Readers raised the question whether the US owed the Native American reparation. Setting aside the fact that Europeans arrived on the Atlantic shores and proceeded with a policy of genocide, some may contend that the Native Americans received reparation via the establishment of indian reservations. This is as rewarding as saying the Japanese Americans that were forced into internment camps during WWII were pleased about the fact they were put in prison.

Andrew Jackson’s order to relocate the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma (Trail of Tears) is more demonstrative of the fact that reservations were no reparation. The land for reservations was the poorest that could be had. During the Trail of Tears, 4,000 men, women, and children died and included Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw that were relocated under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. For centuries the original Cherokee land occupied the entire area from the Mississippi River in the West to the Blue Ridge Mountain in the East. There was pressure to claim those lands to find gold and expand farmland for those who weren’t Native Americans.

Mariner doubts anyone then or now claims that exile to useless internment camps (reservations) was reparation. In a recent post travelogue, mariner noted the poor state of reservation economics; the average Native American has assets averaging 10% of the rest of the US population.

Taking into consideration the displacement of Neanderthal by Homo sapiens, the propensity for invasive genocide throughout the ages, the desire to eradicate via multiple terrorist wars in Africa and the Middle East, humans are of the same propensity as the black plague, jackal, hyena, Komodo Dragon, and of course, our predecessor, the chimpanzee.

Food for thought: For those without money, plutocracy is a form of slavery by deprivation without constraints or interest in a person’s whereabouts or bodily wellbeing – for now.

Ancient Mariner