Monthly Archives: June 2011

Genocide in the Americas in the Present Day

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Ever since the so-called “discovery” of America in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, the Indigenous peoples of the western hemosphere have had to find a way to survive the European intrusion into their homelands. Though at first, the peoples that Columbus mistakenly called “Indians” welcomed the newcomers, it was not too long until the European colonists started to abuse the welcome that they received. Starting in the Caribbean with the Tainos, and then with the Tipple Aliance (i.e., the Aztec Empire), then with the Wampanoag Indians, the colonists ended up abusing their welcomes and then committed acts of genocide against them.

These examples, of course, are from some centuries in the past, true, so I guess it would be natural for many to assume that what is in the past will remain in the past. Genocide in the Americas has just not happened in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, has it? We would like to think not, though anyone who would most likely does not know about the so-called “Termination era” which lasted from 1947 to 1967. It was a time in which policy makers attempted to “terminate” Indian nations and completely absorb them into white society. It was originally called “liquidation,” but it conjured up images of “liquidation” of Nazi Germany, so the term was changed to “termination.” Native American historians, however, retain calling it the “Liquidation era.”

Lately in Canada, the present day genocide of the Indian peoples has come to light when Kevin Annett blew the wistle on how the First Church of Canada and also the local Roman Catholic Church have been involved in the murder, torture, and genocide of Canadian Indians as late as the late twentieth century, and even now in the early twenty first century many of the Indigenous peoples of that area have been subjet to such treatment. The YouTube video is the first part of a documentery that documents this:

Why Study Spanish

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The second most spoken language in the United States is Spanish. This partucular language has seen an increase in speakers mostly because of the immigration waves that we have seen in the last couple of decades leading to a sizeable increase in hispanics. It is true that not all Latin Americans speak spanish; there are some that still speak their ancient indigenous languages. But the majority of immigrants certainly do speak it. It is also true that in the American Southwest, there is a rather large concentration of Spanish speakers, and especially in California which has an actual Spanish speaking majority. This is not to say that these people do not mostly speak and understand English, but many of them are bilingual.

A really good reason to learn Spanish as a second language is so that you can widen your horizon of who you can converse with. That said, more people speak Spanish than English. Spanish grammar is also much more absolute than English. In English we have plenty of exceptions to the grammar, however in Spanish these exceptions are at a small minimum. It may be a bit hard to grasp as first, but once you reach an understanding of the basics of the grammar and verbs, you will be able to speak the language really well.