native American victims that we lost over the past five centuries.
Good-hearted White-Europeans

When the White People first came to America, Native Americans believed that the visiting Europeans were good honorable people. Since then, we've been massacred, and our land has been taken. A few of us remain. We've been placed on reserves in deplorable conditions, with high rates of unemployment, alcoholism, suicide, and missing people.



As if this were not enough, the killing and rape continues with the taking of our natural resources, and continuing to strip us of our language and culture, women and children. This is the "shadow of what was". With this experience, it is difficult to believe that White Americans are good honorable people. But as with all people, not all of them are bad like the mass shooters in Ohio, Texas, California, and Las Vegas.  I believe there are some good-hearted White People.

It takes a strong people to experience all this negativity, to empathize with the victims of the mass shootings, and to continue with a positive outlook.  Somehow, that is what we must do. We must remain strong as Native Americans as we continue forward in these turbulent times.   Condolences to our Mexican  and Black brothers and sisters, and all the families of the innocent lives lost in Texas and Ohio this past weekend.