Paging Gazhekwe

[gazhekwe]

Contrast between Code Talkers and Suspended Basketball Player

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Condition

Today another Navajo Code Talker will be laid to rest. US Marine Corps Sergeant Jimmie Begay, 88, passed away Wednesday. He was one of the courageous Navajo soldiers who were trained to speak in code language utilizing their Navajo language during World War II.

Note: First week in January, Code Talker Keith Little walked on as well. http://www.obitoftheday.com/post/153...08/keithlittle

Many years after the conclusion of World War II in 2001, Navajo Code Talker Begay was awarded a Congressional Silver Medal.

Why? Because he helped to save a nation by using his Native language. The Navajo code language was never broken. Unfortunately, this amazing history is not part of the core curriculum in the American educational system.

On another matter involving Native language, two weeks ago, Miranda Washinawatok, a 12 year old Menominee girl in seventh grade who enjoys playing on her school basketball team, was suspended or benched for one basketball game for speaking in her Native language.

Why? Because her teacher could not understand what Miranda was saying in her Native language. Miranda was sharing with a fellow classmate the Menominee words for hello and I love you.

She was scolded and embarrassed when her teacher came up to her and slammed her hand down on a desk and said:

"You are not to speak like that! How do I know you're not saying something bad? How would you like it if I spoke in Polish and you didn't understand?"

The school in question is the Sacred Heart Catholic School in Shawano, Wisconsin. The school is located just a few miles from the Menominee Tribe Indian Reservation. It has approximately 64 American Indian students out of 102 students who attend there. The racial complexion of the staff is not known, because the spokesperson for the Diocese of Green Bay that oversees the school did not know when I asked him on Friday afternoon.

Diocese spokesperson assured me the school "failed miserably in its handling of the matter."

Recognition of failure or of a deficiency is a great first step towards healing. So in that sense, I am glad the church recognizes there is a major problem at Sacred Heart.
Equity and inclusion experts can attest top officials of organizations or corporations and entry level employees or students usually "get it" when comprehending the importance of multiculturalism. Unfortunately, there is usually a disconnection by mid-level employees. They usually don't want to "get it" when it comes to diversity issues.

In the context of Sacred Heart's scenario, Miranda would be entry level; the teachers, coaching staff and principal would be mid-level employees. Miranda gets it. Her teachers, coaching staff and principal don't. Sadly, the very ones who are on the front-line don't get it. How sad and unfortunate for the impressionable Mirandas in Indian Country.

American Indian students across America have the highest high school dropout rate of any racial / ethnic group. They the invisible and statistically insignificant in America. They dropout because of incidents like what happened to Miranda. The incident involving Miranda, a tender soon-to-be teen, is one clear example of things gone bad for Indian kids in the American educational system.

The good news is Miranda comes from a strong Indian family. They care about her well-being as evidenced by Miranda's mother going to the school by 7:30 in the morning to see the principal. With this caring family, Miranda will learn to be strong from the insensitivity displayed by the mid-levels. When it comes to Native language, Miranda should be proud she learned and can speak her Native language.

Unfortunately, for many American Indians of my generation, we were not afforded the ability to learn our Native languages. Unfortunately, the language was beaten out of our grandparents by school officials, who felt it better if we did not learn it.

Fortunately, for the United States of America, the Navajo code talkers were able to retain their language and they helped to win World War II.

That is the irony of Native language. The very languages that were seen as evil - or bad - helped to save the nation.

Today, we say: "Rest in peace, Navajo Code Talker Jimmie Begay", your battles are over; and we pray for Miranda to prosper, your battles have just begun.

posted February 4, 2012 8:00 am est

http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com/on-...ll-player.html

[gazhekwe]

Meeting Set to Discuss Healing of Menominee Student Suspended for Speaking Native Language

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Challenges

SHAWANO, WISCONSIN - This morning the family of twelve year old Miranda Washinawatok, Menominee, tribal, church and school officials will meet to discuss the next steps in the healing process at Sacred Heart Catholic School.

The meeting is being arranged after two weeks of hurt and confusion over Miranda being benched from playing basketball for one game. Miranda was benched for saying the Menominee word "posoh" that means "hello" and said "Ketapanen" in Menominee that means "I love you" while talking with a fellow classmate.

Miranda is an honor roll student, who does not have a history of disciplinary problems at school. Her mother said Miranda is very mature, respectful and typically a quiet girl, who has a competitive edge to her. In addition to being a basketball player, Miranda is the team captain on a volleyball team, who plays the whole game because she never gets substituted.

As the result of speaking in Menominee, she was scolded and embarrassed when her teacher came up to her and slammed her hand down on a desk and said: "You are not to speak like that! How do I know you're not saying something bad? How would you like it if I spoke in Polish and you didn't understand?"

As the result, Miranda was suspended for one basketball game on the night the classroom incident occurred.

Who made this suspension decision is in dispute. The blame game commenced once Miranda's mother, Tanaes Washinawatok, began making inquiries just before game time. Teachers blamed the coaching staff and vice versa.

“We were promised a public apology for the racist comment,” commented Tanaes Washinawatok to the Native News Network late Sunday afternoon, as she talked about today's upcoming meeting.

“The meeting is about how we can move forward and satisfy the situation,” she continued.

“The school failed miserably in its handling of the matter,” commented Deacon Ray DuBois, communication director for the Diocese of Green Bay. “The number one priority is to help this girl.”

He said the Diocese of Green Bay does not prohibit the usage of Menominee or any language while at school.

“I hope something good can come out of this bad situation,” continued DeBois. “Perhaps, this can be a wake-up call for people.”

Sacred Heart is located in a small town located six miles from the Menominee Tribe Indian Reservation in central Wisconsin. It has approximately 64 American Indian students out of 102 students who attend there. The Catholic School is operated by the Diocese of Green Bay.

“Last night an uncle held a sweat lodge with others to pray for Miranda,”said Tanaes Washinawatok, who said she appreciates all the kind comments and prayers the family is receiving. “They prayed for healing for the situation.”Chairman Randall Chevalier of the Menominee Tribe is scheduled to attend the meeting.

posted February 6, 2012 6:30 am est

[gazhekwe]

There’s no need to keep one’s eyes peeled for tonight’s lunar phenomenon—it will be in your face with the luminescent Snow Moon, so named by the Algonquin.

Every tribe has names for the moon, a different one for each month in many cases. With Earth’s satellite changing shape and color in the sky almost daily, and its lighting and position varying month by month, it’s not surprising that the orb has earned many monikers.

“The tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full moon,” the Farmers’ Almanac states. “Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred.”

Tonight Mother Earth will bask in the full glow of the Snow Moon, which according to the Farmers’ Almanac earned the designation because of what is usually happening on the Algonquins’ traditional turf, the territory stretching from the Great Lakes through what is known today as the northeastern United States.

“Some tribes also referred to it as the Full Hunger Moon or Little Famine Moon, since harsh weather conditions in their areas made hunting very difficult,” the Farmers’ Almanac says. “Forced to gnaw on bones and sip bone marrow soup for sustenance, the Cherokee named it the Full Bony Moon.”

The Algonquin name may have the world abuzz, but it is just one of dozens of tribal names for the February moon. Some samples are below, thanks to the site AmericanIndian.net, which actually lists the Algonquin name for February moon as wapicuummilcum, or Ice in River Is Gone.

Other tribal February moon names, according to the site: the Abenaki call it piaôdagos, Makes Branches Fall in Pieces Moon; the Anishnaabe [[Chippewa, Ojibwe), from the Great Lakes, named it the Sucker Moon, or namebini-giizis. The Apache had a cheerier epithet, Frost Sparkling in the Sun, while the Assiniboine called it Long Dry Moon, and the Choctaw nicknamed it hotvlee-hv’see, or Wind Moon. Back in the wintry realm, the Comanche of the southern plains called it positsu mua, Sleet Moon, while the Canadian Cree of the northern plains called it the Old Moon. Up north in Alaska it’s known as cepizun, or Old Moon, among the Haida, while the Hopi call it powamuya, Moon of Purification and Renewal.

