Rigoberta Menchu Quotes
I am deeply gladdened that 1993 has been delcared the International Year of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations. It is the first year we have had in five hundred years. This is thanks to the struggle of many untitled, unnamed indigenous brothers who, without understanding international law, patiently walked the corridors asking for some time. Thanks to them this international year has been declared.
Menchú, Rigoberta. "Nobel Lecture." NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach AB, 10 Dec. 1992.
The White Africaners were attacking the Blacks to force them off their land so the Afrkaners could take over. The country was under British rule and the unarmed Blacks were being slaughtered by the Afrikaners who were British Subjects. Eventually the Boer War set the English against the Afrikaners. See {583902} for a related quotation.
When the British first colonized South Africa, the area they used was akmost uninhabited or very sparcely so. However, some Black tribes (including the Zulus) were moving from the north and themselves were colonizing or annexing the areas to their kingdom. The British were most interested in Trading so did not have large land asperations. The Dutch white Boer Africanners, in contrast, wanted to farm the lands and use the range for their cattle. They wanted the land. The English policy was that there would be friendly relations with the Black tribes surrounding their Cape Colony and no one should take their land. However the Boers started attacking the Black areas and seizing their farms and villages. At first, the English assumed that the Blacks would easily be able to ward off the invasion as the Afrikanners had no professional troops like the British. However, the neighboring tribes were not very warlike or good fighters. They were being overrun by the Zulus coming from the North and the Boers from the South. The British Government had a real problem in that they would have to have British soldiers fight the white Afrikanners if they wanted to stop the illegal white invasions. This was the root of the Boer War where the British would be fully at war with the Africanners.
Cass was negotiating with the Shawnees and Cherokees to persuade them to move to land west of the Mississippi. See John Henry Eaton for similar unkept promises.
This was passed in 1787 before the Constitution had become operative, but was then ratified by Congress in 1789. It was one of the first acts of our new nation, and one of the most frequently violated throughout our history.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
