Books: Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Courtesy University of Nebraska Press Plans for cultural genocide as well as the stories of courage and oppression at the famous/infamous residential Carlisle Indian Industrial School appear in an unprecedented collection of essays, poems and photos entitled “Carlisle Indian Industrial School/Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations,” recently published.

Courtesy University of Nebraska Press
Plans for cultural genocide as well as the stories of courage and oppression at the famous/infamous residential Carlisle Indian Industrial School appear in an unprecedented collection of essays, poems and photos entitled “Carlisle Indian Industrial School/Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations,” recently published.

Plans for cultural genocide as well as the stories of courage and oppression at the famous/infamous residential Carlisle Indian Industrial School appear in an unprecedented collection of essays, poems and photos entitled “Carlisle Indian Industrial School/Indigenous Histories, Memories and Reclamations,” recently published by University of Nebraska Press and edited by Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Susan D. Rose.

This compelling gathering of work examines the legacy of the Carlisle experience through verse by noted poets N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) and Maurice Kenney (Mohawk) along with essays by distinguished historians and scholars such as Fear-Segal, Rose, Barbara Landis and Louellyn White (Mohawk). It also includes the recollections and reflections of some descendants of the more than 10,000 Native children who attended the school between 1879 and 1918.

The book is divided into six parts—1) A Sacred and Storied Space; 2) Student Lives and Losses; 3) Carlisle Indian School Cemetery; 4) Reclamations; 5) Revisioning the Past; and 6) Reflections and Responses—and provides a panoramic view of the experience, including many poignant and heartbreaking stories.

The anthology starts out with a comprehensive introduction to the school, the historical context of Manifest Destiny, Native dispossession and a compelling re-imagining of how the Native children must have felt after being seized and sent far away to be forcibly “assimilated” into white culture. The removal of children, in effect the tearing apart of families and communities, was part of the attempt to “Kill the Indian, and save the man,” a seminal quote from the school’s founder and superintendent, Richard Henry Pratt who sought to change the children, beginning with their names.

One of the many themes in the book involves names, the white names given to Native children and the names on tombstones in the school’s cemetery.

“Names are especially important in Native American culture,” Momaday wrote in “The Stones at Carlisle.” “Names and being are thought to be indivisible. One who bears no name cannot truly be said to exist, for one has being in his name… In this context we see how serious is the loss of one’s name. In the case of the tombstones at Carlisle we are talking about the crime of neglect and negation. We are talking not only about the theft of identity, but the theft of essential being.”

The full article is at ICTMN. This goes right to the top of my reading list. The book is available from the University of Nebraska Press, and an excerpt can be read here.

Beautiful.

Oct 21, 2016; Miami, FL, USA; National Anthem singer Denasia Lawrence kneels as she sings the anthem prior to the game between the Miami Heat and the Philadelphia 76ers at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports.

Oct 21, 2016; Miami, FL, USA; National Anthem singer Denasia Lawrence kneels as she sings the anthem prior to the game between the Miami Heat and the Philadelphia 76ers at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports.

A singer knelt while performing the national anthem at a Miami Heat basketball game on Friday and opened her jacket to reveal a shirt that read “Black Lives Matter,” a variation on a protest that has punctuated many U.S. sporting events since the summer.

[…]

Lawrence, a social worker, wrote on Facebook that the opportunity at the preseason Heat game “was bigger than me.”

“Right now, we’re seeing a war on Black & Brown bodies – we’re being unjustly killed and overly criminalized,” she continued. “I took the opportunity to sing AND kneel; to show that we belong in this country AND that we have the right to respectfully protest injustices against us. I took the opportunity to sing AND kneel to show that, I too, am America.”

Well done, Ms. Lawrence, you’re a light in the world.

Full story here.

Oh, the fuckin’ irony.

pat-buchanan-250x141If I had a real life irony meter, I’d be dead from the massive explosion caused by Pat Buchanan. Pat is once more weeping salty tears over the marginalization and oppression of white men, and the dismal state of patriarchal control. If anyone reading has a shiny Acme™ Irony Meter, get rid of it, it will never take the strain.

Is the system rigged? Ask yourself.

For half a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has systematically de-Christianized and paganized American society and declared abortion and homosexual marriage constitutional rights.

