Andy Laverdure responds to the North Dakota editorial, "Opportunity for Dialogue Squandered." The editorial followed the Turtle Mountain Chippewa banning Rob Port from tribal land.
Open letter to Tony Bender, president of the North Dakota Newspaper Association
By Andy Laverdure, Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribal member
Your most recent article decrying the banishment action taken by the Turtle Mountain Tribe against Rob Port is off mark. You state that the action “did more to discredit the tribal council than it did to discredit Port." How so?
You misconstrue the intent of the banishment action. If you actually lived on the reservation and witnessed or experienced the hurt and harm caused not only to the tribe itself, but to tribal residents (Indian and non-Indian), you would realize that the banishment action was necessary and appropriate. The action primarily served to bring the issue to the forefront and to spotlight the tribe’s disgust at the insult.
The banishment action does not restrict Rob Port’s free speech in any way whatsoever. Can you tell me how this is possible? Rob still has his blog site. He still works with Steve Cates and the Dakota Beacon. He still apparently and appallingly has the ears of the North Dakota Newspaper Association.
In your article, Mr. Bender, you state “a real opportunity to educate and refute any misconception is being squandered” and that tribal membership should “use this opportunity to tell this story from the perspective of the tribe." You let me know where the story can be told, who should tell the story, and how it should be told.
If the tribe didn’t take drastic measure, do you even think anyone in your news world would be showing any interest? Most North Dakota newspapers have always shown distaste for Indian issues. Selected news is usually negative, except for positive input from individuals like Dorreen Yellow Bird at the Grand Forks Herald.
There have been many occasions where tribal people have tried to tell their story, but no one would listen. Who makes the decisions in the state relative to what is newsworthy? Not tribal members, that’s for sure.
It may come as a surprise to you, but the US Constitution applies only sporadically to Indian tribes. Tribes have their own laws and have every right to apply those laws as they see fit. In this case, the Turtle Mountain Tribe saw fit to banish Rob Port for the terror he caused to the tribe and the tribe’s membership. The article and the ensuing battle that occurred in the sayanythingblog site caused a great deal of consternation and emotional harm to tribal membership. The harm cannot be adequately described, but it was great. No one seems to care about that aspect of this story; after all, those negatively affected are only a bunch of Indians. As I asked before, and will continue to ask, where is the outrage about the article from the non-tribal voices in our state? The article brought shame onto the whole state, not only Indian Reservations.
Thank you,
Andy Laverdure
(Comment two) To the editor
From: Andy Laverdure
Tony Bender, president of the North Dakota Newspaper Association argues the importance of free speech and the First Amendment in his May 25, 2007 opinion article to various outlets in North Dakota.
Mr. Bender states that “debate often makes us wiser and sometimes changes hearts and minds”. I certainly hope so.
When you enter http://www.sayanythingblog.com/, you can use key words to search the site in the upper right corner of the page. If you type in “Indian Reservations” for example, you will be taken to a list of all threads that discuss Indian Reservation related issues. This is an important tool to use for tracking issues.
If you type “Manhart” into search, you will find pornography. The article, titled: “Air Force Sgt. Michelle Manhart Suspended While Military "Investigates" Playboy Spread
(With Pics)”, dated January 11, 2007 is written by Rob Port. The article has an update at the bottom of the page that states "Thanks to a helpful reader, if you want to see Sgt. Manuhurt's pictorial click here, here and here. Investigation complete". Please note the new spelling of the name Manhart. The click here references are blue and take you to the nude pictures. These pictures display full frontal nudity.
KXNET.com syndicates the sayanythingblog site. KXNET includes: KXMB, Bismarck; KXMA, Dickinson; KXMC, Minot; and KXMD, Williston. Syndication means these stations sponsor and support Rob Port and his sayanythingblog site. You need to contact these stations to see if they support nudity and pornography.
The North Dakota Republican Party also supports the sayanythingblog site and has a link calling the sayanythingblog site “Interesting”. The Dakota Beacon, an extension of the Republican Party lists the sayanythingblog site as “North Dakota’s most popular blog” and has Rob Port as one of its contributors. Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon, is also Chairman of the North Dakota Family Alliance, an organization that espouses integrity and a Christian statement of faith. Each of these entities, the NDGOP and the Dakota Beacon support and promote the Rob Port blog site. Do they also support and promote pornography?
When you enter the sayanythingblog site, there is no notification to anyone entering that the site contains nudity and pornography. Anyone under the age of 18 can enter the site. Parental blocks? Those can only be made when parents are aware.
Now, I ask, how does pornography affect free speech at the blog site? A friend of mine has stated “people who live in glass houses…”
Thank you,
Andy Laverdure
.
Tony Bender's editorial:
"Opportunity for Dialogue Squandered"
by Tony Bender
http://www.in-forum.com/Opinion/articles/166916
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
United Nations calls for second Indigenous Border Summit
By Brenda Norrell
Human Rights Editor
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
http://www.unobserver.com/
Independent news at the Hague
NEW YORK -- The Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas, held in San Xavier on Tohono O'odham land in Arizona, was so successful that the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is calling for a second Border Summit.
The Border Summit is having far-reaching global impacts.
"As the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues VI came to an end, I am glad to inform you that it too recommended the call for another International Border Summit," said Tony Gonzales, field representative for the International Indian Treaty Council and among the moderators of the Border Summit in San Xavier.
"Migration and development, border deaths and conflict, border crossing and ID use and displacement of whole communities apparently is coming under scrutiny. It is emerging as a hot topic in the halls of the United Nations and gathering movement; and the global search for solutions."
In New York, the Permanent Forum priorities were the protection of intellectual and traditional property rights, safeguarding genetic integrity, climate change and border issues.
The Border Summit of the Americas, organized by Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham, with support from the International Indian Treaty Council, in 2006, issued a proclamation of Indigenous border rights. The proclamation called for an end to the militarization of borders and a halt to the harassment of Indigenous Peoples crossing borders. The declaration opposed the construction of a U.S. and Mexico border wall that would dissect O'odham communities and violate an O'odham ceremonial route.
The summit gathered testimony from those who are living in the border region, including victims of the military and border agents and those struggling to uphold human rights. The summit brought together in solidarity Mohawk from the north with Indigenous from the southern border.
Gonzales said the Border Summit received endorsement from the United Nations at the preparatory session in April, then again in May from the Forum.
"The preparatory meeting held in mid-April 2007 in Minneapolis in the presence of Willie Little Child, UN Permanent Forum member, endorsed the Border Summit including the San Xavier District Declaration, and recommended in their report the support of another such effort to the UN Permanent Forum."
A site has not yet been selected for the second Border Summit.
The United Nations said that Indigenous leaders wrapped up the annual session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues with a series of recommendations calling on Member States to take steps to protect their rights to lands, territories and natural resources.
Participants urged countries to adopt measures to halt "land alienation" in Indigenous territories – such as by imposing a moratorium on the sale and registration of land in areas that are occupied by Indigenous Peoples, according to the U.N. news release.
They also called for the world’s estimated 370 million Indigenous Peoples to be given a central role in dispute-solving arrangements over the lands, territories and natural resources they occupy and use, as well as the right to receive information about these issues in a language they can understand.
During the two-week summit, recommendations included a call for financial and technical assistance so that Indigenous Peoples can map the boundaries of their communal lands, the imposition of penalties on those who carry out harmful activities on indigenous lands, and the payment of compensation to indigenous peoples as a result of such activities.
The recommendations are contained in the Forum’s report, to be forwarded to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which stresses that territories, lands and natural resources are the sources of Indigenous Peoples’ spiritual, cultural and social identity.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chairperson of the Permanent Forum, said that Indigenous People worldwide have long suffered discrimination over their entitlements to occupying and using lands and natural resources.
“One of the key reason why Indigenous Peoples are being disenfranchised from their lands and territories is the existence of discriminatory laws, policies and programmes that do not recognize indigenous peoples’ land tenure systems and give more priority to claims being put by corporations – both State and private,” she said.
More than 1,500
Indigenous representatives attended the Forum’s session. Next year’s Forum will focus on the theme of climate change and there will also be sessions devoted to the Pacific region and to the protection of the thousands of threatened Indigenous languages.Indigenous oppose Border Wall and Militarization:
http://americas.irc-online.org/amcit/3648
To read reports on the Border Summit, please see:
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/
Articles from the Border Summit by Brenda Norrell:
"Mohawk and Tohono O'odham solidarity at Border Summit"
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id59.html
"Border Summit opposes border wall"
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id62.html
"Tohono O'odham Bennett Patricio, Jr., ran over by Border Patrol"
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id63.html
"Tohono O'odham Mike Wilson: Border Patrol is occupying army"
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com/id61.html
PHOTOS: Top: Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham receives flag from Mark Maracle, Mohawk, at the Border Summit in San Xavier. Lower left: Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham who puts out water for migrants dieing in the desert, speaks at summit. Right: Irvin and Angie Ramon, Tohono O'odham, whose 18-year-old son Bennett Patricio, Jr., was ran over and killed by the Border Patrol speak at summit. Bottom right: Treaty Council staff Tony Gonzales on Alcatraz. Photos Brenda Norrell. Bottom right: Western Shoshone Carrie Dann and Michelle Cook, Navajo and participant at the summit in San Xavier, at the Permanent Forum in May in New York. Courtesy photo.)
Gwich'in and Saami on Climate Change: The thawing Arctic
http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2007/05/15/opinion/otherviews/guest0515.txt
'Wounded Knee' disappointing end to the Hollywood trail
THE END OF THE HOLLYWOOD TRAIL
by Hanay Geiogamah
Reposted from Pechanga Net: www.pechanga.net/
In the wake of HBO' s disappointing and history-deranging adaptation of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, American Indian actors, writers, aspiring directors and producers arrive at the end of the trail for their decades-long struggle to gain a footing in Hollywood: our cause is lost in the American film and television industry.
It is now time for us to abandon our stake in the Hollywood camp, this distressed outpost, now time for us to gather on the open beach at Santa Monica and there bury in the sand our hopes for participation and inclusion, then head out of town with our heads held a high as we can hold them. We will be better off re-locating our work back to the reservations, to the tribal communities and scattered remnants of land allotments that were given to us in treaties with the United States government over a hundred years ago in the epic tragedy which Dee Brown described so vividly and thoroughly in his iconic history. And there, hopefully safe from the misbegotten creative and economic forces of the industry, we must knuckle down and produce our own films, our own television dramas, write our own accounts of our history, and present them in images that we create and that we will control. We have an audience of two million American Indians waiting.
With Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, the power brokers of the industry have demonstrated that their entertainment values and demands prevail over anything we say or do, write or create, that our history is for them to tell, to fictionalize, to distort with false love stories and character portrayals, and to trivialize all that is complex and tragic. HBO did not ask for or seek the help and guidance of any of the experienced American Indian creative professionals who might have helped steer them away from this debacle. Yes, Indian actors played the Indians, but that was all.
With breathtaking arrogance, Bury My Heart's narrative forcibly inducts American Indians into the brotherhood of savagery as a way of universalizing them and making them like all other people. Genocide is dramatized as just as much the result of the mean-spirited and physically cruel behavior of American Indians, who were fighting for their very survival, as it was of the inhumanity of the American armies. The last shreds of Indian nobility are eliminated once and for all.
A feature article on the making of Bury My Heart titled "The Last Stand" in the May 27 Los Angeles Times gives a brief, perplexing account of how Hollywood came to the view that American Indians can now be justly and fairly seen as co-agents of their own destruction. As a two-hour condensation of the book, "The film didn't have time to dwell on the spiritual, Earth-friendly image of Native Americans," says the article's author, Graham Fuller. "Nor does it offer a politically correct perspective," he adds. The Sioux, we're told, were "as rapacious as their white conquerers."
This view is scaldingly laid out with the portrayal of Sitting Bull as a baby killer, as a coward who hid in his tipi at the height of the Battle of Little Bighorn, and as a greedy buffoon who lusts for the white man's money and approval. The scriptwriter, Daniel Giat, confidently tells The Times, "My primary objective was to fully dimensionalize these people. Sitting Bull was vain. He was desperate to hold onto the esteem of his people and win the esteem of the whites. But I think in depicting his desperation and the measures he took in acting on it, it makes it all the more sad and tragic, and I think we identify with him all the more for it."
To complete this grim, determined view, the film presents every Indian cliche imaginable in graphic, full-bodied images without context or explanation: brutal scalpings; stoic, saddened faces of Indian elders; sick, dying babies; herds of wild horses surging across open prairies; vast armies of Indian warriors mounted along high vistas; war ponies being ceremonially painted; desperate ghost dancers, and heartless Indian agents and schoolteachers. We've seen them all far too many times.
And to all of this, unbelievably, the article tells us, "The passel of Lakota and other Indian consultants hired for the project obviously didn't object too strenuously." No credible American Indian historians, scholars or film makers are quoted in The Times article. I was astonished to see the names of two highly respected scholars and historians listed in the film's credit crawl and was grateful that this embarrassment for them would not be seen by many.
As students in the early 1970s, members of my generation of American Indians carried paperback copies of Bury My Heart in our backpacks as talismans of hope. Thirty-seven years later, we must sadly accept that HBO, the avatar of original television programming and creative innovation, has failed to deliver a truthful, even recognizable telling of Dee Brown's history. The more cynical among us back then forecast that this would happen, and, alas....
By letting go of our Hollywood dreams, we American Indians can take control of our stories and images and establish creative sovereignty. Affordable digital cameras and production equipment and scripts written by the Indian writers whom Hollywood rejected and left blowing in the wind will help us to become free and independent tellers our our own stories. The failure of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee urgently tells us that we must, must do this. Aho, thank you.
Hanay Geiogamah Professor of Theater
UCLA School of Theater, Film and TelevisionDirector
UCLA American Indian Studies Center
by Hanay Geiogamah
Reposted from Pechanga Net: www.pechanga.net/
In the wake of HBO' s disappointing and history-deranging adaptation of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, American Indian actors, writers, aspiring directors and producers arrive at the end of the trail for their decades-long struggle to gain a footing in Hollywood: our cause is lost in the American film and television industry.
It is now time for us to abandon our stake in the Hollywood camp, this distressed outpost, now time for us to gather on the open beach at Santa Monica and there bury in the sand our hopes for participation and inclusion, then head out of town with our heads held a high as we can hold them. We will be better off re-locating our work back to the reservations, to the tribal communities and scattered remnants of land allotments that were given to us in treaties with the United States government over a hundred years ago in the epic tragedy which Dee Brown described so vividly and thoroughly in his iconic history. And there, hopefully safe from the misbegotten creative and economic forces of the industry, we must knuckle down and produce our own films, our own television dramas, write our own accounts of our history, and present them in images that we create and that we will control. We have an audience of two million American Indians waiting.
With Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, the power brokers of the industry have demonstrated that their entertainment values and demands prevail over anything we say or do, write or create, that our history is for them to tell, to fictionalize, to distort with false love stories and character portrayals, and to trivialize all that is complex and tragic. HBO did not ask for or seek the help and guidance of any of the experienced American Indian creative professionals who might have helped steer them away from this debacle. Yes, Indian actors played the Indians, but that was all.
With breathtaking arrogance, Bury My Heart's narrative forcibly inducts American Indians into the brotherhood of savagery as a way of universalizing them and making them like all other people. Genocide is dramatized as just as much the result of the mean-spirited and physically cruel behavior of American Indians, who were fighting for their very survival, as it was of the inhumanity of the American armies. The last shreds of Indian nobility are eliminated once and for all.
A feature article on the making of Bury My Heart titled "The Last Stand" in the May 27 Los Angeles Times gives a brief, perplexing account of how Hollywood came to the view that American Indians can now be justly and fairly seen as co-agents of their own destruction. As a two-hour condensation of the book, "The film didn't have time to dwell on the spiritual, Earth-friendly image of Native Americans," says the article's author, Graham Fuller. "Nor does it offer a politically correct perspective," he adds. The Sioux, we're told, were "as rapacious as their white conquerers."
This view is scaldingly laid out with the portrayal of Sitting Bull as a baby killer, as a coward who hid in his tipi at the height of the Battle of Little Bighorn, and as a greedy buffoon who lusts for the white man's money and approval. The scriptwriter, Daniel Giat, confidently tells The Times, "My primary objective was to fully dimensionalize these people. Sitting Bull was vain. He was desperate to hold onto the esteem of his people and win the esteem of the whites. But I think in depicting his desperation and the measures he took in acting on it, it makes it all the more sad and tragic, and I think we identify with him all the more for it."
To complete this grim, determined view, the film presents every Indian cliche imaginable in graphic, full-bodied images without context or explanation: brutal scalpings; stoic, saddened faces of Indian elders; sick, dying babies; herds of wild horses surging across open prairies; vast armies of Indian warriors mounted along high vistas; war ponies being ceremonially painted; desperate ghost dancers, and heartless Indian agents and schoolteachers. We've seen them all far too many times.
And to all of this, unbelievably, the article tells us, "The passel of Lakota and other Indian consultants hired for the project obviously didn't object too strenuously." No credible American Indian historians, scholars or film makers are quoted in The Times article. I was astonished to see the names of two highly respected scholars and historians listed in the film's credit crawl and was grateful that this embarrassment for them would not be seen by many.
As students in the early 1970s, members of my generation of American Indians carried paperback copies of Bury My Heart in our backpacks as talismans of hope. Thirty-seven years later, we must sadly accept that HBO, the avatar of original television programming and creative innovation, has failed to deliver a truthful, even recognizable telling of Dee Brown's history. The more cynical among us back then forecast that this would happen, and, alas....
By letting go of our Hollywood dreams, we American Indians can take control of our stories and images and establish creative sovereignty. Affordable digital cameras and production equipment and scripts written by the Indian writers whom Hollywood rejected and left blowing in the wind will help us to become free and independent tellers our our own stories. The failure of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee urgently tells us that we must, must do this. Aho, thank you.
Hanay Geiogamah Professor of Theater
UCLA School of Theater, Film and TelevisionDirector
UCLA American Indian Studies Center
Western Shoshone and Navajo at United Nations
Fighting for Indigenous Rights: Western Shoshone Carrie Dann with Michelle Cook, Navajo student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in New York. Courtesy photo Michelle Cook. Blackfoot Confederacy moves to implement its own passport
By John McGillWednesday, May 30, 2007 10:46 AM MDT
http://www.glacierreporter.com/
As early as Jan. 1, 2008, U.S. citizens may be required to present a passport or other documentation to get to and from Mexico, and more importantly for residents of Blackfeet Country, Canada. The $100 fee per person, said Blackfeet Tribal Councilman Rodney "Fish" Gervais, is a particular hardship for the tribal membership, and one the U.S. based Southern Piegan band of the Blackfeet is working to change, along with their northern relatives.
Representatives of the Blood and Siksika, two of the three Canadian bands, joined with their Southern Piegan relatives Friday, May 25, to finalize plans to create a passport designed for use by members of the Blackfoot Confederacy."I kept going to the Tribal Council about border crossing and the need for a common passport," said Gervais Friday from the Glacier Peaks Casino where the delegates came for lunch. "Now that I'm on the Council, it was one of the first things I did, and now we're in the final process. Tuesday [May 29] is the final signing."Gervais said he'd met with U.S. Immigration officials already, and the American side of the deal seems to be possible because of their willingness to recognize arrangements made in the Jay Treaty of 1794. In that treaty, both governments of the United States and Canada agreed to allow free travel for Native peoples across the international border although both governments have been criticized for their failures to live up to the treaty. Gervais said the Canadians have yet to agree to honor the passport."It's been years in the making," Gervais said. "We're taking the initiative; now comes the accepting part. The idea is a border crossing of our own like the Mohawk have. The Confederacy is behind it, and it strengthens the confederacy." The Akwesasne Mohawk found themselves similarly divided between the United States and Canada and eventually gained a border crossing specifically for members of their tribe.Gervais displayed a model passport - a plastic coated card with the member's name and photo, along with a place for signatures of the chiefs of each of the four bands. An American and Canadian flag grace each corner of the card.
"Since 9/11 it's become much more strict at the border, and it's a hardship for the cultural and religious ties of indigenous peoples," Gervais concluded.
Petition demanding apology from Mel Gibson for Apocalypto
Gibson told to apologize to students and Mayans
To: Mel Gibson and University Administration
Mel Gibson Apologize to CSUN students and the Mayan Community!
We demand that Mel Gibson, writer and director of the film “Apocalypto” apologize to the faculty, students and members of the Mayan community present at the California State University Northridge talk where he used an abusive obscenity in response to legitimate questions about his film. Mel Gibson’s obscene and hostile remarks tarnished the safe learning environment that the university strives to foster for all students, faculty and guests. His refusal to address the questions raised by the Mayan community members and his obscene response saying “F¬ ck off lady” demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect and understanding of the issues raised by the indigenous communities he claims to depict in his film. While we cannot hold a Hollywood movie like “Apocalypto” to the standards of accuracy in its depiction of history, we must hold it and its creator accountable for its public value, impact and influence. “Apocalypto” is a movie that perpetuates a racist and violent understanding of Indigenous peoples; these representations propagate, at best, misconception, and at worst, hate toward the Indigenous communities ...
http://www.petitiononline.com/MAYAN/
Rob Schmidt: Gibson was presenter at the First Americans in the Arts awards ceremony:
" ... The first big moment occurred when Mel Gibson presented an award to Morris Birdyellowhead for his supporting role in Apocalypto. As Gibson walked to the stage, he went right past me. He was literally a foot away.
For a split second I thought of tripping him to advance the cause of race relations. But I didn’t."
http://www.nativevue.org/blog/?p=544
Back home to a breakfast of cactus
It is good to be back near the southern border and a breakfast of cactus (nopalitos) after a train ride from Montana, down the west coast. I was deeply touched by the kindness of strangers on this trip and the great beauty of the mountains and coast.
The good news at home is that Marcos and the Comandantes have been successful in setting up Zapatista camps and traveling throughout northwest Mexico to support Indigenous Peoples and their struggles to survive. The Other Campaign has continued to visit the desperate, the hungry, those forgotten by the Mexican government, and those who have lost hope. The Zapatistas are supporting their rights to fish, to organize, to farm and live without oppression, slavery and toxins and pesticides in their soil, water and air.
The Migrant march from Sasabe, Arizona, is underway and the struggle for human decency continues at the border.
