WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) – A Defense Ministry spokesman today discounted the possibility that Natives will be allowed to form their own independent state, alluding to recent terrorism as evidence that Natives are not ready for self-rule.
The nation has been shocked recently by a series of “suicide scalpings,” whereby Native terrorists infiltrate settlements and scalp and knife settlers, including women and children, before being felled by the guns of the local militia.
However, due to the high death toll among terrorist perpetrators, recent Native attacks have seemed to indicate a gradual abandonment of the “suicide scalping” tactic in favor of making lightning-fast strikes with dozens of horsemen and simply burning the whole blamed settlement down.
The President reiterated yesterday that no peace is possible as long as Native Authority leader Sitting Bull remains in power, and has called for the election of new native leaders. “Every time a White man is killed,” continued the President, “it is Bull’s responsibility. The Native people need more moderate leadership.”
Hearing of this statement, an unidentified Native retorted, “We will choose our own leaders, not Big White Wanker.”
Bull has been under house arrest since surrendering to Federal troops, but is still suspected of supporting the Ghost Dancers, a hard-line militant organization.
Recently the option of “mass removal” has been gaining popularity among the White citizenry, particularly in frontier areas. A settler spokesman, speaking to a local assembly, fulminated in the following fashion: “Let’s ship them all to Canada! Let those soft-hearted limeys take care of 'em!”
The governments of Great Britain and Canada have strongly rejected all such proposals. Worldwide condemnation of the United States’ treatment of the Natives has largely fallen on deaf ears.
One seemingly intractable sticking point in this conflict has been the disposition of the 1836 refugees. Native spokesmen claim that international law as well as several Supreme Court decisions give them the right to return to their ancestral homes in Georgia and Tennessee, from which they were removed by the Jackson Administration.
According to Administration sources, this is no longer a viable solution. "We already have our own people living on those lands now, " said one source, "and they don’t want no danged Natives living near them. Sorry, but that’s a ‘fact on the ground.’
“Besides, all we did in 1836 was remove the Natives from one Native territory to another. Hey, sorry about the people who died on the way, but that’s progress and manifest destiny.”
The prospects also seem dim for the withdrawal of more recent settlements on Native lands in the West. Native spokesmen have accused these settlers of taking the best hunting grounds and killing all the buffalo, leading to economic hardship in Native communities.
Settler communities on the Western frontier constitute a powerful bloc of votes, and settler spokesmen have often justified their presence on the land in patriotic or even Biblical terms.
Natives dwelling outside the White frontier are not considered citizens of the United States or any other country, and hence cannot vote in United States elections.
So far the death toll in this conflict is up to 1,000 white deaths and an undetermined number of Native deaths. Native spokesmen, as well as notorious Native sympathizer Helen Hunt Jackson, claim the figure is many times the number for Whites, including both civilian and combat deaths.
Testifying before Congress last week, a United States Army spokesman downplayed the importance of Native non-combatant casualties, such as those at Sand Creek and the Washita River, calling them “tragic, but necessary.”
“Those cowardly Natives hide among their civilian population, and in close-quarters fighting it is very difficult to avoid harming women and children,” declared the spokesman. "Besides, you know as well as I do that those children would only grow up to be indoctrinated with hatred for Whites. It may be more merciful to nip that in the bud.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t you remember Little Big Horn? Don’t you remember Minnesota in '62? These people hate us and will always hate us. We cannot let up on them for even a second.”
The spokesman also strongly defended the practice of “collective punishment,” whereby the home villages of suspected terrorists are destroyed by the Army.
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