On a more pessimistic note, the Kalapuya of the Pacific Northwest, in what is today Oregon, called it atchiulartadsh, Out of Food. Cannapopa wi was the name given the moon by the Lakota of the northern plains, Moon When the Trees Crack Because of the Cold.

One name unlikely to surface soon is 51st State, USA, Republican Presidential hopeful Newt Gringrich’s vow to colonize the moon notwithstanding.
Tonight’s abnormally springlike temperatures will not deter the Snow Moon from shining brightly, however. Stay tuned for the full brilliance starting at 4:54 p.m. EST [[2154 GMT), according to Space.com. The moon has been blazing since yesterday and will continue into tomorrow night, but tonight is the actual full moon, Space.com said.

“The full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky all night long,” Space.com said, quoting a February 2012 skywatching guide written by contributor and astronomer Geoff Gaherty.

Read more:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...#ixzz1ljQnp4PP

[gazhekwe]

The 1887 Dawes Act: The U.S. Theft of 90 Million Acres of Indian Land

Steven Newcomb, Feb. 8 2012

In his Executive Order declaring November 2011 “Native American Heritage Month,” U.S. President Barack Obama said that his administration “recognizes the painful chapters in our shared history.” As a key part of that history, today marks the 125th year since the U.S. Congress passed the Dawes General Allotment Act in 1887.

Under that allotment legislation, for which there was no legitimate constitutional basis, Indian land holdings dropped from 138 million acres down to 48 million acres, for a loss to Indian nations of some 90 million acres of land. During a period of 47 years under the Act, some 60 percent of all Indian lands at that time are characterized as having passed to the United States, thereby resulted in tremendous boost to the economic growth of the U.S. economy.

Designed as part of a divide-and-conquer policy, the Allotment Act divided the total acreage of Indian reservation lands into 40, 80 or 160 acre parcels [[a head of family would receive 160 acres, a single person or orphan over 18 years would receive 80 acres, and persons under the age of 18 would receive 40 acres). Reservation lands left over were designated ‘surplus’ lands and sold off to non-Indian ‘settlers.’

Clearly, allotment was a massive grab of Indian lands by the United States, but a key goal of the policy was to destroy the integrity of Indian nations by assimilating Indian people into the body politic of the United States. It was an effort to make Indian peoples no longer understand themselves as nations, and an effort to cut their cultural connections to their traditional lands.

During his first inaugural address, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt stated his view that the Allotment Act was “a mighty pulverizing machine intended to break up the tribal mass.”

Roosevelt was the same president who stated the racist view that “it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.” Behind allotment was the desire to dominate and exploit Indian lands and resources.

In 1886, one year prior to the Allotment Act, President Grover Cleveland delivered his annual address to both houses Congress. He spoke of “the management of Indian affairs,” and “the accomplishment of an object which has become pressing in its importance—the more rapid transition from tribal organization to [U.S.] citizenship, of such portions of the Indians as are capable of civilized life.”

Cleveland also expressed his view that the Indians’ inclination, long fostered by a defective system of control, is to cling to the habits and customs of their ancestors and struggle with persistence against the change of life which their altered circumstances press upon them. But barbarism and civilization cannot live together. It is impossible that such incongruous conditions should coexist on the same soil.

President Cleveland further said that the paths “in which they [the Indians] should walk must be clearly marked for them and they must be led or guided until they are familiar with the way and competent to assume the duties and responsibilities of our [U.S.] citizenship.”

In his 1987 law review article, “Constitution, Courts, Indian Tribes,” law professor Milner S. Ball said the Allotment Act’s purpose was “to do away with tribes and assimilate their number into the states.”

Ball further stated that there was “no constitutional basis for Allotment Act and its aftermath. Non-Indian desire for Indian land, for minerals, and for the Christianization-Americanization of Indians prevailed,” said Ball.

Eroding Indian nationhood by imposing U.S. citizenship on Indian people—despite Indian nations being completely outside the framework of the U.S. Constitution—and working toward the dispossession of Indian nations for the economic benefit of the United States were the main rationales behind the Allotment Act.

Indian Country is still dealing with the aftermath of the Dawes Allotment Act. Indian nations are making present day efforts to reacquire portions of their traditional territories under the Wheeler-Howard Act of June 18, 1934. Otherwise known as the Indian Reorganization Act [[IRA), it created a legislative framework whereby American Indians could organize themselves as “federally recognized Indian tribes” and reacquire additional lands.

Although the IRA was supposed to remedy some of the dire results of the General Allotment Act, the U.S. government is now able to presume that such federally recognized tribes no longer possess the free and independent nationhood status of their ancestors. This is because Indian Tribes organized under the IRA are legislatively presumed to exist, according to the wording of the IRA, ‘under the jurisdiction of the United States.’

Steven Newcomb [[Shawnee/Lenape) is the co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery [[Fulcrum, 2008), and a columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network.

Read more:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...#ixzz1lwBUbK2f

[gazhekwe]

Menominee 7th Grader's Mother Calls for School Staff to be Disciplined

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Challenges.

SHAWANO, WISCONSIN - Tanaes Washinawatok, the mother of Miranda, wants something more from the Sacred Heart Catholic Academy than an apology. She is not happy on how the matter has been handled this far.

Seventh grader Miranda, who was publically reprimanded on January 19th for speaking in Menominee, her Native language, with two other students who are Menominee. They were talking to each other when Miranda told her how to say "Hello" and "I love you" in Menominee.

Because of how things unfolded that day, Miranda was suspended from playing in a basketball game later the same evening. The basketball game forever lost to Miranda and her parents was the "parents' recognition" game.

“Three weeks after this incident, I am probably more angry and hurt than I was right after it happened,” stated Washinawatok to the Native News Network in an interview on Wednesday evening. "I don't think it was handled properly. I think we were lied to about how things happened. We were promised a public apology and that never happened. The principal put a letter in the teacher's file, and I was told there would be no further reprimands for the staff involved and no public apology."

Late Thursday afternoon, the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay which operates Sacred Heart said it would not comment on what further actions will be taken against the school personnel, until further investigation of the circumstances.

This week alone, there have been eight hours of meetings that have involved family members, school personnel and diocesan officials. Miranda and her mother participated in a three hour meeting on Monday.

Yesterday, family representative Richie Plas spent five hours with officials that the diocesan offices in Green Bay discussing how to move forward in a positive way that would allow respect for American Indian students in the schools operated by the diocese.

“I am waiting for more information on what further disciplinary actions will be taken,” said Tanaes Washinawatok on Thursday evening to the Native News Network.

The story of Miranda has received tremendous attention from readers from all around the globe.

“We have received emails, facebook messages and letters from all seven continents in support of Miranda,” stated Karen Washinawatok, Miranda's grandmother, who is the director of the Language and Culture Commission of the Menominee Tribe.

posted February 10, 2012 6:00 pm est

Gazhekwe here: It has been my concern that, with no teacher action, the teachers who "got upset" over the incident will feel they have been treated unfairly because of student and parent complaints. They could continue to treat the students unfairly, in retaliation for their unpleasant experience over this. I would like to see faculty education about the Menominee language and culture and how important it is to the students. Work toward faculty acceptance of the language and culture of the dominant group in the area. The student body is 60% Menominee, so it is way past time for this.

[gazhekwe]

Short Handed Breakaway Goal by Alex Mason, Menominee, Detroit Lakes High School

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygNvD...layer_embedded

Here he is talking about Grass Dancing and life on White Earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lIin...yer_embedded#!

[gazhekwe]

This Day in the Maya Calendar

Cholq'ij, the Maya sacred ceremonial calendar of 260 days—a cycle of 20 Day deities and 13 numbers—is the basis of the Maya spirituality that survives to this time, practiced daily among millions of Maya people, in thousands of communities. The interpretation of the days can vary from one Maya people to another. The interpretations given here are based on sustained conversations and participation over three decades with Maya Q'eqchi calendar priest Roderico Teni and daykeeping families in the area of Cobán, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, by Jose Barreiro [[Taíno), head of NMAI’s Office of Latin America, and his wife, Katsi Cook [[Mohawk).

