Theos-Talk Archives (March 2006 Message tt00228)

	By the way, if you cite Ward Churchill's work, please note that he is 
an extremely controversial figure who has been already caught in 
numerous lies, and there has been a consderable amount of refutation to 
his theories.

	Doing some additional research on the germ warfare during the French 
and Indian War, it turns out that, by the time the program was 
initiated, the native Americans targeted were already being ravaged by 
smallpox, so it is questionable whether or not the blankets actually did 
anything, not that it excuses the actual behavior.

	Back to the Civil Rights movement in the United States, there were 
certainly many Theosophists involved, as they were involved in better 
treatment of the Australian aborigines, treatment of the native people 
in Indonesia, and particularly in India. However, Blavatsky had 
specifically called for the Theosophical Society as a whole to stay out 
of politics:

"Those who know us at all need not be told that there is no association 
in the world which builds its hope of success on Government favour, less 
than the Theosophical Society. Our business is with truth and 
philosophy, not with politics or administration."


Bart Lidofsky wrote:

> krsanna wrote:
>
> > I'll look for an article published around 2003 acknowledging that 
> > the U.S. Army infected blankets with smallpox before giving them to 
> > the Cherokee, who had been rounded up at gunpoint in the middle of 
> > the winter.  It made news in the Native American community at the 
> > time I worked in Native American Studies at a state university.  The 
> > acknowledgement was not widely published in the predominantly White 
> > media.  
>
> 	Smallpox was definitely transmitted by blankets during the French and 
> Indian War. Of course, by then, an estimated 90-95% of the Native 
> American population in what is now the continental United States had 
> already been wiped out by measles, smallpox, and the Bubonic Plague.
>
> 	Bart
>
>
>
>  
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