Where did these unelected jurists get the right to impose their views and values upon us, and remake America in their own secularist image? Was that really the Court’s role in the Constitution?

Oh, come now, Pat. You were just fine with assholes like Scalia, who imposed their views and values on people, and in doing so, crushed more lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness than you could shake a stick at. As someone who had an abortion, Pat, I’ll remind you of something: none. of. your. business. I’m thankful mine took place before the mega-assholes of morality decided to involve themselves. Health-wise, I was safe rather than bleeding to death in a room somewhere, and that termination allowed me to keep my sanity. Never been in the slightest way sorry for it, either. Just relieved. (And yes, I would have taken the risk of bleeding to death in a room somewhere, that’s how strongly I felt, and my reasons? My business.) Everyone allowed to marry? Yes, why not? In case you weren’t looking Pat, that fight took many years, mostly because of those unelected jurists who thought exactly the same way you do. You’re a toddler having a tantrum.

How did we wind up with an all-powerful judicial tyranny in a nation the Founding Fathers created as a democratic republic?

Hey, you started it. Liked it well enough when decisions were going your way.

There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants here, with millions more coming. Yet the government consistently refuses to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.

Yeah, about that…even the incredibly white-washed history texts in uStates could explain this one to you, Pat.

Why should those Americans whose ancestors created, fought, bled and died to preserve America not believe they and their children are being dispossessed of a country that was their patrimony — and without their consent?

Sigh. Fuckety fuck. Oh, you mean those Americans whose ancestors happened on Turtle Island, a place which had been long inhabited, who fought, raped, pillaged, and slaughtered everyone in sight in attempted genocide to steal “America” be dispossessed of a country they stole, without the consent of the inhabitants? Stealing is wrong, Pat. I was under the impression even Christians think so. Something about commandments and being all morally superior. As for your patrimony, oh, you can shove that one, Pat. Really deep.

When did the country vote to convert the America we grew up in into the Third World country our descendants will inherit in 2042?

Perhaps you should find a place you could legally acquire, and start setting up White Patriarchs Paradise. Then everyone could be happy. You could wage war on the sun, in order to preserve that wondrous pasty whiteness, proving for once and all the might of white.

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a Congressional majority voted to end discrimination against black folks. When did we vote to institute pervasive discrimination against white folks, especially white males, with affirmative action, quotas and racial set-asides? Even in blue states like California, affirmative action is routinely rejected in statewide ballots.

You make it sound like this happened because a bunch of old white dudes were sitting around one day, and decided to be all loving and stuff. That’s not quite what happened, Pat. There was a long and ferocious road to acknowledging people of colour as full human beings, and a whole lot of people died to make that happen. It was hardly trivial, and it was only a first step. We remain racist, with too many white people refusing to budge so much as a quarter step toward actual equality. You’re one of the assholes who thinks the Civil Rights Act fixed everything.

Yet it remains regime policy, embedded in the bureaucracy.

Oh, you’re one of those folks who buys into that “Obama Regime” noise. That’s not unexpected, with you being one of the old guard white men, wailing, gnashing your teeth, and lamenting your loss of absolute dominion over other people. You can’t be toppled soon enough, Pat.

Via Right Wing Watch.

All the Black and Brown People Have to Leave.

A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.

A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.

Melissia Hill was eating crepes with her 5-year-old son, Phoenix, at a Brooklyn cafe this summer when he asked her, “Is Donald Trump a bad person? Because I heard that if he becomes president, all the black and brown people have to leave and we’re going to become slaves.”

Next he wanted to know, “What is a slave?” and, “Where are we gonna go?”

Hill was taken aback, and well aware of the wide-eyed interest Phoenix’s questions attracted from neighboring tables. She asked him where he’d heard these things. His answer: from another child at his local YMCA day camp.

[…]

And kids like Phoenix aren’t waiting to see what happens on November 8 before they absorb these views, repeat them, and integrate them into the set of perspectives that combine to make up how they see themselves and others. Many, according to a recent survey of teachers’ perceptions of their students, are using them as fodder for bullying. Others are anxious and scared as a result of the taunts and the real-life threats to their families.