Thanks to all of you for sending me your news, especially rare reports like the turn-of-the-century sovereignty report, that will be in an upcoming article.
Congratulations to the Western Shoshone Dann family whose real life struggle is starting to win awards in the film, "Our Land, Our Life."
The crosses and coffins on the beach in Santa Monica were a chilling reminder of the human cost of war for everyone; a haunting reminder of complicity, censorship and a fear-draped America.
Thanks to all of you who take the time to check in here to read the news. I look forward to hearing from you. Brenda
brendanorrell@gmail.com
The good news at home is that Marcos and the Comandantes have been successful in setting up Zapatista camps and traveling throughout northwest Mexico to support Indigenous Peoples and their struggles to survive. The Other Campaign has continued to visit the desperate, the hungry, those forgotten by the Mexican government, and those who have lost hope. The Zapatistas are supporting their rights to fish, to organize, to farm and live without oppression, slavery and toxins and pesticides in their soil, water and air.
The Migrant march from Sasabe, Arizona, is underway and the struggle for human decency continues at the border.
Thanks to all of you for sending me your news, especially rare reports like the turn-of-the-century sovereignty report, that will be in an upcoming article.
Congratulations to the Western Shoshone Dann family whose real life struggle is starting to win awards in the film, "Our Land, Our Life."
The crosses and coffins on the beach in Santa Monica were a chilling reminder of the human cost of war for everyone; a haunting reminder of complicity, censorship and a fear-draped America.
Thanks to all of you who take the time to check in here to read the news. I look forward to hearing from you. Brenda
brendanorrell@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Oglala Commemoration 2007
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
http://lpdctexas.blogspot.com/
Oglala Commemoration 2007
Updates An Army of One:
" We must each be an army of one on the endless struggle between the goodness we are capable of and the evil that threatens us all from without as well as from within. Yes, we can be an army of one. One good man or one good woman can change the world, can push back the evil, and their work can be a beacon for millions, for billions. Are you that man or woman? If so, may the Great Spirit bless you. If not, why not? We must each of us be that person. That will transform the world overnight. That would be a miracle, yes, but a miracle within our power, our healing power. To heal will require real effort, and a change of heart, from all of us. To heal means that we will begin to look upon one another with respect and tolerance instead of prejudice, distrust, and hatred. We will have to teach our children ----as well as ourselves----to love the diversity of humanity. To heal we will have to make a conscious effort to live as the Creator intended, as sisters and others, all of one human family, caretakers of this fragile, perishable, and sacred Earth. To heal we will have come to the realization that we are all under a life sentence together...... and there's no chance for parole.We can do it - yes you and I and all of us together. Now is the time.Now is the only possible time."LET THE GREAT HEALING BEGIN
"Leonard Peltier From Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance
Edited by : Harvey Arden
Please click here for a copy of Army of One flyer:
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/downloads/leonardword.pdf
Words to start your day, something to think about, something to act upon.
May the Great healing begin with you.
Join us for the 8th Oglala Commemoration on June 26th, 2007 in Oglala, South Dakota. A day of ceremony,a day of remembrance, and day of honoring, and a evening of awareness at the youth concert. This is a free event, opened to all family, friends and supporters of Leonard Peltier.We are very pleased to announce the following performers have confirmed:Arrow Space, (rez rock)Julian B (hip-hop)Native Era (Nammy nominated hip-hop)JD Nash (Nammy nominated southern rock and M'cee)Dale Alan (folk)More to be announced soon! This is a free event and we ask that you bring a school supply for the drive, we will be collecting school supplies for this event for the annual give-away.Education is the first step of empowerment.Quick Notes:
The auction is still opened. Take a look as this is our main support to pull this event together.
We have the "2006 Live" Oglala Commemoration Youth Concert on CD.
We will have a booth next weekend at the NAICCO "Moon when the Pony Sheds" pow-wow at the Franklin County fairgrounds just outside of Columbus, Ohio, this will be our last fund raiser for this year's event,Please be sure to sponsor our annual Pendleton Blanket Raffle
For more information about the Oglala Commemoration please visit the following website address: http://www.oglalacommemoration.com/
In Solidarity,
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee LPDC WEBSITE:http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
http://lpdctexas.blogspot.com/
Oglala Commemoration 2007
Updates An Army of One:
" We must each be an army of one on the endless struggle between the goodness we are capable of and the evil that threatens us all from without as well as from within. Yes, we can be an army of one. One good man or one good woman can change the world, can push back the evil, and their work can be a beacon for millions, for billions. Are you that man or woman? If so, may the Great Spirit bless you. If not, why not? We must each of us be that person. That will transform the world overnight. That would be a miracle, yes, but a miracle within our power, our healing power. To heal will require real effort, and a change of heart, from all of us. To heal means that we will begin to look upon one another with respect and tolerance instead of prejudice, distrust, and hatred. We will have to teach our children ----as well as ourselves----to love the diversity of humanity. To heal we will have to make a conscious effort to live as the Creator intended, as sisters and others, all of one human family, caretakers of this fragile, perishable, and sacred Earth. To heal we will have come to the realization that we are all under a life sentence together...... and there's no chance for parole.We can do it - yes you and I and all of us together. Now is the time.Now is the only possible time."LET THE GREAT HEALING BEGIN
"Leonard Peltier From Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance
Edited by : Harvey Arden
Please click here for a copy of Army of One flyer:
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/downloads/leonardword.pdf
Words to start your day, something to think about, something to act upon.
May the Great healing begin with you.
Join us for the 8th Oglala Commemoration on June 26th, 2007 in Oglala, South Dakota. A day of ceremony,a day of remembrance, and day of honoring, and a evening of awareness at the youth concert. This is a free event, opened to all family, friends and supporters of Leonard Peltier.We are very pleased to announce the following performers have confirmed:Arrow Space, (rez rock)Julian B (hip-hop)Native Era (Nammy nominated hip-hop)JD Nash (Nammy nominated southern rock and M'cee)Dale Alan (folk)More to be announced soon! This is a free event and we ask that you bring a school supply for the drive, we will be collecting school supplies for this event for the annual give-away.Education is the first step of empowerment.Quick Notes:
The auction is still opened. Take a look as this is our main support to pull this event together.
We have the "2006 Live" Oglala Commemoration Youth Concert on CD.
We will have a booth next weekend at the NAICCO "Moon when the Pony Sheds" pow-wow at the Franklin County fairgrounds just outside of Columbus, Ohio, this will be our last fund raiser for this year's event,Please be sure to sponsor our annual Pendleton Blanket Raffle
For more information about the Oglala Commemoration please visit the following website address: http://www.oglalacommemoration.com/
In Solidarity,
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee LPDC WEBSITE:http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
Photo: Muscogee's Julian B/Courtesy photo Julian B
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Santa Monica: On the beach with the dead in Iraq
Update: Boeing subsidiary sued over secret torture flights for CIA
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/4848217.html
The human cost of the war in Iraq for Americans and Iraqis
Photos by Brenda Norrell
Veterans for Peace, Arlington West: Photos 1: Symbolic caskets represent the dead in Iraq, a sight which America is being shielded from 2. Each cross represents a soldier killed in Iraq. Photo 3: Faces of US soldiers killed in Iraq Photo 4: Some of the Iraqi victims 5. Crosses represent US soldiers killed in Iraq. 6. Iraqi killed; 655,000: If there was a cross for each Iraqi killed, the beach would be covered
by Brenda Norrell
By Sarah Olson
(APN) FORT STEWART – "Just because we volunteered, doesn't mean we volunteered to throw our lives away for nothing. You can only push human beings so far," Marc Train, 19, a soldier from America's heartland, stationed most recently in Fort Stewart, Georgia, says.
"Soldiers are going to Iraq multiple times. The reasons we're there are obviously lies. We're reaching a breaking point, and I believe you're going see a lot more resistance inside the military."
Train's a Private in the US Army, but the last time anyone saw him on base at Fort Stewart was March 16, 2007, just before he headed to Washington, DC, to protest the Occupation in which he is expected to fight.
Before leaving for DC, Train contacted Garett Reppenhagen, Chairman of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Train wanted to participate in the street theater protests Reppenhagen was organizing for Iraq veterans to mark the fourth anniversary of the Invasion.
"When I learned he was coming from Fort Stewart where he was still an active duty soldier, my first thought was, Wow, the kid has guts," Reppenhagen said.
Photos show Train at an anti-war demonstration outside the Pentagon that drew over 30,000 people on March 17, 2007. He was on stage with veterans and other GIs opposing the Occupation. In one hand he held an antiwar banner; in the other, a red flag, waving in the wind, high above his head.
"We parted that evening with plans for Marc to get a ride to the Operation First Casualty [street theater] preparation the next day," Reppenhagen recalls. "Marc never showed. Something deep down inside me figured he wasn't going back to Fort Stewart."
TRAIN’S JOURNEY INTO MILITARY SERVICE
Marc Train was an Army brat. His father, Eric, was stationed in Germany, where Marc spent the first three years of his life.
Eric Train was responsible for border security between East and West Germany. "He may have seen some bad things there," his son Marc says, uncertain. "I've heard stories from people stationed with my Dad. When people tried to cross from East to West, they'd get pretty torn up. They were shot down. My Dad might have been exposed to that."
When the Berlin Wall came down, Eric moved his family back to the United States. Seeking to spare them the monotony of an active duty lifestyle, Eric transferred to the Army Reserves.
When Eric couldn't find a job, he started drinking. Spiraling into debt, Eric and Charlene were in the process of splitting up. When young Marc Train was five, his father shot himself in the head with a deer-hunting rifle.
After that, Train went through a predictable string of psychotropic medications for young people with trauma.
At one point, he was spent a month at Charter Mental Hospital in Wichita, Kansas.
"I'm kind of a mamma's boy," Train says, laughing a little. "For 13 years, I put her through a lot... I never went to class and the school would call her job all the time. We'd get really frustrated and yell at each other. The cops would come and I'd get taken away to jail. My Mom always came to pick me up later, though."
Marc and his mother ended up in Salina, Kansas, a city that promised boom-time economic growth. Marc Train bounced from school to school just the same: Salina High School South, an alternative school, and finally the Job Corps. He graduated from the Job Corps with a GED.
Marc and his mother weren't hungry, but they still struggled to make ends meet. The family wasn't homeless, but they occasionally went to stay with his grandparents. Mostly, they just kept moving from place to place. Looking around, Train didn't see much in the way of a future ahead of him.
"I was in an economic trap," he says. "I just wanted to find some stability in my life. The Army seemed like just the thing. Going through school, they teach you implicitly, if you're [unsuccessful] here, you're gonna be [unsuccessful] forever. I needed a way out of that."
Train signed up for the Army under the delayed-entry program in the summer of 2005.
TRAIN’S JOURNEY OUT OF MILITARY SERVICE
On September 1, 2005, Marc Train was picked up at his house by a recruiter and delivered to the military entrance-processing station (MEPS) in Kansas City. Nine days later, Train ended up at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he began a new life on September 9, 2005.
"That was zero day," Train says, talking about the Army process of breaking down and rebuilding new recruits. "They tried to shatter everybody."
As Train's boyhood was being smashed out of him by Army drill instructors, he watched Hurricanes Katrina and Rita rip through the Gulf Coast of the US. As drill instructors tried to remake him into a US Army soldier, Train grew more and more critical of the government's callous response to the death and economic devastation in the region.
He knew the National Guard should have been around to assist with the disaster, but the troops were deployed in Iraq instead.
After Basic Training, Train spent 16 weeks at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, learning to be an intelligence analyst. He was given an interim top-secret security clearance, and after an initial investigation, would have access to highly sensitive compartmentalized intelligence.
"The really spooky, CIA stuff," Train explains, without going into further detail.
In April 2006, he arrived at his first duty station at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
The problems began when Train started a blog critical of the US government's financial decisions. How could the Administration disburse funding to its pals at Halliburton's KBR and Bechtel, but allocate nothing for the people in the Gulf Coast, he asked. Along the way, Train says he may have been a bit disrespectful to those responsible.
Seeing as how his writings were posted anonymously, it shouldn't have mattered.
But when Train's commanders saw his blog, they hit the roof. On the grounds he was a threat to national security, his clearance was suspended. A months-long investigation resulted in the revocation of his top-secret security status and other disciplinary action. He could no longer do the only job he knew how to do.
"No one ever asked me if I intended to overthrow the government, or even if I would have supported that. If they had asked, I would have said no, because I wanted to support my unit," Train says. "I'd seen movies like Iraq for Sale, and I had heard about the scandal at Abu Ghraib. I wanted to use my knowledge to support our mission and help the people in Iraq. But no one asked me.”
Train says his commanders told him they “thought I was an infiltration and espionage threat."
In November 2006, Train's security clearance was formally revoked and his commanding officer started to talk seriously about Train leaving the Army. Train agreed he and the Army weren't such a good fit anymore. He filled out a separation packet, and was pulled off the deployment roster in January 2007. His paperwork made its way through the chain of command.
By every indication, Train was on his way to getting out of the Army.
By this time, Train had signed the Appeal for Redress, an online petition for active duty members of the military. He joined IVAW and was developing a political critique of the policies that supported the Invasion of Iraq.
In February 2007, Train began hearing rumors his discharge had been rejected and he would be sent to Iraq anyway. His Rear Detachment Commander eventually confirmed the rumors, saying Train would deploy as an 11Bravo infantryman, with generic assignments and combat responsibilities.
"Everyone in the Army gets a few combat skills. But infantry? It's not what I was trained for," Marc says. "It would have been a suicide mission."
Train knew the threats were serious when he was sent to the rapid fielding initiative (RFI) and equipped for deployment.
Because he wasn't reclassified with more useful duties or properly prepared for the ones to which he was now assigned, Train became convinced going AWOL was his best option.
He left for the March 17, 2007, protests in Washington, DC, knowing he wouldn't return to Fort Stewart. Train arranged to meet other GIs in DC.
Jonathan Hutto, Cofounder of the Appeal for Redress, didn't know about Train's plans, but no soldier makes the decision to go AWOL lightly, he says.
"I support any and everyone who has been driven to go AWOL," says Hutto, himself an active duty member of the Navy. "It's not his fault he went AWOL. It's the government's fault for committing this war and creating such an untenable situation."
Like Hutto, IVAW’s Garett Reppenhagen says Train going AWOL was an understandable choice given the circumstances. "I also would have supported him if he had gone back and continued service," Reppenhagen said.
"I have a huge pain in my heart, like it's literally breaking," Train said after leaving Washington, DC.
SOLDIER QUESTIONS RECRUITMENT IN SCHOOLS
"The recruiters are coming into these inner-city schools, full of kids who are already going to have a hard life, harder than most people. When the same kids come back with post-traumatic stress disorder, the military denies them benefits. It sickens me because I wore that uniform. I represented a system of treating people like garbage."
The militarization of America's schools is shocking, Train says. "They're creating a culture of conformity. They're teaching kids to lash out at anything different." Train notes the metal detectors, the security guards on every floor, and students wearing uniform-like clothes.
"I want to counter the whole idea that just because you think you might have messed up one area of your life, your life is ruined forever," Train says.
He doesn't know specifics, but in the long run knows his future work will have something to do with giving young people hope. "I want to build support networks for troubled kids so they don't have to join the military."
"Regardless of what the mainstream media says about troops supporting the war, a lot of people around me disagreed with the policies," Train says.
"Recruiting is down. The length and number of tours is up. GIs are exhausted, and we're angry. When a bunch of uniformed soldiers say the war is [messed] up, the anger begins to spill over. There's going to be a breaking point soon. The Army already has a situation on its hands."
About the author:
Sarah Olson is an independent journalist and radio producer based in Oakland, CA. She can be reached at solson75@yahoo.com. Olson was previously featured in Atlanta Progressive News for objecting to testifying against another Iraq objector who she interviewed, Lt. Ehren Watada, in his recent tribunel.
Syndication policy:
This article may be reprinted in full at no cost where Atlanta Progressive News is credited.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/4848217.html
The human cost of the war in Iraq for Americans and Iraqis
Photos by Brenda Norrell
Veterans for Peace, Arlington West: Photos 1: Symbolic caskets represent the dead in Iraq, a sight which America is being shielded from 2. Each cross represents a soldier killed in Iraq. Photo 3: Faces of US soldiers killed in Iraq Photo 4: Some of the Iraqi victims 5. Crosses represent US soldiers killed in Iraq. 6. Iraqi killed; 655,000: If there was a cross for each Iraqi killed, the beach would be coveredby Brenda Norrell
SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- The human cost of the war in Iraq is stretched out on the white sand of the beach in Santa Monica, in white and red crosses, photos and symbolic flag-draped caskets, this Memorial Day weekend.
Some visitors have come for a holiday and are now jolted to the reality of war; the price being paid by the people of the world.
"Horrible," a parent says, then tries to explain to his children why these young soldiers have died. He can not think of any explanation to justify their deaths.
Others place lilies and carnations on the crosses. These are private moments filled with sorrow and strength. In the guest book, they write loving notes, remembering their brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and friends.
The Iraqi dead are also remembered. There are photos of children and a reminder that if there were crosses representing the Iraqi killed in the war, that crosses would cover the vastness of the beach.
The Arlington West, Iraq War Memorial, is both a tribute to the sacrifice and courage of those who have died and a call for the end to war. It is a reminder that war is not selective in its victims.
Ultimately, this is the face of humanity, the dead and those left behind with suffering and grief. It touches everyone.
The flag-covered coffins bear witness to those whose deaths have not been publicized. For this, there is shame in the U.S. The dead have been buried in silence, away from the eyes of the masses.
They have died without the screams of their mothers being heard.
--bn
For more information:
Arlington West
Iraq War Memorial
Veterans of Peace
.
Related news articles:
Major General fired by CBS for anti-war advocacy:
War profiteers rewarded with billions
UPDATE:
A Soldier in Iraq Asks in Despair: Why Are We Here?
By Donald C. Hudson, Jr.
Clarksville, Tennessee Online
Tuesday 29 May 2007
After watching his roommate fatally wounded in a roadside bombing, an Army private wonders why the lives of good men are being lost when the Iraqis pose no threat to us and don't want us there.
Baghdad -- My name is Donald Hudson Jr. I have been serving our country's military actively for the last three years. I am currently deployed to Baghdad on Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where I have been for the last four and a half months.I came here as part of the first wave of this so called "troop surge", but so far it has effectively done nothing to quell insurgent violence. I have seen the rise in violence between the Sunni and Shiite. This country is in the middle of a civil war that has been on going since the seventh century.Why are we here when this country still to date does not want us here? Why does our president's personal agenda consume him so much, that he can not pay attention to what is really going on here?Let me tell you a story. On May 10, I was out on a convoy mission to move barriers from a market to a joint security station. It was no different from any other night, except the improvised explosive device that hit our convoy this time, actually pierced through the armor of one of our trucks. The truck was immediately engulfed in flames, the driver lost control and wrecked the truck into one of the buildings lining the street. I was the driver of the lead truck in our convoy; the fifth out of six was the one that got hit. All I could hear over the radio was a friend from the sixth truck screaming that the fifth truck was burning up real bad, and that they needed fire extinguishers real bad. So I turned my truck around and drove through concrete barriers to get to the burning truck as quickly as I could. I stopped 30 meters short of the burning truck, got out and ripped my fire extinguisher out of its holder, and ran to the truck. I ran past another friend of mine on the way tothe burning truck, he was screaming something but I could not make it out. I opened the driver's door to the truck and was immediately overcome by the flames. I sprayed the extinguisher into the door, and then I saw my roommate's leg. He was the gunner of that truck. His leg was across the driver's seat that was on fire and the rest of his body was further in the truck. My fire extinguisher died and I climbed into the truck to attempt to save him. I got to where his head was, in the back passenger-side seat. I grabbed his shoulders and attempted to pull him from the truck out the driver's door. I finally got him out of the truck head first. His face had been badly burned. His leg was horribly wounded. We placed him on a spine board and did our best to attempt "Buddy Aid". We heard him trying to gasp for air. He had a pulse and was breathing, but was not responsive. He was placed into a truck and rushed to the "Green Zone", where he died within the hour. His name was Michael K. Frank. He was 36 years old. He was a great friend of mine and a mentor to most of us younger soldiers here.Now I am still here in this country wondering why, and having to pick up the pieces of what is left of my friend in our room. I would just like to know what is the true reason we are here? This country poses no threat to our own. So why must we waste the lives of good men on a country that does not give a damn about itself? Most of my friends here share my views, but do not have the courage to say anything.----------
Donald C. Hudson Jr. is a private assigned to the 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.
Fort Stewart Soldier, Blogger Goes AWOL, Objects to Iraq Deployment
By Sarah Olson
Special to The Atlanta Progressive News (June 11, 2007)
(APN) FORT STEWART – "Just because we volunteered, doesn't mean we volunteered to throw our lives away for nothing. You can only push human beings so far," Marc Train, 19, a soldier from America's heartland, stationed most recently in Fort Stewart, Georgia, says.
"Soldiers are going to Iraq multiple times. The reasons we're there are obviously lies. We're reaching a breaking point, and I believe you're going see a lot more resistance inside the military."
Train's a Private in the US Army, but the last time anyone saw him on base at Fort Stewart was March 16, 2007, just before he headed to Washington, DC, to protest the Occupation in which he is expected to fight.
Before leaving for DC, Train contacted Garett Reppenhagen, Chairman of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Train wanted to participate in the street theater protests Reppenhagen was organizing for Iraq veterans to mark the fourth anniversary of the Invasion.
"When I learned he was coming from Fort Stewart where he was still an active duty soldier, my first thought was, Wow, the kid has guts," Reppenhagen said.
Photos show Train at an anti-war demonstration outside the Pentagon that drew over 30,000 people on March 17, 2007. He was on stage with veterans and other GIs opposing the Occupation. In one hand he held an antiwar banner; in the other, a red flag, waving in the wind, high above his head.
"We parted that evening with plans for Marc to get a ride to the Operation First Casualty [street theater] preparation the next day," Reppenhagen recalls. "Marc never showed. Something deep down inside me figured he wasn't going back to Fort Stewart."
TRAIN’S JOURNEY INTO MILITARY SERVICE
Marc Train was an Army brat. His father, Eric, was stationed in Germany, where Marc spent the first three years of his life.
Eric Train was responsible for border security between East and West Germany. "He may have seen some bad things there," his son Marc says, uncertain. "I've heard stories from people stationed with my Dad. When people tried to cross from East to West, they'd get pretty torn up. They were shot down. My Dad might have been exposed to that."
