Don’t buy Ben & Jerry’s saccharine take on the Native American storyBy Rich Lowry
July 6, 2023
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream wants the United States to return the Blacks Hills to the Lakota.
Which raises the question: Once this transfer takes place, will the Lakota turn around and give the Black Hills back to the tribes they took them from?
It’s never a good idea to get history lessons from an ice-cream maker with a hippy vibe that sold out to a multinational conglomerate long ago, but the Ben & Jerry’s July 4th condemnation of the United States as “founded on stolen Indigenous land” is a common enough hostile interpretation of our past that it’s worth dwelling on.
There is no doubt that our dealings with Native Americans were characterized by brutality, land-hunger and duplicity, and constitute one of the nation’s foremost sins.
The problem with the Ben & Jerry’s view, which is considered a truism on the left, is that it is immune to complexity and rests on an ahistorical, ultimately condescending belief in the inherent innocence and peaceableness of Native Americans.
Consider the Lakota.
Like many other tribes we encountered on the Plains, they were relative newcomers to the area, getting pushed westward and establishing themselves on the Plains by intra-tribal warfare.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/06/dont-buy-ben-jerrys-saccharine-take-on-the-native-american-story/