Nobody — not even those who study the development of racial attitudes in kids or the impact of racial trauma — can say with certainty what the long-term effects of this unprecedented dose of high-profile animosity will be on the young people who are steeped in it.

This spring, Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm, took an informal poll of educators to gauge how this campaign had affected schools so far.

Maureen Costello, the director of Teaching Tolerance, said the organization’s interest in the election’s effect on school-age kids was piqued by news reports about high school sporting events where chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” and “Build a wall” were used against predominantly Latino teams.

“We wondered, is this the tip of an iceberg? Is there something beneath this?” she said.

The organization sent queries to the teachers who subscribed to its weekly newsletter. “We weren’t trying to be scientific. We were trying to find out, ‘Is there anything going on?’ I compare it to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] asking doctors to report if there are measles outbreaks,” Costello said.

The organization’s conclusion from the thousands of comments it received: Yes, something is going on. More than two-thirds of teachers reported that students — mainly immigrants, children of immigrants, and Muslims — had expressed concerns or fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election:

Teachers used words like “hurt” and “dejected” to describe the impact on their charges. The ideas and language coming from the presidential candidates are bad enough, but many students — Muslim, Hispanic and African-American — are far more upset by the number of people, including classmates and even teachers, who seem to agree with Trump. They are struggling with the belief that “everyone hates them.”

There were reports of tears shed in classrooms from second grade to high school. Concerns about being “sent back” transcended immigration status, as in Phoenix’s case, to affect African-American kids:

African-American students aren’t exempt from the fears. Many teachers reported an increase in use of the n-word as a slur, even among very young children. And black children are burdened with a particularly awful fear that has been reported from teachers in many states — that they will “be deported to Africa” or that slavery will be reinstated. As an Oklahoma elementary teacher explains, “My kids are terrified of Trump becoming [p]resident. They believe he can/will deport them — and NONE of them are Hispanic. They are all African American.

According to the report, even children who did not face, or did not believe they faced, direct threats as a result of Trump’s policies, perceived the same pattern as the white supremacists who support Trump: that the candidate’s vision for a return to a “great’ version of America was dismissive of people of color.

I highly recommend reading the whole article at Vox. This is heartbreaking, to say the very least. Institutionalized, systemic racism is bad enough in uStates, what with it being the very core and framework of this country, now there’s the storm of ugly Americanism breaking right over the heads of these children. I remember growing up under the cold war and the constant threat of nuclear war, you heard about it constantly, and it was a very real fear. Even that pales in comparison to the depth of fear facing non-white children now. Do people truly want to claim this legacy? A legacy of hate, fear, and bigotry? A legacy of gleeful traumatization? There is already a deep divide in schools when it comes to white children and non-white children. I was reading an article about Seattle teachers donning BLM t-shirts, and there was mention of children of colour not seeing themselves in curriculum or histories. No kidding. And if people think that’s bad for Black and Hispanic children, think about what it’s like for Indigenous children. I have mentioned, so many times, just how white-washed uStates ‘history’ is – if you aren’t white, you’re definitely going to be the villains in one way or another, if you are represented at all. About the only people who actively campaign to have special history modules taught in school are various Indigenous tribes, who are damn tired of the lack of representation, combined with ugly, racist, inaccurate representation. There’s not been any concerted effort to have accurate history texts, and with Texas in charge of school textbooks, it’s not likely that will ever happen.

Now, with Trump opening up Ugly Americanism, with way too many people diving into that ugly headfirst, we’ll have at least one generation of children who, already standing at the edge of a deep divide, will be traumatized and living in fear of their very lives. Way to go, America.

Full story at Vox. Via Black Lives Matter.

First Baby Born at Standing Rock Camp.

baby

The first baby was born at one of the Standing Rock camps earlier in the week. A woman’s healthcare center has been put together at the No DAPL camp, focusing on Indigenous ways regarding family, pregnancy, parenting, birthing, and childcare. There’s a video and transcript at Democracy Now.

Coming Full Circle: Tending The Wild.

Courtesy KCET.

Courtesy KCET.

Indigenous Peoples are increasingly being seen as having the keys to save our habitat from human-induced destruction.

A new series on KCET explores several aspects of Traditional Knowledge and the ways in which the most effective methods of caretaking this land we call Turtle Island originated with those who originally inhabited these lands. Tending the Wild began airing on Monday October 3 with “Fire” and had its second episode, “Salmon,” on October 17.