For more background to this series, please see Jose's introduction, "Living in the Practice." For further insight into the role of the Day lords in everyday life, please see the Maya Journal. For the complete year so far, please see the Maya calendar archive.

5 Toj | Tuesday, February 14, 2012



Corresponding with this day in the Gregorian calendar is 5 Toj. Toj is the mystic Fish; it is the tear of jade and drops of rain, water falling. Toj is a day of making even. 5 is one hand. Toj is a good day to pay your spiritual and financial debts, and to collect what you are owed. It is a day of evenness for a family, a good day for parents to pay the family's debt to el Mundo, good for the oldest son to appreciate the father and the father to appreciate the mountain. Illness can be deviated from the family by making ceremonial offering on this day.

This day's Maya calendar glyph represents Toj.
Glyphs representing the Day lords appear throughout Maya County.

Yesterday was a good day for romance:




Corresponding with this day in the Gregorian calendar is 4 Anil. Anil is the fertility in the seed; Anil is Rabbit. 4 is a sacred number and powerful balance. Anil is the four colors of corn—red, white, yellow, black—the seed of life that is the unity of the world. Anil is renewal after death, regeneration of the earth. Anil people are four-directions people and can be good travelers. This is a day of coming back, a day to generate and appreciate abundance, a day of declaring love to create a new relationship, a day to announce the wish to do business, a day of finding lost things, a day to ask for help in overcoming shyness.

This day's Maya calendar glyph represents Anil.
Glyphs representing the Day lords appear throughout Maya County.

http://blog.nmai.si.edu/main/2012/02...2-10-2012.html

[gazhekwe]

The Dawes Act of February 8, 1887, Stealing a hundred million acres of land, ​Part I of III [You cannot imagine how sick this history makes me, every time I read about it--Gazhekwe]

Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts [[1816–1903) was a firm believer in the civilizing power of private property. He once said that to be civilized one must “wear civilized clothes, cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property.”

His faith in that premise was so strong that he sponsored federal legislation in the 1880s to “civilize” Indians by giving them individual allotments of land. The consequences were disastrous. His legislation broke up communally owned tribal land that had guaranteed every tribal member a home and almost destroyed Indian communities, traditions and culture. It dispossessed Indian nations of almost a million acres of the land that had sustained them since time immemorial. It also opened up Indian land for white European settlers eager to fulfill the mandates of Manifest Destiny—a 19th century belief rooted in the Christian Doctrine of Discovery that American citizens had a God-given right [[and obligation) to possess all the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

February 8 marks the 125th anniversary of the passage of the General Allotment Act—commonly known then and now as the Dawes Act. The Dawes Act was one of the most effective implementations of the colonial and imperialist strategy against Indigenous Peoples of divide-and-conquer—a strategy that combines political, military and economic tactics to gain power over another power by breaking it up into individual units that are powerless to resist domination. It was also an act of lawfare—a relatively new term for an old phenomenon: warfare by legal means.

It makes “what was illegal legal,” according to Philip Giraldi, a writer and former CIA military intelligence officer. Giraldi defines lawfare as “using the law itself to subvert existing constitutional arrangements and, ironically, to undermine legal restraints.”

As an example of making the illegal legal, Giraldi cites what John Yoo and Jay Bybee, lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration, did when they issued legal judgments supporting torture. The Dawes Act subverted the Constitution’s acknowledgement of the sovereignty of Indian tribes and violated the federal government’s trust responsibility “to protect tribal treaty rights, lands, assets and resources.” Because of the Dawes Act, tribally owned land decreased from 138 million acres in 1887 to 48 million acres in 1934. It was a land-grab on a massive, almost unimaginable scale.

The Dawes Act was the culmination of decades of efforts by the federal government to remove and relocate Indian nations from their ancestral homelands as the tide of European settlement in America moved from the Northeast to the South and West. At the same time, the intent to “civilize” Indigenous Peoples by forced assimilation included pushing Indian children into brutal boarding schools and the banning of indigenous religion, language and cultural practices.

In the 1866 annual report of the commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior, Dawes said he wanted the government to “put [the Indian] on his own land, furnish him with a little habitation, with a plow, and a rake, and show him how to go to work to use them.… The only way [to civilize the Indian] is to lead him out into the sunshine, and tell him what the sunshine is for, and what the rain comes for, and when to put his seed in the ground.” The General Allotment Act passed the following year.

It applied to all Indian nations with a few exceptions. The act did not apply to “the territory occupied by the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Osage, Miamies and Peorias, and Sacs and Foxes, in the Indian Territory, nor to any of the reservations of the Seneca Nation of New York Indians in the State of New York, nor to that strip of territory in the State of Nebraska adjoining the Sioux Nation on the south added by executive order.”

The Dawes Act gave the president of the United States the right to dissolve “any reservation created for [Indians’] use, either by treaty stipulation or by virtue of an act of Congress or executive order” if in his “opinion” it would be “advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes.” The president could then “allot” the land to individual Indians living there. The head of a family would receive 160 acres, a single person or orphan over 18 years would receive 80 acres, and boys under the age of 18 would receive 40 acres. Married Indian women were not entitled to receive allotments. The allotments would be held in “trust” by the federal government for 25 years, and then turned over to the individual allotment holder, who would hold the title free and clear, but would now have to pay taxes on the land. The twist of the knife here was that many Indian people lost their allotments because they couldn’t afford to pay those taxes.

Indians who were eligible for allotments had four years to select their land; after that period, the Secretary of the Interior or his agents would select the land for them. All allottees who abandoned tribal life for “civilized life” were to be “rewarded” with U.S. citizenship. But the breakup of reservations and expropriation of Indian lands left very little “tribal or other property” for individual Indians to claim a right to. Any “surplus” land—all the land not allotted to individual Indians—would be “held by the United States for the sole purpose of securing homes to actual settlers.”

Land expropriation and assimilation became the federal government’s policy toward the Indigenous Peoples for the next 50 years.

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan expressed the intent of federal policy in his annual report to the Interior Secretary for 1889. “The Indians must conform to the white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it and must either conform to it or be crushed by it.”

The next year, Morgan reiterated the federal government’s policy toward Indians in his annual report. “It has become the settled policy of the government to break up reservations, destroy tribal relations, settle Indians upon their own homesteads, incorporate them into the national life, and deal with them not as nations or tribes or bands, but as individual citizens,” he wrote.

The “civilizing power” of the Dawes Act did not extend so far as to provide Indian people with documentation of their allotments. The act mandated the “special agents” in charge of the reservations to make only two copies of the allotment certification—one for the Indian office and the other for the Interior Secretary.



Real estate poster, 1911



Read more: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...08/96582-96582

[gazhekwe]

THE RESISTANCE
The Dawes Act provoked a campaign of resistance known as the Snake Rebellion, which was led by Chitto Harjo, a citizen of the Muscogee [[Creek) Nation. The Snake Rebellion ultimately failed to stop the dispossession of Indian lands, but it forged a “spirit of collective political activism” that still inspires Indigenous Peoples today.

From around 1898 until 1909, Harjo led a group of dissident Creeks who opposed the allotment of Creek land, insisting that the federal government honor the original removal treaties made between the United States and the Creeks in the 1830s. The federal government signed those treaties in response to pressure from white European settlers moving into the South who were eager to acquire Indian lands.

Most of the treaties were drawn up under the guidance of Andrew Jackson, America’s seventh president and its most famous Indian fighter [[and killer). As a result of the treaties, the United States gained control over three quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. The area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations, who were known as the Five Civilized Tribes. This was a period of voluntary Indian migration, but only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new lands. But when the Southeastern nations resisted, Jackson forced them to leave.

Jackson created the Indian Removal Act of 1830, America’s legalized form of ethnic cleansing. Within seven years the Indian Removal Act had relocated 46,000 Indigenous Peoples from the lands east of the Mississippi and opened up 25 million acres of land “to white settlement and to slavery,” according to a PBS Resource Bank on the companion website for the series Africans in America. The Cherokee people called their relocation journey the Trail of Tears, because it took a devastating toll on them. The refugees faced hunger, disease and exhaustion on this forced march and more than 4,000 of 15,000 Cherokees died. [Note: Many of The Potawatomi of southern Michigan were removed to Kansas and Oklahoma through the 1830s courtesy of this Act. -- Gazhekwe]

The Indian Removal Act stemmed in part from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Johnson v. M’Intosh [[1823), a ruling based on the 15th century Christian Doctrine of Discovery that allowed European nations to subjugate or kill non-Christian populations in lands the Europeans “discovered.” The high-court ruling said that the title of land, which had been “discovered and conquered,” belonged to the conquering nation and the Indigenous Peoples of the land had only a “right of occupancy.”

