Black-capped Chickadee, click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Black-capped Chickadee, click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Honorearth.org
From October 8-13, Honor the Earth is proud to join forces with the Wounded Knee Memorial Riders, the Dakota 38 and Big Foot riders, and many horse nation societies, in a spiritual horse ride to protect our sacred waters from the Dakota Access pipeline and all the black snakes that threaten our lands.
Thousands have come together in a historic gathering of tribes at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, where Dakota Access threatens a concentration sacred sites and the water source of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, as well as the 18 million people downstream.
This is our moment. Tribes and First Nations are standing up and standing together to demand an end to the desecration of our lands and the poisoning of our sacred waters…to demand a better future for our people. We are the river, and the river is us.
On October 8th we will gather at the Standing Rock encampment, and ride against the current of the oil.
Please stand with us. We need your support. For more info, visit www.honorearth.org/mniwiconi
Oh, and in case you’re wondering about that Standing Rock to Tioga, it means Tioga, ND, which styles itself as ‘The Oil Capital of North Dakota’.
This reminds me of another embarrassing white person moment at the camps last week. The Dakota 38 were expected, and we were hoping to see them. A white woman laughed and shrugged, saying “I mean, I don’t even know what that is. What is the Dakota 38.” Yeah, okay, I know the ‘history’ taught in uStates is a whitewashed mess, but still…
Even if you’re just a solidarity tourist, try to not only be respectful, but try to learn. Aaaand, this is the internet age, how hard is it? The Dakota 38, the largest mass execution in the history of the United States. A criminal injustice, perpetrated in Mankato, Minnesota.
Tipi-hdo-niche, Forbids His Dwelling
Wyata-tonwan, His People
Taju-xa, Red Otter
Hinhan-shoon-koyag-mani, Walks Clothed in an Owl’s Tail
Maza-bomidu, Iron Blower
Wapa-duta, Scarlet Leaf
Wahena, translation unknown
Sna-mani, Tinkling Walker
Radapinyanke, Rattling Runner
Dowan niye, The Singer
Xunka ska, White Dog
Hepan, family name for a second son
Tunkan icha ta mani, Walks With His Grandfather
Ite duta, Scarlet Face
Amdacha, Broken to Pieces
Hepidan, family name for a third son
Marpiya te najin, Stands on a Cloud (Cut Nose)
Henry Milord (French mixed-blood)
Dan Little, Chaska dan, family name for a first son (this may be We-chank-wash-ta-don-pee, who had been pardoned and was mistakenly executed when he answered to a call for “Chaska,” reference to a first son; fabric artist Gwen Westerman did a quilt called “Caske’s Pardon” based on him.
Baptiste Campbell, (French mixed-blood)
Tate kage, Wind Maker
Hapinkpa, Tip of the Horn
Hypolite Auge (French mixed-blood)
Nape shuha, Does Not Flee
Wakan tanka, Great Spirit
Tunkan koyag I najin, Stands Clothed with His Grandfather
Maka te najin, Stands Upon Earth
Pazi kuta mani, Walks Prepared to Shoot
Tate hdo dan, Wind Comes Back
Waxicun na, Little Whiteman (this young white man, adopted by the Dakota at an early age and who was acquitted, was hanged, according to the Minnesota Historical Society U.S.-Dakota War website).
Aichaga, To Grow Upon
Ho tan inku, Voice Heard in Returning
Cetan hunka, The Parent Hawk
Had hin hda, To Make a Rattling Noise
Chanka hdo, Near the Woods
Oyate tonwan, The Coming People
Mehu we mea, He Comes for Me
Wakinyan na, Little Thunder
Wakanozanzan and Shakopee: These two chiefs who fled north after the war, were kidnapped from Canada in January 1864 and were tried and convicted in November that year and their executions were approved by President Andrew Johnson (after Lincoln’s assassination) and they were hanged November 11, 1865.
You can read more about the Dakota 38 + 2 here and here. Also, here.
Via Facebook.