The series centers on tribes based in what is today California. Episode 1, subtitled “Cultural Burning,” explores “how Native California communities use fire as a natural resource to promote a healthy ecosystem and how plants and animals have evolved to need fire disturbances to survive,” according to a KCET statement. “Additionally, this episode will explore how fire is used in various cultures; and the negative effects of fire suppression, a western concept initially promoted by National Parks and Forest Services.”

Indeed, the theme of not only restoring but also

The second episode, subtitled “Keeping the River,” became available online on October 18 at KCET.org and LinkTV.org. This segment looks at dam removals, fishing restrictions and the controlling of runoff from agriculture and industry into the waters. Key members of the Yurok, Karuk and Hupa tribes appear in this one, KCET said.

Basketry takes up the third episode, set to air on October 31, in a story about using “Plants as Materials” and what that entails by viewing the process of basket weaving from the cultivation of the proper plants, to the end product.

Viewers will learn about the “decolonized diet” in Episode 4, “Plants as Medicine” in Episode 5, and how to love the desert in Episode 6. The series continues through mid-December.

Oh, I want to watch everything right now, but work calls. The importance of traditional ecological knowledge can’t be emphasised enough. Via ICTMN.  Tending the Wild at KCET.

George Takei: There Is Hope.

George Takei (MSNBC).

George Takei (MSNBC).

George Takei has an open letter at The Daily Beast, and a message many of us sorely need to hear. Just an excerpt from the middle here:

You see, I am ever an optimist. A poll taken in August of voters aged 18-34 showed that the vast majority favored Clinton over Trump—64 percent to 29 percent. That split tells me the same thing that the polls for same-sex marriage told us years ago: Over time, reason and fairness will win out, while bigotry and hatred literally would die off. In 20 years, you will all be in charge, and demonstrate far less appetite or patience for Trump’s brand of nativist rhetoric and race baiting. Trump and his supporters understand they are on borrowed time, and while they may seem resurgent today, this in fact could be their last chance to take control. Our country is rapidly moving on from their discredited and archaic worldview. Perhaps that is why the death throes of their campaign are so spectacular.

You are in many ways wiser to the world than your older counterparts. You came of age in a time where there was greater cause for skepticism, and you’re accustomed to the non-stop barrage of social media. Unlike your parents, you understand that we all live in an echo chamber, and that it is up to each of us to depart from it to hear alternative points of view. You are more likely to place your trust in science and embrace diversity, to reject hate while celebrating love in all its manifestations. You are more focused on racial justice and equality of opportunity than the two generations before you. And contrary to common myth, you are not disengaged. In this election cycle, millions of young voters made their concerns heard and very nearly succeeded in realigning the entire election. Nor are you impractical; even when your favored candidate did not succeed, you stuck by your convictions and goals, and in overwhelming numbers now support the party that will best advance them.

Full article at The Daily Beast.

Pine Nuts.

Johnny Bob, a spiritual leader from Yomba Shoshone Tribe, gathering pine cones in a mountain valley in central Nevada. (Photo by Joseph Zummo).

Johnny Bob, a spiritual leader from Yomba Shoshone Tribe, gathering pine cones in a mountain valley in central Nevada. (Photo by Joseph Zummo).

There’s a very good article at ICTMN about the Western Shoshone tribes and a staple of their diet, pine nuts. A staple, which is considered sacred, and is healthy, it also treated with utter disregard by non-natives, who have been using any excuse to destroy the trees.

“Everything depends on the water and the trees,” said spiritual leader Johnny Bob, from the Yomba Shoshone Tribe, as he prayed for the start of a Western Shoshone pine-nut gathering. In September, members of several bands came together in a steep-walled mountain valley in central Nevada to collect the protein- and nutrient-rich nuts that were once the mainstay of their diet.

Some people took hold of long sticks and began to knock the sticky green cones off the tops of the pinyon trees. Others gathered fallen branches to chop up for the fire in which they would later roast the cones to release the sweet, creamy nuts. These can be eaten out of hand, added to soups and stews or parched and ground for gravy or mush.

