A Open Letter to L. Brooks Patterson

To L. Brooks Patterson
County Executive Oakland County
Executive Office Building - 41 West
2100 Pontiac Lake Road
Waterford, Michigan, USA, 48328-0409


Dear Mr. Patterson,

On Monday January 27th I was a member of the Idle No More group that had gathered in front of the Oakland County Courthouse speaking out against what you were quoted in The New Yorker magazine. After some contemplation I think that maybe you spoke such hateful things about Indians to make a point about Detroit without fully understanding what it was exactly you were saying.

I myself have made the mistake of speaking without fully understanding my words. Especially in the heat of the moment! Myabe that is what happened with you in the article, maybe you were "ambushed" as you say. I was not there and can not in good faith tell you the motives of either the writer or yourself.

So here is what I propose Mr. Patterson. I suggest you meet with myself, an elder, and a young member of the Native American community to discusss the things you said. Let me further explain:

You said and I quote, “I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, ‘What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn.”

Firstly, the conditions on Native American reservations is like third world conditions. Some people may be under the impression that because we have casinos that we as Native people sit back and collect per cap checks with no abandon. This is not true at all. I can give the example of Shannon County on the Pine Ridge reservation. It is absolutely the poorest county in the entire United States. When I tell you they are poor they are not the , "Dang I can't afford the Playstation 4, or 'I can't afford that trip to Florida'" No I am talking about a per capita income of less than $3,000.00 a year, a unemployment rate that has consistently run into the 90th percentil for years. A life expectancy that;s one third shorter generation after generation than the average American people. There is a real degree of impoverishment that has created a tone of death on many reservations. The death of malnutrition and diabetes, high blood pressure, alcoholism, cancer, obesity and a score of other diseases that run the gambit within Indian Country.

I can't think of anyone who becomes aware of those type of conditions in this nation that would not want to step in and help change those conditions.  Maybe you're not aware of the conditions of reservations in this nation and so you wished for Detroit such a terrible fate as just not understanding fully what you were talking about. I would love for the opportunity to discuss that further with you.

So then we move onto the blanket issue. Maybe you are not aware of this but the disease of smallpox was used as a form of chemical warfare against Native people. In 1763 Chief Pontiac of the Odawa Nation began a rebellion at Fort Detroit. I am sure you're familliar with that story but what may have slipped past you is that when the rebellion spread all the way to Fort Pitt which is now present day Pittsburgh. Lord Jeffrey Amherst, a commander of British forces in North America during the French and Indian war (1756-1763) in a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who was leading reinforcements to Fort Pitt. stated:

P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.
 

On July 16 Amherst replied, also in a postscript:

P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.

On July 26 Bouquet wrote back:

I received yesterday your Excellency's letters of 16th with their Inclosures. The signal for Indian Messengers, and all your directions will be observed.

Then over in Canada it is well documented that smallpox eliminated over 90% of the Wyandot population. I am sure that many of these truths I have written here has come as a surprise to you. I have made accommodations for you to visit a reservation here in Michigan and maybe attend a class with me about the way to view we Natives as a viable and living culture here in the great state of Michigan. Will you join me and have a sit down with three of us and further discuss these things that you said about my people?


I most anxiously await your correspondence

Davi Trusty

"Herd them all together"

L. Brooks Patterson is an Oakland County executive who was quoted in a New York Times article titled "Drop Dead Detroit" "Anytime I talk about Detroit, it will not be positive. Therefore, I'm called a Detroit basher. The truth hurts, you know?  I used to say to my kids, 'First of all, there's no reason for you to go to Detroit. We've got restaurants out here.' They don't even have movie theatres in Detroit - not one."
So we can gather that Brooksie doesn't care much for the city of Detroit. He's an Oakland county guy. Let me explain that Oakland county is a more affluent suburb of Detroit. It's where all the White people went when Blacks from the south moved here to Michigan for jobs. You know, because of fear and loathing of "them".
Brooksie wasn't done bashing Detroit, he further states in the article,
"I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said,
‘What we’re going to do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and corn."
I want to point out that smallpox infected blankets and dispossession and repressive policies of Whites caused the death of up too 80% of the Indigenous population.  Don't you see the comedy in his statement? How glib and frank he can be at the same time? Do you know, during the late 1630s, smallpox killed over half of the Wyandot, who controlled most of the early North American fur trade in what became Canada. They were reduced to fewer than 10,000 people.( Robertson, Ronald G (2001). Rotting face : smallpox and the American Indian. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Press. pp. 107–108. ISBN 0-87004-419-2.)