Amnesty International has turned their attention to Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, an incompetent bigot who has repeatedly run to media with reports of pipe bombs, guns, knives, and violence in the camps at Standing Rock, and has been proven wrong every time, but he continues to do this. With the last peaceful direct action being met with armored vehicles, cops in armored riot gear and wielding assault rifles at people who were planting corn and willow, he once again shows his plain desire to rain down violence and destruction on peaceful people. He managed to restrain himself to arresting 21 people. I have mentioned our surprise at seeing a monstrous, shiny, new mobile command center hulking behind silos, last week on our way into camp. Kirchmeier has all the shiny, militarized goodies, and it’s apparent that he’s just aching to use them. Not once has he or his force bothered to protect the Standing Rock Protectors, he refused to stop the attack and assault by private goons, but instead chose to run to the media with stories of those poor, beset upon goons and their vicious animals. Indians? Oh, who cares about them?
Kirchmeier has been trying, every day, to amp things up, and it’s getting very worrying now, because all it will take is one moment, one loss of control, one bullet fired. Ndakota doesn’t offer much opportunity for “action”, the kind of action a strutting chicken like Kirchmeier would like to see. I get the feeling he sees this as one chance for some of that glorious cop action, a story to end his days on. This man is dangerous because he is weak, and too in love with those shiny, militarized toys.
Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier
Morton County Sheriff’s Department28 September 2016
Dear Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier:
Following the protests that took place at a Dakota Access Pipeline construction site on 3 September, we are writing to ask you to investigate the use of force by private contractors, remove blockades and discontinue the use of riot gear by Morton County Sheriff’s deputies when policing protests in order to facilitate the right to peaceful protests in accordance with international law and standards.
Ronald Reagan. Whitehouse.gov
With just eight months to go before the end of his two-term presidency, Ronald Wilson Reagan declared that the United States might have “made a mistake” in humoring the Indians.
His audience was a group of students and faculty at Moscow State University in May 1988. His speech was delivered nearly 5,000 miles from Washington, D.C., yet a group of Native Americans reportedly had traveled to the Soviet Union for a chance to bend the President’s ear.
When questioned about his failure to connect with the Indians on home soil, Reagan opined about the state of Indian affairs—and in the process revealed a gaping hole in his own understanding.
“Let me tell you just a little something about the American Indian in our land,” he began. “We have provided millions of acres of land” for reservations, and “they, from the beginning, announced that they wanted to maintain their way of life.”
The government set up reservations, established a Bureau of Indian Affairs and provided education for the Indians, Reagan said. Yet some still preferred “that early way of life” over becoming mainstream American citizens.
“We’ve done everything we can to meet their demands as to how they want to live,” he said. “Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should have said, no, come join us; be citizens along with the rest of us.”
Winona LaDuke has an excellent column up at ICTMN, and an excellent article in Yes! too, What Would Sitting Bull Do?
Excerpts here, please, click and read the full stories.
[…] There is more than just a $3.9 billion pipeline at stake here. This is about constitutional rights, and human rights. This time, instead of the Seventh Cavalry, or Indian police dispatched to assassinate Sitting Bull, Governor Dalrymple seeks to spend over $7.8 million militarizing the state to put down the Lakota and their allies. This is not going to happen. We are a strong and principled people. As of today, 69 people have been arrested, including Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II and Councilmember Dana Yellowfat. The people have physically stopped construction for weeks. And the battle is just beginning. I am watching history repeat itself, and wondering how badly Dalrymple really wants that pipeline.
[…]
This is our plan: Three of Honor the Earth’s primary staff have essentially moved to Standing Rock to support the frontlines and ensure a multi-dimensional campaign. We continue to provide legal strategies and counsel, and campaign coordination. And we continue to work on the future. This tribe does not need a new pipeline, they need energy infrastructure that actually serves its people. After all, three years ago Debbie Dogskin, a Standing Rock resident, froze to death because she could not pay her propane bill. That is the reality here.
With an 85% drop in active oil rigs in the Bakken oil fields, there is no need for this pipeline. It is a pipeline from nowhere. Here’s what true energy independence would look like: With $3.9 billion equally divided, we could install 65,000 typical 5kw residential rooftop PV systems, each supplying about half of the home’s electricity needs; install 325 2MW utility scale wind towers that would generate over 3.5 billion kwh per year; and provide 160,000 homes with $8000 efficiency retrofit packages, saving $300/yr/home. That would produce jobs, most of them local.
We are supporting Standing Rock as they fight this pipeline, but we are also helping to create a new future. We plan to install 20 solar thermal panels on tribal houses at Standing Rock, beginning to address fuel poverty on the reservation.
Via ICTMN.
via WCPO.
he small town of Aurora, Indiana is in an uproar after a local man entered a float in the annual Farmers Fair Parade depicting Hillary Clinton sitting in an electric chair with rival Donald Trump about to pull the switch.