“As we collect, we are pruning the trees to ensure there are even more cones next year. We are also cleaning the forest,” explained Joseph Holley, former chairman and now council member of the Battle Mountain Band of Te-Moak Western Shoshone.

[…]

This critical food source, along with game living in the forest, began to disappear during the late 19th century, as newly arrived settlers chopped down trees for fuel over many square miles around towns and mining operations. Starting in the 20th century, these losses were amplified by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, which together have uprooted more than 3 million acres of pinyon-plus-juniper woodlands.

To destroy the forests, the federal agencies use tractors to drag gargantuan chains through them, ripping up everything in their path. The ruined landscapes look like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Sometimes, the agencies eliminate woodlands in order to increase rangeland for grazing, an activity that further damages the fragile arid lands where pinyons flourish. Scientists estimate that soil in an erosion-prone “chained” landscape may take 10,000 years to recover.

The full story is at ICTMN.

The Senators Standing with Standing Rock.

Bernie Sanders (Good Morning America).

Bernie Sanders (Good Morning America).

Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and four other senators on Thursday called on President Barack Obama to order a comprehensive environmental review of a pipeline project that has stirred widespread opposition from Native Americans and environmental activists.

After a U.S. appeals court on Sunday night denied a request to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the senators asked Obama to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to complete a full environmental impact statement for a contested part of the route that includes stronger tribal consultation.

“The project’s current permits should be suspended and all construction stopped until a complete environmental and cultural review has been completed for the entire project,” said the letter by Sanders and Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein, Ed Markey, Patrick Leahy and Benjamin Cardin.

In recent weeks, protests against the Dakota Access pipeline led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota drew international attention, prompting the U.S. government to temporarily block its construction on federal land.

[…]

On Tuesday, anti-pipeline activists in four states closed pipeline valves to halt the flow of crude through arteries transporting 15 percent of U.S. oil consumption..

When fully connected, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km) pipeline would be the first to carry crude directly to the U.S. Gulf from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada.

The $3.7 billion project is being built by the Dakota Access subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, which has vowed to complete construction.

“There must be a serious consideration of the full potential climate impacts of this pipeline prior to the Army Corps of Engineers approving any permits or easements for the Dakota Access pipeline,” the senators said.

Experts say that the full environmental review requested by the senators could take several months.

The U.S. appeal court’s ruling was the second time the federal judiciary rejected the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s request to halt construction of the pipeline. On Sept. 9, a U.S. judge rejected a similar request.

Oh, so scrutiny would take a couple of months, golly, the agony for those poor, poor billionaires. Cry me a river, oil wašichu, cry me a river of clean, untainted water. Once again, we see just how much, and how easily Indigenous concerns are brushed aside, and treaties broken, again. And again. And again. My thanks to Senators Sanders, Feinstein, Markey, Leahy, and Cardin. Please, please keep the pressure on. I think everyone should remind the President of his visit to Standing Rock two years ago. How can it possibly be, in any way, to turn away from people who keep asking for justice? How long for people to wake the fuck up to all the lies, all the crimes committed by DA and Energy Transfer Partners? Remember when they swore up and down that the oil running through this travesty of a pipeline was “sweet and light”? The only people pointing out that that was a lie were Indigenous people who live in the Dakotas. I posted about that, and heard arguments and “oh no, you’re wrong.” No, we aren’t wrong. Oil lies, and it would be great if people would wake up to that fact, and stay woke. This is a disaster waiting to happen, to all of us.

Via Raw Story.

Shailene Woodley Released.

Courtesy Morton County Sheriff's Office Shailene Woodley, charged with criminal trespass during peaceful civil action against the Dakota Access oil.

Courtesy Morton County Sheriff’s Office
Shailene Woodley, charged with criminal trespass during peaceful civil action against the Dakota Access oil.

Celebrity support flooded in for the actress after her arrest on Monday October 10 with other water protectors at a Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL) construction site. She paid a $500 fine and prepared for an October 24 court date, according to USA Today.

“Shailene Woodley has been released from the Morton County Jail in North Dakota,” her spokesperson told Us Weekly in a statement on Tuesday. “She appreciates the outpouring of support, not only for her, but more importantly, for the continued fight against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

The star of Snowden, Divergent and The Descendants, among other films, was among 28 unarmed people arrested by riot police for peacefully demonstrating at the site where Energy Transfer Partners is working on the 1,172-mile-long, $3.8 billion pipeline set to wend its way through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois, carrying as many as 550,000 barrels of crude daily from the Bakken oil fields. She livestreamed the arrest on Facebook.

