This must be worth a post, right?

So, Ryan sends me a text with a picture of a poster he saw at a museum he was visiting with the boys. The poster is shown above. Ryan is upset at the notion that someone can be critical of the manner in which the indigenous people of this continent were treated by the US, and that such criticism could manifest itself in a poster satirizing such topical subjects as our own, beloved Homeland Security Department. He was so upset that he (in his own words) took umbrage with the museum curator about the poster.

Now, I'm not unfamiliar with this photo. Both Jambo and I grew up on an Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin, and our first casino job was with an Indian casino in northern Minnesota. Our association was almost exclusively with Ojibwas/Chippewa Indians, but one can't move within the Native American community and not become familiar with the great Sioux leaders of the second half of the 19th Century. This photo (that so got Ryan's dander up) is of Red Dog, Little Wound, Red Cloud, American Horse and Red Shirt, with their interpreter John Bridgeman standing behind them. The photo is of a delegation to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about Native American children going to school in boarding houses there... and concerns that the children were being taught negative things about their people, their culture, their leaders and even their parents. These concerns proved to be 100% true.

In short, if Ryan is really that upset about this poster... can he please tell me why it is any more offensive than posters depicting Obama's campaign images to those of a Maoist dictator with obvious communist overtones? That isn't offensive to the Office of the President of the United States, but the above picture is offensive to the Department of Homeland Security?

Many in America associate the cause of individual liberty and freedom with the efforts of leaders like Red Cloud, Black Elk, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo... and with good reason. As has been discussed here in the past, America's history of dealing with the aboriginal peoples of North America is less than perfect, to say the least, and using such images and concepts as reminders that we cannot venture down that path again is no bad thing, believe me. What better example exists of America's failure to champion the cause of the individual over that of the majority than its long and troubled history of associations and broken promises to the Native American people?