Letter: Don't celebrate Kansas statehood - a holiday on stolen land

Tuesday, February 1, 2011  

"It’s 2011 and thus it’s the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War and Kansas statehood. In 2011, we have vehicles with stars in bars plates in areas that were Union 150 years ago. So much for history. We have historians revisiting revisionism for tourism’s sake and ignoring the reasons for the war or outright omitting them to sell to an unknowing and uncaring public. We have local and national politicians completely butchering this history to sell themselves to the unknowing and uncaring public trying in futility to omit the sins of the past that still linger to this day.

We have a new governor who proposed an apology to Native Americans that has as much value as confederate money as a U.S. senator, and yet as governor, it’s business as usual. Just ask the Wyandotte tribe about this behavior. One might want to invite the Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Osage, Miami, Peoria, one band of Sac and Fox and Iowa each, Ottawa, and Citizen Band Potawatomi tribes back to Kansas for this anniversary. The only problem is, the public usually doesn’t want to hear the stories that are whitewashed out of textbooks and lectures."

Get the Story:
Mike Ford: Missing history (The Lawrence Journal World 2/1)