The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the...
As the world has been made smaller by modernity and destruction of nature, this will only increase.
Native peoples in villages across the U.S., including the territories of Hawai‘i and Alaska, sustain staggering death rates. Some communities lose almost all of their residents.
In November at the Iñupiat village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, 72 of the 80 Iñupiat residents die of Spanish Influenza in five days
At Ketchikan, 74 cases of polio are reported to the Alaska Department of Health. The Tsimshian tribe located 15 miles south of Ketchikan is also affected, in communities such as Metlakatla, Alaska. Tribal leaders say that polio vaccine did not reach the community soon enough.
False. Pandemics have been periodically hitting first peoples since first contact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Syndrome
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/420.html
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/645.html
As the world has been made smaller by modernity and destruction of nature, this will only increase.