When the Berlin Wall came down, Eric moved his family back to the United States. Seeking to spare them the monotony of an active duty lifestyle, Eric transferred to the Army Reserves.
When Eric couldn't find a job, he started drinking. Spiraling into debt, Eric and Charlene were in the process of splitting up. When young Marc Train was five, his father shot himself in the head with a deer-hunting rifle.
After that, Train went through a predictable string of psychotropic medications for young people with trauma.
At one point, he was spent a month at Charter Mental Hospital in Wichita, Kansas.
"I'm kind of a mamma's boy," Train says, laughing a little. "For 13 years, I put her through a lot... I never went to class and the school would call her job all the time. We'd get really frustrated and yell at each other. The cops would come and I'd get taken away to jail. My Mom always came to pick me up later, though."
Marc and his mother ended up in Salina, Kansas, a city that promised boom-time economic growth. Marc Train bounced from school to school just the same: Salina High School South, an alternative school, and finally the Job Corps. He graduated from the Job Corps with a GED.
Marc and his mother weren't hungry, but they still struggled to make ends meet. The family wasn't homeless, but they occasionally went to stay with his grandparents. Mostly, they just kept moving from place to place. Looking around, Train didn't see much in the way of a future ahead of him.
"I was in an economic trap," he says. "I just wanted to find some stability in my life. The Army seemed like just the thing. Going through school, they teach you implicitly, if you're [unsuccessful] here, you're gonna be [unsuccessful] forever. I needed a way out of that."
Train signed up for the Army under the delayed-entry program in the summer of 2005.
TRAIN’S JOURNEY OUT OF MILITARY SERVICE
On September 1, 2005, Marc Train was picked up at his house by a recruiter and delivered to the military entrance-processing station (MEPS) in Kansas City. Nine days later, Train ended up at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he began a new life on September 9, 2005.
"That was zero day," Train says, talking about the Army process of breaking down and rebuilding new recruits. "They tried to shatter everybody."
As Train's boyhood was being smashed out of him by Army drill instructors, he watched Hurricanes Katrina and Rita rip through the Gulf Coast of the US. As drill instructors tried to remake him into a US Army soldier, Train grew more and more critical of the government's callous response to the death and economic devastation in the region.
He knew the National Guard should have been around to assist with the disaster, but the troops were deployed in Iraq instead.
After Basic Training, Train spent 16 weeks at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, learning to be an intelligence analyst. He was given an interim top-secret security clearance, and after an initial investigation, would have access to highly sensitive compartmentalized intelligence.
"The really spooky, CIA stuff," Train explains, without going into further detail.
In April 2006, he arrived at his first duty station at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
The problems began when Train started a blog critical of the US government's financial decisions. How could the Administration disburse funding to its pals at Halliburton's KBR and Bechtel, but allocate nothing for the people in the Gulf Coast, he asked. Along the way, Train says he may have been a bit disrespectful to those responsible.
Seeing as how his writings were posted anonymously, it shouldn't have mattered.
But when Train's commanders saw his blog, they hit the roof. On the grounds he was a threat to national security, his clearance was suspended. A months-long investigation resulted in the revocation of his top-secret security status and other disciplinary action. He could no longer do the only job he knew how to do.
"No one ever asked me if I intended to overthrow the government, or even if I would have supported that. If they had asked, I would have said no, because I wanted to support my unit," Train says. "I'd seen movies like Iraq for Sale, and I had heard about the scandal at Abu Ghraib. I wanted to use my knowledge to support our mission and help the people in Iraq. But no one asked me.”
Train says his commanders told him they “thought I was an infiltration and espionage threat."
In November 2006, Train's security clearance was formally revoked and his commanding officer started to talk seriously about Train leaving the Army. Train agreed he and the Army weren't such a good fit anymore. He filled out a separation packet, and was pulled off the deployment roster in January 2007. His paperwork made its way through the chain of command.
By every indication, Train was on his way to getting out of the Army.
By this time, Train had signed the Appeal for Redress, an online petition for active duty members of the military. He joined IVAW and was developing a political critique of the policies that supported the Invasion of Iraq.
In February 2007, Train began hearing rumors his discharge had been rejected and he would be sent to Iraq anyway. His Rear Detachment Commander eventually confirmed the rumors, saying Train would deploy as an 11Bravo infantryman, with generic assignments and combat responsibilities.
"Everyone in the Army gets a few combat skills. But infantry? It's not what I was trained for," Marc says. "It would have been a suicide mission."
Train knew the threats were serious when he was sent to the rapid fielding initiative (RFI) and equipped for deployment.
Because he wasn't reclassified with more useful duties or properly prepared for the ones to which he was now assigned, Train became convinced going AWOL was his best option.
He left for the March 17, 2007, protests in Washington, DC, knowing he wouldn't return to Fort Stewart. Train arranged to meet other GIs in DC.
Jonathan Hutto, Cofounder of the Appeal for Redress, didn't know about Train's plans, but no soldier makes the decision to go AWOL lightly, he says.
"I support any and everyone who has been driven to go AWOL," says Hutto, himself an active duty member of the Navy. "It's not his fault he went AWOL. It's the government's fault for committing this war and creating such an untenable situation."
Like Hutto, IVAW’s Garett Reppenhagen says Train going AWOL was an understandable choice given the circumstances. "I also would have supported him if he had gone back and continued service," Reppenhagen said.
"I have a huge pain in my heart, like it's literally breaking," Train said after leaving Washington, DC.
SOLDIER QUESTIONS RECRUITMENT IN SCHOOLS
"The recruiters are coming into these inner-city schools, full of kids who are already going to have a hard life, harder than most people. When the same kids come back with post-traumatic stress disorder, the military denies them benefits. It sickens me because I wore that uniform. I represented a system of treating people like garbage."
The militarization of America's schools is shocking, Train says. "They're creating a culture of conformity. They're teaching kids to lash out at anything different." Train notes the metal detectors, the security guards on every floor, and students wearing uniform-like clothes.
"I want to counter the whole idea that just because you think you might have messed up one area of your life, your life is ruined forever," Train says.
He doesn't know specifics, but in the long run knows his future work will have something to do with giving young people hope. "I want to build support networks for troubled kids so they don't have to join the military."
"Regardless of what the mainstream media says about troops supporting the war, a lot of people around me disagreed with the policies," Train says.
"Recruiting is down. The length and number of tours is up. GIs are exhausted, and we're angry. When a bunch of uniformed soldiers say the war is [messed] up, the anger begins to spill over. There's going to be a breaking point soon. The Army already has a situation on its hands."
About the author:
Sarah Olson is an independent journalist and radio producer based in Oakland, CA. She can be reached at solson75@yahoo.com. Olson was previously featured in Atlanta Progressive News for objecting to testifying against another Iraq objector who she interviewed, Lt. Ehren Watada, in his recent tribunel.
Syndication policy:
This article may be reprinted in full at no cost where Atlanta Progressive News is credited.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Desert Rock power plant: BIA issues death certificate for Navajos
UPDATE: VANDALS ATTACK DOODA DESERT ROCK:
http://www.desert-rock-blog.com/
Navajos fight the 'Lords and puppets' of corporations and spin doctors
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
SHIPROCK, N.M. -- The BIA's cozy relationship with Navajo politicians and the corporation Sithe Global was obvious in the BIA's recommendation to build the Desert Rock power plant, the third power plant in the Four Corners area.
Navajos said the draft environmental impact statement is no more than another alien document, another BIA-issued death certificate for the Navajo people.
"This BIA EIS is hogwash" said the founding Doodá Desert Rock Committee president, Sarah Jane White.
"They already made their decision to approve the project and this DEIS is just going to justify their decision," said the Navajo from Sanostee.
"But not if I can help it, our elders and our youth are ready to stand with us against the Sithe Lords and their puppet DPA (Dine' Power Authority)."
The Four Corners area has long been considered a sacrifice zone, attracting death machines such as the uranium industry during the Cold War and more recently power plants and oil and gas industries. This region is also Dinetah, the sacred place of Dine' origin.
For energy companies, the way has been paved by Navajo politicians. Navajo politicians receive the bulk of their salaries from energy industries and approve the tribal leases. The bulk of the Navajo Nation Council delegates' salaries and travel expenses come from taxes and royalties from the polluting industries of power plants, coal mines and oil and gas wells.
While the air, land and water are polluted, many Navajo elderly live without running water and electricity, while the nearly all of the power that is produced is transported to non-Indians.
Navajos are speaking out against the environmental destruction and the environmental racism that has made Navajo people the target. However, each time they speak out, highly-paid spin doctors known as press officers try to silence them, claiming that building another power plant is the only way the Navajo government can provide jobs.
Bradley Angel of Greenaction sent a message to Navajo President Joe, Shirley, Jr.
"Why are you so pleased to push a coal-fired power plant that would contribute to global warming, contaminate the air with asthma-inducing pollutants and cause the eviction of Navajo elders from their homes … and of course, disturb the burials and cultural sites in the immediate vicinity of Desert Rock.
"Shame."
While pushing for the Desert Rock power plant, at the same time President Shirley said he opposes new uranium mining and the desecration of Navajo sacred sites.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration pushes for more power plants nationwide, as part of the overall scheme to enrich profits for a small circle of corporations. At the same time, Navajos continue to be sacrificed in Bush's bogus war in Iraq. In Iraq, the same corporate scenario plays out. Bush's corporate friends with US contracts are not only making the profits, but are finding it easy to pocket billions without any justification, a fact recently exposed by Congress.
Dine' Citizens Against Ruining the Environment points out the death trap of still another power plant here.
"The BIA's recommended approval of the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project is a step backward from even minimal environmental protection because the planned power plant will only worsen the air pollution problem in the already over polluted San Juan Basin air shed.
"Combined with deadly air contaminants from the nearby Four Corners and San Juan power plants, Desert Rock will literally create a triangle of death in the northern Navajo Nation where Navajo people have long suffered epidemic levels of asthma, black lung disease, and other respiratory diseases caused by the decades of chronic exposure to persistent and accumulative airborne pollutants emitted by the existing industrial death factories on and near the affected reservation," Dine CARE said in a written statement.
The draft environmental impact statement process is also fatally flawed. The project proponents paid for the two-year study.
"So not surprisingly, the pre-biased or prejudiced environmental analysis (or draft EIS) supported the controversial project. Under the guise of impartial environmental review, the governmental and corporate agents of genocide produced a pre-decisional document designed to justify a bad project and one that is opposed by the very people who live in the shadow of its 580-acre 'footprint.'
"That document, written in the technical language of the alien invaders, is nothing less than a BIA-issued death certificate for those brave indigenous Diné who hold the sacred ground at Ram Springs."
Dine CARE said the BIA is engaged in a campaign built on deceit and treachery.
"It completed its draft EIS making it accessible only on the Internet.
"How many of our people have Internet access? How many of them even have electricity? Adding to its deliberate misinformation, the Bureau also announced that it will publish the draft’s 'Notice of Availability' in the Federal Register in early June. How many of our people read the Federal Register? How many of them even read the legal notices section in the Navajo Times?
"The federal Indian agency then announced that it will hold public hearings on the 'available' draft EIS beginning in mid-June. It took them over two years to produce the DEIS and it is atrocious that they expect the Navajo public to review and present oral comments on the voluminous technical document in less than a week or two," Dine' CARE said.
But don't expect to read much of that in the newspapers.
Whenever editors do publish the statements of Dine' CARE, the spin doctors come out like starving dogs with gnashing teeth, attacking anyone who publishes the words of Dine' CARE and anyone who champions the voices of the grassroots Navajo people.
Editors of publications that pander to tribal politicians won't publish these words. Others won't even care.
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
http://www.desert-rock-blog.com/
Navajos fight the 'Lords and puppets' of corporations and spin doctors
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
SHIPROCK, N.M. -- The BIA's cozy relationship with Navajo politicians and the corporation Sithe Global was obvious in the BIA's recommendation to build the Desert Rock power plant, the third power plant in the Four Corners area.
Navajos said the draft environmental impact statement is no more than another alien document, another BIA-issued death certificate for the Navajo people.
"This BIA EIS is hogwash" said the founding Doodá Desert Rock Committee president, Sarah Jane White.
"They already made their decision to approve the project and this DEIS is just going to justify their decision," said the Navajo from Sanostee.
"But not if I can help it, our elders and our youth are ready to stand with us against the Sithe Lords and their puppet DPA (Dine' Power Authority)."
The Four Corners area has long been considered a sacrifice zone, attracting death machines such as the uranium industry during the Cold War and more recently power plants and oil and gas industries. This region is also Dinetah, the sacred place of Dine' origin.
For energy companies, the way has been paved by Navajo politicians. Navajo politicians receive the bulk of their salaries from energy industries and approve the tribal leases. The bulk of the Navajo Nation Council delegates' salaries and travel expenses come from taxes and royalties from the polluting industries of power plants, coal mines and oil and gas wells.
While the air, land and water are polluted, many Navajo elderly live without running water and electricity, while the nearly all of the power that is produced is transported to non-Indians.
Navajos are speaking out against the environmental destruction and the environmental racism that has made Navajo people the target. However, each time they speak out, highly-paid spin doctors known as press officers try to silence them, claiming that building another power plant is the only way the Navajo government can provide jobs.
Bradley Angel of Greenaction sent a message to Navajo President Joe, Shirley, Jr.
"Why are you so pleased to push a coal-fired power plant that would contribute to global warming, contaminate the air with asthma-inducing pollutants and cause the eviction of Navajo elders from their homes … and of course, disturb the burials and cultural sites in the immediate vicinity of Desert Rock.
"Shame."
While pushing for the Desert Rock power plant, at the same time President Shirley said he opposes new uranium mining and the desecration of Navajo sacred sites.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration pushes for more power plants nationwide, as part of the overall scheme to enrich profits for a small circle of corporations. At the same time, Navajos continue to be sacrificed in Bush's bogus war in Iraq. In Iraq, the same corporate scenario plays out. Bush's corporate friends with US contracts are not only making the profits, but are finding it easy to pocket billions without any justification, a fact recently exposed by Congress.
Dine' Citizens Against Ruining the Environment points out the death trap of still another power plant here.
"The BIA's recommended approval of the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project is a step backward from even minimal environmental protection because the planned power plant will only worsen the air pollution problem in the already over polluted San Juan Basin air shed.
"Combined with deadly air contaminants from the nearby Four Corners and San Juan power plants, Desert Rock will literally create a triangle of death in the northern Navajo Nation where Navajo people have long suffered epidemic levels of asthma, black lung disease, and other respiratory diseases caused by the decades of chronic exposure to persistent and accumulative airborne pollutants emitted by the existing industrial death factories on and near the affected reservation," Dine CARE said in a written statement.
The draft environmental impact statement process is also fatally flawed. The project proponents paid for the two-year study.
"So not surprisingly, the pre-biased or prejudiced environmental analysis (or draft EIS) supported the controversial project. Under the guise of impartial environmental review, the governmental and corporate agents of genocide produced a pre-decisional document designed to justify a bad project and one that is opposed by the very people who live in the shadow of its 580-acre 'footprint.'
"That document, written in the technical language of the alien invaders, is nothing less than a BIA-issued death certificate for those brave indigenous Diné who hold the sacred ground at Ram Springs."
Dine CARE said the BIA is engaged in a campaign built on deceit and treachery.
"It completed its draft EIS making it accessible only on the Internet.
"How many of our people have Internet access? How many of them even have electricity? Adding to its deliberate misinformation, the Bureau also announced that it will publish the draft’s 'Notice of Availability' in the Federal Register in early June. How many of our people read the Federal Register? How many of them even read the legal notices section in the Navajo Times?
"The federal Indian agency then announced that it will hold public hearings on the 'available' draft EIS beginning in mid-June. It took them over two years to produce the DEIS and it is atrocious that they expect the Navajo public to review and present oral comments on the voluminous technical document in less than a week or two," Dine' CARE said.
But don't expect to read much of that in the newspapers.
Whenever editors do publish the statements of Dine' CARE, the spin doctors come out like starving dogs with gnashing teeth, attacking anyone who publishes the words of Dine' CARE and anyone who champions the voices of the grassroots Navajo people.
Editors of publications that pander to tribal politicians won't publish these words. Others won't even care.
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Sheep is Life Conference, Navajos' herding and weaving culture
"Sheep Is Life: A Celebration of Traditional Herding and Weaving Culture"
June 11–16 2007, Dine College
Tsaile, Arizona
FORT DEFIANCE, Ariz. - Jay Begay Jr., The Sheep is Life conference coordinator said the Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (The Navajo Lifeway) presents a two-part event series scheduled for June 11th through 16th. All events will be located at the Dine College campus near Tsaile AZ. Accommodations and services are located nearby in Chinle, AZ.
Sheep is Life celebrates sheep, wool, and weaving with two days of free public events on June 15 and 16, Friday and Saturday, at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona. There will be hands-on activities, sheep and wool demonstrations, workshops, and storytelling events are scheduled daily at 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Organized by Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (The Navajo Lifeway), the eleventh annual Celebration honors the central role that sheep play in the philosophy and daily life of diverse traditional and indigenous cultures. All are invited to bring spindles, spinning wheels, wool, yarn, and weavings. Sharing and learning are at the heart of the Celebration.
"Sheep is Life" in every essence is an important part of our culture and traditions, to celebrate our sheep traditions and our lifeways once a year," said Roy Kady, Dibé be Iina, Inc president. "The event re-centers us in the cosmos of our universe; it is our blessingway ceremony for our continuance here on earth, and for the next generations to come."
Highlights of the celebration include:
• Workshops in wool processing, weaving, and other fiber arts, Monday – Friday
• Evening spinning and storytelling with Navajo elders during the week
• Two days of free events, vendors, and hands-on demonstrations, Friday and Saturday
• Herd Health care and management of sheep, goats, and other livestock
• Benefit Awards, Dinner, Friday, 6:00 p.m.
• Navajo-Churro Sheep and Wool Show, open to all, Saturday, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
• Navajo Rug Auction, Saturday, 6:00 p.m.
• Navajo Sheep Project 30th Anniversary special events
• Navajo-Churro Sheep Camp Tours
• “Weaving World” film
Complete information, schedules, registrations, and brochures are available. For information, call 928-729-2037 or e-mail jay_bjr@yahoo.com
To review the conference information, visit http://www.navajolifeway.org/ for a complete schedule which will be posted soon.
June 11–16 2007, Dine College
Tsaile, Arizona
FORT DEFIANCE, Ariz. - Jay Begay Jr., The Sheep is Life conference coordinator said the Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (The Navajo Lifeway) presents a two-part event series scheduled for June 11th through 16th. All events will be located at the Dine College campus near Tsaile AZ. Accommodations and services are located nearby in Chinle, AZ.
Sheep is Life celebrates sheep, wool, and weaving with two days of free public events on June 15 and 16, Friday and Saturday, at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona. There will be hands-on activities, sheep and wool demonstrations, workshops, and storytelling events are scheduled daily at 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Organized by Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (The Navajo Lifeway), the eleventh annual Celebration honors the central role that sheep play in the philosophy and daily life of diverse traditional and indigenous cultures. All are invited to bring spindles, spinning wheels, wool, yarn, and weavings. Sharing and learning are at the heart of the Celebration.
"Sheep is Life" in every essence is an important part of our culture and traditions, to celebrate our sheep traditions and our lifeways once a year," said Roy Kady, Dibé be Iina, Inc president. "The event re-centers us in the cosmos of our universe; it is our blessingway ceremony for our continuance here on earth, and for the next generations to come."
Highlights of the celebration include:
• Workshops in wool processing, weaving, and other fiber arts, Monday – Friday
• Evening spinning and storytelling with Navajo elders during the week
• Two days of free events, vendors, and hands-on demonstrations, Friday and Saturday
• Herd Health care and management of sheep, goats, and other livestock
• Benefit Awards, Dinner, Friday, 6:00 p.m.
• Navajo-Churro Sheep and Wool Show, open to all, Saturday, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
• Navajo Rug Auction, Saturday, 6:00 p.m.
• Navajo Sheep Project 30th Anniversary special events
• Navajo-Churro Sheep Camp Tours
• “Weaving World” film
Complete information, schedules, registrations, and brochures are available. For information, call 928-729-2037 or e-mail jay_bjr@yahoo.com
To review the conference information, visit http://www.navajolifeway.org/ for a complete schedule which will be posted soon.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Indians in Brazil refute Pope's claims
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37862
While protesting, Indians in Brazil said they weren't silently yearning to become Catholics and weren't purified by the church as Pope Benedict said:
"... Wera Djekaupe, a GuaranÃ, arrived back at the museum. He repeated what he had just broadcast on a Brazilian television programme, as part of his activism in the press, media, academic circles and schools. 'The indigenous people of Brazil, long before the arrival of the Portuguese and other colonialists, already knew who had created the Earth. The great creator of all nature, of the sea, of the moon, of everything, was Ñanderú,' he said. 'The pope said that the Church purified the Indians. I refute that. Indigenous people were already pure; we were purified by the great Ñanderú,' Djekaupe said."
While protesting, Indians in Brazil said they weren't silently yearning to become Catholics and weren't purified by the church as Pope Benedict said:
"... Wera Djekaupe, a GuaranÃ, arrived back at the museum. He repeated what he had just broadcast on a Brazilian television programme, as part of his activism in the press, media, academic circles and schools. 'The indigenous people of Brazil, long before the arrival of the Portuguese and other colonialists, already knew who had created the Earth. The great creator of all nature, of the sea, of the moon, of everything, was Ñanderú,' he said. 'The pope said that the Church purified the Indians. I refute that. Indigenous people were already pure; we were purified by the great Ñanderú,' Djekaupe said."
Manitoba Chief calls for rail blockades
CBC News
"As First Nations leaders at an aboriginal summit in Quebec planned Wednesday for a national day of action, a Manitoba chief said they should instead hold a day of rail blockades.
Manitoba Chief Terry Nelson said blocking trains would send a stronger message about the poverty that aboriginal communities face and the numerous land claims that are still being disputed."
Read the story:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/05/23/aboriginal-conference.html
"As First Nations leaders at an aboriginal summit in Quebec planned Wednesday for a national day of action, a Manitoba chief said they should instead hold a day of rail blockades.
