18.

American Indians experienced some of the worst massacres and grossest injustices in history while Ulysses S. Grant was in office.

American Indians experienced some of the worst massacres and grossest injustices in history while Ulysses S. Grant was in office. Whitehouse.gov

…But changes in how the government treated Indians came at a critical juncture in westward expansion. As Grant worked to reform federal agencies, he also supervised the development of millions of acres of federal public lands and presided over the private acquisition of land by pioneers, spectators and railroad and mining companies.

During his eight years in office, Grant approved the Timber Culture Act (granting homesteaders additional acreage if they agreed to plant trees), the General Mining Act (authorizing prospecting and mining for minerals on public lands) and the Desert Lands Act (issuing arid Western lands to individuals who agreed to reclaim and irrigate). He also created the first national park at Yellowstone.

Yet Grant realized that his expansionist goals required the removal of Indians from desirable land. His Indian Peace Policy, designed to reform the Indian Bureau and remove corrupt agents, also called for rigorous agricultural training on reservations and established schools and churches that would transform Indians into Christian citizens.

“From the foundation of the government to the present the management of the original inhabitants of this continent—the Indians—has been a subject of embarrassment and expense,” Grant told Congress in December 1869. Calling the Indians “wards of the nation,” he proposed a new policy to establish “permanent peace” between white settlers and Indian nations.

[…]

Yet Grant’s policies toward Indians fell far short of what he promised. White settlers continued to push Indians off the land, relying on the Army to prevent retaliation. While Indians on reservations experienced poverty and increasing desperation, Grant oversaw the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad and the great slaughter of buffalo on the Plains, which destroyed much of the Indian economy.

The peace policy, ironically, led to some of the worst massacres in history. Grant’s strategy to contain Indians on reservations involved aggressive military pursuits, resulting in the Modoc War in California, the Red River War in Texas, the Nez Perce conflict in Oregon, the Black Hills campaign by Gen. George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Indian chiefs Sitting Bull, Gall, Chief Joseph, Geronimo and Cochise led their people into wars against the United States in efforts to preserve their land and ways of life. In 1870, Oglala Chief Red Cloud visited Grant at the White House, where he condemned Indian policy and described his peoples’ suffering.

Full Article Here.

Indigenous News Roundup

Running for Their Lives: 500-Mile Youth Spiritual Run Against Dakota Access Pipeline.

The public outcry against the Dakota Access Pipeline has been joined by a group of youth, both Native and non-Native, who are running a 500-mile spiritual relay this week from Cannonball, North Dakota to the district office of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Omaha, Nebraska.

“We ask that everyone stand with us against this threat to our health, our culture, and our sovereignty,” said the group in a statement. “We ask that everyone who lives on or near the Missouri River and its tributaries, everyone who farms or ranches in the local area, and everyone who cares about clean air and clean drinking water stand with us against the Dakota Access Pipeline!” Full story at the link.

Europe Reintroduces Its Own Brand of Bison, Also Driven to Near Extinction.

Valène Aure via Wikipedia European bison, known as wisent, are being reintroduced into the wild across the Pond from Turtle Island. Here, wisent frolic in the Réserve biologique des Monts d'Azur, Haut-Thorenc, France.

Valène Aure via Wikipedia
European bison, known as wisent, are being reintroduced into the wild across the Pond from Turtle Island. Here, wisent frolic in the Réserve biologique des Monts d’Azur, Haut-Thorenc, France.

Amid all the bison buzz on Turtle Island, what with the National Bison Legacy Act having passed both houses of Congress and currently sitting on President Barack Obama’s desk, a lesser-known but parallel phenomenon is happening across the Pond.

Full Story here.

Marty Two Bulls

Marty Two Bulls

Reconciliation Is the New Assimilation: New NAIPC Co-Chair.

Courtesy Tamara Starblanket “Indigenous Peoples have the right to self-determination in international law. Minorities do not have the rights of self-determination.”

Courtesy Tamara Starblanket
“Indigenous Peoples have the right to self-determination in international law. Minorities do not have the rights of self-determination.”

[Read more…]

Wolf Saga

Walls.

Walls is a story of a strong Woman raising a young boy, and how he learns through her that we all need to have equal opportunity.

I wrote this song about my 88 year old grandmother who still has an effective impact on me. Thanks for raising me right. – Johnny Saga.

 

Stolen.

Published on Dec 8, 2015

Today Ottawa announced it’s inquiry into MMIW in Canada. [MMIW – Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women]
This is a song I wrote for the short film of the same name, directed by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs. Which is being submitted to film festivals in the new year.

Please read up on this issue and share the song.
Miigwetch.

Tiospaye and Indigenous Environmentalism

First up, Thunder Valley CDC, working to build a community at Pine Ridge rez, one that fulfills the concept of community and tiospaye, which means extended family. This is a very important project, and one dear to my heart. If you can be tiospaye by helping out, there aren’t words enough for appreciation.

Tiospaye

 

Thunder Valley CDC – explore, read, and if you can help, pilamayaye.

Iearth

Indigenous Environmental Network. IEN is an alliance of Indigenous Peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination & exploitation, maintaining and respecting Indigenous teachings and natural laws.  Have a look around, and get involved if you can.

