Nez percés au président des Etats-Unis d'Amérique

Good words will not give me back my children ... Let me be a free man, free to work, free to choose my own teachers

Extraits du discours



"I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, they do not protect my fathers' graves. Good words will not give me back my children. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promisses."



"If the white man wants to leave in peace with the indian, he can leave in peace. There need be be not trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live ang grow.
You migth as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was borned a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only asked an even chance to live as other men live. We asked to be recognized as men.
Let me be a free man - free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself."

Le contexte
Yellowstone, souvenez-vous, des indiens (natifs d'Amérique) effrontés ont osé faire une apparition au milieu des premiers touristes du parc, l'été 1877. Eh bien, ce sont justement les Nez percés en fuite contre les malversations des E-U, désireux de se réfugier au Canada !
Finalement les soldats les ont rattrapés, leur ont fait de nouvelles promesses. Les Nez Percés ont alors été amenés dans un coin paumé, loin de leurs terres d'origine, infesté par la malaria. Beaucoup y moururent. Alors dans un dernier effort leur chef, Chief Joseph (Heinmot Tooyalaket) a demandé une entrevue au président des E-U à Washington pour rappeler toutes ces promesses non tenues et son désir de vivre en liberté. C'est là qu'il prononça son discours, célèbre dans l'histoire du peuple américain (natifs-américains et européens-américains).

Les grands libérateurs étasuniens et les "indiens" juste après l'indépendance (fin 18ème)

Washington asked his general to attack the Iroquois and 'lay waste all the settlements ... that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed'. Jefferson was convinced that Indans 'ferocious bararities justified extermination. ... In war they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.'

sans oublier (parmi beaucoup d'autres) un autre symbole de la nation "libre"

We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux ... even to their extermination, men, women, and children." (General William Tecumseh Sherman, 1866)

Sources

Brown, Dee A. (1970/1991) Bury my heart at Wounded Knee:an Indian history of the American West. First Owl Book Edition. pp 329-330
Buffet, P (1994). 500 nations, a musical journey [cédérom]. Extraits 1 et 18.
Burbank, J. & Cooper, F. (2010). Empires in world history. Power and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press : Princeton, NJ. pp 262-266
Haynes, F. Jay (1877). Nez Perce Chief Joseph poses with decorated sash, Bismark, North Dakota, 1877 [photo]. Wikipedia.org [http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Chief.Joseph.1877.jpg]