Manitoba Chief Terry Nelson said blocking trains would send a stronger message about the poverty that aboriginal communities face and the numerous land claims that are still being disputed."
Read the story:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/05/23/aboriginal-conference.html
Mohawk Nation News: The International Corporate Agenda
STEPHEN HARPER’S “FOOL SOME PRISON BLUES” – PRIVATIZATION AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRATIC DUE PROCESS
Mohawk Nation News
May 21, 2007
Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, or whoever really runs the Canadian dictatorship, has wiped out any pretension that Canada ever was a democratic country. He did this by obstructing democratic parliamentary debate on the use of Canadian taxes. If Canadian cops were on their toes as true defenders of law and order, he could be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada, Section 129.1. He intentionally, with malice aforethought, obstructed parliamentarians who were engaged in enforcing the laws concerning “revenues, customs, excise, trade or navigation”.
Harper outlined his methods in a 200-page manual showing his party members how to obstruct justice and democratic due process. This is a major constitutional crisis that can’t be swept under the carpet. Right now he’s hiding out in Afghanistan . He might end up in the next cave over from Bin Laden.
The public is getting so confused they don’t know what the rules are anymore. Big business and big government want to keep them in a trance. If someone sees a baby being killed, they’re afraid to help because they might be arrested for intruding on someone else’s rights.
Harper and the two major political parties see the people as the enemy, particularly us, the Indigenous people. He needs a personalized target. It looks like hysteria is being created deliberately to set us up as the threat or scapegoat. In the 911 model, the threat is more terrifying than the action. He steers the public to vent their anger and hatred on us. That’s how he was able to push through the anti-terrorism legislation. He got rid of habeas corpus and usurped peoples’ right to the sanctity of their home.
Harper obviously has no rules for himself. It looks like he thinks democratic institutions won’t work. They certainly have never treated us humanely or respected our sovereign rights to the land and resources of Turtle Island .
Harper wants severe rules and regulations over everybody, especially the media. He does not want to be judged. He doesn’t even want us to have our minds in gear. Through propaganda and brute force, people are losing their freedom to sociopaths and control-freak demagogues.
How does one know when the government is corrupt? When the public leaders lie. When the public doesn’t object. Then nobody can tell what’s true anymore. Harper has hamstrung the Parliamentary committees so there is no free open discussion. The cabinet decrees laws, sets the agenda and cancels hearings at will. Once lies have become the status quo there can be no real communication. All words become meaningless babble or catch phrases.
Canada and the U.S. have turned into oligarchies controlled by a small elite who act on behalf of multinational corporations controlled from afar. They are fronts for international investors to get the leases to run the assets and drain the resources on Turtle Island .
Starting in the 1960s the middle-class was meticulously destroyed. They were attacked as being materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war mongers, brutal and corrupt. This is true in the way they ran the Indian Affairs bureaucracies where colonial control of the lands and resources reside. This is a kind of rot and disease spreading through the colonial constitutional trees on Turtle Island controlled by the oligarchy.
Indian Affairs Minister Jim “Jonestown” Prentice announced fundamental changes to the way Indigenous land claims are to be settled. We wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing he announces is his plan to lease out the settling of land claims to private corporate structures on some kind of profit-sharing basis. We demand that the land claims be mediated by a neutral and mutually agreed upon third party. The “other” party cannot be anyone from the federal, provincial, territorial or local “Indian” entities set up by Canada . Nor can they be any of the corporations that act as the puppet masters for Canada ’s pseudo government.
Are they working on privatizing Indian Affairs? Don’t laugh! This has already been tried in Kanehsatake and on many other communities by placing its management under the control of private companies. It was a catastrophe for Indigenous people and a bonanza for the well connected accounting, management and legal firms. All the money went to the companies, the lawyers and a few cooperative band councilors. Services were stopped. The Indigenous People got less than before.
Indian Affairs could be planning to lease us out to multinational investors who want to get their paws on our land, hydro electric power, resources and diamonds that can be extracted from our land in the north. This happened before when they leased out our education to church run residential schools, whose staff got their paws and other parts on our young children, molesting and killing them with impunity.
The Crown would love to get out of its legal responsibility to us by handing us over to corporations who have no obligations. Their only agenda is profit! Not service for the people. Not living up to the treaties. They have to cut costs, services, streamline everything and put their friends in big jobs with fat salaries.
The big pie in the sky is “leasing”. It is really the “confiscation” of all lands, resources, public assets and programs by international investors. The plan is already operational. Assets have already been confiscated such as highways, cable, television, electricity, internet, water, prisons, schools, health care, private police forces, airports, parking garages, social services, welfare, pensions, housing, drug and alcohol treatment programs, adoptions, programs for the elderly, road maintenance, garbage collection, fire departments, environmental protection, job training and placement, child support enforcement, child care, child protection – get the picture? Even the management of all these assets and programs are being privatized and leased out.
So what happens when you have a complaint? You can’t go to your member of parliament. The lease holder might be in Singapore or Zurich Switzerland , 5,000 miles away! They’re probably run by numbered companies.
Does this mean that people don’t have to pay taxes anymore? The Treasury Board will give Indian Affairs $9 billion who turn it over to an offshore multinational corporation which is the leaseholder that is headquartered in Paris France . It's international colonialism!
The private sector can raise costs and authority on the assets they lease. The government doesn’t have to answer to the public. It’s all international. The head office might be in Germany or wherever. They don’t understand what you’re talking about. Your call will go to a call center in India . You’ll be put on hold and then passed around to five others whose job is to give you a nervous breakdown. Don’t think you’re going to get an answer about the plumbing leak in your rental apartment, or the 200% increase in the road tolls you have to pay just to get home.
Would this be considered high treason? It is when the government is consorting with foreign entities that destroy the economy and rob them of those things they stole from us.
The local brokers of these leases/confiscations are making out like bandits.
Rudy Giuliani of 911 fame is the exclusive lawyer for Cintra of Spain, which is headed by Prince Juan Carlos. Cintra is now the proud owner of what was once the “ Chicago Skyway”. They are working on getting the Midway Airport too. The leases are for 75 to 99 years. Once leased they are exempt from taxation. Upstate New York recently signed the same sort of lease with National Express Group of London UK which specializes in rail and bus transport.
Some U.S. municipalities are trying to get their water systems back. But they keep getting outbid by Illinois American Water which is owned by a German investor that is also functioning in 29 U.S. states.
These international corporations are gaining control of the cities. Today one can’t get into some cities without paying tolls and the infra structures are falling apart. Canadians will soon be trapped in just like Indigenous People.
Were going back to the middle ages, man! Prisons have been privatized to save money. Correction Corporation of America runs half the private prisons and expects to double their investment in 5 years. Costs must be minimized. Jails must be kept full. Less is spent on prisoner care and training of guards. To maximize profits jail time must be maximized. In some prisons the inmates work for 17 cents an hour making clothes, car parts, computer components, shoes and furniture. It’s not just license plates anymore. This is going on even though it’s a violation of international law.
The “three strikes you’re out” law in California is coming soon to Canada , your home on native land. So Congress is being heavily lobbied to increase sentences. Correction Corporation and corrections officers are some of the largest campaign contributors in California . Ten years ago there were ten private prisons and 2,000 inmates. Today there are 140 with 70,000 inmates. They are aiming to increase this slave labor by 500% in the next ten years.
If people don’t wake up soon, by the time Harper’s out of office, Canada will be dismantled and sold off to foreign corporations. Let’s see what happens on June 29th when Indigenous people demonstrate everywhere against injustice and mistreatment. We think that the “war room” in the “ Tower of Power ” at Indian affairs is working round the clock to speed up privatization. Minister “Jonestown” Prentice wants to drag us into the colonial courts for doing what we’re supposed to do, protect our possessions. Then we’ll be heavily fined for this “crime”. “Jonestown” threatened we are “liable” and funds owing to our communities will be cut.
In exchange for our freedom, the oligarchy wants Turtle Island – our land, resources and no Indigenous title. That’s the big prize! With no venues for democratic debate, we’’ll all be divided into two camps, the prisoners and the guards. That’s the game.
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, speakers, workshops, to sign up, go to:
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/ Please sign the Women Title Holders petition. BOOKS available, “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” & “Warriors Hand Book” ($10 USD each including shipping).
Mohawk Nation News
May 21, 2007
Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, or whoever really runs the Canadian dictatorship, has wiped out any pretension that Canada ever was a democratic country. He did this by obstructing democratic parliamentary debate on the use of Canadian taxes. If Canadian cops were on their toes as true defenders of law and order, he could be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada, Section 129.1. He intentionally, with malice aforethought, obstructed parliamentarians who were engaged in enforcing the laws concerning “revenues, customs, excise, trade or navigation”.
Harper outlined his methods in a 200-page manual showing his party members how to obstruct justice and democratic due process. This is a major constitutional crisis that can’t be swept under the carpet. Right now he’s hiding out in Afghanistan . He might end up in the next cave over from Bin Laden.
The public is getting so confused they don’t know what the rules are anymore. Big business and big government want to keep them in a trance. If someone sees a baby being killed, they’re afraid to help because they might be arrested for intruding on someone else’s rights.
Harper and the two major political parties see the people as the enemy, particularly us, the Indigenous people. He needs a personalized target. It looks like hysteria is being created deliberately to set us up as the threat or scapegoat. In the 911 model, the threat is more terrifying than the action. He steers the public to vent their anger and hatred on us. That’s how he was able to push through the anti-terrorism legislation. He got rid of habeas corpus and usurped peoples’ right to the sanctity of their home.
Harper obviously has no rules for himself. It looks like he thinks democratic institutions won’t work. They certainly have never treated us humanely or respected our sovereign rights to the land and resources of Turtle Island .
Harper wants severe rules and regulations over everybody, especially the media. He does not want to be judged. He doesn’t even want us to have our minds in gear. Through propaganda and brute force, people are losing their freedom to sociopaths and control-freak demagogues.
How does one know when the government is corrupt? When the public leaders lie. When the public doesn’t object. Then nobody can tell what’s true anymore. Harper has hamstrung the Parliamentary committees so there is no free open discussion. The cabinet decrees laws, sets the agenda and cancels hearings at will. Once lies have become the status quo there can be no real communication. All words become meaningless babble or catch phrases.
Canada and the U.S. have turned into oligarchies controlled by a small elite who act on behalf of multinational corporations controlled from afar. They are fronts for international investors to get the leases to run the assets and drain the resources on Turtle Island .
Starting in the 1960s the middle-class was meticulously destroyed. They were attacked as being materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war mongers, brutal and corrupt. This is true in the way they ran the Indian Affairs bureaucracies where colonial control of the lands and resources reside. This is a kind of rot and disease spreading through the colonial constitutional trees on Turtle Island controlled by the oligarchy.
Indian Affairs Minister Jim “Jonestown” Prentice announced fundamental changes to the way Indigenous land claims are to be settled. We wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing he announces is his plan to lease out the settling of land claims to private corporate structures on some kind of profit-sharing basis. We demand that the land claims be mediated by a neutral and mutually agreed upon third party. The “other” party cannot be anyone from the federal, provincial, territorial or local “Indian” entities set up by Canada . Nor can they be any of the corporations that act as the puppet masters for Canada ’s pseudo government.
Are they working on privatizing Indian Affairs? Don’t laugh! This has already been tried in Kanehsatake and on many other communities by placing its management under the control of private companies. It was a catastrophe for Indigenous people and a bonanza for the well connected accounting, management and legal firms. All the money went to the companies, the lawyers and a few cooperative band councilors. Services were stopped. The Indigenous People got less than before.
Indian Affairs could be planning to lease us out to multinational investors who want to get their paws on our land, hydro electric power, resources and diamonds that can be extracted from our land in the north. This happened before when they leased out our education to church run residential schools, whose staff got their paws and other parts on our young children, molesting and killing them with impunity.
The Crown would love to get out of its legal responsibility to us by handing us over to corporations who have no obligations. Their only agenda is profit! Not service for the people. Not living up to the treaties. They have to cut costs, services, streamline everything and put their friends in big jobs with fat salaries.
The big pie in the sky is “leasing”. It is really the “confiscation” of all lands, resources, public assets and programs by international investors. The plan is already operational. Assets have already been confiscated such as highways, cable, television, electricity, internet, water, prisons, schools, health care, private police forces, airports, parking garages, social services, welfare, pensions, housing, drug and alcohol treatment programs, adoptions, programs for the elderly, road maintenance, garbage collection, fire departments, environmental protection, job training and placement, child support enforcement, child care, child protection – get the picture? Even the management of all these assets and programs are being privatized and leased out.
So what happens when you have a complaint? You can’t go to your member of parliament. The lease holder might be in Singapore or Zurich Switzerland , 5,000 miles away! They’re probably run by numbered companies.
Does this mean that people don’t have to pay taxes anymore? The Treasury Board will give Indian Affairs $9 billion who turn it over to an offshore multinational corporation which is the leaseholder that is headquartered in Paris France . It's international colonialism!
The private sector can raise costs and authority on the assets they lease. The government doesn’t have to answer to the public. It’s all international. The head office might be in Germany or wherever. They don’t understand what you’re talking about. Your call will go to a call center in India . You’ll be put on hold and then passed around to five others whose job is to give you a nervous breakdown. Don’t think you’re going to get an answer about the plumbing leak in your rental apartment, or the 200% increase in the road tolls you have to pay just to get home.
Would this be considered high treason? It is when the government is consorting with foreign entities that destroy the economy and rob them of those things they stole from us.
The local brokers of these leases/confiscations are making out like bandits.
Rudy Giuliani of 911 fame is the exclusive lawyer for Cintra of Spain, which is headed by Prince Juan Carlos. Cintra is now the proud owner of what was once the “ Chicago Skyway”. They are working on getting the Midway Airport too. The leases are for 75 to 99 years. Once leased they are exempt from taxation. Upstate New York recently signed the same sort of lease with National Express Group of London UK which specializes in rail and bus transport.
Some U.S. municipalities are trying to get their water systems back. But they keep getting outbid by Illinois American Water which is owned by a German investor that is also functioning in 29 U.S. states.
These international corporations are gaining control of the cities. Today one can’t get into some cities without paying tolls and the infra structures are falling apart. Canadians will soon be trapped in just like Indigenous People.
Were going back to the middle ages, man! Prisons have been privatized to save money. Correction Corporation of America runs half the private prisons and expects to double their investment in 5 years. Costs must be minimized. Jails must be kept full. Less is spent on prisoner care and training of guards. To maximize profits jail time must be maximized. In some prisons the inmates work for 17 cents an hour making clothes, car parts, computer components, shoes and furniture. It’s not just license plates anymore. This is going on even though it’s a violation of international law.
The “three strikes you’re out” law in California is coming soon to Canada , your home on native land. So Congress is being heavily lobbied to increase sentences. Correction Corporation and corrections officers are some of the largest campaign contributors in California . Ten years ago there were ten private prisons and 2,000 inmates. Today there are 140 with 70,000 inmates. They are aiming to increase this slave labor by 500% in the next ten years.
If people don’t wake up soon, by the time Harper’s out of office, Canada will be dismantled and sold off to foreign corporations. Let’s see what happens on June 29th when Indigenous people demonstrate everywhere against injustice and mistreatment. We think that the “war room” in the “ Tower of Power ” at Indian affairs is working round the clock to speed up privatization. Minister “Jonestown” Prentice wants to drag us into the colonial courts for doing what we’re supposed to do, protect our possessions. Then we’ll be heavily fined for this “crime”. “Jonestown” threatened we are “liable” and funds owing to our communities will be cut.
In exchange for our freedom, the oligarchy wants Turtle Island – our land, resources and no Indigenous title. That’s the big prize! With no venues for democratic debate, we’’ll all be divided into two camps, the prisoners and the guards. That’s the game.
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, speakers, workshops, to sign up, go to:
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/ Please sign the Women Title Holders petition. BOOKS available, “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” & “Warriors Hand Book” ($10 USD each including shipping).
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Dorreen Yellow Bird: North Dakota blogger's 'Backhanded Bigotry'
Dorreen Yellow Bird has a message for Rob Port, banned by the Turtle Mountain Chippewa:
"Stop blogging Rob Port, until you have some facts.
"The 15 hours Port spent on the Turtle Mountain reservation gave him a lopsided view of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. Port gathered a whole group of people into one bundle, tied a dirty, lazy knot around them and tossed them into the national spotlight," Yellow Bird writes.
Yellow Bird says Port needs to rethink his "backhanded bigotry."
read the story:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=38587
"Stop blogging Rob Port, until you have some facts.
"The 15 hours Port spent on the Turtle Mountain reservation gave him a lopsided view of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. Port gathered a whole group of people into one bundle, tied a dirty, lazy knot around them and tossed them into the national spotlight," Yellow Bird writes.
Yellow Bird says Port needs to rethink his "backhanded bigotry."
read the story:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=38587
Monday, May 21, 2007
Indigenous speak out for sacred water at United Nations
Tibetan monks at UN session
Photo Alyssa Macy/Indigenius Media
NEW YORK -- Indigenous Peoples spoke out in defense of the sacredness of water, the women who carry it and humanity's right to pure water, during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Tia Oros, delivering a collective statement said, "Although we do not always know when we will walk into the prayers of our ancestors, here we have done just that.
"Many thousands of our ancestors have prayed for peace and rain. And, for many decades our relatives throughout the world have dreamed, worked and bled for the creation of this Forum, to have our voices and concerns heard by the world community in this House of Mica, this place recognized by our Hopi brother, the late Thomas Banyaca, at the opening of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in 1993.
"For all of them, and for the generations yet to come, we support the immediate adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as adopted by the UN Human Rights Council last year, and we offer these recommendations."
COLLECTIVE STATEMENT
Intervention to the Sixth Session of the
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Submitted by the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development
May 17, 2007
Protection of Water: WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Thank you, Madame Chair, for the opportunity of addressing the United Nations Per
manent Forum on Indigenous Issues. My name is Tia Oros and I am of the A:shiwi People/Zuni Nation. The Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, an Indigenous Peoples’ organization working directly with grassroots Native communities to design and implement ecologically harmonious strategies for sovereignty, human rights, environmental justice, cultural revitalization, and sacred sites protection for Indigenous Nations, submits this intervention on Agenda Item 4b, under the mandated area of Environment, with the following signatories: The Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Indian Reservation, American Indian Law Alliance, Laguna Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment, Tonatierra, Native Youth Coalition, Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade, Tatanka Oyate, Andes Chinchasuyo, Maya Vision, Western Shoshone Defense Project, Buffalo River Dene Nation, Mainyoto Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization, Bangsa Adat Alifuru from Maluku, Indigenous Peoples’ Council on Biocolonialism, Te Runanga Kaimahi, Kaimahi Maori o Aotearoa of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, Indigenous Environmental Network, Resisting Environment Destruction on Indigenous Land (RedOil), Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Te Hau Takitini o Aotearoa, Nihiyaw Cree Society, Council of Grandmothers, and Indigenous Peace Action.
For the last two years our organization has addressed the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues regarding the Protection of Water, and it is an honor to do so again. At this time, I urgently reiterate the critical significance of protecting Indigenous Peoples’ full, unencumbered access to clean Water on our territories. This is crucial for all aspects of our health: physical, cultural, and spiritual. Water is boundless. Water is Life.
Although we do not always know when we will walk into the prayers of our ancestors, here we have done just that. Many thousands of our ancestors have prayed for peace and rain. And, for many decades our relatives throughout the world have dreamed, worked and bled for the creation of this Forum, to have our voices and concerns heard by the world community in this House of Mica, this place recognized by our Hopi brother, the late Thomas Banyaca, at the opening of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in 1993. For all of them, and for the generations yet to come, we support the immediate adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as adopted by the UN Human Rights Council last year, and we offer these recommendations.
Recommendations:
1. We again urgently appeal to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to request the immediate appointment of a United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Water and Water Catchment Areas in order to gather testimony directly from Indigenous Nations of the world targeted
for or impacted by Water privatization, diversion, toxic contamination, dams, pollution, commodification, non-sustainable energy development and other environmental injustices that damage natural, potable and accessible Water supplies on which Indigenous Peoples rely for spiritual and nutritional sustenance. We recall that this recommendation was carried forth by the Permanent Forum to the Economic and Social Development Council when we first requested this in 2005, and we respectfully request that this compelling concern is recognized and advanced once again.
2. We ask that the Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Water and Catchment Areas critically review and assess Water allocation, access policies and regulations that affect the rights of Indigenous Nations, the health of our Peoples and that of future generations. This should be done to identify protective and preventive and restorative mechanisms to restore our Waters and assure that Water is accessible to our Peoples, as well as to repair our diverse ecosystems that rely on the health of natural Water flows where they have been damaged.
3. Our Peoples have a right to say no to any development project on our territories. We call upon the Permanent Forum to strongly advocate for the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples in regard to any development on our territories by any outside entities, including the World Bank and States, whose actions may impact or abrogate our aboriginal and/or treaty rights including right of access to clean, potable Water for all aspects of our life.
4. Further, we ask that Nation-States’ reports to the United Nations contain a focus on Water and also that they include direct participation by Indigenous Peoples in the development of those reports.
5. We recommend that the Permanent Forum take immediate steps in the Commission on Sustainable Development to protect Water from privatization, and from bi-lateral and multi-lateral governmental agreements and other incursions onto our territories that affect the integrity of our Waters, impoverish our Nations and impose additional hardships on Indigenous Peoples, particularly on Indigenous women.
6. We fully support the Indigenous Women’s Caucus statement and its recommendations in light of the unique and essential relationship between women and Water.
Narrative Justification:
Indigenous Peoples know Water as the sacred source and essence of all Life imbued with a spirit and a consciousness. The vitality of Water to our communities is expressed in a rainbow of songs, stories, and ceremonies, holding a special place in our cultures for the continuation of an Indigenous worldview that affirms the vital link of Water to life everlasting. And yet, springs from which our ancestors emerged from within the womb of Mother Earth, precious watersheds that feed our lakes and enable life, and rivers that carry our prayers to the forever after, are being destroyed. Privatization of Water and our other resources places them in the control of multi-national corporations, shortsighted governmental development policies, and the unrelenting encroachment by non-indigenous settlements, forcing us into poverty and pushing us further to the edge of existence, where we are already barely holding on by our fingertips for survival.