In an 1832 treaty, which Harjo insisted be honored, the leadership of the Muscogee Confederacy exchanged the last of its ancestral homelands in the present states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina for new lands in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma. “But for the majority of Muscogee people the process of severing ties to a land they felt so much a part of proved impossible. The U.S. Army enforced the removal of more than 20,000 Muscogee to Indian Territory in 1836 and 1837,” the PBS site reports.

When Congress passed an amendment to the Dawes Act in 1898 to mandate allotments of the collectively held lands to which the Creeks and other tribes had been moved, Harjo took action and organized opposition among members of the Five Civilized Tribes to allotment and the dissolution of traditional tribal governments.

Members of the resistance movement were called Crazy Snakes after a mistranslation of Harjo’s name, according to Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee. “Hajo or Harjo is the title of a Muscogee Warrior Society,” Suzan Shown Harjo said. “Harjo is wrongly translated as ‘crazy,’ when it really is a combination name—Magic [[Enchanted, Fixated) in Battle and Brave Beyond Words—much as the Crazy in Crazy Horse’s name doesn’t mean crazy. The reason there are so many people named Harjo is that many warriors and many other Muscogee and other people of the Muscogee Confederacy took Harjo as a personal name and as a sign of resistance during removal.” Asked if she is a relation of Chitto Harjo, Suzan Shown Harjo replied, “We all usually say yes to the relative question, and Chitto Harjo certainly is the political ancestor of most Muscogee peoples.”

Beginning in 1900, Chitto Harjo tried various strategies to stop the allotment process. He led a delegation to Washington, D.C. to lobby the president to uphold the 1832 treaty. He led a rebellion of dissident Hickory Ground [a Creek town in Alabama] Creeks to establish an independent government. He was also elected Creek chief and made an eloquent speech before a select Senate committee in 1906.

“My ancestors and my people were the inhabitants of this great country from 1492,” he said. “I mean by that from the [time the] white man first came to this country until now. It was my home and the home of my people from time immemorial and is today, I think, the home of my people.… Away back in that time—1492—there was a man by the name of Columbus came from across the great ocean, and he discovered this country for white man—this country which was at that time the home of my people. What did he find when he first arrived here? Did he find a white man standing on this continent then, or did he find a white man or a black man standing on this continent? I stood here first and Columbus first discovered me.”

There are various accounts of an incident known as the Smoked Meat Rebellion in 1909 when Chitto Harjo was wounded. By that time the rebellion against allotment that he led had been defeated by the U.S. military. Chitto Harjo’s wound eventually led to his death two years later.

There is no disputing the devastating effect of removal on Indigenous Peoples. The Cheyenne and Muscogee Nations lost tens of thousands of acres of land by way of the Dawes Act, Suzan Shown Harjo said.

“Like other nations, the insidious act stole land in two ways. First, it detribalized tribal treaty lands, turning less than one-third over to individual tribal people and giving away much of the rest to non-Native land-rushers. Second, it let the federal and state governments and private banks and other vulture capitalists pick off lands from Native allottees, who did not know they had to pay land taxes, for nonpayment of taxes.”

These actions were almost as devastating for the people as being wrenched from their homelands, she said: “Removal and Dawes were born of greed and intended to break the spirit of Native peoples. While they caused incalculable damage, the miracle is that they didn’t break our spirit.”

Read more:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/02/13/part-2-the-dawes-act-started-the-u-s-land-grab-of-indian-territory-97157#ixzz1mbOcclPz

[gazhekwe]

Part 3: The Dawes Act Started the U.S. Land-Grab of Indian Territory

By Gale Courey Toensing

February 15, 2012

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 [[IRA), which authorized the Secretary of the Interior to restore and acquire lands for Indian nations, was a shot at redemption by descendants of the white European settler colonists who had arrived more than 300 years earlier and stole land in what became the United States of America.

The IRA was signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 18, 1934, and was considered the Indian New Deal. The act was initiated by John Collier, the Bureau of Indian Affairs’s [[BIA) reformist commissioner from 1933 to 1945, who proposed sweeping reforms to the federal Indian policies. “For nearly 300 years white Americans, in our zeal to carve out a nation made to order, have dealt with the Indians on the erroneous, yet tragic, assumption that the Indians were a dying race—to be liquidated,” he wrote in his annual report for 1938. “We took away their best lands; broke treaties, promises; tossed them the most nearly worthless scraps of a continent that had once been wholly theirs. But we did not liquidate their spirit. The vital spark which kept them alive was hardy.”

The IRA was designed to reverse the devastating effects of the Dawes Act. In the 47 years between the enacting of the Dawes Act and the IRA, the allotment policy drastically decreased tribally owned land. The IRA put an end to the practice of allotment and authorized the Secretary of the Interior “to restore to tribal ownership the remaining surplus lands of any Indian reservation heretofore opened, or authorized to be opened, to sale, or any other form of disposal by presidential proclamation, or by any of the public land laws of the United States.” Not only was the secretary mandated to restore Indian lands, he was also authorized to acquire new tribal lands. “The Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to acquire through purchase, relinquishment, gift, exchange, or assignment, any interest in lands, water rights or surface rights to lands, within or without existing reservations, including trust or otherwise restricted allotments whether the allottee be living or deceased, for the purpose of providing lands for Indians.”

Seventy-five years after the IRA was enacted, the momentum of American politics switched again, and the good done by the IRA is gradually being undone. On February 24, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Carcieri v. Salazar which says the Secretary of the Interior does not have the authority to take land into trust for tribes that were not “now under federal jurisdiction” when the IRA was enacted. The ruling didn’t define “under federal jurisdiction” but interpreted the word “now” to mean then—1934—as opposed to “as of now.” The Carcieri ruling has frozen hundreds of land-into-trust applications and has spawned federal lawsuits that could potentially threaten Indian land rights throughout the country.

Since 1934, the BIA has restored millions of acres of land to tribes and acquired new tribal lands. According to the BIA website, the federal government now holds approximately 56.2 million acres in trust for various Indian tribes and individuals, including a 1.32-acre parcel in California where the Pit River Tribe’s cemetery is located. Some reservations are the remnants of a tribe’s original land base; others were created to resettle Indian people who were ethnically cleansed from their aboriginal homelands. Some federally recognized tribes have no reservation. And the injustice of the federal government’s actions regarding Indian land rights didn’t stop with its blatant expropriation of Indian land. More recently, the federal government has also benefited from the use and abuse of resources on Indian lands. The late Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana, won her 15-year-long legal battle against the federal government for its failure to account for billions of dollars in royalties owed to more than 300,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives. The $3.4 billion settlement is the largest class-action settlement against the government in the history of the country.

Mashpee Wampanoag Chairman Cedric Cromwell calls the Carcieri ruling “the modern-day Dawes Act.” The Carcieri ruling was a “terrible, terrible misguided mistake,” he says. “The Carcieri decision is the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty since the General Allotment Act and opens the possibility of condemning tribes to live with the benighted Indian policies of the 19th century and it raises the specter of two classes of tribes, with one class permanently deprived of land,” Cromwell says.

Despite being one of the first people to greet the European settlers in the early 17th century, the Mashpee Tribe was not federally acknowledged until 2007, so it is affected by the Carcieri ruling. “Along with other recently reaffirmed tribes, we are the ones who need land the most so we can begin to provide economically for our people,” Cromwell says. Land, he insists, is fundamentally important to Indian tribes. “We have always been, and today continue to be, land based cultures—communities inextricably connected to the soil, water, and air around us, to the plants and animals that ensure our survival, and to the places we call home. In our view, our lands hold much more than mere economic value but rather have great cultural, religious, and—in the modern era, especially—political significance. Our lands are where we live, where we gather together, and where we exercise our inherent sovereign rights as pre-Constitutional peoples.”

