Tasiyagnunpa Livermont

Aren’t we all sick of political correctness?

As a Collegian columnist said last week, “‘politically correct’ makes me want to ‘politically puke.”‘

My first thought when I read that line was, “Me too.”

You may wonder then why I write a column focused on injustices toward Native Americans.

I do it because there is a difference between educating people about misconceptions and stereotypes associated with racial and ethnic issues and the people who like to shove some sort of hippie “Make Love, Not War” propaganda down our throats.

I’m talking about the people who tell us that our morals and values are stupid.

The extreme feminists, gay rights activists, atheists, and others who think those with moral or religious values are some kind of hateful Nazis , judging and condemning everyone and everything.

The fact is that someone’s race or ethnicity cannot be changed like someone’s values.

It would be the same as telling them to wear their bones outside their skin.

In light of this fact, I want to bring to your attention the dishonor and hatefulness displayed during SDSU’s Hobo Day weekend.

Two SDSU Native American students walked into Godfather’s Pizza the night before the parade.

Plastered in the window was a sign which read: “Blitzkrieg the Sioux.” The accompanying illustration was of a SDSU Jackrabbit in a tank firing at a tipi. They had even spelled “Sioux” wrong.

The next day during the parade many floats carried slogans such as: “Attack the Sioux,” “Tank the Sioux” and my favorite, “Destroy the Sioux.”

At this point may I mention that I am Oglala Lakota which is a part of the group collectively known as the Sioux.

How would you have felt, reading signs like, “Tank the Norwegians,” “Destroy the Irish,” “Attack the French” or “Kill the Americans?” Or how about “Blitzkrieg the Jews?”

I hope you would have been angry. Americans of the 1940s used the last slogan brandished by Nazi Germany as one of their reasons for World War II.

Yet, the people native to this continent get so little respect.

We went overseas for the Koreans and Vietnamese and others, yet Native Americans are still dishonored on their own land?

For God’s sake don’t be politically correct, but I admonish you, especially the Hobo Day committee and the whole of the University of North Dakota, to be human.

Write to Tasiyagnunpa Livermont at [email protected].