Environmental injustice including the ongoing invasions onto Indigenous territories, and the attendant wrongful taking of our natural resources, particularly the nearly unhindered exploitation and commodification of Water, obstruct critically needed access to our Waterways and threaten the survival of Indigenous Peoples and of our distinct cultures. These assaults have direct and tremendously destructive impacts and further impoverish our already vulnerable, besieged Peoples. Although North America is widely assumed to be a region of universal affluence, there are many thousands of Indigenous Peoples and communities, throughout the continent, who have no meaningful system of protection against the wrongful diversion, privatization, and oppression of our Water resources. In fact, many of us are dying of thirst.
Madame Chair, and esteemed members of this Forum, Indigenous women throughout the world who often have the primary responsibility of locating and carrying water for their families, and may risk their lives to do so now find only dust instead of water. In too many places, a polluted stream is our only source of Water. We hunger and can no longer plant our gardens, not because we have forgotten how to nurture life from a seed, but because without access to Water, our crops cannot flourish, and we cannot thrive without them. A child dies every eight seconds for lack of access to clean Water and many victims are our own, Indigenous children. The unquenchable greed of States, corporations, settlers, and other invaders, whose unrelenting actions on our lands constitute a Water war against Indigenous Peoples, are killing us all – violating our ecosystems, condemning our peoples, obliterating our futures.
What were once rich landscapes awake with forests and gardens, rivers and cornfields, alive with animals and birds, and a harmonious diversity of Indigenous cultures, are quickly becoming parched lands that only our tears can soften today. Let us dry our eyes and take action on the recommendations as offered. Water is a human right. Our children, those generations yet to be born, and all of our relations, are the ultimate casualties of this conflict. I urge you all to take immediate action on this most urgent matter. Thank you for your kind attention. Elahkwa.
(Photo above/California coast/Brenda Norrell)
Hopi and Japanese Say Water Has Intelligence
by Brenda Norrell
News from Indian Country, January, 2004
KYKOTSMOVI, Ariz. -- Hopi members of Black Mesa Trust said water carries intelligence. Hopi and Japanese are discovering what Hopi and other Indigenous peoples have always known, "Water is alive."
Vernon Masayesva, executive director of Black Mesa Trust, recently visited Japan and met with Shinto priests and researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto, chief of the Hado Institute in Tokyo and author of Message from Water.
During the Hisot Navoti (knowledge of ancestors) water conference at the Hopi Veterans Center, Hopi revealed knowledge of water shared by Hopi and Japanese.
Masayesva showed amazing film footage, revealing startling transformations in water crystals when exposed to music and written words. Emoto's photographs reveal water crystals, under high magnification, have drastically different forms from different water sources. Further, Emoto shows that water changes its expression as a result of human actions.
When water is exposed to the music of Mozart and Beethoven, crystals expand and become more beautiful. These crystals resemble diamonds, with flower buds blossoming on their points, as the music plays.
Emoto explains that water carries and responds to the vibrations of music. He reveals even more amazing research, showing water responds to the written word.
When clear tubes of water are placed over positive and negative words, the structure of water crystals change. Water crystals increase in beauty when placed over the word "peace," but are transformed to dark and ugly crystals when placed over the word "war."
When water is placed over the word "let's," the crystals expand and increase in beauty. However, when water is placed over the word "must," the crystals become ugly with a dark green center. Emoto says water is letting us realize the hidden power of words.
During the gathering for the defense of pure water, Jerry Honawa, Hopi elder, said, "Water has intelligence."
Speaking of water, Masayesva said, "If you are happy, you will have happy crystals; if you are angry, you will have angry crystals." Masayesva also shared the history of the Hopi people, revealing their destiny intertwined with the earth and its mysteries.
"According to Hopi, long ago there was nothing but water from the beginning of time. This is what we call the First World of Hopi. "Life was created from water, from the land, from the sun."
When life was first created, it was beautiful, a perfect circle. On Hopiland today there are areas of perfect seashells, proof that this land was once underwater as Hopi are told. There are perfect fossils here, he said.
"Where does coal come from? It comes from plants. Everywhere you go, you see dinosaur tracks. This must have been a beautiful place at one time."
In the First World, there was balance, harmony and peace. This balance and harmony, however, was destroyed in the Third World because of man and his greed. The ancestors began searching for a safe place to begin a new life. Bird was sent out and returned with news of this place.
"Through the bamboo, they entered the new land,” Masayesva said. "It is a metaphor, we don't really know, but we came from somewhere where there was bamboo." When the people arrived in this new land, they thought they had left evil behind them. But after a child died, they realized that evil had come with them. Those with the two hearts had come. "Evil is necessary to understand what good truly is," Masayesva said.
The people knew they had to learn from the destruction of the Third World and not return to those ways. They wanted to create a new way of life. The Hopi people were not led by politicians, they were led by priests, often the poorest man in the village who denied himself everything for the benefit of his children.
In this new place they found a man who grew beautiful corn. It was Ma'sau, guardian of the land. Ma'sau said it is a harsh land, but if the people were willing to live Ma'sau's way of life, they could stay here.
Ma'sau told the people, "If you follow this way of life, you can stay here forever." Ma'sau showed the people corn, a gourd of water and planting stick. "He said if you decide to stay here you must help me take care of this land, then you can stay."
Ma'sau told them that others are coming. "They will claim everything when they come, even the oceans, the air and the stars." Ma'sau told the Hopi people to migrate to the four corners of the world, then return here to Black Mesa. The gourd to carry water was also a revelation, showing that water here is not infinite, it is limited.
Masayesva said the colors of the corn represent the colors of all mankind, yellow, purple, red and white. The sweet corn also represents the ancestors and the purple the heavens. Corn, too, gave Hopi a new way of life, and meant that the people no longer had to search for food every day, leaving them free for other things.
The planting stick represents tools or technology, which can be used for good or for destruction. There was a time when smallpox nearly eliminated the Hopi people, with only 300 Hopi surviving, Masayesva said technology can prevent and cure illness today, but it threatens to end humankind with the production of nuclear bombs. Nuclear power and travel to distant planets have resulted in dangerous "god-like powers."
The waters--aquifers, springs, lakes, rivers, oceans and glaciers-- work in harmony to sustain life. Hopi believe the aquifers breathe, breathe in rain and snow and breathe it out. The springs are the breathing holes. Humankind is a participant in water-life; mankind's thoughts influence whether the rain and snow comes.
Of the world's water today, Masayesva said 97 percent is seawater and 2 percent is bound in glaciers. Only1 percent is available for drinking.
However, America is a nation of waste. "We are a throwaway society. We think we are never going to run out of anything."
Masayesva said the people must honor their trust as guardians of the water and land.
"If we don't, we will break the circle."
©News From Indian Country January 12, 2004.
"Indigenous leaders bring eco-sense to UN"
www.oneworld.net
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/149394/1/4536
Return to Censored homepage
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Photo Alyssa Macy/Indigenius Media
NEW YORK -- Indigenous Peoples spoke out in defense of the sacredness of water, the women who carry it and humanity's right to pure water, during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Tia Oros, delivering a collective statement said, "Although we do not always know when we will walk into the prayers of our ancestors, here we have done just that.
"Many thousands of our ancestors have prayed for peace and rain. And, for many decades our relatives throughout the world have dreamed, worked and bled for the creation of this Forum, to have our voices and concerns heard by the world community in this House of Mica, this place recognized by our Hopi brother, the late Thomas Banyaca, at the opening of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in 1993.
"For all of them, and for the generations yet to come, we support the immediate adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as adopted by the UN Human Rights Council last year, and we offer these recommendations."
COLLECTIVE STATEMENT
Intervention to the Sixth Session of the
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Submitted by the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development
May 17, 2007
Protection of Water: WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Thank you, Madame Chair, for the opportunity of addressing the United Nations Per
manent Forum on Indigenous Issues. My name is Tia Oros and I am of the A:shiwi People/Zuni Nation. The Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, an Indigenous Peoples’ organization working directly with grassroots Native communities to design and implement ecologically harmonious strategies for sovereignty, human rights, environmental justice, cultural revitalization, and sacred sites protection for Indigenous Nations, submits this intervention on Agenda Item 4b, under the mandated area of Environment, with the following signatories: The Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Indian Reservation, American Indian Law Alliance, Laguna Acoma Coalition for a Safe Environment, Tonatierra, Native Youth Coalition, Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade, Tatanka Oyate, Andes Chinchasuyo, Maya Vision, Western Shoshone Defense Project, Buffalo River Dene Nation, Mainyoto Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization, Bangsa Adat Alifuru from Maluku, Indigenous Peoples’ Council on Biocolonialism, Te Runanga Kaimahi, Kaimahi Maori o Aotearoa of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, Indigenous Environmental Network, Resisting Environment Destruction on Indigenous Land (RedOil), Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Te Hau Takitini o Aotearoa, Nihiyaw Cree Society, Council of Grandmothers, and Indigenous Peace Action.For the last two years our organization has addressed the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues regarding the Protection of Water, and it is an honor to do so again. At this time, I urgently reiterate the critical significance of protecting Indigenous Peoples’ full, unencumbered access to clean Water on our territories. This is crucial for all aspects of our health: physical, cultural, and spiritual. Water is boundless. Water is Life.
Although we do not always know when we will walk into the prayers of our ancestors, here we have done just that. Many thousands of our ancestors have prayed for peace and rain. And, for many decades our relatives throughout the world have dreamed, worked and bled for the creation of this Forum, to have our voices and concerns heard by the world community in this House of Mica, this place recognized by our Hopi brother, the late Thomas Banyaca, at the opening of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in 1993. For all of them, and for the generations yet to come, we support the immediate adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as adopted by the UN Human Rights Council last year, and we offer these recommendations.
Recommendations:
1. We again urgently appeal to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to request the immediate appointment of a United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Water and Water Catchment Areas in order to gather testimony directly from Indigenous Nations of the world targeted
for or impacted by Water privatization, diversion, toxic contamination, dams, pollution, commodification, non-sustainable energy development and other environmental injustices that damage natural, potable and accessible Water supplies on which Indigenous Peoples rely for spiritual and nutritional sustenance. We recall that this recommendation was carried forth by the Permanent Forum to the Economic and Social Development Council when we first requested this in 2005, and we respectfully request that this compelling concern is recognized and advanced once again.2. We ask that the Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Water and Catchment Areas critically review and assess Water allocation, access policies and regulations that affect the rights of Indigenous Nations, the health of our Peoples and that of future generations. This should be done to identify protective and preventive and restorative mechanisms to restore our Waters and assure that Water is accessible to our Peoples, as well as to repair our diverse ecosystems that rely on the health of natural Water flows where they have been damaged.
3. Our Peoples have a right to say no to any development project on our territories. We call upon the Permanent Forum to strongly advocate for the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples in regard to any development on our territories by any outside entities, including the World Bank and States, whose actions may impact or abrogate our aboriginal and/or treaty rights including right of access to clean, potable Water for all aspects of our life.
4. Further, we ask that Nation-States’ reports to the United Nations contain a focus on Water and also that they include direct participation by Indigenous Peoples in the development of those reports.
5. We recommend that the Permanent Forum take immediate steps in the Commission on Sustainable Development to protect Water from privatization, and from bi-lateral and multi-lateral governmental agreements and other incursions onto our territories that affect the integrity of our Waters, impoverish our Nations and impose additional hardships on Indigenous Peoples, particularly on Indigenous women.
6. We fully support the Indigenous Women’s Caucus statement and its recommendations in light of the unique and essential relationship between women and Water.
Narrative Justification:
Indigenous Peoples know Water as the sacred source and essence of all Life imbued with a spirit and a consciousness. The vitality of Water to our communities is expressed in a rainbow of songs, stories, and ceremonies, holding a special place in our cultures for the continuation of an Indigenous worldview that affirms the vital link of Water to life everlasting. And yet, springs from which our ancestors emerged from within the womb of Mother Earth, precious watersheds that feed our lakes and enable life, and rivers that carry our prayers to the forever after, are being destroyed. Privatization of Water and our other resources places them in the control of multi-national corporations, shortsighted governmental development policies, and the unrelenting encroachment by non-indigenous settlements, forcing us into poverty and pushing us further to the edge of existence, where we are already barely holding on by our fingertips for survival.
Environmental injustice including the ongoing invasions onto Indigenous territories, and the attendant wrongful taking of our natural resources, particularly the nearly unhindered exploitation and commodification of Water, obstruct critically needed access to our Waterways and threaten the survival of Indigenous Peoples and of our distinct cultures. These assaults have direct and tremendously destructive impacts and further impoverish our already vulnerable, besieged Peoples. Although North America is widely assumed to be a region of universal affluence, there are many thousands of Indigenous Peoples and communities, throughout the continent, who have no meaningful system of protection against the wrongful diversion, privatization, and oppression of our Water resources. In fact, many of us are dying of thirst.
Madame Chair, and esteemed members of this Forum, Indigenous women throughout the world who often have the primary responsibility of locating and carrying water for their families, and may risk their lives to do so now find only dust instead of water. In too many places, a polluted stream is our only source of Water. We hunger and can no longer plant our gardens, not because we have forgotten how to nurture life from a seed, but because without access to Water, our crops cannot flourish, and we cannot thrive without them. A child dies every eight seconds for lack of access to clean Water and many victims are our own, Indigenous children. The unquenchable greed of States, corporations, settlers, and other invaders, whose unrelenting actions on our lands constitute a Water war against Indigenous Peoples, are killing us all – violating our ecosystems, condemning our peoples, obliterating our futures.
What were once rich landscapes awake with forests and gardens, rivers and cornfields, alive with animals and birds, and a harmonious diversity of Indigenous cultures, are quickly becoming parched lands that only our tears can soften today. Let us dry our eyes and take action on the recommendations as offered. Water is a human right. Our children, those generations yet to be born, and all of our relations, are the ultimate casualties of this conflict. I urge you all to take immediate action on this most urgent matter. Thank you for your kind attention. Elahkwa.
(Photo above/California coast/Brenda Norrell)
Hopi and Japanese Say Water Has Intelligence
by Brenda Norrell
News from Indian Country, January, 2004
KYKOTSMOVI, Ariz. -- Hopi members of Black Mesa Trust said water carries intelligence. Hopi and Japanese are discovering what Hopi and other Indigenous peoples have always known, "Water is alive."
Vernon Masayesva, executive director of Black Mesa Trust, recently visited Japan and met with Shinto priests and researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto, chief of the Hado Institute in Tokyo and author of Message from Water.
During the Hisot Navoti (knowledge of ancestors) water conference at the Hopi Veterans Center, Hopi revealed knowledge of water shared by Hopi and Japanese.
Masayesva showed amazing film footage, revealing startling transformations in water crystals when exposed to music and written words. Emoto's photographs reveal water crystals, under high magnification, have drastically different forms from different water sources. Further, Emoto shows that water changes its expression as a result of human actions.
When water is exposed to the music of Mozart and Beethoven, crystals expand and become more beautiful. These crystals resemble diamonds, with flower buds blossoming on their points, as the music plays.
Emoto explains that water carries and responds to the vibrations of music. He reveals even more amazing research, showing water responds to the written word.
When clear tubes of water are placed over positive and negative words, the structure of water crystals change. Water crystals increase in beauty when placed over the word "peace," but are transformed to dark and ugly crystals when placed over the word "war."
When water is placed over the word "let's," the crystals expand and increase in beauty. However, when water is placed over the word "must," the crystals become ugly with a dark green center. Emoto says water is letting us realize the hidden power of words.
During the gathering for the defense of pure water, Jerry Honawa, Hopi elder, said, "Water has intelligence."
Speaking of water, Masayesva said, "If you are happy, you will have happy crystals; if you are angry, you will have angry crystals." Masayesva also shared the history of the Hopi people, revealing their destiny intertwined with the earth and its mysteries.
"According to Hopi, long ago there was nothing but water from the beginning of time. This is what we call the First World of Hopi. "Life was created from water, from the land, from the sun."
When life was first created, it was beautiful, a perfect circle. On Hopiland today there are areas of perfect seashells, proof that this land was once underwater as Hopi are told. There are perfect fossils here, he said.
"Where does coal come from? It comes from plants. Everywhere you go, you see dinosaur tracks. This must have been a beautiful place at one time."
In the First World, there was balance, harmony and peace. This balance and harmony, however, was destroyed in the Third World because of man and his greed. The ancestors began searching for a safe place to begin a new life. Bird was sent out and returned with news of this place.
"Through the bamboo, they entered the new land,” Masayesva said. "It is a metaphor, we don't really know, but we came from somewhere where there was bamboo." When the people arrived in this new land, they thought they had left evil behind them. But after a child died, they realized that evil had come with them. Those with the two hearts had come. "Evil is necessary to understand what good truly is," Masayesva said.
The people knew they had to learn from the destruction of the Third World and not return to those ways. They wanted to create a new way of life. The Hopi people were not led by politicians, they were led by priests, often the poorest man in the village who denied himself everything for the benefit of his children.
In this new place they found a man who grew beautiful corn. It was Ma'sau, guardian of the land. Ma'sau said it is a harsh land, but if the people were willing to live Ma'sau's way of life, they could stay here.
Ma'sau told the people, "If you follow this way of life, you can stay here forever." Ma'sau showed the people corn, a gourd of water and planting stick. "He said if you decide to stay here you must help me take care of this land, then you can stay."
Ma'sau told them that others are coming. "They will claim everything when they come, even the oceans, the air and the stars." Ma'sau told the Hopi people to migrate to the four corners of the world, then return here to Black Mesa. The gourd to carry water was also a revelation, showing that water here is not infinite, it is limited.
Masayesva said the colors of the corn represent the colors of all mankind, yellow, purple, red and white. The sweet corn also represents the ancestors and the purple the heavens. Corn, too, gave Hopi a new way of life, and meant that the people no longer had to search for food every day, leaving them free for other things.
The planting stick represents tools or technology, which can be used for good or for destruction. There was a time when smallpox nearly eliminated the Hopi people, with only 300 Hopi surviving, Masayesva said technology can prevent and cure illness today, but it threatens to end humankind with the production of nuclear bombs. Nuclear power and travel to distant planets have resulted in dangerous "god-like powers."
The waters--aquifers, springs, lakes, rivers, oceans and glaciers-- work in harmony to sustain life. Hopi believe the aquifers breathe, breathe in rain and snow and breathe it out. The springs are the breathing holes. Humankind is a participant in water-life; mankind's thoughts influence whether the rain and snow comes.
Of the world's water today, Masayesva said 97 percent is seawater and 2 percent is bound in glaciers. Only1 percent is available for drinking.
However, America is a nation of waste. "We are a throwaway society. We think we are never going to run out of anything."
Masayesva said the people must honor their trust as guardians of the water and land.
"If we don't, we will break the circle."
©News From Indian Country January 12, 2004.
"Indigenous leaders bring eco-sense to UN"
www.oneworld.net
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/149394/1/4536
Return to Censored homepage
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 20, 2007
UPDATED: North Dakota racism has familiar smell
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
After Rob Port was banned by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, it was interesting to see the support Port received from some editors of North Dakota newspapers.
It had a familiar smell.
Racism was common in newspaper rooms in New Mexico and Arizona in the 1990s.
During the early 1990s, I worked as a staff reporter for the Farmington Daily Times in New Mexico. I was based in Shiprock, N.M., on the Navajo Nation.
A group of Navajo teens at a convenience store were attacked and beaten with baseball bats by a group of white Farmington teenagers.
The Daily Times editors knowingly published articles which distorted the facts and made it appear that the victims were responsible for those beatings.
The Navajo teens had broken bones. This was neither the first time, nor the last, that American Indians were beaten by Farmington teenagers. It was what Navajo Genevieve Jackson called "a rite of passage" for white Farmington teenagers. Three of the torture murders of Navajos in Farmington in the 1970s are described in the book, "The Broken Circle," by Rodney Barker. The beatings and murders continue.
When I made a formal complaint to the editors of Farmington Daily Times, about the facts being distorted and the teen victims being blamed, I was fired.
I reported the situation to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Denver. The Civil Rights Commission was holding hearings at the time on bordertown racism; it became part of the submitted testimony.
The institutionalized racism was intense.
The Farmington Police Department was monitored by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission for decades. Like in the Dakotas, Indians were stopped by police far more often than non-Indians. But even non-Indians who came to the defense of Indians were targeted by police. One non-Indian Farmington resident testified to the Civil Rights Commission that Farmington police stopped him dozens of times, for the purpose of harassment, after he reported police for beating an Indian man. (I've included a link below to the most recent Commission report on Farmington.)
Eventually, the Daily Times was sold and gained new management.
However, the racism and distortion of the facts concerning the beating of the Navajo teens by white teens with baseball bats was not just a singular incident at the newspaper.
The Daily Times staff meetings were often plagued with racist insults toward American Indians, derogatory racial slurs voiced by some of the staff reporters and editors.
Hopefully, things in Southwest newsrooms have changed for the better.
North Dakota is now in the spotlight, with exposure that the sayanything blog, which Port moderates, is a forum for racism and hatred.
It is interesting to follow the press coverage on this issue, since editors and wire reporters don't seem to have read the tribe's resolution or sought out Chippewa tribal members for their responses, which is normally done in news stories.
UPI's current wire story doesn't include a single comment from a Chippewa tribal member or a quote from the tribe's resolution. At least in this case, it appears that UPI doesn't believe it is important to get the Indians' side of the story.
The sad part is that violence begins with thoughts. The good part is that things usually change when people speak out for truth and justice.
--bn
UPI's one-sided story:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/05/18/nd_tribal_leaders_banish_man/2629/
"The Farmington Report, Civil Rights for Native Americans 30 Years Later"
US Commission on Civil Rights
http://www.usccr.gov/
Original post: "Chippewa insulted by banned author"
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/05/chippewa-insulted-by-banned-author.html
Turtle Mountain Chippewa resolution posted at:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/05/comment-about-chippewa-banning-rob-port_17.html
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
After Rob Port was banned by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, it was interesting to see the support Port received from some editors of North Dakota newspapers.
It had a familiar smell.
Racism was common in newspaper rooms in New Mexico and Arizona in the 1990s.
During the early 1990s, I worked as a staff reporter for the Farmington Daily Times in New Mexico. I was based in Shiprock, N.M., on the Navajo Nation.
A group of Navajo teens at a convenience store were attacked and beaten with baseball bats by a group of white Farmington teenagers.
The Daily Times editors knowingly published articles which distorted the facts and made it appear that the victims were responsible for those beatings.