I want to point out also that Brooksie is a republican. It's not just that, it is that he got caught being an HONEST republican. Remember these are the people who invented the whole "Obama is a Kenyan" and "Obama the magic Negro" on conservative radio stations. For Brooksie to make such an ugly statement about us is just following suit of the members of that party.Don't believe me?

Rick Santorum while running for nomination under the republican ticket in 2012 said, "I don't want to make Black people's lives easier by giving them other people's money"

Ron Paul argues that the landmark federal legislation that dismantled Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s was a moral evil and a violation of white people’s liberty. Ron Paul’s claim that the rights of black Americans are secondary to the “freedom” of whites to discriminate, is an almost perfect mirror for the logic of apartheid. Ron Paul’s white supremacist ethic is more than a dismissal of one of the crowning legislative achievements of the 20th century: it is the endorsement of a principle that conveniently allows white people to hate and discriminate in the public sphere at will--and without consequence--against people of color. This “freedom” is the living and bleeding heart of white racism. (Daily Kos)

The echo chamber that is Fox News, right-wing talk radio, the conservative blogosphere, and Republican elected officials daily stoke the politics of white racial resentment, bigotry and fear. Ultimately, the Republican candidates would not use racism as a weapon if it were not rewarded by their voters, and encouraged by the party’s leadership. An army travels on its stomach; it needs foot soldiers and shock troops to advance its aims.
From the ugly, race-based conspiracy fantasies of Birtherism to the astroturf politics of the Tea Party to a news network whose guests routinely disparage Barack Obama with such labels as “ghetto crackhead” to the bloviating racist utterances by opinion leaders such as Rush Limbaugh, to the common bigotry on display at right-wing Web sites that use monkey, ape, gorilla, pimp, and watermelon imagery to depict the United States’ first black president and his family, it is clear that racism “works” for the Republican Party. To ignore the attraction of rank-and-file white conservatives to such ugliness is to overlook the driving force behind the Republican nominees’ behavior. (Daily Kos)

Jason Richwine, who received his doctorate in public policy from Harvard in 2009, wrote in his dissertation “IQ and Immigration Policy” that immigrants in the U.S. have lower IQs than native white Americans, and that difference “is likely to persist over several generations.”

“The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations.”

“The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market,” he writes. “Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.”

No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.

Now if they can make statements like that about Latinos and Black why are we surprised that Brooksie made those comments about Indians?

See Brooksie cares only for the White base that breeds fear and loathing of Original people. He caters to a base that believes those of us who are blessed to be brown and more are somehow undermining the intentions of the founding fathers. You know, those Indian killing Slave owning White guys on the money? For him to make a ugly statement that Detroit is doomed and wanting to "herd all the Indians" into the city like the government did to my people on the trail of tears, or what they did to the Lakota at Wounded Knee, or wha they did to the Pottawatomie on The Trail Of Death and then say it was nothing more than a "bombastic statement" is an outright lie or he is completely ignorant of history. Brooksie is a smart dude, you can't get to the position he is in by being a dumb ass, I know like I know that he is a liar.

Some want him to apologize, not me. I want him and the rest of the members of that bigoted racist group of things calling themselves "Tea partiers" and "Republicans" and "Conservatives" exposed as the vile devils and cancer to society and progress for what they are. His apology if it ever comes will mean nothing, it will be false and fake and disingenuous at best. He attempted one earlier and it was mumbled and soft. He will apologize only because he got caught being honest and everyone should know by now that an honest republican is nothing more than an exposed devil.