Mashpee was one of the first tribes to experience the effects of Dawes’s theory that private property ownership “civilizes” people. When Dawes sponsored the General Allotment Act, he was putting forward a strategy to break up Indian nations by dispossessing them of their land that had already proven successful with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe under a Massachusetts state law.

As part of the Wampanoag Confederacy, the Mashpee Wampanoags had a vast aboriginal territory—approximately 55 square miles from Cape Cod to the Narragansett Bay in present-day Rhode Island to the Merrimack River near Gloucester, Massachusetts. But state legislation enacted in 1842—a precursor to the federal Dawes Act—provided for 60-acre allotments to be given to individual members as privately owned taxable land that they could sell. Tribal members voted against the act twice in ballots seeking the tribe’s consent to the allotments, but in 1870 the act was implemented and each tribal member over the age of 18 received 60 acres of land—freely alienable and fully taxable. “Once communally held lands were made alienable, desperately poor tribal members would in short time lose their parcels,” Cromwell says. Today, the tribe owns only 140 acres of fee land [[or privately owned land) and not a single acre is held in trust by the federal government, Cromwell says.

Legislators in Congress and the Senate have promised to move a Carcieri “fix” forward during the current congressional session. Sen. Daniel Kahikina Akaka [[D-Hawaii) and Rep. Tom Cole [[R-Oklahoma) both have bills pending that would reaffirm the Interior Secretary’s authority to take land into trust for all federally acknowledged tribes. “As chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, I will exercise every legislative opportunity at my disposal to bring forward Indian country’s number-one priority: a Carcieri fix,” Akaka told Indian Country Today Media Network in November. Both men reiterated that a Carcieri fix is their top priority.

A Carcieri fix couldn’t come soon enough for the Mashpee Tribe, Cromwell says: “The lingering effect of the allotment of Mashpee tribal land is that by the 20th century those tribal members who had any homes at all were living in shacks among the mansions of the rich people. That’s if they had a home. Most of our people lost their homes and lands to taxation. The people couldn’t afford to live in their homeland anymore and they still can’t, which is why the dream of a tribal housing project is so important.”

Read more:

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/02/15/part-3-the-dawes-act-started-the-u-s-land-grab-of-indian-territory-97744#ixzz1mhFesALW

[gazhekwe]

• The Time Has Come to Raise the John T. Williams Memorial Totem Pole

• After many, many months of hard work, dedication, passion and prayers, the time has come to Raise the John T. Williams Memorial Totem Pole!! Please accept this invitation to join us in the carrying of the JTW Honor Pole along the Seattle waterfront and up Broad Street to the Seattle Center where the pole will be raised in honor and celebration! SCHEDULE OF EVENTS 10:00 am Gathering at Pier 57 Location: 1300 block of Alaskan Way. 11:00 am Processional carrying of the pole to Seattle Center Location: Along the waterfront and up Broad Street. 1:00 pm Raising of the Pole at Seattle Center Location: Seattle Center, south of the Experience Music Project building and east of the Space Needle, in the area bounded by Broad Street, Thomas Street and 4th and 5th Avenues North. 2:00 pm Ceremonial Program & Celebration of Gifting the Pole to City of Seattle 6:00 pm Candle Light Vigil by NATIVE B.R.I.D.G.E. GUESTS AND DIGNATARIES: >Master of Ceremonies Arlie Neskahi, Diné [[Navajo) >Tribal Leaders including Jack Thompson, Chief Councillor, Diditaht First Nations > City of Seattle Mayor McGinn > Seattle City Council Bruce Harrell > Millie Kennedy, Cindi Beech LaMar and Janice Brown, Ndns for Justice, and the Honorable Chairman Brian Cladoosby, Swinomish Tribal Community [[tentative) > Rick Williams, First Nations Carver >Jay Hollingsworth, JT Williams Organizing Committee > Tribal Leaders and other Special Guests > The Sacred Waters Canoe Family, the Tsimshian Haayuuk Dancers, and a variety of other cultural groups with sacred and ceremonial drumming, song, and blessings.

[gazhekwe]

Unlike the statement in Indian Country Today Media Network’s “Best Presidents for Indian country” story, it’s a bit easier identifying the “worst” presidents for Indian country. Five tend to stand out with the majority of the rest huddled together after that. Here are our nods to the presidents who did more harm than good for Native Americans while in office.

Andrew Jackson: A man nicknamed “Indian killer” and “Sharp Knife” surely deserves the top spot on a list of worst U.S. Presidents. Andrew Jackson "was a forceful proponent of Indian removal," according to PBS. Other descriptions of the seventh US President are less genteel.

“Andrew Jackson was a wealthy slave owner and infamous Indian killer, gaining the nickname ‘Sharp Knife’ from the Cherokee,” writes Amargi on the website Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory & Practice. “He was also the founder of the Democratic Party, demonstrating that genocide against indigenous people is a nonpartisan issue. His first effort at Indian fighting was waging a war against the Creeks. President Jefferson had appointed him to appropriate Creek and Cherokee lands. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Andrew Jackson recommended that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination. The Creeks lost 23 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama, paving the way for cotton plantation slavery. His frontier warfare and subsequent ‘negotiations’ opened up much of the southeast U.S. to settler colonialism.”
Jackson was not only a genocidal maniac against the Indigenous Peoples of the southwest, he was also racist against African peoples and a scofflaw who “violated nearly every standard of justice,” according to historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown. As a major general in 1818, Jackson invaded Spanish Florida chasing fugitive slaves who had escaped with the intent of returning them to their “owners,” and sparked the First Seminole War. During the conflict, Jackson captured two British men, Alexander George Arbuthnot and Robert C. Ambrister, who were living among the Seminoles. The Seminoles had resisted Jackson’s invasion of their land. One of the men had written about his support for the Seminoles’ land and treaty rights in letters found on a boat. Jackson used the “evidence” to accuse the men of “inciting” the Seminoles to “savage warfare” against the U.S. He convened a “special court martial” tribunal then had the men executed. “His actions were a study in flagrant disobedience, gross inequality and premeditated ruthlessness… he swept through Florida, crushed the Indians, executed Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and violated nearly every standard of justice,” Wyatt-Brown wrote.

In 1830, a year after he became president, Jackson signed a law that he had proposed – the Indian Removal Act – which legalized ethnic cleansing. Within seven years 46,000 indigenous people were removed from their homelands east of the Mississippi. Their removal gave 25 million acres of land “to white settlement and to slavery,” according to PBS. The area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole nations. In the Trail of Tears alone, 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands.

Dwight Eisenhower: President Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II hero who served as President from 1953 until 1961, was an early advocate of consultation. On August 15, 1953, he signed into law H.R. 1063, which came to be known as Public Act 280, because he believed it would help forward “complete political equality to all Indians in our nation.”

Public Act 280 transferred extensive criminal and civil jurisdiction in Indian country from the federal government to California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin and Alaska. Other states were allowed to opt in later. In a signing statement accompanying the bill, Eisenhower objected to certain sections because they allowed other states to impose HR 1063 on tribal nations, "removing the Indians from federal jurisdiction, and, in some instances, effective self-government" without requiring "full consultation." He recommended that Congress quickly pass an amendment requiring states to consult with the tribes and get federal approval before assuming jurisdiction on reservations.

The bad news is Eisenhower didn’t veto H.R. 1063. If he had, the devastating termination and relocation era would have been delayed and possibly stopped, according to Edward Charles Valandra in his book Not Without Our Consent: Lakota resistance to termination, 1950-59.