The Navajo teens had broken bones. This was neither the first time, nor the last, that American Indians were beaten by Farmington teenagers. It was what Navajo Genevieve Jackson called "a rite of passage" for white Farmington teenagers. Three of the torture murders of Navajos in Farmington in the 1970s are described in the book, "The Broken Circle," by Rodney Barker. The beatings and murders continue.
When I made a formal complaint to the editors of Farmington Daily Times, about the facts being distorted and the teen victims being blamed, I was fired.
I reported the situation to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Denver. The Civil Rights Commission was holding hearings at the time on bordertown racism; it became part of the submitted testimony.
The institutionalized racism was intense.
The Farmington Police Department was monitored by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission for decades. Like in the Dakotas, Indians were stopped by police far more often than non-Indians. But even non-Indians who came to the defense of Indians were targeted by police. One non-Indian Farmington resident testified to the Civil Rights Commission that Farmington police stopped him dozens of times, for the purpose of harassment, after he reported police for beating an Indian man. (I've included a link below to the most recent Commission report on Farmington.)
Eventually, the Daily Times was sold and gained new management.
However, the racism and distortion of the facts concerning the beating of the Navajo teens by white teens with baseball bats was not just a singular incident at the newspaper.
The Daily Times staff meetings were often plagued with racist insults toward American Indians, derogatory racial slurs voiced by some of the staff reporters and editors.
Hopefully, things in Southwest newsrooms have changed for the better.
North Dakota is now in the spotlight, with exposure that the sayanything blog, which Port moderates, is a forum for racism and hatred.
It is interesting to follow the press coverage on this issue, since editors and wire reporters don't seem to have read the tribe's resolution or sought out Chippewa tribal members for their responses, which is normally done in news stories.
UPI's current wire story doesn't include a single comment from a Chippewa tribal member or a quote from the tribe's resolution. At least in this case, it appears that UPI doesn't believe it is important to get the Indians' side of the story.
The sad part is that violence begins with thoughts. The good part is that things usually change when people speak out for truth and justice.
--bn
UPI's one-sided story:
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/05/18/nd_tribal_leaders_banish_man/2629/
"The Farmington Report, Civil Rights for Native Americans 30 Years Later"
US Commission on Civil Rights
http://www.usccr.gov/
Original post: "Chippewa insulted by banned author"
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/05/chippewa-insulted-by-banned-author.html
Turtle Mountain Chippewa resolution posted at:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/05/comment-about-chippewa-banning-rob-port_17.html
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Friday, May 18, 2007
In Focus, Gros-Ventre in Montana
Please keep James Main, Sr., White Clay People (Gros-Ventre) in Montana, in your thoughts and prayers. James, like his father Tom Main, has served Indigenous Peoples all his life. He recently returned home after open heart surgery, but is now again hospitalized. The Mains will be in focus in an upcoming series. (James Main on Big Warm Creek, May 2007. T-shirt reads, "Sure you can trust your government, just ask any Indian." Photo by Brenda Norrell.)MNN: NAFTA Super Autobahn, the Road to Hell
IS “NAFTA SUPER AUTOBAHN” THE ROAD TO HELL?
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 18, 2007
The Bush Administration is planning to build a huge Highway from Mexico to Canada. The NAFTA Super “Autobahn” will be a four football fields wide car-truck-train-pipeline corridor from Mexico to Canada. It will be a 10-lane limited-access road with tolls. Jerome R. Corsi of “Human Events” has written extensively about this project which is being done on the quiet.The NAFTA autobahn is mainly going to transport our resources from one million square miles of unsurrendered Indigenous land in the northern part of Turtle Island, through the U.S and Mexico to the countries of the Pacific rim.Then the road will bring containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union on the docks of the west coast. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of Turtle Island. [See attached map]. We see more containers on trains that are miles and miles long coming from California ports heading east. The west coast is one of the places where they want to put unions out of business.So who benefits? Not the Mexicans! Maybe not even the Americans! Certainly not the Indigenous land and resource owners!The northeastern route will go along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, right through Haudenosaunee territory. Mega bridges to the northern reaches are already planned, one from Kahnawake to Montreal, one over the Ottawa River at Kanehsatake and another from Cornwall over to Akwesasne. Once again we Mohawks are in the way.The Mexican trucks will cross the border in fast lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, known as a “Smart Port”, built for Mexico by U.S. taxpayers. Containers from the Far East can be transferred there to trucks going east and west.Super roads are not a new idea. In 1933 Hitler and the Nazis finished the German “autobahn” during the Third Reich. It linked north and south Germany. It was promoted as creating jobs. It was actually built mostly by Russian prisoners of war. The military was involved in the planning to provide mobility for the movement of their troops and weaponry. They were designed with auxiliary airports with aircraft hidden in tunnels or camouflaged in nearby woods. [We don’t know what military auxiliary will be built alongside the NAFTA autobahn].In the end the German autobahn was useless during most of the war due to a shortage of gas and lack of trucks. Tanks and trucks were hard on the fragile surface. Much of the road was bombed. The bulk of the military traffic, men and material ended up being transported by rail. Eisenhower was inspired by the German Autobahn and created a U.S. interstate highway system in 1956.The concession for the tolls on the Texas portion of the NAFTA Autobahn was leased to a Spanish firm, “Cintra Concesiones de infra”. Rudy “911” Giuliani’s law firm represents Cintra exclusively. The state of Texas was paid $2.1 billion up front and $700 million yearly for 50 years. “Rudy Guiliani Capital Advisors” has been bought out by “Macquarrie”, an Australian Consortium which leases and operates U.S. and Canadian toll roads. It can be presumed that the whole corridor will be a private toll road which will need a private military force to protect it.“Euro Money Seminars” of the UK is teaching state and local U.S. governments how to lease public assets such as highways, water works, prisons and schools to international investment groups. One of Giuliani’s firms, “Giuliani and Partners”, has a component for leasing out private police forces.President Bush does not appear to be anxious to secure the Mexican border. Maybe he has to create express lanes first for the Mexican trucks that will be bringing containers into the heart of the U.S., to bypass U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks. 90% of trucking is now non-union because of government union busting.The only places where the unions are still strong are in major financial industrial cities like New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago. For example, fabricated steel coming in from non-union fabricators have to go to New Jersey, reload onto union trucks and then are driven into New York City by the Teamsters Union.It’s to kill off whatever is left of the unions. It’s to steal our resources. It’s to stop indigenous protest. It’s to eliminate anyone who wants to prevent the reestablishment of the oligarcic cultural elite who want to treat the rest of us like slaves.To get the public’s [forced] “cooperation” of those cities and towns that are in the way of the corridor, large corporations are being shut down, such as Domtar in Cornwall Ontario and General Motors in Massena New York. A few hundred million dollars has been taken out of the economy on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Lost jobs will lower house and property values which can then be grabbed cheaply or easily expropriated by NAFTA under the “eminent domain” stealing act.The public is mostly unaware of the coming North American Union that is planned for the United States, Canada and Mexico. Various U.S. government and state agencies and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are working behind the scenes to create this highway. The U.S. government has set up an office in the Department of Commerce called the “SPP Office” for “Security and Prosperity Partnership”. The SPP Agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005.CN Rail and CP Rail in Canada are part of this. Let’s see how lucrative it is for them to steal our resources and to cooperate with multinational corporations and the governments they control. As of February 2007, the President and CEO of CN make more than the directors and senior management who make 2.2% of all outstanding shares. This is about $30 million. You can bet that when dividend time comes, they won’t be eating Kraft Dinner like the Indigenous people they stole the land and trust funds from to build the rail empire.CN has had record profits on the backs of employees who were fired thus resulting in safety issues. A newly appointed vice-president and chief safety officer was created to address derailments and toxic spills. Many railroad engineers have died due to poor maintenance all in the name of $$$.This autobahn will not benefit Turtle Island. It is a corridor to carry resources that are being stolen from us. It is transported through the U.S. to Mexico and then put it on ships to China and elsewhere. It appears like the U.S. public will not get anything out of it either. The investors and profiteers use U.S., Mexican and Canadian fronts on their various boards.Until 1999, the land in the north of Turtle Island was administered by the Canadian government. Then a “government” was set up similar to a band council, with no authority over resources. This control is still held by the federal government which can make deals to sell it all off to multinational corporations.This is a stupid plan. How will they defend such a long road? These extremes of self-centered despotism are not new. They have risen many times before. 2000 years ago the Han Dynasty in China forced people to do a lot of road work for almost nothing. The penalty for arriving late for work was death. Finally, when a river flooded and the people could not get to work on time, they rebelled and brought the dynasty down. Despotism always falls down in the end. This senseless project is doomed from the start. In the meantime the people will suffer a lot while the abuse builds itself up to the breaking point.If this megalomaniac nonsense isn’t questioned right now people can go through decades or even a century of suffering. The U.S. was founded on egalitarian principles they learned from the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois. The U.S. constantly forgets its inspirational sources. When Europeans arrived on our shores they were huddled masses yearning to be free. They were dirty, malnourished and abused. Now they abuse us.It’s time for everyone to throw off the shackles of abuse. We have to assert our rights, participate, share and laugh. We were not born to be slaves to corporate greed.
Kahentinetha Horn,MNN Mohawk Nation News;
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com;
for updates, workshops, speakers and to sign up, go to www.mohawknationnews.com;
please sign the Women Title Holders petition; for sale “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” and “Warriors Hand Book” ($10 USD each postage included)[http://MohawkNationNews.com/news/singlenews.php?lang=en&category=48&newsnr=464]
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 18, 2007
The Bush Administration is planning to build a huge Highway from Mexico to Canada. The NAFTA Super “Autobahn” will be a four football fields wide car-truck-train-pipeline corridor from Mexico to Canada. It will be a 10-lane limited-access road with tolls. Jerome R. Corsi of “Human Events” has written extensively about this project which is being done on the quiet.The NAFTA autobahn is mainly going to transport our resources from one million square miles of unsurrendered Indigenous land in the northern part of Turtle Island, through the U.S and Mexico to the countries of the Pacific rim.Then the road will bring containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union on the docks of the west coast. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of Turtle Island. [See attached map]. We see more containers on trains that are miles and miles long coming from California ports heading east. The west coast is one of the places where they want to put unions out of business.So who benefits? Not the Mexicans! Maybe not even the Americans! Certainly not the Indigenous land and resource owners!The northeastern route will go along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, right through Haudenosaunee territory. Mega bridges to the northern reaches are already planned, one from Kahnawake to Montreal, one over the Ottawa River at Kanehsatake and another from Cornwall over to Akwesasne. Once again we Mohawks are in the way.The Mexican trucks will cross the border in fast lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, known as a “Smart Port”, built for Mexico by U.S. taxpayers. Containers from the Far East can be transferred there to trucks going east and west.Super roads are not a new idea. In 1933 Hitler and the Nazis finished the German “autobahn” during the Third Reich. It linked north and south Germany. It was promoted as creating jobs. It was actually built mostly by Russian prisoners of war. The military was involved in the planning to provide mobility for the movement of their troops and weaponry. They were designed with auxiliary airports with aircraft hidden in tunnels or camouflaged in nearby woods. [We don’t know what military auxiliary will be built alongside the NAFTA autobahn].In the end the German autobahn was useless during most of the war due to a shortage of gas and lack of trucks. Tanks and trucks were hard on the fragile surface. Much of the road was bombed. The bulk of the military traffic, men and material ended up being transported by rail. Eisenhower was inspired by the German Autobahn and created a U.S. interstate highway system in 1956.The concession for the tolls on the Texas portion of the NAFTA Autobahn was leased to a Spanish firm, “Cintra Concesiones de infra”. Rudy “911” Giuliani’s law firm represents Cintra exclusively. The state of Texas was paid $2.1 billion up front and $700 million yearly for 50 years. “Rudy Guiliani Capital Advisors” has been bought out by “Macquarrie”, an Australian Consortium which leases and operates U.S. and Canadian toll roads. It can be presumed that the whole corridor will be a private toll road which will need a private military force to protect it.“Euro Money Seminars” of the UK is teaching state and local U.S. governments how to lease public assets such as highways, water works, prisons and schools to international investment groups. One of Giuliani’s firms, “Giuliani and Partners”, has a component for leasing out private police forces.President Bush does not appear to be anxious to secure the Mexican border. Maybe he has to create express lanes first for the Mexican trucks that will be bringing containers into the heart of the U.S., to bypass U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks. 90% of trucking is now non-union because of government union busting.The only places where the unions are still strong are in major financial industrial cities like New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago. For example, fabricated steel coming in from non-union fabricators have to go to New Jersey, reload onto union trucks and then are driven into New York City by the Teamsters Union.It’s to kill off whatever is left of the unions. It’s to steal our resources. It’s to stop indigenous protest. It’s to eliminate anyone who wants to prevent the reestablishment of the oligarcic cultural elite who want to treat the rest of us like slaves.To get the public’s [forced] “cooperation” of those cities and towns that are in the way of the corridor, large corporations are being shut down, such as Domtar in Cornwall Ontario and General Motors in Massena New York. A few hundred million dollars has been taken out of the economy on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Lost jobs will lower house and property values which can then be grabbed cheaply or easily expropriated by NAFTA under the “eminent domain” stealing act.The public is mostly unaware of the coming North American Union that is planned for the United States, Canada and Mexico. Various U.S. government and state agencies and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are working behind the scenes to create this highway. The U.S. government has set up an office in the Department of Commerce called the “SPP Office” for “Security and Prosperity Partnership”. The SPP Agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005.CN Rail and CP Rail in Canada are part of this. Let’s see how lucrative it is for them to steal our resources and to cooperate with multinational corporations and the governments they control. As of February 2007, the President and CEO of CN make more than the directors and senior management who make 2.2% of all outstanding shares. This is about $30 million. You can bet that when dividend time comes, they won’t be eating Kraft Dinner like the Indigenous people they stole the land and trust funds from to build the rail empire.CN has had record profits on the backs of employees who were fired thus resulting in safety issues. A newly appointed vice-president and chief safety officer was created to address derailments and toxic spills. Many railroad engineers have died due to poor maintenance all in the name of $$$.This autobahn will not benefit Turtle Island. It is a corridor to carry resources that are being stolen from us. It is transported through the U.S. to Mexico and then put it on ships to China and elsewhere. It appears like the U.S. public will not get anything out of it either. The investors and profiteers use U.S., Mexican and Canadian fronts on their various boards.Until 1999, the land in the north of Turtle Island was administered by the Canadian government. Then a “government” was set up similar to a band council, with no authority over resources. This control is still held by the federal government which can make deals to sell it all off to multinational corporations.This is a stupid plan. How will they defend such a long road? These extremes of self-centered despotism are not new. They have risen many times before. 2000 years ago the Han Dynasty in China forced people to do a lot of road work for almost nothing. The penalty for arriving late for work was death. Finally, when a river flooded and the people could not get to work on time, they rebelled and brought the dynasty down. Despotism always falls down in the end. This senseless project is doomed from the start. In the meantime the people will suffer a lot while the abuse builds itself up to the breaking point.If this megalomaniac nonsense isn’t questioned right now people can go through decades or even a century of suffering. The U.S. was founded on egalitarian principles they learned from the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois. The U.S. constantly forgets its inspirational sources. When Europeans arrived on our shores they were huddled masses yearning to be free. They were dirty, malnourished and abused. Now they abuse us.It’s time for everyone to throw off the shackles of abuse. We have to assert our rights, participate, share and laugh. We were not born to be slaves to corporate greed.
Kahentinetha Horn,MNN Mohawk Nation News;
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com;
for updates, workshops, speakers and to sign up, go to www.mohawknationnews.com;
please sign the Women Title Holders petition; for sale “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” and “Warriors Hand Book” ($10 USD each postage included)[http://MohawkNationNews.com/news/singlenews.php?lang=en&category=48&newsnr=464]
United Nations Indigenous Forum Updates Online
Photo credit: Indigenius MediaINTERNATIONAL INDIAN TREATY COUNCIL
Administration Office
Information Office456 N. Alaska Street
2390 Mission St. Suite 301 Palmer, AK 99645
USA San Francisco CA 94110
USATel. (907) 745-4482; fax 745-4484
Tel. (415) 641-4482; fax 641-2198Email: andrea@treatycouncil.org
Email: iitc@treatycouncil.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 17, 2007
For more information contact:
Alyssa Macy, 414-526-2633
Online updates from the Sixth United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues provided by International Indian Treaty Council delegate
For the second year, IITC delegate, Alyssa Macy (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon), is providing updates on proceedings of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) being held in New York May 14-25, 2007. Updates include summaries of daily proceedings and photographs of events through the duration of the Permanent Forum. "I believe it's important that information about proceedings at the Permanent Forum be shared with as wide of an audience as possible as the decisions that are made in this fora have an impact on the lives of Indigenous Peoples across the globe," stated Alyssa at the opening session of the UNPFII. "Providing timely updates of the proceedings of the Permanent Forum provide the opportunity for Indigenous Peoples and allies to stay abreast of the proceedings as many people cannot afford to attend gatherings such as this," stated Andrea Carmen, IITC Executive Director. "We especially hope that our younger generations pay attention to the work at the United Nations – we are looking at them to carry this important work forward."
The updates can be accessed at the Indigenius Media blog (http://www.indigeniusmedia.com/blog/)
and via several myspace accounts including: Treaty Council ( http://www.myspace.com/treatycouncil)
Indigenous Environmental Network (http://www.myspace.com/IEN_Revolution)
Alyssa's myspace
( http://www.myspace.com/indigenousflygirl). -- +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Alyssa Macy
Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon Indigenius Media
http://www.indigeniusmedia.com/
"You Tube" video from forum:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbQ9Q46D1ZU
Thursday, May 17, 2007
MOHAWKS: Railroad Companies Fuel Hysteria
17.05.2007 19:50:46
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE BLOCK MEGA "YARD SALE"-
RAILROAD COMPANIES FUEL HYSTERIA
by Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 17th 1007.
Power is going out of colonial hands straight to the people.The Canadian government through Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations AFN are trying to take over the agenda of the independent Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Demonstrations across the country are set for June 29th.As Chief Terrance Nelson of Roseau River Manitoba stated, “There are only two ways to deal with the white man. You either pick up a gun and deal with the issue. Or you stand between the white man and his money. On June 29th we are going to stand between the white man and his money”.The “white men” are the multinational corporations and banks that are the “blood suckers” running the colonial governments.We have a runaway locomotive of unresolved grievances, enough to bury almost every railroad track in Canada. Canada refuses to address them. They tie their federal, provincial and territorial representatives onto the railroad track to distract us. The train is still barreling ahead, a disaster waiting to happen. Phil and Jim (Prentice, Minister of Indian Affairs) seem to be chatting endlessly with each other. Hey, guys, aren’tcha gonna do something? It’s time for the world to step on all colonial bugs.Canada is being forced to deal with the land and resource issues. Phil wants to be at the land claims “table” when Prentice sets it up, candelabra and all. They want the “whole meal-deal” to themselves. They have to get rid of the owners of Turtle Island in order to exploit and sell off our resources. The pressure is coming from the U.S. They don’t want to go to Africa where there is turmoil, or other places in the world where they’ve split the countries apart.That’s why we’re being attacked and discredited? Canada wants to put the strings on their puppets when they set up their “bargain basement yard sale”, the yard being Canada. Phil and Jim want to sit together on the folding chairs at the yard sale table because they know what they’re supposed to do – to make sure we don’t get anything.Canada’s crying, “Those ‘Injuns’ are so hard. We just can’t make a deal with them. Imagine that! They want more than beads and mirrors in return for the whole yard!” Any deals made at this table would be illegal because they are not dealing with us, the real owners of the yard on behalf of our future generations.At the recent OCAP meeting in Toronto, Shawn Brant of Tyendinaga, made some provocative statements. He’s being sued by CN Rail for $108 million! What is the net worth of the average Indigenous person? Indian Affairs would never let any of us make that kind of money. They’re going after anybody who supported him, which is probably most of the public that knew what was going on and those who want to stop environmental pollution. This suit is diverting attention from the toxic waste scandal at the quarry and elsewhere.There were about 100 people at that meeting. It was the first day Shawn Brant had been out of the quarry in eight weeks. He went to court in Toronto after that to respond to the civil suit launched by CN. They have since dropped it against the Tyendinaga band council but not him.Shawn said they took over the quarry because the band council asked them to take back their land and do whatever it took – as long as it didn’t make the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte look like victims. If the band council purports to represent Shawn, then the charges should be dropped on him and anyone else too.If the CN was really interested in dealing fairly with the situation, they’d be asking for neutral mediation. Their wealth depends on goods they stole from us. How did the railroads come to think they owned so much Indigenous land? Have you ever been to a yard sale where they were selling off the neighbor’s tulip beds? Canada said, “Build us a railroad and we’ll give you some native land!”Now the band council has backed off because of Canada’s threats. Jim “Jonestown” Prentice said he would cut off all funds to Tyendinaga and to anybody that questions the government’s wrong doing. Truthfully, it is money owed to us. If they don’t pay us, then they have to leave. The rail blockage was a glimpse of what one entity makes in one day off our land. Multiply this by 200 years and see how much has been taken from us.Let’s turn the suit against them. The fact that CN is suing Shawn Brant for so much proves that they’re making obscene amounts of money off of us. $108 million for stopping the trains for thirty hours is $3.6 million an hour. CN uses our land and doesn’t pay us one cent of royalty! They even dumped polluters onto the land so that hundreds of our communities don’t have clean drinking water anymore.Chief Maracle probably doesn’t want to lose his spot at the land claims picnic table that Prentice is setting up.Shawn Brant said shutting down the railway was “punishment” for having to stay at the quarry for an extra 30 days. When is Ontario going to pull the illegal quarry permit? He added that he is haunted by the faces of more than 50,000 children who died while in the care of the Indian residential school system. This figure is many times higher when unreported deaths, kidnappings, outright murder and inter-generational ethnic cleansing are factored in. He stated he is prepared to be killed in memory of them and on behalf of those now living.He worked for the poor homeless people of Toronto for two years at $250 a week. Does CN imagine he saved enough to pay his legal bills? What have they been smoking? Well, whatever he’s got, they want it. [Let’s hope he didn’t invest it in the railroad stock, which was built with Indian trust money. The principle and interest has never been repaid to us. ]The powers that be are embarrassed by these people who sleep on the heating grates in the winter in front of the stock exchange. Those are Shawn Brant’s supporters. They have no resources to fight. What kind of guy is this Shawn Brant anyway? He and the Mohawks brought about 200 of them to Tyendinaga and fed them deer meat that they caught at Presquille Park.Asked by someone in the audience if he felt matters between native people and the government of Canada could be resolved without violence, he gave a one-word answer – “NO!” Because Canada has the power, money, lawyers and police, they negotiate in bad faith and they back it up with guns.It is up to Canada if they want to send in the army and police on us. Let the world see what is happening to us. We have no guns and no power. They took our kids to residential schools, raped and killed them. These little children were helpless. How could they fight back. If Canada was operating in good faith, why have they laid charges against Shawn Brant? Where were they when it was time to lay charges against those who stole, abused, raped and killed our children? Let the world be the judge.In Six Nations we have been peaceful throughout the reclamation of our land. The world is watching. They can see who the thugs really are, Canada.Canada, if you want to continue your atrocities, we will not be enticed into violence so you can use your guns and your court system on us. We have right and truth on our side. Stop trying to set us up to fight back so you can come in and kill us. You tried to say Dudley George had a gun at Ipperwash when the Ontario Provincial Police attacked the people and murdered him. He did not. Agent provocateurs are being sent into our communities to start violence so Canada can walk in on unarmed people.We have a greater weapon than you will ever have to defend our people and our rights. Our weapon is the truth. With this we have disarmed the army, police and the colonial government. This is making the colonial powers hysterical. We will assert our rights peacefully. It’s up to you, Canada, whether you will be peaceful too. When the time comes, our brothers, sister, friends and allies will stand with us.
