But for 7,000 years, they didn’t threaten the very existence of the planet. I’m not going to overidealize it I’m sure they had their own problems. And we’ve managed-these people lived there for 7,000 years, and were in harmony with nature the redwoods grew, the salmon jumped out of the creeks. And in the short time that California has been around-and the book centers a lot around UC Berkeley 1873 was when that school was started, and the whole university system. And it shows a contempt for, basically, 7,000 years of life in this area. Really, the book centers on digging up graves it’s grisly, and in the name of science, particularly anthropology, that we have the right to desecrate a people’s history, to just rip their bones from the ground, measure their skulls. And the title is called, Grave Matters: The Controversy Over Excavating California’s Buried Indigenous Past.Īnd I want to begin with that.
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The title is-and it’s published by Heyday Books, which does a lot of publication on indigenous life, and particularly in California, but in North America.
![the hunting ground controversy the hunting ground controversy](https://cinemacao.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Hunting-Ground.jpg)
In this case, Tony Platt, a well-known criminologist who’s written a lot about the incarceration system that defines America in so many ways. RS: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, and the intelligence comes from my guests.
The hunting ground controversy full#
Listen to the full conversation between Platt and Scheer as they discuss the details of this Californian story and the broader American story of Native American mass murder and desecration. However, as Scheer highlights throughout the episode, works like “Grave Matters” and those by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Benjamin Madley, former guests of the show who have exposed other travesties committed against the Indigenous Peoples, are undoubtedly indispensable to this process. Whether or not the process will lead to justice and reparations remains to be seen. Scheer points to recognition from former California Governor Jerry Brown and current Governor Gavin Newsom regarding the crimes the state has committed against Native Americans, and the two discuss the recent New York Times exposé of UC Hastings’ founder Serranus Hastings and his “mastermind the slaughter of Yuki men, women and children” (which ultimately prompted the law school to decide to change its name) as signs the times are changing. With regard to the future, Platt expresses some hope that the country is at the start of the inevitably long process of coming to grips with its grim past. The “ Grave Matters” author explains that in addition to their genocide, displacement, and continual disenfrenchisement, Americans have continued to desecrate the very bones of the Indigenous Peoples whose remains archaelogists stole in the “name of scholarship.” “Grave Matters,” which was first released in 2011 and has recently been re-issued by Heyday Books, reveals many uncomfortable truths at the core of America’s past and present, while prompting crucial questions about the country’s future. On this week’s “Scheer Intelligence,” Platt joins Robert Scheer to discuss his book “ Grave Matters: The Controversy over Excavating California’s Buried Indigenous Past,” which examines the history of the Yurok people whose ancestors’ remains were excavated by UC Berkeley for use in its research without any consent, or, as Scheer indicates, respect. In a recently reissued book, Tony Platt, the acclaimed author of 10 books and professor emeritus who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and California State University, Sacramento, uncovers another more recent abhorrence committed against Native Californians by one of the state’s most revered institutions, the University of California, Berkeley.
![the hunting ground controversy the hunting ground controversy](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wlz9Owo7XSU/maxresdefault.jpg)
The prosperous, liberal state of California is not exempt from this original sin, nor has it made reparations for the devastation of Indigenous Peoples and their lands. To this day, all non-Native Americans live on stolen land. White settler colonialism is not just a stain on the country’s history, it is its very raison d’etre. The United States of America is founded on the original sin of Native American genocide and the myth that the Indigenous Peoples that lived on these lands for thousands of years had no right to it.
![the hunting ground controversy the hunting ground controversy](https://i1.wp.com/www.calcasa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/the-hunting-ground-poster.jpg)
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