According the creator of the float, which also featured a grim reaper and an Easter Island moai head in blackface labeled “Obama,” he entered it in an effort to get laughs, reports WCPO.
“It definitely was all for laughter. We’ve always had floats for laughter,” explained 76-year-old Frank Linkmeyer. “There’s never been anything else but that,” while denying there was anything racist about his creation.
Okay, fine, leave the racism out, Mr. Linkmeyer. The violence and misogyny, that’s funny? I’m amazed you made it to 76 years old without learning one damn thing.
According to one woman who was marching in the parade with her daughter’s Girl Scout group, she didn’t find anything about it funny.
“For us to be in 2016 and have our president depicted as an Easter Island statue in blackface, which doesn’t even make any sense, but it’s just racist as can be,” explained Jackie Reynolds. ““But knowing that we are marching alongside displays like this really makes me question whether or not we will be participating next year.”
Said local Penny Britton, who didn’t attend the parade but saw pictures of the float after they were posted to Facebook, it was “disgusting.”
“It instantly turned my stomach,” Britton stated. “One of the pictures shows children seeing the float go by and staring at it.”
In a statement from the Lions Club, which approves the floats, officials kept their distance stating, “the parade is a public venue which does not reflect the views of the Aurora Lions Club. As a member of a worldwide service organization, we are proud and standby our record of service to this community.”
As for float designer Linkmeyer, he said he could have reversed Trump and Clinton, saying, “I could’ve taken and put Donald Trump in that float and had Hillary pull the handle. Nevertheless, I would have never pleased everybody and it was definitely all for laughter.”
Linkmeyer did not explain how that would have meshed with the Trump/Pence or hand-written signs listing so-called Clinton “scandals.”
As for the Obama statue in blackface, “We were getting ready to get in that parade and this thing was sittin’ in front of this gentleman’s building down there and they said, ‘Let’s put that on there,’ and I didn’t give it a thought,” he attempted to explain.
Didn’t give it any thought. Gee, I think we’ve diagnosed your problem, you vile bigot – you don’t think.
The float was part of the Aurora Farmers Fair Parade Saturday morning in the small Ohio River town 35 miles west of Cincinnati. It’s sponsored by the Aurora Lions Club, according to its website, and touted as Indiana’s oldest street festival. The theme of the parade was “Celebrating the Past, Embracing the Future.”
According to the Rules & Regulation on the website, Fair officials “reserve the right to reject or evict any entry from the parade line-up that they deem unsuitable.”
So, this inhumanity float got by everyone as suitable. For someone who commented (See WCPO) that it was no big deal, there are good and bad people, and as long as you don’t hang out with racists, it’s all good. To that person, I’m just going to point out that you are hanging out with racists. Another person wanted to know where the racism and sexism was in the picture. Some days, I just don’t have much hope.
Johnson Tsang is an extraordinary, brilliant sculptor. The work is absolutely stunning. I’m going to show a lot here, the ones that impacted me the most, but that’s different for every person, so click on over to see the whole series. Click on images to see at full size, the detail…oh.
‘Two in One’
Lucid Dream Series
Published only once in 1973, Les Diners de Gala was a dream fulfilled for surrealist artist Salvador Dali who claimed at the age of 6 that he wanted to be a chef. The cookbook pairs 136 recipes over 12 chapters (the 10th of which is dedicated to aphrodisiacs) with the his exceptionally strange illustrations and collages created especially for the publication. The artworks depict towering mountains of crayfish, an unusual meeting of a swan and a toothbrush in a pastry case, and portraits of Dali himself mingling with chefs against decadent place settings. Recipes include such delicacies as “Thousand Year Old Eggs”, “Veal Cutlets Stuffed With Snails”, “Frog Pasties”, and “Toffee with Pine Cones”.
…Despite the unusual ingredients and preparation methods, many of the old school recipes in Les Diners de Gala originated in some of the top restaurants in Paris at the time including Lasserre, La Tour d’Argent, Maxim’s, and Le Train Bleu. Lest you think anything in the book might be remotely healthy, it offers a cautionary disclaimer at the outset:
We would like to state clearly that, beginning with the very first recipes, Les Diners de Gala, with its precepts and its illustrations, is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of Taste. Don’t look for dietetic formulas here.
We intend to ignore those charts and tables in which chemistry takes the place of gastronomy. If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive, and far too impertinent for you.