Kahentinetha Horn,MNN Mohawk Nation News
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com; for updates, workshops, speakers and to sign up, go to www.mohawknationnews.com;
please sign Women Title Holders petition;
For sale “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” and “Warriors Hand Book” [$10 USD each postage included].[http://MohawkNationNews.com/news/singlenews.php?lang=en&category=22&newsnr=463]
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE BLOCK MEGA "YARD SALE"-
RAILROAD COMPANIES FUEL HYSTERIA
by Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 17th 1007.
Power is going out of colonial hands straight to the people.The Canadian government through Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations AFN are trying to take over the agenda of the independent Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Demonstrations across the country are set for June 29th.As Chief Terrance Nelson of Roseau River Manitoba stated, “There are only two ways to deal with the white man. You either pick up a gun and deal with the issue. Or you stand between the white man and his money. On June 29th we are going to stand between the white man and his money”.The “white men” are the multinational corporations and banks that are the “blood suckers” running the colonial governments.We have a runaway locomotive of unresolved grievances, enough to bury almost every railroad track in Canada. Canada refuses to address them. They tie their federal, provincial and territorial representatives onto the railroad track to distract us. The train is still barreling ahead, a disaster waiting to happen. Phil and Jim (Prentice, Minister of Indian Affairs) seem to be chatting endlessly with each other. Hey, guys, aren’tcha gonna do something? It’s time for the world to step on all colonial bugs.Canada is being forced to deal with the land and resource issues. Phil wants to be at the land claims “table” when Prentice sets it up, candelabra and all. They want the “whole meal-deal” to themselves. They have to get rid of the owners of Turtle Island in order to exploit and sell off our resources. The pressure is coming from the U.S. They don’t want to go to Africa where there is turmoil, or other places in the world where they’ve split the countries apart.That’s why we’re being attacked and discredited? Canada wants to put the strings on their puppets when they set up their “bargain basement yard sale”, the yard being Canada. Phil and Jim want to sit together on the folding chairs at the yard sale table because they know what they’re supposed to do – to make sure we don’t get anything.Canada’s crying, “Those ‘Injuns’ are so hard. We just can’t make a deal with them. Imagine that! They want more than beads and mirrors in return for the whole yard!” Any deals made at this table would be illegal because they are not dealing with us, the real owners of the yard on behalf of our future generations.At the recent OCAP meeting in Toronto, Shawn Brant of Tyendinaga, made some provocative statements. He’s being sued by CN Rail for $108 million! What is the net worth of the average Indigenous person? Indian Affairs would never let any of us make that kind of money. They’re going after anybody who supported him, which is probably most of the public that knew what was going on and those who want to stop environmental pollution. This suit is diverting attention from the toxic waste scandal at the quarry and elsewhere.There were about 100 people at that meeting. It was the first day Shawn Brant had been out of the quarry in eight weeks. He went to court in Toronto after that to respond to the civil suit launched by CN. They have since dropped it against the Tyendinaga band council but not him.Shawn said they took over the quarry because the band council asked them to take back their land and do whatever it took – as long as it didn’t make the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte look like victims. If the band council purports to represent Shawn, then the charges should be dropped on him and anyone else too.If the CN was really interested in dealing fairly with the situation, they’d be asking for neutral mediation. Their wealth depends on goods they stole from us. How did the railroads come to think they owned so much Indigenous land? Have you ever been to a yard sale where they were selling off the neighbor’s tulip beds? Canada said, “Build us a railroad and we’ll give you some native land!”Now the band council has backed off because of Canada’s threats. Jim “Jonestown” Prentice said he would cut off all funds to Tyendinaga and to anybody that questions the government’s wrong doing. Truthfully, it is money owed to us. If they don’t pay us, then they have to leave. The rail blockage was a glimpse of what one entity makes in one day off our land. Multiply this by 200 years and see how much has been taken from us.Let’s turn the suit against them. The fact that CN is suing Shawn Brant for so much proves that they’re making obscene amounts of money off of us. $108 million for stopping the trains for thirty hours is $3.6 million an hour. CN uses our land and doesn’t pay us one cent of royalty! They even dumped polluters onto the land so that hundreds of our communities don’t have clean drinking water anymore.Chief Maracle probably doesn’t want to lose his spot at the land claims picnic table that Prentice is setting up.Shawn Brant said shutting down the railway was “punishment” for having to stay at the quarry for an extra 30 days. When is Ontario going to pull the illegal quarry permit? He added that he is haunted by the faces of more than 50,000 children who died while in the care of the Indian residential school system. This figure is many times higher when unreported deaths, kidnappings, outright murder and inter-generational ethnic cleansing are factored in. He stated he is prepared to be killed in memory of them and on behalf of those now living.He worked for the poor homeless people of Toronto for two years at $250 a week. Does CN imagine he saved enough to pay his legal bills? What have they been smoking? Well, whatever he’s got, they want it. [Let’s hope he didn’t invest it in the railroad stock, which was built with Indian trust money. The principle and interest has never been repaid to us. ]The powers that be are embarrassed by these people who sleep on the heating grates in the winter in front of the stock exchange. Those are Shawn Brant’s supporters. They have no resources to fight. What kind of guy is this Shawn Brant anyway? He and the Mohawks brought about 200 of them to Tyendinaga and fed them deer meat that they caught at Presquille Park.Asked by someone in the audience if he felt matters between native people and the government of Canada could be resolved without violence, he gave a one-word answer – “NO!” Because Canada has the power, money, lawyers and police, they negotiate in bad faith and they back it up with guns.It is up to Canada if they want to send in the army and police on us. Let the world see what is happening to us. We have no guns and no power. They took our kids to residential schools, raped and killed them. These little children were helpless. How could they fight back. If Canada was operating in good faith, why have they laid charges against Shawn Brant? Where were they when it was time to lay charges against those who stole, abused, raped and killed our children? Let the world be the judge.In Six Nations we have been peaceful throughout the reclamation of our land. The world is watching. They can see who the thugs really are, Canada.Canada, if you want to continue your atrocities, we will not be enticed into violence so you can use your guns and your court system on us. We have right and truth on our side. Stop trying to set us up to fight back so you can come in and kill us. You tried to say Dudley George had a gun at Ipperwash when the Ontario Provincial Police attacked the people and murdered him. He did not. Agent provocateurs are being sent into our communities to start violence so Canada can walk in on unarmed people.We have a greater weapon than you will ever have to defend our people and our rights. Our weapon is the truth. With this we have disarmed the army, police and the colonial government. This is making the colonial powers hysterical. We will assert our rights peacefully. It’s up to you, Canada, whether you will be peaceful too. When the time comes, our brothers, sister, friends and allies will stand with us.
Kahentinetha Horn,MNN Mohawk Nation News
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com; for updates, workshops, speakers and to sign up, go to www.mohawknationnews.com;
please sign Women Title Holders petition;
For sale “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” and “Warriors Hand Book” [$10 USD each postage included].[http://MohawkNationNews.com/news/singlenews.php?lang=en&category=22&newsnr=463]
New York police spied on just about everyone ...
New York City police spied on peace activists, hip-hoppers, bloggers and even a cartoonist:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n&q=surveillance+activists
Cops spied on hippies, hip-hoppers
NYPD eyed everyone from stars to pols before '04 GOP bash in city
BY THOMAS ZAMBITODAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, May 17th 2007, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/05/17/2007-05-17_cops_spied_on_hippies_hiphoppers.html
Jay-Z was among those targeted.
The NYPD kept tabs on the biggest names in hip hop as well as peaceniks, anarchists, anti-war bloggers, a city councilman and at least one hippie pie-tosser as cops girded for protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
The list of the spied upon was revealed yesterday in 600 pages of secret NYPD intelligence files released by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the city on behalf of hundreds of demonstrators arrested during the convention.
Sean (Diddy) Combs, Jay-Z, LL Cool J and Alicia Keys were among the notables the NYPD monitored in the months before the convention arrived in New York. Each was expected to attend a protest rally during the convention staged by the Hip Hop Summit Action Network.
Among the activists eyed by the NYPD was Aron Kay, aka the Yippie Pie Man, who earned his moniker by tossing pies into the faces of authority for more than two decades.
Mostly, the NYPD intelligence squad crisscrossed the Internet, peeking in on Web sites like one for Camp Shut Down that urged viewers to Resist the GOP and offered advice for those caught up in an NYPD dragnet.
The cops kept tabs on anti-Bush groups like Cabbies Against Bush and Bands Against Bush, as well as Billionaires for Bush, a group not really for Bush at all.
Police also were watching City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), a onetime mayoral candidate who was expected to demand that the GOP hold the convention elsewhere "unless the RNC indicates that it is willing to address issues of the impoverished, such as HIV/AIDS, housing and welfare."
The NYCLU says cops went too far in their surveillance of lawful political activism, while the city says the work of the intelligence unit justified the cops' high profile during the convention.
"The surveillance spanned the globe," said Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
But Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, "I think a close examination of those documents will show the NYPD did an outstanding job of protecting the city during the convention."
The city tried unsuccessfully to block the documents' public release. Two weeks ago, Manhattan Federal Judge James Francis dismissed city claims that potential jurors in the NYCLU case will be prejudiced by their release.
The NYPD posted all of the documents, as well as a 26-page overview, on its Web site last night.
tzambito@nydailynews.com
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n&q=surveillance+activists
Cops spied on hippies, hip-hoppers
NYPD eyed everyone from stars to pols before '04 GOP bash in city
BY THOMAS ZAMBITODAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, May 17th 2007, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/05/17/2007-05-17_cops_spied_on_hippies_hiphoppers.html
Jay-Z was among those targeted.
The NYPD kept tabs on the biggest names in hip hop as well as peaceniks, anarchists, anti-war bloggers, a city councilman and at least one hippie pie-tosser as cops girded for protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
The list of the spied upon was revealed yesterday in 600 pages of secret NYPD intelligence files released by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the city on behalf of hundreds of demonstrators arrested during the convention.
Sean (Diddy) Combs, Jay-Z, LL Cool J and Alicia Keys were among the notables the NYPD monitored in the months before the convention arrived in New York. Each was expected to attend a protest rally during the convention staged by the Hip Hop Summit Action Network.
Among the activists eyed by the NYPD was Aron Kay, aka the Yippie Pie Man, who earned his moniker by tossing pies into the faces of authority for more than two decades.
Mostly, the NYPD intelligence squad crisscrossed the Internet, peeking in on Web sites like one for Camp Shut Down that urged viewers to Resist the GOP and offered advice for those caught up in an NYPD dragnet.
The cops kept tabs on anti-Bush groups like Cabbies Against Bush and Bands Against Bush, as well as Billionaires for Bush, a group not really for Bush at all.
Police also were watching City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), a onetime mayoral candidate who was expected to demand that the GOP hold the convention elsewhere "unless the RNC indicates that it is willing to address issues of the impoverished, such as HIV/AIDS, housing and welfare."
The NYCLU says cops went too far in their surveillance of lawful political activism, while the city says the work of the intelligence unit justified the cops' high profile during the convention.
"The surveillance spanned the globe," said Donna Lieberman, director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
But Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, "I think a close examination of those documents will show the NYPD did an outstanding job of protecting the city during the convention."
The city tried unsuccessfully to block the documents' public release. Two weeks ago, Manhattan Federal Judge James Francis dismissed city claims that potential jurors in the NYCLU case will be prejudiced by their release.
The NYPD posted all of the documents, as well as a 26-page overview, on its Web site last night.
tzambito@nydailynews.com
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
In the news, the 'Red Light District'
by Brenda Norrell
Ok, so you have your favorite newspaper in hand and you're reading along and something just doesn't feel right in your gut.
The words all look pretty, but something just seems all wrong.
You may have just entered the news media's "Red Light District."
It is an embarrassing secret of publishers, editors and reporters, one that they do not want to talk about.
Instead of happening on street corners, it happens this way.
A reporter gets a call from the editor. The editor tells the reporter to write an article about a business that the newspaper has just received a large sum of money from, for an advertisement.
Of course the article has to be as sweet-smelling as a newly-opened white rose in spring, as pure as the first flakes of freshly-fallen snow.
The reporter tells the editor that this is a violation of the ethics of journalism, that this is tantamount to becoming a news whore.
The editor gives the reporter two choices, either write the article or ... Well, actually there's only one choice, write the article or lose the job.
Usually reporters write the article. They swallow their pride, ethics and reasons for becoming a journalist in the first place. They sink a little lower into the abyss and rationalize all the way to payday.
Usually these articles are found in the business or economy sections. These are easy to spot, just look at the advertisements and compare those to the articles. However, sometimes the articles are written in hopes of selling a big ad. So, in those cases, the ad may never materialize.
In either case, one thing is for certain, few readers know that they have just been had.
Below this reporter-for-hire-for-advertising-dollars deceit, hovers another dark scenario, the sinister truth of the news business.
From promoting war to praising politicians, the dark world of the inner nucleus of newspapers is scarier than most sci-fi movies. Here there are monsters, rising from the darkness of loose money and unbridled power.
Publishers and editors won't publish news that might interfere with their large advertising accounts or attract the wrath of powerful politicians.
In the worst case scenario, publishers and editors protect corrupt politicians and the people they party with. There's favoritism to barter and promotion of legislators who can make certain things happen in Washington.
And yes, some editors and publishers even change the facts. Like highly-paid press officers, they maneuver, placing high spins on the truth that is bought and sold.
Ok, so you have your favorite newspaper in hand and you're reading along and something just doesn't feel right in your gut.
The words all look pretty, but something just seems all wrong.
You may have just entered the news media's "Red Light District."
It is an embarrassing secret of publishers, editors and reporters, one that they do not want to talk about.
Instead of happening on street corners, it happens this way.
A reporter gets a call from the editor. The editor tells the reporter to write an article about a business that the newspaper has just received a large sum of money from, for an advertisement.
Of course the article has to be as sweet-smelling as a newly-opened white rose in spring, as pure as the first flakes of freshly-fallen snow.
The reporter tells the editor that this is a violation of the ethics of journalism, that this is tantamount to becoming a news whore.
The editor gives the reporter two choices, either write the article or ... Well, actually there's only one choice, write the article or lose the job.
Usually reporters write the article. They swallow their pride, ethics and reasons for becoming a journalist in the first place. They sink a little lower into the abyss and rationalize all the way to payday.
Usually these articles are found in the business or economy sections. These are easy to spot, just look at the advertisements and compare those to the articles. However, sometimes the articles are written in hopes of selling a big ad. So, in those cases, the ad may never materialize.
In either case, one thing is for certain, few readers know that they have just been had.
Below this reporter-for-hire-for-advertising-dollars deceit, hovers another dark scenario, the sinister truth of the news business.
From promoting war to praising politicians, the dark world of the inner nucleus of newspapers is scarier than most sci-fi movies. Here there are monsters, rising from the darkness of loose money and unbridled power.
Publishers and editors won't publish news that might interfere with their large advertising accounts or attract the wrath of powerful politicians.
In the worst case scenario, publishers and editors protect corrupt politicians and the people they party with. There's favoritism to barter and promotion of legislators who can make certain things happen in Washington.
And yes, some editors and publishers even change the facts. Like highly-paid press officers, they maneuver, placing high spins on the truth that is bought and sold.
Canada: 'When Justice Fails, Stop the Trains'
Videos now online:"Not Ready to Make Nice (Kanonhstaton and Caledonia)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7djHCo2Mac
(with more Mohawk videos shown on this link)
"You Tube" yanks video showing how to stop trains
This video pulled by You Tube: "When Justice Fails, Stop the Trains"
More online about the train video:
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2007/05/when_justice_fa.html
Pechanga Net online posted the video before it was yanked and has now posted other Mohawk news:
http://www.pechanga.net (Native news section)
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Chippewa insulted by banned author
Comment from Turtle Mountain Chippewa Band tribal member:
"My name is Andy Laverdure. I am an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band. I live on the reservation. The statements made by Rob Port and his followers on the sayanythingblog.com site are some of the most horrible statements ever made. Indian women have been called 'welfare whores.' Indian children have been called "bastards." According to Rob, Indians do not pay taxes, they do not contribute to society, they only leech off the government 'sucking on the government's tit.' Because of this, all Indian society is a welfare society. Rob is stating that all reservations should be abolished. All treaties should be abrogated. Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon (where the original article appeared in Jan. 2007), is just as bad, for allowing such an article to be published. The Dakota Beacon is a major republican journal printed and widely distributed in North Dakota! For ND Governor Ed Schaeffer is a regular contributor! Margaret Sitte, a republican bigwig in the state is a major supporter. The republican party, by publishing the Rob Port article in the Dakota Beacon is agreeing with the 'solution' to the 'Indian Problem' by default, because they are party to the statements made by not decrying the article that was published.
UPDATE: Response from Rob Port:
Brenda,
"I notice that on your blog you've included some commentary from one Andy Laverdure. I'd note that his comments about me are libelous, specifically this sentence: 'According to Rob, Indians do not pay taxes, they do not contribute to society, they only leech off the government 'sucking on the government's tit.' I never once said that Indians do not pay taxes, nor did I say that they do not contribute to society. I expect that you'll be removing these lies from your website in short order and post an apology in their place Or, in lieu of that, I expect you'll offer up some evidence that I said those things."
--Rob Port, posted May 16, 2007
Rob Port, excerpt from "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations:
"....Our government spends billions of dollars on creating education and employment opportunities for Indians, not to mention the billions spent on personal assistance for the Indians themselves in the form of housing money, food money, welfare money, etc. But none of this is working. Most of the Indians on these reservations eat up all of that assistance and still don’t manage to lift themselves out of the ghettos they’re living in. Why? I think it’s because they live without consequences.
Most of us would probably consider living in a squalid apartment in a nasty housing complex a pretty serious consequence for not getting ahead in life, but it seems to me as though most of these Indians are perfectly content to live there. Probably because they don’t know any better. They were likely raised in housing projects by their parents, who in turn were probably raised in housing projects themselves. The 'welfare mentality' has become so ingrained in these people that most of them don’t have any drive to reach for something better. It’s not that they’re incapable of education and holding down a steady job, it’s just that they don’t have to do those things to eek by in life. Like their parents before them, they leave selfish lives full of self-gratification and little achievement while the government subsidizes them..." Rob Port, excerpt from "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservation."
Read entire Rob Port article:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/the_app/
Published in the Dakota Beacon. See page 10:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:GTUlioJ3XS8J:www.dakotabeacon.com/4dcgi/Get_News_PDF/9958/PB100006-5834+Rob+Port+Turtle+Mountain+Dakota+Beacon&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=23&gl=us
HATE WATCH: Is this an issue of "free speech," or is the sayanything.blog a forum for racism and hatred?
Minot Daily News in North Dakota says it is a free speech issue:
http://www.minotdailynews.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=11127
Grand Forks Herald editor seems to like Rob Port:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=38014
Previous post on exclusion order:
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation passes exclusion order for insulting author
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Council unanimously passed a resolution banning Rob Port from tribal lands for insulting comments about the tribe and its members posted on sayanything.com and published in the Dakota Beacon. The resolution was passed Thursday at 3 p.m.The resolution states:"WHEREAS, there has been no effort made on the part of the Dakota Beacon to retract the article, amidst numerous complaints by tribal members; and WHEREAS, Rob Port, author of the article and webmaster of SayanythingBlog.com has made no effort to either retract or apologize to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; now THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, Rob Port, author of the aforementioned article and webmaster of SayAnythingBlog.com, be excluded and removed from all land on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in the State of North Dakota and from such other lands as may be acquired on behalf of said Tribe and be added thereto under the laws of the United States and pursuant to Title 39 of the Turtle Mountain Tribal Code, in order that the peace, health, political integrity, economic security and general welfare of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa be secured; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon, and Dakota Beacon, Inc. publicly retract the January 2007 article “The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations” by issuing a letter to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, with said letter placed by the tribe for publication in regional news outlets and issuance to each of the other tribes in the State of North Dakota; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution be transmitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, North Dakota Congressional Delegation Members, the Governor of the State of North Dakota and the North Dakota State Indian Affairs Commission for follow-through, oversight and information."
Here's Rob Port's response:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/so_one_day_i_came_home_and_found_out_id_been_banned_from_an_indian_reservat/KXMB CBS 12 Bismark:
http://www.kxmb.com/t/indian-reservation/122859.asp
Grand Forks Herald
Blogger banned
05/16/2007
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa has banished someone from its reservation for the second time since creating an "exclusion code" in 2006.
But the banished individual this time is not a suspected drug dealer, high-risk sex offender, or someone who has committed a serious crime. He's an Internet blogger.
Friday, the Turtle Mountain tribal council banished North Dakota political blogger Rob Port from the reservation after a column critical of the reservation appeared in a state political magazine.
