A Response to Another Article about Where we ITI "Reeally" Came From

I am an ITI - an Indigenous Turtle Islander. A First 'American', although in reality, 'America' is a construct made by a self-agrandizing Italian mapmaker, Amerigo Vespucci, who wanted to immortalize himself, not the proper name of this land.
Contrary to popular myth-conceptions developed and promoted by people of European descent, we have been here for far more than the 15,000 years generally quoted - not that it matters. We were here first, by far first and before Europeans made landfall on this side of the Mni Tanka - the Big Water - therefore we are the ones to have properly named it, and we did.
The arrogance that ignorance engenders never fails to amaze me - along with the many forms it takes - about us ITI Peoples. First is the insistence that it 'must' be 'proven' that we 'came here from somewhere else'. Why? Why 'must' this be 'proven'? What prompts this lemming-like rush to make a sea of claims about our 'true' origins? My guess is, cultural guilt. Well-deserved, from where we ITI sit....
After "Why?", we can then ask, "What - if anything - would it 'prove' about our claim to this land if it could be proven that we actually migrated here from somewhere else?" IF we did - and we Elders who are Traditionals, who carry the Creation Stories of our Peoples, KNOW WE DIDN't come from somewhere else - would it prove anything? No.
Would it lessen our claim to this land? No. IF it could be proven beyond any reasonable doubt that we ITI had come here from somewhere else, it wouldn't make a clamshell's worth of difference, because (a) we were here first; (b) we were here first by thousands of years and as a result, the exact number doesn't matter; (c) there is ample evidence that we were here for at least 65,000 years before Europeans came her, should anyone be so backward as to insist on counting the number of years.
And believe me - THAT IS the real reason for the lemming-like rush to 'prove' we ITI "actually came here from somewhere else". It is a sophomoric attempt to try to decrease our claim to this land, so that a rationale can be made for the atrocities committed on our Peoples over the past 516 years or so: The land grabs, the anti-Indn legislation, the outlawing of our Traditional spiritualities and worship forms (with only partial return of our theoretical First-Amendment Rights), the continuing assaults on our cultures and attempts to force us to assimilate, the seemingly-never-ending efforts to terminate our Treaties, our Treaty RIGHTS (not "priviledges") and the US government's / majority culture's concomitant Treaty Obligations, and dispose of our Reservations, and so on to terminal nausea.
Historians try to speak about "The period of The Indian Wars". Listen up, takoszja - The Indian Wars never ended. They are still going on today. Right now. Only the overtness and the form appeared to change. But then, our word for Europeans is "washichu" (wah-SHEE-choo). It can be broken into its root words in two ways; neither of them is a compliment. We give people and things their true names according to their spiritual essence, not some physical characteristic. True names are earned, therefore.
Washichu can be broken into 'washi' and 'ichu' - 'washi' is fat on a body and 'ichu' means 'to take'; thus this means 'to take the fat'. In hunter-gather cultures, fat is a precious commodity, because it is such a concentrated energy source. Fat has twice the calories per unit of mass that protein or carbohydrates do. If you eat a very high-protein diet, as wild meat is, you will starve to death in cold or famine times because you will not put on much, if any, fat. Thus, someone who takes the fat is a greedy, ungenerous person; someone who behaves as if they do not have any relatives. In the ITI Way, this is a huge flaw. Of the few universal threads among our many cultures, to be called greedy or ungenerous is a huge insult.
Washichu can also be broken into 'wa' - snow, and 'shichu' - the conscious fourth of the soul. In my People's Way, the soul has four parts; this is not so for all ITI cultures, of course. Nonetheless, we see it that way, and the word is ours.
Thus you see that we have said this person's sould is that of snow. In every culture in the world, the snow spirits do snow jobs, kill the warmth of the heart, kill kindness, make the path appear to be one way or place when it is another.. It speaks of ungenerousness, deviousness and untrustworthiness.
Over the past 516 years, there haven't been enough members of the majority culture who are no washichu for us to find a new name for them. We make an exception for those who prove they are not entirely washichu, but those are far and few between in our experience.
Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the invading culture over the past 516 years haven't said a whole lot of good about the invading culture or the people who live by it.
Tch, tch, tch!

In my People's Way, when someone does something wrong, the rest of us ask that person, "Where is your respect? WHERE IS your RESPECT?!?" People who are asked this are shamed; and ashamed, if they are not washichu in their heart of hearts..
So on behalf of us ITI People, who have been here since time immemorial, I ask you who continue to insist on trying to 'prove we ITI came here from somewhere else' and therefore have less original right to this Turtle Island than you, so that your culture can somehow try to find an acceptable rationale for the ongoing assaults on our cultures and for your culture's not-so-far-past atrocities committed on us -
Where is your respect? WHERE IS your RESPECT?!? You can quit this nonsense now. That would 'show' respect. Along with fulfilling your Treaty Obligations with no further stupid lawsuits trying to duck your 'word of honor' given when your agents signed the Treaties and stopping your ongoing attempts to destroy our Traditional Ways and our spiritual ways in particular, to mine our Sacred Sites or dump nuclear waste in them, to either force us to take a giant step down and back and assimilate into your culture, or die.. To do anything else is to continue to earn the name we gave you 'way back when - washichu. Tch, tch, tch!