Louise Benally censored
by Indian Country Today
The following
comments by Louise Benally of Big Mountain, comparing the Long Walk and imprisonment in Bosque Redondo to the war in Iraq,
were censored by Indian Country Today.
Pressed to publish
a correction to the published article by this reporter, the newspaper refused.
Navajos at Big Mountain
resisting forced relocation view the 19th
Century prison camp of Bosque Redondo and the war in Iraq as a
continuum of
U.S. government sponsored terror.
Louise Benally of Big Mountain remembered her
great-grandfather and
other Navajos driven from their beloved homeland by the U.S. Army on
foot for hundreds of miles
while witnessing the murder, rape and
starvation of their family and friends.
“I think these poor children had gone
through so much, but, yet they
had the will to go on and live their lives. If it weren’t for that, we
wouldn’t
be here today.
“It makes me feel very sad and I apply
this to the situation in Iraq.
I wonder how the Native Americans in the combat zone feel about killing
innocent lives.”
Looking at the faces of the Navajo and Apache
children in the Bosque
Redondo photo, Benally said, “I think the children in the picture look
concerned and maybe
confused. It makes me think of what the children in
Iraq must be going through right now.
“The U.S. military first murders your
people and destroys your way of
life while stealing your culture, then forces you to learn their evil
ways of lying
and cheating,” Benally said.
The newspaper refused to publish a correction:
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410763