“Indeed, his veto could have stopped its passage. Arguably, had Eisenhower vetoed H.R. 1063, the termination program would have been effectively curtailed long enough for Native peoples to mobilize a preemptive campaign against further measures similar to H.R. 1063. At the very least, Native, state, and U.S. relations would have taken a much different course from what the Native population actually experienced,” Valandra wrote.
Although the termination era had its roots in the post World War II years and lasted through the 60s, it came under full steam during Eisenhower’s presidency. During that time, Congress “terminated” – withdrew federal acknowledgment from and the trust relationship with – 109 tribes and removed more than 1,365,000 acres of land from trust status. More than 13,260 people lost their tribal affiliation.
A writer on the Native American Netroots website sees the termination era as part of America’s Cold War battle against global communism, “Following World War II, the United States turned its energies into fighting communism. Indian reservations and policies which would allow Indians to determine their own futures were deemed communistic and the federal government set out once again to destroy [[terminate) Indian tribes and to ‘allow’ Indians to assimilate like other immigrants. Indian people and their tribal governments vigorously opposed these policies,” the writer says.President Richard Nixon ended the termination era in 1970 and introduced the “self-determination” era.


Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...#ixzz1n37X8ZJY

[gazhekwe]

George W. Bush: While George W. Bush was one of three presidents since 1995 to issue proclamations designating November as National American Indian Heritage Month, his understanding of tribal sovereignty is limited.

At the Unity: Journalists of Color Conference [[see video below) in 2004 when questioned by Mark Trahant, the then editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, about sovereignty in the 21^st century, Bush gave a muddled answer.

“Tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re… You’re a… you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity,” Bush stumbles through his answer. “And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.”

And sovereignty isn’t the only Native American issue Bush was unclear on during his presidency. A 2004 report titled “The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2004” by the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights details where the president fell short on civil rights for Native Americans.
“President Bush has acknowledged the great debt America owes to Native Americans. However, his words have not been matched with action,” the report states.

To back up its claims, the report details how Bush did not provide sufficient funding for tribal colleges and universities, and even proposed cutting $1.5 billion in funding for education programs that benefit Native Americans.

The report also detailed how the Bush administration provided inadequate funding for the Indian Health Service, funding it at $3.6 billion in 2004 when health needs in Indian country called for $19.4 billion.

Housing in Indian country wasn’t funded adequately by Bush either. He failed to provide enough funds to cover the cost of the 210,000 housing units that were needed.

The final point made by the commission was Bush’s termination of critical law enforcement programs, like the Tribal Drug Court Program.

Abraham Lincoln: The majority of the United States knows Lincoln as the president who “cannot tell a lie,” and as the leader of the Emancipation Proclamation. However, if you were to ask Native Americans their perception of the great president, the image would be much darker. Lincoln made no effort to work with Native Americans, instead he worked against them. When the Sioux demanded its $1.4 million they had been promised for the sale of 24 million acres of land, that had already started to be settled by whites, Lincoln did nothing. According to an article on the United Native America website, The Sioux revolted and Lincoln called upon General John Pope to handle the uprising. Pope began his campaign by saying, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made.”

Lincoln did not argue, the Indians were defeated, and Lincoln ultimately signed the fates of 38 Indian prisoners in Mankato, Minnesota according to Greatdreams.com/lies.htm. In Lincoln’s defense, 303 Indian men were sentenced to death, but Lincoln only signed for 38. On December 26, 1862 the largest mass execution in United States history took place, based on a cloud of doubt.
The Navajos were subjected to a similar situation as the Sioux, as were others. Lincoln followed his “American System” through battles in the Plains, South and Southwest crippling tribes and forcing them from their lands.
Before he was president, Lincoln was the attorney for the railroads, which in order to be completed, the Indian “situation” had to be taken care of—a belief Lincoln carried into office with him. His railroad connections according to United Native America would lead, not only to the attempted annihilation of the Indian, but to tremendous scandals in the administration of another of Lincoln’s war criminals, Ulysses S. Grant.
Author David A. Nichols when describing how Lincoln handled the conflicts with the Indians in The Other Civil War: Lincoln and the Indians addressed it by saying, “in his response to these crises, Lincoln was instrumental in determining the fate of Native Americans in the years following his death.”


Ulysses S. Grant: Grant made it on our ‘Best’ Presidents list as well. Mostly because his intentions were in the right place and something that hadn’t been seen in that time. But those good intentions can’t save him from the fact of the matter. Ultimately it was one word that sealed Grant’s fate for this list—reservations. His hopes to move Indians closer to white civilization by creating these “Native communities” backfired. They became a form of bad policy that did more harm than good by cutting ties for Native Americans to a vast area of land they had been used to occupying for hundreds of years. Reservations isolated Native Americans to an area that was and is taken advantage of by federal government administrations for years to come.

George Bush answers a question about sovereignty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdimK...yer_embedded#!


Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...#ixzz1n37X8ZJY

[highjinx]

gazhekwe: What a person of wisdom you are. But then, that seemingly was a trait of those in our area; we the tribe of archivers.

[gazhekwe]

Hi, highjinx! Welcome to the thread. I hope you find a lot to interest you. Since you have figured out who I am, you know one good reason I look smart, I have had a good while to acquire information.

[gazhekwe]

... as the teacher seeks to justify her actions by accusing Miranda Washinawatok of being disrespectful.

SHAWNO, WISCONSIN- It has been over a month since seventh grader Miranda Washinawatok was suspended from the parent recognition night basketball game for speaking in Menominee.

This week her mother, Tanaes Washinawatok, received four letters from four different people associated with the Sacred Heart Catholic School in this small town, located six miles south of the Menominee Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin.

“I was very disappointed,” said Tanaes Washinawatok.

The letters came from the Dr. Joseph Bound, director of education for the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay; Dan Minter, principal of Scared Heart; Billie Jo DeQuaine, assistant girls basketball coach and Julie L Gurta, teacher.

The Native News Network obtained copies of all four letters. Three of the letters were letters of apology.

The differing letter came from the teacher of Miranda, Miss Julie L Gurta. She is the one person who has direct contact with Miranda on a day to day basis. She did not offer an apology for slamming her hand on the desk and embarrassing the 12 year old for speaking her native language. She offered a letter of justification.

The letter differed in another way as well: Miss Gurta's letter was not written on official letterhead as were the other three letters. Her letter contained one paragraph that was 21 lines long.

Miss Gurta writes: "In an academic setting, a student must be respectful of all of the other students - language and behavior that creates a possibility of elitism, or simply excludes other students, can create or increase racial and cultural tensions."

Four weeks after the incident, Miranda's mother was told by the teacher that Miranda, who never has had a behavior problem in school and is an honor roll student, had behavior problems the day of the incident.

The only apology made in her letter was that she did not make Miranda's mother aware of them sooner.

Miss Gurta writes in the final sentence of her letter:

"Unfortunately, the actions of your daughter were not brought to your attention as quickly as they should have been, and for this I apologize."

“I do not consider her letter a proper apology at all.” said Tanaes Washinawatok.posted February 25, 2012 7:50 am est


http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com/men...s-miranda.html

Gazhekwe speaking -- Quite frankly, this teacher's attitude leaves much to be desired. She accuses a student of disrespect for speaking Menominee to another student, in a classroom which was likely at least half Menominee students, based on the student body of the school being over 60% Native American. If some students are speaking among themselves, it should not matter what language they are speaking, if they are not speaking to the class at large. Talking in class is a different issue entirely, and I notice the teacher did not cite that as the problem. It was the language they were speaking that caused her to react.

[gazhekwe]

[gazhekwe]

[gazhekwe]

[gazhekwe]

Major Tribal Self-Governance Bill Stuck in Political Quagmire

By Rob Capriccioso
February 27, 2012

WASHINGTON – Political games in the U.S. Congress are impacting a major piece of legislation that would promote tribal self-governance if signed into law.

The tribally-focused legislation was offered via an amendment to H.R. 7, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, by Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.V., in early February. The amendment would create a tribal transportation self-governance program at the U.S. Department of Transportation [[DOT). Under it, the department and tribes would be able to enter into funding agreements that authorize tribes to perform program activities and receive the funding on transportation-related projects.

Tribal advocates have pushed for such a program for decades, in order to strengthen their own control over transportation projects on their lands, while getting rid of some major federal bureaucracy impacting their communities.

“[M]y amendment would streamline the process and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy by reducing the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the process,” Rahall said in a statement. “In addition, because it allows Indian tribes to use their transportation funds in the best manner to meet the needs of their citizens, my amendment will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of limited transportation funds.”

