"In her recent article in Indian Country Today, Lisa Balk King reports hearing a non-Indian in Rapid City scoff, “You were conquered, get over it!”

I don’t purport to speak for all Indian people here in the U.S. but I think I can say that overall, it’s been tough to bounce back from the whole conquest thing. It’s been the gift that just keeps on giving for many of us. The legacies of European conquest in the form of United States policies such as The Dawes Act, Relocation, forced sterilization, assimilation through relocation, forced attendance at government boarding schools and adoption of our children to say nothing of outright extermination have made a lasting impact on Native peoples.

So it stuck in our craws when last month President Obama failed, once again, to make the United States apology to Native Americans public."

Get the Story:
Mary Annette Pember: The Quiet American Apology to Indians (Daily Yonder 12/13)

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