…Only around 400 copies of Les Diners de Gala are known to survive, most of which sell for hundreds of dollars. However Taschen has finally made this rare book available for the first time in 43 years as a new reprint currently available for pre-order.
Via Colossal Art.
Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Steven Newcomb has an excellent column up at ICTMN, examining the claim to Očeti Sakowiŋ.
We are able to think back to a time when our ancestors were living entirely free from and independent of ideas developed across the Atlantic Ocean in a place called Christendom. We know that our Native ancestors were in no way subject to Christian ideas before the Christians sailed across that ocean to our part of the world, which many of us know as Turtle Island. Because the Christian Europeans were not physically here on Turtle Island, their concepts, ideas, and arguments were not here either. This leaves us with a mystery. On what basis did the invading colonizers first assume that our free nations and our ancestors were subject to the ideas and arguments of the Christian world? To what extent are those ideas still being used today centuries later by the United States?
In his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, published in 1833, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story asked a related question. He asked how the British Colonies got title to the soil of the North American continent. His question not only assumed that the British colonies had title to the soil of the continent, it also assumed, as Story said, that the colonizing powers obtained a “title” by their own “assertion” that they had a “complete title” to and “absolute dominion” over the soil of what from our ancestors’ perspective was the soil of our national territories. Story traced those ideas back to a papal bull of the fifteenth century and to royal charters of England and Great Britain.
Most people fail to realize that men such as Joseph Story and John Marshall spent a great deal of their time thinking about such matters. They did so because they had to develop a rationale for asserting that the Christian colonizers from Europe had a right to the soil of the continent that was superior to whatever right our original nations and our ancestors thought they had. Men of ideas such as Story and Marshall, whose job it was to persuade, undoubtedly knew there was a slight chance that someday in the distant future, we, the descendants of our Native ancestors, might try to go back through the record of the ideas of the colonizers and trace their mental “steps.”
A few of us have been working for decades on that retrospective with the goal in mind of not only understanding but of also now at long last directly challenging the ideas and arguments that were “laid down” by the ancestors of the colonizing society who sailed to Turtle Island from Western Christendom.
Based on decades of intensive and diligent research, we now know that the Christian European thinkers dreamed up out of their heads the idea that the representatives of Christendom could enter someone else’s country and mentally, verbally, and ceremonially make the assertion that the monarch they represented had an “absolute dominion” over the country they had located by ship. They further assumed that their mental, verbal, and ceremonial assertion would become “true” because the Christian thinkers dreamed it up in their minds and treated it as “true” thereby sustaining it over time.
The idea that they as colonizers had a complete title to and absolute dominion over the soil of the territories of our Original Nations, a point that Story, Marshall, and other white men claimed on behalf of the United States, became “true” and a “reality” for the colonizers and for the United States simply because those ideas were collectively treated as “true” and as a “reality.” Since this was all happening in the colonizers’ own language at the time, when such assertions were initially made, our ancestors had no understanding of the specific nature of the colonizers’ bizarre views. Some of our ancestors such as Tecumseh did try to challenge the colonizers’ thinking based on the original free existence of our nations.
The recent controversy over the Dakota Access Pipeline traces back to that process of reality-construction and the ability of the United States government to simply declare a given reality into existence. But there is something rather surprising in the historical record that most people know nothing about. It is surprising because it is language that still ought to be benefiting Native nations. …
The full column is here, and it’s excellent reading.
SACNAS social media team member and University of Wisconsin-Madison SACNAS Chapter Secretary Nik Santistevan says he’s going to SACNAS 2016. Courtesy Facebook/SACNAS.
Thousands of Chicano/Hispanic and Native American scientists will gather at the Long Beach Convention Center for the largest multicultural and multidisciplinary diversity in STEM event in the country from October 13 to 15.
Hosted by the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), some 4,000 students and science professionals of color and their allies will spend three days in California discussing cutting-edge science.
“To maintain a globally competitive STEM workforce, we need to achieve true diversity in STEM,” said SACNAS Executive Director Dr. Antonia O. Franco, in a press release. “The sheer number of attendees proves that not only does STEM diversity matter, it is possible.”
This conference serves as a training ground for the next generation of STEM professionals, and aims to level the playing field for first generation college students of color through mentoring, professional development, and networking.
The keynote speakers are listed in the full article.
From Kengi. So beautiful! Click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
White-breasted Nuthatch. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.