Actor Mark Ruffalo also spoke out in support of Woodley, as did Maggie Q, her costar in the Divergent series.

“I stand with @shailenewoodley for standing with the Standing Rock Water Protectors. #NoDAPL,” tweeted Ruffalo, who is outspoken against climate change and walked with Indigenous Peoples alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City.

“You can arrest someone but you CANNOT silence them,” wrote Maggie Q on Twitter.

Mainstream media picked up on the arrest and mentioned the pipeline controversy. But MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell took it a step further by noting the irony of date of the arrests, including Woodley’s, on criminal trespassing charges. It was for many (though not for all) a celebration of Christopher Columbus, who he dubbed “the greatest trespasser in human history.”

Via ICTMN.

The Fight for Tosawihi.

Photo by Joseph Zummo Tosawihi Complex, a contemporary Native cultural landscape with roots in the deep past.

Photo by Joseph Zummo
Tosawihi Complex, a contemporary Native cultural landscape with roots in the deep past.

As I have mentioned so many times before, Indigenous people all over the world face the constant destruction, or threat of destruction to their homelands, and to sacred places. This is a difficult issue to get across to most Americans, who have no sense which is at all similar to that of Natives, and perspectives are so very different. (For a bit on that, read the excerpt from one of John Trudell’s essays, in the comments here.) Anyroad, there is an in-depth article and photo essay about the fight the Western Shoshone are facing over the spiritual heart of their traditional homeland. As is often seen in such cases, the destruction is well beyond what was necessary, such in the swathes cut for telephone poles, which was much wider and destructive than was close to needed. This contempt is almost always seen in such cases. Non-natives rarely have any care for what natives view as sacred, because all they see is land they can ravage or make money from. They don’t see or understand the sacred, and they know nothing, and seldom care about the history which is there. You all know we have seen that here already in Ndakota, with the contempt from DA and Energy Transfer, then being locked out of the survey of our own sacred sites. All this and more is happening in Nevada right now. Just a very small excerpt here, please go and read the whole article.

[…] The place is ancient, but the fight to protect it is contemporary. Decades of mining have left scars. Like 83 percent of Nevada, Tosawihi sits on federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an Interior Department agency. The BLM, which issues mining permits, calls Western Shoshone accusations of mining-related destruction the product of a “different worldview.” Tribal members say that if the BLM followed federal law, including historic-preservation and environmental regulations, damage could be avoided.

In June, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stay construction for a mining-related power line in Tosawihi until a way could be found to save the ancestral healer’s trail, which had been determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The Band appealed the ruling. Despite the issue still being before the courts, employees of Carlin Resources, part of an international consortium that owned an open-pit gold mine in Tosawihi, fired up their yellow bulldozer. They plowed a rough, nearly 12-mile-long road, along with 50-foot-wide gashes for the bases of the utility poles. They gouged a trench into the side of a nearby hill used for vision quests.

They obliterated much of the healer’s trail, along with the natural pharmacy he cultivated alongside it. Tanya Reynolds, an official of the South Fork Band of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone, called the destruction “beyond words, beyond what is possible to fix.”

“They’re after money and will literally move mountains to get it,” said Murray Sope, from the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe. “But these places are also very valuable to us for teaching our children.”

Demolition of irreplaceable ancient artifacts usually merits outrage, or at least notice. The Islamic State, or ISIS, was widely condemned when it released footage of a yellow bulldozer demolishing the Gates of Ninevah, in the remains of an ancient city in Iraq. Major media outlets reported shock worldwide when ISIS smashed museum exhibits and when the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in Afghanistan.

In contrast, portions of Tosawihi have simply vanished in a national, and international, blind spot. “We don’t understand their need to destroy,” said Joe Holley, former chairman and now councilman of the Battle Mountain Band of the Te-Moak Western Shoshone. “We are realistic. We know we can’t stop them entirely, but we want them to partner with us. They need to listen when we flag endangered cultural resources. They need to follow their own laws.”