NoRedd

Global Alliance Against REDD.

NoRedd1

Have a look around, read, get involved if you can.

It’s all about tiospaye – we are all extended family, and it’s past time we act like it.

17.

Whitehouse.gov Andrew Johnson took office April 15, 1865. He established Thanksgiving as a holiday, and spoke of the need to relocate Indians to “reservations remote from the traveled routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific.”

Whitehouse.gov
Andrew Johnson took office April 15, 1865. He established Thanksgiving as a holiday, and spoke of the need to relocate Indians to “reservations remote from the traveled routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific.”

Andrew Johnson: Racist Determined to ‘Relocate’ Indians.

In his third annual message to Congress, in December 1867, Johnson spoke of the need to relocate Indians to “reservations remote from the traveled routes between the Mississippi and the Pacific.” Calling the Plains Indians “warlike” and “instigated by real or imaginary grievances,” Johnson said the territories should be exempt from Indian outbreaks and that hostile tribes should not be allowed to interrupt construction of the Pacific Railroad.

“These objects, as well as the material interests and the moral and intellectual improvement of the Indians, can be most effectually secured by concentrating them upon portions of country set apart for their exclusive use and located at points remote from our highways and encroaching white settlements,” he said.

Johnson also oversaw three treaties signed in the spring of 1868 at Fort Laramie, in the Dakota Territory. The Sioux, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho signed treaties calling for peace and friendship with the United States.

In June 1868, the U.S. signed a similar peace treaty with the Navajo at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The agreement ended the four-year forced exile of the Navajo and allowed them to return to their homeland.

By the fall of 1868, however, warfare again broke out as Gen. George Armstrong Custer led the 7th U.S. Cavalry in a surprise dawn attack of the Southern Cheyenne village of Washita. Hailed as one of the first substantial American victories against the Southern Plains Indians, the massacre left as many as 100 Cheyenne dead.

Johnson did not mention the massacre in his final message to Congress, in December 1868. Instead, he encouraged the “aboriginal population” to abandon their “nomadic habits” in favor of agriculture and industry.

Full Article Here.

Also of interest today is whether or not The U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) will actually get around to doing a critique of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery issued at its 13th Session in May 2014: “Study on the impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery on indigenous peoples, including mechanisms, processes and instruments of redress.” [UN Doc E/C.19/2014/3], instead of burying it once again.

The Permanent Forum—like most conventional bodies—avoided naming the religious basis of the Doctrine. But the Study itself took aim at the root: “the presumption of racial superiority of Christian Europeans.” The Doctrine “originated with the papal bulls issued during the so-called Age of Discovery in Europe. It was compounded by regulations, such as the Requerimiento, that emanated from royalty in Christian European States.”

The Study showed how the Christian presumption of superiority embodied by the Doctrine of Discovery fuels colonial land seizures and genocide of Native Peoples. “In all its manifestations, ‘discovery’ has been used as a framework for justification to dehumanize, exploit, enslave and subjugate indigenous peoples and dispossess them of their most basic rights, laws, spirituality, worldviews and governance and their lands and resources. Ultimately it was the very foundation of genocide.”

The Study concluded with a realistic appraisal and recommendation:

Peter D’Errico has the full story here.

A love letter to bigotry

Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Jim Webb (Flickr Creative Commons)

Former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Jim Webb (Flickr Creative Commons)

Sen. Jim Webb scolds supporters of Harriet Tubman’s new home on the 20-dollar bill, because they’ve been disparaging President Andrew Jackson too much.

One would think we could celebrate the recognition that Harriet Tubman will be given on future $20 bills without demeaning former president Andrew Jackson as a “monster,” as a recent Huffington Post headline did. And summarizing his legendary tenure as being “known primarily for a brutal genocidal campaign against native Americans,” as reported in The Post, offers an indication of how far political correctness has invaded our educational system and skewed our national consciousness.

This dismissive characterization of one of our great presidents is not occurring in a vacuum. Any white person whose ancestral relations trace to the American South now risks being characterized as having roots based on bigotry and undeserved privilege. Meanwhile, race relations are at their worst point in decades.

Aaauugh. It’s too bloody early [here] for this ineffable twaddle. Race relations are at their worst point in decades? Yes, I’d say they are, but perhaps you should figure out just why that is so.

Far too many of our most important discussions are being debated emotionally, without full regard for historical facts. The myth of universal white privilege and universal disadvantage among racial minorities has become a mantra, even though white and minority cultures alike vary greatly in their ethnic and geographic origins, in their experiences in the United States and in their educational and financial well-being.

Into this uninformed debate come the libels of “Old Hickory.”

Old Hickory. Did you know that Jackson was known as Sharp Knife among many Indigenous peoples? Ever heard Indian Killer Jackson?

As president, Jackson ordered the removal of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi to lands west of the river. This approach, supported by a string of presidents, including Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, was a disaster, resulting in the Trail of Tears where thousands died. But was its motivation genocidal?

I can answer that. Yes. Yes, it was. Fuck, I can’t take any more right now. Need tea.

Op ed here. Raw Story has this also.