On June 27, 2002, the US Supreme Court rendered a verdict on a case brought by Lindsay Earls, a member of the Cherokee Nation, whom I refer to as a great American heroine. Even though she is an Oklahoma resident, her case received a great deal of coverage in my region (Vermont/New Hampshire border) as she was by then a student at Dartmouth College (whose medical center I am employed at).
I wrote about this several years ago; alas, several links which I cite here no longer work. But here first is her story of courage, followed by what she is doing today.
I dreamed I was dead and talking to your spirit at the tree of life Mr. President. You were somewhat annoyed at having been summoned by greater powers than you, but you listened and were very considerate of hearing what I had to say. I didn't need to tell you all the details of what you are considering signing, and I understood your complex predicament. I told you that you had a choice to make since most the remaining natural resources of the Earth Mother are on Indigenous lands, and you are president of all the people of this country. I told you I pitied your predicament and would not want it for myself. When respecting one's sacred lands means compromising the survival of another, how do you decide between what is right and necessary but evil?
HB2929 has passed the Oklahoma House and Senate and may now be moving to the Governor's office for his signature. It is a historic day for Indian education in Oklahoma. Well done, ALL!!!!!
Now on to Governor Henry for signature. Please take a moment to call or message him with your support.
Mvto Mvto Mvto Mvto!!!!!
Brenda Golden on behalf of:
Society to Preserve Indigenous Rights & Indigenous Traditions
Governor Henry,
As a former constituent and soon to be Oklahoma resident and constituent once more, please allow me to respectfully explain why you should sign the Indian Education Advisory Council bill (HB2929).
Chief Ron Yonaguska Holloway met with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, James Anaya on April 23, after giving a speech at the UN on April 20 regarding his case.
In that speech, it was revealed that this is the first time that a state in the US is being held accountable for the actions of its leadership regarding Native Americans. That fact drew much attention the week of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The Sand Hill Tribe is the last continuously operating Lenape tribe left in the state of New Jersey. It is one of the last "first contact" tribes left on the Eastern seaboard. The stakes are enormous.
When Chairman Holloway met with the Special Rapporteur, he was informed that the UN is willing to represent Chairman Holloway and his Tribe - The NJ Sand Hill Band of Lenape and Cherokee Indians, and will reach out to the US Leadership to set up a meeting to negotiate a settlement. The Rapporteur also promised to represent Chairman Yonaguska Holloway and his tribe, if necessary, at the Hague.
As a previous editor of the Classic Progressive Historians, I was trying to get a historian I had met on line to post there. He was in Mexico and as we corresponded, he told me that at least 80% of "Mexicans" are Lipan Apache. Who is Arizona wanting to "send back to where they came from?"
The privileges of citizenship were slow to come for Indians while the responsibilities came right away. It's hard not to think of the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, some of the toughest combat of WWII. The Navajo code talkers served though that campaign at a time when Arizona was still denying them the vote. Now, it appears that Arizona Indians who visit the cities will have to be careful about being brown in a no-brown zone, whether or not they are veterans.
PINE RIDGE -- Oglala Sioux Tribe President Theresa Two Bulls will declare a suicide state of emergency for Pine Ridge Indian Reservation during a news conference at 1 p.m. today.
Thanks to navajo and a robust crew of volunteers and diarists, the snow emergency on the Indian Reservations in the Dakotas found its way to the TV (thanks, Keith!) and more donations have started to flow. (Navajo's excellent compilation of donation contact info and links here.) My intention is to add a little background to the story, because it's annoying as all get-out that this has ever become a situation for charity.
In the early days of the United States, Indian Affairs was an agency under the War (later Defense) Department. Not unlike the private contractors in Iraq, the Indian agents in the field typically did much better than the people they were charged with protecting and assisting. Often much better.
I have been told that your area news and the National news will not carry the story for my people unless and until CNN carries it. Each day someone has told me they have gone to CNN on Facebook, their website, or called into report our story, since the 12/20/09 State of Emergency was issued.
I was pretty exhausted from moving again for the third time in six months for good reasons, although I had to sweep a few streets till I got the job I moved for. Pictures weren't hung up yet when this racial utterance came out of Steele's mouth.
The 35-year-old chairman was camped on 7,100 acres of wind-swept, snowy land owned by Crow Creek Tribal Farms. The IRS recently seized the tract and on Dec. 3 auctioned it off for $2 million less than its $4.6 million value to pay a purported tax bill for the tribe, a separate legal entity.
The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that "the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves," and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we'll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 119th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
The entire tribe, elders and children included, is going to be removed by force from their land with no place to go. They are forced to barricade themselves in the tribal office. Using filing cabinets and anything else they can use to secure the building in hopes to protect their culture, their people, and basically everything they have.
We ask that Miwok tribe be allowed to stay in the land they have lived on for 7 years and be given the chance to dialogue with the appropriate legislatures and/or officials about the matter.
The extent to which a Nation denies the genocide it has committed is a measure of that Nation's social conscience. The social conscience of the United States is infected with numerous rationalizations that keep the dark light from shining. Federal and state institutions are named after mass murderers, and the land tells a story of massacres and atrocities that occurred. But the truth is not forgotten, it is denied.
8. DENIAL is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile.
Genocide is not just denied in the United States, it is celebrated.
The term "redskins" actually refers to the Indian skins and body parts that bounty hunters had to show in order to receive payment for killing Indians, the National Congress of American Indians argued in a brief filed before the high court.
What we shall see, is that denying the genocide of the American Indian is for ideological or economic reasons. What we need to know, is how specifically people deny the genocide of the American Indian.
I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.
As early as 1933, Raphael Lemkin proposed a cultural component to genocide, which he called "vandalism." However, the drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention dropped that concept from their consideration.
One must make a connection between making profit from cultural components considered sacred, and to the severe damage done to the indigenous culture being preyed on and profited from. While indigenous people yet suffer the effects of a 500 year Holocaust, the overall dominant culture adheres to genocide denial. Plastic Medicine men charging money for fake ceremonies and the people who pay them is the issue at hand. Why is the desecration of Native American ceremonies cultural genocide? One word - relationships.
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Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights News by Brenda Norrell