Federal authorities have permitted destruction of Native sites nationwide. In September, more than 1,200 museum directors and scholars condemned the builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) for destroying Sioux burial grounds in North Dakota with apparent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorization. The Obama administration asked the builders, Energy Transfer Partners, to halt work until it could scrutinize tribal-consultation policies, including how they had been applied in the DAPL process.

That did not necessarily signal a policy change, though. A few weeks later, under a permit issued on behalf of President Obama by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the same company bulldozed ancient Native sites in Texas, turning them into a sea of mud.

In Tosawihi, the BLM-authorized power line stoked fears of more aggressive mining to come, said Reggie Sope, the healer from Shoshone-Paiute Tribe who ran the sweat lodge ceremony.

“Work began yesterday,” confirmed John Seaberg, senior vice president of the gold mine’s new owner, Klondex, which bought the operation on October 4. Depending on the results of exploratory testing, the company may install another ramp (inclined mining tunnel), Seaberg said. He called tribes “key stakeholders” in the process but refused to comment on ongoing lawsuits. They include Carlin’s suit against the Battle Mountain Band, which the Band has asked the courts to dismiss.

The full 3 page article is at ICTMN.

BREAKING: Tar Sands Pipeline Shut Down.

st

To avert climate catastrophe, activists shut down 5 pipelines bringing Tar Sands Oil into the U.S, in Solidarity with Standing Rock.

This morning, by 7:30AM Pacific time, 5 activists have successfully shut down 5 pipelines across the United States delivering tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada in support of the call for International Days of Prayer and Action for Standing Rock. Activists employed manual safety valves, calling on President Obama to use emergency powers to keep the pipelines closed and mobilize for the extraordinary shift away from fossil fuels now required to avert catastrophe.

[…]

WHERE. Enbridge line 4 and 67, Leonard, MN; TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline, Walhalla, ND; Spectra Energy’s Express pipeline, Coal Banks Landing, MT; Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain pipeline, Anacortes, WA.

WHO. Climate Direct Action is Emily Johnson, 50 and Michael Foster, 52, of Seattle, WA, Annette Klapstein, 64, of Bainbridge Island, WA, Ken Ward, 59, of Corbett, OR, and Leonard Higgins, 64, of Eugene, Oregon, with the support of Climate Disobedience Action Fund.

Livestream, videos and photos available on our Facebook Page.
https://www.facebook.com/climatedirectaction/

Website
http://www.shutitdown.today

Via Last Real Indians.

Moron Bingo!

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

Everyone read Simon Moya-Smith’s 6 Banal Defenses of Columbus Day, And How You Should Respond to the Moron, right? Reading ICTMN today, specifically, an article about the fight for Indigenous Peoples Day at ground zero, Colorado. In that article is one Rita DeFrange, moron, and if this was an actual bingo game, I would have cleaned up. She managed to hit every single moron point. I think Ms. DeFrange needs about 100 copies of Simon Moya-Smith’s article, and must sit down and read it 100 times. Perhaps the points would sink in.

Rita DeFrange, president of the Columbus Day Parade Committee and a member of the Denver chapter of the Order Sons of Italy, said it’s “not fair” that city officials are taking away from one group to give to another.

“It’s a struggle for folks. The community itself is very disappointed. They don’t understand why they are being picked on,” DeFrange told ICTMN.

DeFrange said herself and her community just want to celebrate their history and heritage.

Although Indigenous Peoples’ Day supporters like McLean and Salazar say Columbus shouldn’t be celebrated because of the atrocities he brought to the Native American people, DeFrange however, believes Columbus shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards.

“Unfortunately, we’re evaluating a man by 2016 standards, when the events happened 500 years ago,” DeFrange said. “The community really needs to take a hard look at how we look at our history books.”

Members of the Columbus Day Parade Committee and Order Sons of Italy met with Salazar earlier this year to discuss resolutions that could make both parties happy.

No resolutions were met, DeFrange said.

She said she’s more than happy to celebrate the heritage of the Native American people, but just on a different day.

“It’s one day. It’s a group of individuals who value their Italian heritage,” DeFrange said. “We all value the cultures … that’s what’s so great about America. You know, let’s not take one over the other and that’s the perception that people have.”

Full story at ICTMN.