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Activision Responds to American Indian Boycott
JorgeDeLaCancha writes "As previously reported, the American Indian Development has begun a boycott of Activisions game GUN. Activision has quickly responded. From the article: 'Activision does not condone or advocate any of the atrocities that occurred in the American West during the 1800s. GUN was designed to reflect the harshness of life on the American frontier at that time.'"
Check out the documentary "Guns, Germs, and Steel". Really good show.
The researcher who came up with the GGS hypothesis on why some societies flourished and others languished notes that there were roughly 20 million aboriginal Americans when the Europeans arrived. He then goes on to mention that 95% of that 20 million died of diseases that came with the settlers.
The reason for the natives being susceptible was that they did not keep livestock, and did not build up immunities to the diseases that came hand in hand with livestock farming. Most of the nastiest diseases in human history jumped from barnyard animals to their owners.
Side note:
The Spaniards are supposedly the first to use biowarfare against the South American natives, though there have been other instances in history where corpses were thrown into forts under siege. This is apparently the first time the blankets alone were used. Who knows for sure though.
WTF ???
... hope you are happy convincing all the mindless freaks.
.. what do you expect?
m herstsmallpox.htm
You jerk
Fact is, there was a plan to do this. And small pox later broke out where they targetted. There are no photos of the actual handover obviously
Provide some evidence to support your view. Evidence-less assertions may work if you are a talk radio host or post on freerepublic.com.
Fact is the native americans got screwed, and their land/inheritance stolen. No amount of trying to convince oneself otherwise will chnge reality. Ironically the USA supports the Israelis getting their ancestral homeland from the Palestinians.. yet native americans can forget getting their ancestral home back. Sad but true.
The evidence is overwhelming to support the view of blankets being used to spread smallpox... do some god damn googling.
http://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/~chssocst/ssgavittus1a
From straightdope.com: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_066.html
Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War (1756-'63). Amherst and a subordinate discussed, apparently seriously, sending infected blankets to hostile tribes. What's more, we've got the documents to prove it, thanks to the enterprising research of Peter d'Errico, legal studies professor at the University of Massachusetts at (fittingly) Amherst. D'Errico slogged through hundreds of reels of microfilmed correspondence looking for the smoking gun, and he found it.
The exchange took place during Pontiac's Rebellion, which broke out after the war, in 1763. Forces led by Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa who had been allied with the French, laid siege to the English at Fort Pitt.
According to historian Francis Parkman, Amherst first raised the possibility of giving the Indians infected blankets in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who would lead reinforcements to Fort Pitt. No copy of this letter has come to light, but we do know that Bouquet discussed the matter in a postscript to a letter to Amherst on July 13, 1763:
P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.
On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:
I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed.
We don't know if Bouquet actually put the plan into effect, or if so with what result. We do know that a supply of smallpox-infected blankets was available, since the disease had broken out at Fort Pitt some weeks previously. We also know that the following spring smallpox was reported to be raging among the Indians in the vicinity.
To modern ears, this talk about infecting the natives with smallpox, hunting them down with dogs, etc., sounds over the top. But it's easy to believe Amherst and company were serious. D'Errico provides other quotes from Amherst's correspondence that suggest he considered Native Americans subhumans who ought to be exterminated. Check out his research for yourself at www.nativeweb.org/pages/l egal/amherst/lord_jeff.html. He not only includes transcriptions but also reproduces the relevant parts of the incriminating letters.
There's a difference between merely discussing history (yes, the Europeans fought Indians) and _revisionist_ history in which you paint the attacked as the aggressors. For better or worse, the Indians were really the ones attacked and driven off their lands there, and painting them as a bunch of bandits wantonly attacking the caravans isn't history, it's revisionist history.
Just for trivia sake, here's a historical tidbit for you: you know how scalping is thrown around as the example of how savage and cruel the Indians were? Well, it was invented by the Europeans. A bunch of Europeans decided they'd be better off if they just exterminated the Indians wholesale to make room for European farmers. (Incidentally the exact same plan Hitler had for Poland, for example.) So they paid headhunters for each Indian scalp brought in, as proof of one killed Indian.
The Indians just knew a good idea when it bit them, so they soon started scalping too, as a way to keep track of killed enemies.
That's the kind of wanton aggression the Europeans waged upon the rightful owners and inhabitants of that land. So now representing the ones who fought back as the aggressors is a tad rich.
It's like making a game in which you're a WW2 German soldier just defending yourself against the supposedly wanton aggression of partisans on the Eastern front. Or helping shoot Polish "aggressors" in the Warshaw uprising. You know, you're just minding your business there, and all of a sudden these aggressive Poles or Russians attack your convoy and you have to defend yourself. Great game idea to show people how harsh life was on the Eastern Front, eh?
I'm guessing noone would have any trouble spotting the shameless revisionism there, but when it's about American natives we all act so surprised that they're offended.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.