Albert E. Burke: Difference between revisions

“Burke uses the story of Pima Indian Ira Hayes, one of the six marines to raise the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in WWII, to illustrate the U.S. government's treatment of Native Americans. He refers to an NBC program, "The American stranger," which had recently provoked widespread public outrage, and to a defensive response issued by the Department of the Interior. Burke says the program was accurate and cites examples of treaty-breaking on the part of the government, and of lawbreaking on the part of wealthy whites, whom he compares to the fictitious greedy rancher Elder Conklin, a character in a Frank Harris short story by the same name. He gives examples of Native American contributions to farming and medicine and says that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were inspired by the governmental structures of the Five United Indian Nations. Includes footage of the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the Pima reservation, and Coolidge Dam.”