The federal funding system for tribal transportation projects is currently set up as having the DOT provide funding to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for roads and bridges that provide access to or are within Indian communities. The BIA manages and performs all transportation duties, including construction of the roads and bridges.

Under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act [[ISDEAA), the BIA may enter into self-governance agreements allowing tribes to receive funding to perform the BIA’s transportation duties. And since 2005, the DOT has entered into agreements directly with tribes to perform the transportation duties that would be performed by the BIA.

However – of contention to tribal leaders – these agreements are not self-governance agreements subject to the terms of the ISDEAA, so tribes do not always have the protections offered under that law.

“Native America desperately needs economic development and jobs,” Rahall added. “Given the proven success of the tribal self-governance program, there is no better way to enhance transportation funds to create jobs in Indian country than by extending self-governance to the Department of Transportation.”

The amendment cleared a hurdle on February 2 when it was adopted during the markup of H.R. 7 by the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, on which Rahall serves as the ranking Democrat. Before passage, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, spoke in favor of the amendment, and no one on the committee raised any problems with it.

The final bill, including the tribal provisions, was reported out of the committee on February 3.

But then, like so many times before in the current session of Congress, a game of political football began, this time endangering the self-governance good that was within the reach of tribes. Far-right conservatives began saying that the overall $260 billion bill was too expensive, while Democrats and some moderate Republicans raised concerns that it would cut funding for public transportation, bike paths, and pedestrians.

Speaker of the House John Boehner was soon uncertain on whether he could get the 218 votes needed to get the bill passed. “Will it pass? For the good of the country, I sure hope so,” Boehner said during a February 9 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “But that’s not up to me, that’s up to the House.”

The Ohio Republican had made the legislation a priority and centerpiece of the House Republicans jobs agenda, so he had strong reason to broker a final bill. Later in the month, with passage still not guaranteed, tinkering began.

In a concession to conservatives Republicans, Boehner agreed to reduce the cost and the duration of the bill, senior aides were reported as saying. Still, his office portrayed the changes as a move to appease the Democratic-controlled Senate: “Given Senate Democrats’ unwillingness to pursue a longer-term infrastructure and energy plan, House Republican leaders are considering a revamped approach that would retain the speaker’s vision of linking infrastructure to expanded American energy production,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement.

What isn’t yet known is if the final brokerage will cost Indian country its self-governance. The bill’s final language is expected to be released around early March.

Read more: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...#ixzz1nb7x4u00

[gazhekwe]

From Tragedy Comes Beauty: Memorial Pole Erected for John T. Williams
By Richard Walker February 27, 2012

A storm of outrage ripped through Seattle after the shooting death of Ditidaht First Nation carver John T. Williams on August 30, 2010 by a city policeman. There were marches in the streets, angry demands for justice and an investigation by the police department. The officer resigned after he had been cleared of all criminal charges by the King County prosecutor’s office, and a U.S. Justice Department investigation found widespread use of excessive force by Seattle police, a report released in December 2011 said.On February 26, a 34-foot totem pole was raised at Seattle Center, near the city’s famous Space Needle.

Through it all, Williams’s brother, Rick, was a standard-bearer for peace. He devoted his time to creating a monument to his brother that will, after the players in this drama are long gone, tell of what happened in Seattle in 2010, how an injustice brought people together. “Anger doesn’t serve anything,” Williams said one chilly December morning on the Seattle waterfront. “They took something beautiful from my family. I want to give something beautiful back.”

The John T. Williams Totem Pole Project features the main totem pole that was carried from Waterfront Park to Seattle Center and raised at a spot between the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project. Jay Westwind Wolf Hollingsworth, Mohegan, chairman of the project organizing committee, said a minimum of 64 people will be needed to carry the pole; according to the Seattle Times, 90 people lent a hand on Sunday. Some of the volunteers carried stands that the pole could be set on during rest periods, and helped raise the pole using ropes. According to Williams, ten chiefs had committed to attend. A second memorial pole carved by Williams family members and others will be erected later at Seattle’s Victor Steinbrueck Park, northwest of the famous Pike Place Market; a third pole will be erected at a site yet to be determined.

John T. Williams was intimately familiar with the streets his poles will loom over. His ancestors were too; his family has been in the Seattle area since the early 1900s, Rick Williams said. It’s fitting that the Native imagery of the main pole was be carried down these streets, home to Native peoples now and since time immemorial, a history and a future that cannot be erased with a bullet.

On that August day in 2010, John T. Williams was crossing the street at Boren Avenue and Howell Street, carrying a piece of wood and a carving knife with three-inch blade. Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk saw Williams, pulled his patrol car over, then walked toward the carver and yelled at him to put down the knife. A few seconds later, Birk opened fire, fatally shooting Williams four times.

John T. Williams

Birk testified that Williams ignored his command and took an aggressive posture, and that he considered Williams to be a threat. Williams’s family says John was hard of hearing, a result of living on the streets, and had a history of alcoholism.

A police review board ruled the shooting unjustified, Birk resigned from the force, and the city agreed to pay the Williams family a $1.5 million settlement.

Seattle city officials, among them Mayor Mike McGinn, supported Rick Williams’s idea of a memorial pole to honor his brother and arranged for him to have free use of Waterfront Park to carve the poles. The cedar tree that was felled and donated by Manke Lumber Company yielded the logs for the memorial totem pole and the two other memorial poles that will be dedicated later. Williams, his son Eagleson, and two other carvers started carving the poles in March 2011 at Seattle Center, which is owned by the city, and the project moved to Waterfront Park in April due to construction of a museum.
Williams, who owns a home in the Cascade foothills town of Concrete, Washington, 95 miles northeast of Seattle, lived in a construction trailer on the carving site until the project finished. That trailer was a four-minute walk from Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, which first sold his grandfather’s totems and other carvings a century ago. When he wasn’t carving on-site and talking to visitors about his brother, he worked on commission on four house posts for the salmon bake house at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, the intertribal cultural center at Discovery Park in Seattle operated by the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation.

Visitors regularly post comments and photos to the project’s Facebook page, which as of press-time had 2,795 likes. All have been touched by the symbols of healing and peace that are emerging from this tragedy. “I saw the pole and heard John’s story today for the first time,” wrote Heather Burns, a native of Akron, Ohio now living in Port Townsend, Washington. “Thank you for transcending the injustice of his death with this powerful tribute.”

Rick Williams

Hollingsworth, who lives in Seattle, said Rick Williams has a dozen spiral-bound notebooks that have been signed and filled with messages from visitors from all over the world. “Everybody’s totally amazed,” he said of response to the memorial totem pole. “Visitors have been sympathetic and empathetic toward the Williamses for their loss. It’s been uplifting to see that they care.”

An interpretive display at the carving site explains the figures on the John T. Williams Memorial Totem Pole.

• Top: Eagle. “The Eagle flies the highest and sees the farthest, so he takes the perch at the top of the pole.”
• Middle: Master Carver. “This is a Williams family symbol handed down through seven generations of woodcarvers. This master carver is John T. Williams displaying his own signature totem, which features the Kingfisher and the Salmon. This carving, at the age of 15, made John a master carver in the Ditidaht First Nation, in British Columbia.” According to the interpretive display, John T. Williams’s works, and other Williams family pieces, are displayed all over Seattle, at the White House and in the Smithsonian. At this writing, early John T. Williams carvings are being sold on eBay for $8,500.
• Bottom: Raven Mother and Baby. “The Raven watches and nurtures us, making up the foundation of the totem.”

Dennis Underwood, Stz’uminus First Nation, a cousin of the Williamses who helped carve the memorial totem pole, said he hopes the memorial totem pole will prove that “something good can come out of something bad.” He said working on the pole was healing for him. “I took out my frustration with the justice system in a positive way,” he said.

There are two ways people can help defray expenses associated with the John T. Williams Memorial Totem Pole Project—and be a part of history. Donations will be used to establish a fund to ensure the memorial totem pole’s perpetual care by the city of Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.
For a charitable contribution of $250, a granite tile will be engraved with the donor’s name and a short message, Hollingsworth said. Tiles will be placed on the plaza around the pole at Seattle Center. Visit TheJTWProject.org.
The Potlatch Fund is accepting donations for the memorial totem pole project. Write to the Potlatch Fund, John T. Williams Memorial Totem Pole Project, 801 Second Avenue, Suite 304, Seattle, Washington, 98104.


