Our beginnings as a civilized people began before Rome or Athens were even started. We had created and developed magnificence in art and architecture. We had made discoveries in science, mathematics, engineering, astronomy, and medicine.

We were the first people in the history of humanity to have mandatory education for males and females, of all classes. We had developed universities (in many ways superior to those of Europe) and libraries, the world's most accurate calendar, and one of the great theologies and bodies of literature of the world. We had created our own world of brilliant accomplishments and genius.

All of this greatness of our people came to a sudden end with the European invasions of our lands. All of this great past history has been kept silent to protect the guilty –– the Europeans and their European Settler descendants who destroyed it. We have been intentionally kept ignorant of all of our accomplishments and all of the European crimes for almost 500 years.

This destruction of our history of 4,000 years of civilization, along with the cultural castration and the racial rape of our population, has left our people hopelessly chained to the interests of Europeans. We find ourselves captive to an endless self-perpetuating cycle of problems that include an abundance of poverty, poor education, low self-esteem, crime, gangs, dropouts, lack of Indigenous representation, and an inferiority complex of the worst kind: the self-hate of an entire people.

This tragedy of the imposed ignorance of our people serves American society with an unproud, passive people who serve seemingly happily as maids, busboys, gardeners, farmworkers, fast-food service workers and other poverty-equivalent and slave-equivalent jobs. We suffer this poverty despite the fact that we are the wealthy true owners of all the land we walk upon (half of our land is now called U.S. land and the other half is controlled by descendants of Spaniards - Criollos. We are today called foreigners in our own land. We are forced to rent or buy our own land from the invaders who stole it from us, forced to work for them to survive –– forced to surrender up the wealth of our labor and our land.

In this ignorance we have no real control of our land or the wealth that is made from our land, and no control over the power that comes from our land and our wealth. When you have no control or no possibility of ever having control over the land, wealth, or power in your life: you are in fact a slave. It is perhaps a modern, kinder, gentler, form of slavery, one without physical chains. But it is slavery, never the less. And it is an addictive form of slavery which we have become too comfortable with, and are too unwilling to ever leave.

It is criminal to continue this de facto enforced ignorance of our people. We cannot continue to endure this programmed self-hate much longer. This enforced ignorance is an uncivilized act. It must end. This 500 year history of injustices and ignorance has to stop.