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[gazhekwe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGkW0...ature=youtu.be

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Miranda's Mother Calls for Removal 3 Members of School Staff

Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Challenges.

SHAWANO, WISCONSIN - Tanaes Washinawatok, the mother of seventh grader, Miranda, who was suspended for one basketball game for speaking "I Love You" in Menominee, is asking the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay to remove the principal, teacher and assistant coach involved in the incident at the Sacred Heart Catholic School. They are Dan Minter, principal; Julie Gurta, teacher and Billie Jo DuQuaine, assistant coach.

“It is a tragedy that this is the process through which my young daughter was introduced to the idea that difference is to be feared or punished, instead of acknowledged and celebrated… ” writes Washinawatok, in part, in a tersely written letter over four pages long.

"In this particular situation Miranda was the victim. Through the years countless children have suffered similar and often much worse treatment silently. We reside in the 21st century a time of fast paced and often unbelievable changes," Washinawatok's letter continues.

The letter is addressed to Dr. Joseph Bound, director of education for the Green Bay Diocese. In the letter, Washinawatok describes what she believes has been the inadequate handling of how and why Miranda was disciplined by the school staff.

"I feel as if I have been lied to by these people involved. The stories kept changing as time went by. In the end, it is about protecting the well-being of Miranda," stated Washinawatok to the Native News Network.

"We place great faith in the staff that they will care for our children properly. Many families go to great lengths to send their children to Sacred Heart Catholic School. In my mind you have jeopardized the trust I have placed in this relationship. You have caused me to question the humility and compassion displayed by the staff at Sacred Heart," continues Washinawatok in a portion of the letter.

Washinawatok's call for the removal of the three school personnel comes a week after the Diocese of Green Bay offered a broad apology to the Menominee Nation through Dr. Joseph Bound. Her response reflects the culmination of the incident response that originally occurred on January 19 when Miranda and two classmates were discussing how to say hello and I love you in Menominee.

Miranda speaks Menominee and English.

posted March 1, 2012 3:20 am est

http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com/mir...ool-staff.html

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World Council of Churches Disowns "Doctrine of Discovery"

Native News Network Staff in Native Briefs.

The statement was issued in a meeting from February 14-18 in Bossey, Switzerland, urging to repudiate this doctrine, which has permitted the enslavement of Indigenous Peoples in the name of Christianity.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – In a gesture that may be almost five hundred years too late, the World Council of Churches Executive Committee last month released a statement that denounced the "Doctrine of Discovery."

The Doctrine was used to subjugate and colonize Indigenous Peoples, including American Indians and Alaska Natives.

The Executive Committee issued a statement calling the nature of the doctrine "fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus".

The origin of the doctrine goes back to the papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452 and 1455 respectively, allowing the invasion and killing of the Indigenous Peoples.

These historical church documents titled "Dum Diversas" and "Romanus Pontifex" called for non-Christian people to be captured, vanquished and to have their possessions and property seized by the Christian monarchs.

On basis of the same historical precedence the statement points out that, "Christopher Columbus was instructed, for example, to 'discover and conquer,' 'subdue' and 'acquire' distant lands."
European countries like Spain, Portugal, England, France, and Holland used the doctrine. The doctrine was introduced in the law of the United States and was referenced in the United States Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 US in 1823, which in turn has been cited by courts in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Therefore the Executive Committee statement points out that the "current situation of Indigenous Peoples around the world is the result of a linear program of 'legal' precedent, originating with the Doctrine of Discovery and codified in contemporary national laws and policies."

The statement rejects the idea endorsed by the doctrine that "Christians enjoy a moral and legal right based solely on their religious identity to invade and seize indigenous lands and to dominate Indigenous Peoples."

Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Calling the "Doctrine of Discovery" a violation of human rights, the statement supports the "rights of Indigenous Peoples to live in and retain their traditional lands and territories" and "to maintain and enrich their cultures."

Along with the Episcopal Dioceses of Maine and Central New York and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, many churches have denounced the doctrine in the United States and Canada.

Last year several Unitarian Universalist churches and Quaker organizations also adopted resolutions to repudiate the doctrine.

As the "Doctrine of Discovery" will be the theme for the 11th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues this year, the Executive Committee statement stressed the need to sensitize churches on this issue.

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues session will take place from May 7-18 2012 in New York.

In consideration of this, the Executive Committee statement urged the churches and ecumenical organizations to mobilize and participate in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues process.

The statement requested the governments to "ensure that their policies, regulations and laws that affect Indigenous Peoples comply with international conventions and, in particular, conform to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the International Labour Organization's Convention 169."

Through this statement, the World Council of Churches reaffirms its commitment to the rights of the Indigenous Peoples, asking each member church to "reflect upon its own national and church history" and to seek a better understanding of the issues faced by Indigenous Peoples.

posted March 3, 2012 6:00 am est

http://www.nativenewsnetwork.com/wor...discovery.html

[gazhekwe]

$13,500 to Kill Sacred White Buffalo in Texas—Can This Be True?

By ICTMN Staff March 5, 2012

from texashuntlodge.com

"Our White Buffalo bulls weigh 1200 -1500lbs, and have horns in the 17-20 inch [range]," says the site. "Your white buffalo trophy will be a huge!"

American Indians across the internet are flocking to the website of Texas Hunt Lodge today—and not because they’re planning a hunting trip. No, they’re alarmed by a page on the site dedicated to the White Buffalo Hunt Package, which advertises a chance to kill a white buffalo for $13,500.

White buffaloes are sacred animals to the Lakota Sioux and other Native groups, and there aren’t a lot of the creatures around. When one was born last year in Greenville, Texas, it was an occasion for much rejoicing. An article in the British newspaper Daily Mail extensively covered the naming ceremony of Lightning Medicine Cloud. That report said that “Lightning Medicine Cloud, whose name is also a tribute to a white buffalo born in 1933, named Big Medicine, is thought—in Lakota Sioux tradition—to be the third of its kind ever born.”

It may be that not all white buffaloes are created equal, for there is a herd in Bend, Oregon, that contains 11 white buffaloes. Even so, it’s safe to say there aren’t a lot of them; an article on the herd from 2010 said that experts estimate that there are less than 50 white buffaloes in existence.

The sacredness of the white buffalo is linked to the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman, a Lakota prophet who brought the Lakota the Seven Sacred Rituals.

Understandably, this page at Texas Hunt Lodge has alarmed those who value white buffaloes. The text reads, in part:

Texas Hunt Lodge allows the opportunity to hunt and harvest the Authentic and Rare White Buffalo. … There are no seasonal restrictions on hunting the White Buffalo, or White Bison, in Texas, which makes it a suitable trophy year round.
We typically let our hunters choose the method of hunting White Buffalo that they prefer. Hunters of White Buffalo can choose the Spot and Stalk method, Bow Hunting, Rifle Hunting, Black Powder, Safari Style Hunting, Handgun, as well as hunting from a Blind. We can accomodate hunters of any age and experience level, as well as hunters which have physical disabilities or may be confined to a wheelchair.
Our White Buffalo bulls weigh 1200 -1500lbs, and have horns in the 17-20 inch ranch…your white buffalo trophy will be a huge!

A page about Lightning Medicine Cloud on the website of Lakota Ranch speaks of the white buffalo not as a huge trophy, but a hugely significant part of Native culture. According to that page, esteemed Lakota spiritual leader John Lame Deer called the white buffalo “the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter.” Oglala Sioux spiritual leader Floyd Looks for Buffalo Hand, a grandson of Red Cloud, is quoted as saying “The arrival of the white buffalo is like the second coming of Christ. … It will bring about purity of mind, body, and spirit and unify all nations—black, red, yellow, and white.”

See Lightning Medicine Cloud here:

​http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z09P...yer_embedded#!

and here, with some prophesies and some history:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCdXX...yer_embedded#!


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