Port, of Minot, is webmaster for SayAnythingBlog.com, a political Web site.
The tribal resolution says Port's column was "injurious to the peace and seriously threatens the general welfare, health, safety, political security and prosperity of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, its members, and other tribes in the state of North Dakota."
Port is under fire for a column that ran in the January issue of The Dakota Beacon, a political magazine published monthly in North Dakota. The column also appears on Port's blog.
Titled "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations," the column stems from Port's daylong experience at the Turtle Mountain reservation, where he says he spent about 15 hours "going around neighborhoods and knocking on doors."
In his column, Port talks about the conditions of the homes he saw and the people he came into contact with while on the Turtle Mountain reservation.
He writes that living conditions on the reservation are "abhorrent" and continues with: "Most of us would probably consider living in a squalid apartment in a nasty housing complex a pretty serious consequence for not getting ahead in life, but it seems to me as though most of these Indians are perfectly content to live there. Probably because they don't know any better. They were likely raised in housing projects by their parents, who in turn were probably raised in housing projects themselves."
Port's column also calls for an end to reservations and "cradle-to-grave entitlements."
Eight tribal council members voted to exclude Port from tribal lands. Tribal Chairman David "Doc" Brien signed the resolution into law Friday.
Attempts to reach Brien were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Turtle Mountain Vice Chairman Ted Henry said the council was approached by a group of people demanding Port be banned from the reservation.
"We were getting a lot of calls asking that we do something," Henry said Tuesday, explaining that the column was the source of tribal members' ire.
Last year, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa adopted its exclusion code, a tribal ordinance that creates a process to permanently banish or withhold services from tribal members and nonmembers who are involved in serious crimes.
It was put into place because of growing concerns about illicit drugs on reservations and the lack of jurisdiction tribes have over nonmembers who deal with, possess, or use drugs. Only serious felony offenses committed by members or nonmembers of the tribe are federally prosecuted.
The exclusion ordinance has been used once before, when the tribe banned Calvin John Andrist, who is not a member of the tribe but living on the reservation. Andrist was removed after a request to the tribal council from tribal law enforcement officers, who said Andrist was involved in numerous drug-related actions from the summer of 2005 to March 8, 2006.
Tribal members and non-tribal members who are repeat offenders either dealing in drugs or committing sex offenses can be banned from the reservation permanently, according to the ordinance. Tribal members are given warnings before they are banned, according to the ordinance.
Non-tribal members can be banished without warning if the tribe deems immediate removal necessary.
Port said Tuesday his opinions do not warrant such a reaction.
"How do you ban somebody from land without even telling them about it?" he said. "It doesn't seem very straightforward, banning somebody for an opinion piece."
Port has been writing his opinion on politics for about four years. After his article appeared in print and on the Web, some outraged Turtle Mountain tribal members responded at Port's SayAnythingBlog site.
"I didn't write it thinking I am going to tick these people off," Port said. "I thought I am writing it because people don't think about what's going on in the reservation very often."
Turtle Mountain's Henry said the column unfairly generalizes what life is like on the reservation.
"It cut our people down," Henry said. "I am sure we are having troubles already, and this just seems to make it worse. We do have a lot of good people here. The article doesn't say anything about that. A lot of our Indian people work hard."
Port agreed, to a point. "Not everybody up there lives like that," he said. "There are tribal members with very high levels of education, with jobs and who aren't using drugs. But, it's also crime-addled, with poverty and drugs. It's ludicrous to me that I get people angry with me for pointing that out."
The tribal resolution banning Port from Turtle Mountain tribal lands accuses Port and people commenting on the site of using demeaning terms about Indian women, children and other reservation residents.
Port denies having used such terms, but added that his blog isn't censored: "I don't think it's fair for me to be held responsible for what other people are saying."
The tribal resolution also demands a retraction of the column published in The Dakota Beacon column in a letter that might be published throughout the state.
"It makes me a little sad that this is their reaction," Port said.
The resolution was not only for the Turtle Mountain people, but also for Port's "own safety," Henry said. "A lot of people were pretty upset with the article," he added.
"I don't think he'll retract it, and I suppose there will be more writing now," Henry said. "But (Port) won't be allowed back on."
Nadeau, a Herald staff writer who covers cops, courts and general assignments, is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
"My name is Andy Laverdure. I am an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band. I live on the reservation. The statements made by Rob Port and his followers on the sayanythingblog.com site are some of the most horrible statements ever made. Indian women have been called 'welfare whores.' Indian children have been called "bastards." According to Rob, Indians do not pay taxes, they do not contribute to society, they only leech off the government 'sucking on the government's tit.' Because of this, all Indian society is a welfare society. Rob is stating that all reservations should be abolished. All treaties should be abrogated. Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon (where the original article appeared in Jan. 2007), is just as bad, for allowing such an article to be published. The Dakota Beacon is a major republican journal printed and widely distributed in North Dakota! For ND Governor Ed Schaeffer is a regular contributor! Margaret Sitte, a republican bigwig in the state is a major supporter. The republican party, by publishing the Rob Port article in the Dakota Beacon is agreeing with the 'solution' to the 'Indian Problem' by default, because they are party to the statements made by not decrying the article that was published.
UPDATE: Response from Rob Port:
Brenda,
"I notice that on your blog you've included some commentary from one Andy Laverdure. I'd note that his comments about me are libelous, specifically this sentence: 'According to Rob, Indians do not pay taxes, they do not contribute to society, they only leech off the government 'sucking on the government's tit.' I never once said that Indians do not pay taxes, nor did I say that they do not contribute to society. I expect that you'll be removing these lies from your website in short order and post an apology in their place Or, in lieu of that, I expect you'll offer up some evidence that I said those things."
--Rob Port, posted May 16, 2007
Rob Port, excerpt from "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations:
"....Our government spends billions of dollars on creating education and employment opportunities for Indians, not to mention the billions spent on personal assistance for the Indians themselves in the form of housing money, food money, welfare money, etc. But none of this is working. Most of the Indians on these reservations eat up all of that assistance and still don’t manage to lift themselves out of the ghettos they’re living in. Why? I think it’s because they live without consequences.
Most of us would probably consider living in a squalid apartment in a nasty housing complex a pretty serious consequence for not getting ahead in life, but it seems to me as though most of these Indians are perfectly content to live there. Probably because they don’t know any better. They were likely raised in housing projects by their parents, who in turn were probably raised in housing projects themselves. The 'welfare mentality' has become so ingrained in these people that most of them don’t have any drive to reach for something better. It’s not that they’re incapable of education and holding down a steady job, it’s just that they don’t have to do those things to eek by in life. Like their parents before them, they leave selfish lives full of self-gratification and little achievement while the government subsidizes them..." Rob Port, excerpt from "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservation."
Read entire Rob Port article:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/the_app/
Published in the Dakota Beacon. See page 10:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:GTUlioJ3XS8J:www.dakotabeacon.com/4dcgi/Get_News_PDF/9958/PB100006-5834+Rob+Port+Turtle+Mountain+Dakota+Beacon&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=23&gl=us
HATE WATCH: Is this an issue of "free speech," or is the sayanything.blog a forum for racism and hatred?
Minot Daily News in North Dakota says it is a free speech issue:
http://www.minotdailynews.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=11127
Grand Forks Herald editor seems to like Rob Port:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=38014
Previous post on exclusion order:
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation passes exclusion order for insulting author
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Council unanimously passed a resolution banning Rob Port from tribal lands for insulting comments about the tribe and its members posted on sayanything.com and published in the Dakota Beacon. The resolution was passed Thursday at 3 p.m.The resolution states:"WHEREAS, there has been no effort made on the part of the Dakota Beacon to retract the article, amidst numerous complaints by tribal members; and WHEREAS, Rob Port, author of the article and webmaster of SayanythingBlog.com has made no effort to either retract or apologize to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; now THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, Rob Port, author of the aforementioned article and webmaster of SayAnythingBlog.com, be excluded and removed from all land on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in the State of North Dakota and from such other lands as may be acquired on behalf of said Tribe and be added thereto under the laws of the United States and pursuant to Title 39 of the Turtle Mountain Tribal Code, in order that the peace, health, political integrity, economic security and general welfare of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa be secured; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon, and Dakota Beacon, Inc. publicly retract the January 2007 article “The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations” by issuing a letter to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, with said letter placed by the tribe for publication in regional news outlets and issuance to each of the other tribes in the State of North Dakota; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution be transmitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, North Dakota Congressional Delegation Members, the Governor of the State of North Dakota and the North Dakota State Indian Affairs Commission for follow-through, oversight and information."
Here's Rob Port's response:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/so_one_day_i_came_home_and_found_out_id_been_banned_from_an_indian_reservat/KXMB CBS 12 Bismark:
http://www.kxmb.com/t/indian-reservation/122859.asp
Grand Forks Herald
Blogger banned
05/16/2007
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa has banished someone from its reservation for the second time since creating an "exclusion code" in 2006.
But the banished individual this time is not a suspected drug dealer, high-risk sex offender, or someone who has committed a serious crime. He's an Internet blogger.
Friday, the Turtle Mountain tribal council banished North Dakota political blogger Rob Port from the reservation after a column critical of the reservation appeared in a state political magazine.
Port, of Minot, is webmaster for SayAnythingBlog.com, a political Web site.
The tribal resolution says Port's column was "injurious to the peace and seriously threatens the general welfare, health, safety, political security and prosperity of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, its members, and other tribes in the state of North Dakota."
Port is under fire for a column that ran in the January issue of The Dakota Beacon, a political magazine published monthly in North Dakota. The column also appears on Port's blog.
Titled "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations," the column stems from Port's daylong experience at the Turtle Mountain reservation, where he says he spent about 15 hours "going around neighborhoods and knocking on doors."
In his column, Port talks about the conditions of the homes he saw and the people he came into contact with while on the Turtle Mountain reservation.
He writes that living conditions on the reservation are "abhorrent" and continues with: "Most of us would probably consider living in a squalid apartment in a nasty housing complex a pretty serious consequence for not getting ahead in life, but it seems to me as though most of these Indians are perfectly content to live there. Probably because they don't know any better. They were likely raised in housing projects by their parents, who in turn were probably raised in housing projects themselves."
Port's column also calls for an end to reservations and "cradle-to-grave entitlements."
Eight tribal council members voted to exclude Port from tribal lands. Tribal Chairman David "Doc" Brien signed the resolution into law Friday.
Attempts to reach Brien were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Turtle Mountain Vice Chairman Ted Henry said the council was approached by a group of people demanding Port be banned from the reservation.
"We were getting a lot of calls asking that we do something," Henry said Tuesday, explaining that the column was the source of tribal members' ire.
Last year, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa adopted its exclusion code, a tribal ordinance that creates a process to permanently banish or withhold services from tribal members and nonmembers who are involved in serious crimes.
It was put into place because of growing concerns about illicit drugs on reservations and the lack of jurisdiction tribes have over nonmembers who deal with, possess, or use drugs. Only serious felony offenses committed by members or nonmembers of the tribe are federally prosecuted.
The exclusion ordinance has been used once before, when the tribe banned Calvin John Andrist, who is not a member of the tribe but living on the reservation. Andrist was removed after a request to the tribal council from tribal law enforcement officers, who said Andrist was involved in numerous drug-related actions from the summer of 2005 to March 8, 2006.
Tribal members and non-tribal members who are repeat offenders either dealing in drugs or committing sex offenses can be banned from the reservation permanently, according to the ordinance. Tribal members are given warnings before they are banned, according to the ordinance.
Non-tribal members can be banished without warning if the tribe deems immediate removal necessary.
Port said Tuesday his opinions do not warrant such a reaction.
"How do you ban somebody from land without even telling them about it?" he said. "It doesn't seem very straightforward, banning somebody for an opinion piece."
Port has been writing his opinion on politics for about four years. After his article appeared in print and on the Web, some outraged Turtle Mountain tribal members responded at Port's SayAnythingBlog site.
"I didn't write it thinking I am going to tick these people off," Port said. "I thought I am writing it because people don't think about what's going on in the reservation very often."
Turtle Mountain's Henry said the column unfairly generalizes what life is like on the reservation.
"It cut our people down," Henry said. "I am sure we are having troubles already, and this just seems to make it worse. We do have a lot of good people here. The article doesn't say anything about that. A lot of our Indian people work hard."
Port agreed, to a point. "Not everybody up there lives like that," he said. "There are tribal members with very high levels of education, with jobs and who aren't using drugs. But, it's also crime-addled, with poverty and drugs. It's ludicrous to me that I get people angry with me for pointing that out."
The tribal resolution banning Port from Turtle Mountain tribal lands accuses Port and people commenting on the site of using demeaning terms about Indian women, children and other reservation residents.
Port denies having used such terms, but added that his blog isn't censored: "I don't think it's fair for me to be held responsible for what other people are saying."
The tribal resolution also demands a retraction of the column published in The Dakota Beacon column in a letter that might be published throughout the state.
"It makes me a little sad that this is their reaction," Port said.
The resolution was not only for the Turtle Mountain people, but also for Port's "own safety," Henry said. "A lot of people were pretty upset with the article," he added.
"I don't think he'll retract it, and I suppose there will be more writing now," Henry said. "But (Port) won't be allowed back on."
Nadeau, a Herald staff writer who covers cops, courts and general assignments, is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
New film on Carrie and Mary Dann shows in NY
Photo courtesy Western Shoshone Defens
e Project
"Our Land, Our Life," is an exceptional new film, revealing the Western Shoshone struggle with film excerpts spanning the years from Mary and Carrie Dann's ranch. It takes a gentle and inside look at these hard-working ranch women and the United States' persistent effort to eradicate the Shoshone people from their lands. --bn
Western Shoshone Film Screening
Our Land, Our Life
Produced by Beth Gage & George Gage
Music by Joanne Shenandoah
Wednesday May 16,2007
1:15 pm-2:45 pm
Dag Hammarskjold Library Theatre (United Nations)
(United Nations Plaza, New York City)
Followed by panel discussion: Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone grandmother), George Gage (film maker), Western Shoshone delegates: Larson Bill, Sandy Dann, Joseph Moon, and Julie Ann Fishel (WSDP).
Please note the following time and date change -- 1:15-2:45 pm. Wednesday, May 16 at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold Library Theatre in the United Nations on United Nations Plaza, New York City, New York. Thank you and we apologize for any confusion. Please forward to your friends and colleagues in the New York area.Followed by panel discussion: Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone grandmother), George Gage (film maker), Western Shoshone delegates: Larson Bill, Sandy Dann, Joseph Moon, and Julie Ann Fishel (WSDP).
New film on the Western Shoshone story - told from the lives of Mary and Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone sisters who have taken their struggle for indigenous rights in the United States to the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond. Includes footage of events leading to the 2006 CERD Urgent Action Decision, interviews with CERD members, the 2006 Permanent Forum on Indigenous Populations and reflections on the impact of transnational corporations in the ongoing human rights violations.
Awarded Best Feature Documentary in San Luis Obispo International Film Festival
The film has been accepted at the following 2007 film festivals:
Native American Film Festival in Stuttgart, Atlanta Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Mountain Film Festival.
Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)
http://www.wsdp.org/
wsdp@igc.org
"Western Shoshone, where gold is the color of genocide"
By Brenda Norrell
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
http://www.unobserver.com/layout4.php?id=2848&blz=1
e Project"Our Land, Our Life," is an exceptional new film, revealing the Western Shoshone struggle with film excerpts spanning the years from Mary and Carrie Dann's ranch. It takes a gentle and inside look at these hard-working ranch women and the United States' persistent effort to eradicate the Shoshone people from their lands. --bn
Western Shoshone Film Screening
Our Land, Our Life
Produced by Beth Gage & George Gage
Music by Joanne Shenandoah
Wednesday May 16,2007
1:15 pm-2:45 pm
Dag Hammarskjold Library Theatre (United Nations)
(United Nations Plaza, New York City)
Followed by panel discussion: Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone grandmother), George Gage (film maker), Western Shoshone delegates: Larson Bill, Sandy Dann, Joseph Moon, and Julie Ann Fishel (WSDP).
Please note the following time and date change -- 1:15-2:45 pm. Wednesday, May 16 at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold Library Theatre in the United Nations on United Nations Plaza, New York City, New York. Thank you and we apologize for any confusion. Please forward to your friends and colleagues in the New York area.Followed by panel discussion: Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone grandmother), George Gage (film maker), Western Shoshone delegates: Larson Bill, Sandy Dann, Joseph Moon, and Julie Ann Fishel (WSDP).
New film on the Western Shoshone story - told from the lives of Mary and Carrie Dann, Western Shoshone sisters who have taken their struggle for indigenous rights in the United States to the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond. Includes footage of events leading to the 2006 CERD Urgent Action Decision, interviews with CERD members, the 2006 Permanent Forum on Indigenous Populations and reflections on the impact of transnational corporations in the ongoing human rights violations.
Awarded Best Feature Documentary in San Luis Obispo International Film Festival
The film has been accepted at the following 2007 film festivals:
Native American Film Festival in Stuttgart, Atlanta Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, Mountain Film Festival.
Western Shoshone Defense Project
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV 89821
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)
http://www.wsdp.org/
wsdp@igc.org
"Western Shoshone, where gold is the color of genocide"
By Brenda Norrell
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
http://www.unobserver.com/layout4.php?id=2848&blz=1
Standing Rock: Occupation of Abandoned Uranium Mines
On Mothers Day, Sunday, May 13, Harold One Feather from the newly organized Grand River Environmental Equality Network (GREEN) began the occupation on U.S. Forest Service land at Slim Buttes, South Dakota to call attention to the abandoned uranium mines that have contaminated water and impacted human health on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Mr. One Feather lives in the Rock Creek District on the Reservation, downstream from the mines.While the abandoned mines have been an issue for approximately the last thirty years, renewed interest came about several years ago when members from the Rock Creek District hiked into the abandoned mine sites at Slim Buttes and Cave Hills with radiation detection equipment. Slim Buttes and Cave Hills are locations of numerous Lakota Sacred Sites that are now too dangerous to access because of excessive radiation levels. In the up and coming days, individuals from Standing Rock and other communities will be joining this effort.
UN: Indigenous women, land, water and life
Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development is a thirty-year-old Indigenous Peoples' organization whose mission is dedicated to promoting and maintaining the uniqueness of Indigenous Peoples and the sovereignty of our distinct Nations, is pleased to share with you our special events on the website.
By Tia Oros Peters
More than 2,500 Indigenous Peoples from throughout the world are expected to participate in this unique forum, where Indigenous Peoples' voices and concerns are shared with the world community of Nations.
As one of the oldest, continually operating people of color /Indigenous organizations dedicated to grassroots empowerment, sovereignty and collective action, we are honored to facilitate / sponsor the participation of nearly 40 Indigenous Peoples from throughout Abya Yala (Americas) at theUN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues taking place in New York from May 14 - 25, 2007.
SGF's media team, including members of the Native Youth Coalition, are on site at the UN and documenting the events every day. We are also interviewing Indigenous leaders of the world and will be posting photographs and interviews from this year's United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Please note: Seventh Generation Fund, along with our sister organization, the American Indian Law Alliance and many co-sponsors, is coordinating the following UN side panel workshops this week:
Land, Water, Life - Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change
May 15, 2007, Conference Room 7, 1:15pm - 2:45pm
Our Bodies Are Landscapes - Indigenous Women of Abya Yala / Americas and Violence
May 18, 2007, Conference Room 7, 1:15pm - 2:45pm
Please look at our website .... and click on special events.
www.7genfund.org
Thank you,
Tia Oros Peters
Executive Director
Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development (1977-2007)
30 Years of Keeping the Homefires Burning - Manteniendo Vivo el Fuego del Hogar para 30 Años
By Tia Oros Peters
More than 2,500 Indigenous Peoples from throughout the world are expected to participate in this unique forum, where Indigenous Peoples' voices and concerns are shared with the world community of Nations.
As one of the oldest, continually operating people of color /Indigenous organizations dedicated to grassroots empowerment, sovereignty and collective action, we are honored to facilitate / sponsor the participation of nearly 40 Indigenous Peoples from throughout Abya Yala (Americas) at theUN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues taking place in New York from May 14 - 25, 2007.
SGF's media team, including members of the Native Youth Coalition, are on site at the UN and documenting the events every day. We are also interviewing Indigenous leaders of the world and will be posting photographs and interviews from this year's United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Please note: Seventh Generation Fund, along with our sister organization, the American Indian Law Alliance and many co-sponsors, is coordinating the following UN side panel workshops this week:
Land, Water, Life - Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change
May 15, 2007, Conference Room 7, 1:15pm - 2:45pm
Our Bodies Are Landscapes - Indigenous Women of Abya Yala / Americas and Violence
May 18, 2007, Conference Room 7, 1:15pm - 2:45pm
Please look at our website .... and click on special events.
www.7genfund.org
Thank you,
Tia Oros Peters
Executive Director
Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development (1977-2007)
30 Years of Keeping the Homefires Burning - Manteniendo Vivo el Fuego del Hogar para 30 Años
Monday, May 14, 2007
Love, Respect and Dance for Mother Earth
The 27th Annual Traditional Indian Health Education Program at Indian Grinding Rock State Park in Pine Grove, Calif., May 18 -- 20, 2007.
Youth Invited to Speak with Indigenous Grandmothers
Call to Youth: Speak With the Grandmothers
5th Council of the The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers
Deadline: June 1, 2007
http://www.nativevillage.org
The Grandmothers
Grandmother Aama Bambo, Nepal, Asia
Grandmother Margaret Behan, Cheyenne/Arapho North America
Grandmother Rita Pikta Blumenstein,Yupik, Arctic/North America
Grandmother Julieta Casimiro, Mazatec, Mexico/North America
Grandmother Flordemayo, Mayan, Central America
Grandmother Maria Alica Campos Freire, Brazil, South America
Grandmother Tsering Dolma Gyalthong, Tibetan, Asia
Grandmother Beatrice Holy Dance Long-Visitor, Lakota, North America
Grandmother Rita Holy Dance Long-Visitor, Lakota, North America
Grandmother Agnes Baker-Pilgrim, Takelma Siletz, North America
Grandmother Mona Palocca, Hopi-Havasupi, North America
Grandmother Bernadette Rebienot, Bwiti, Africa
Grandmother Clara Shinobu Iura, Amazonian Rainforest, Brazil South America
This year, The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers will hold their fifth council gathering before and during Sundance from June 12-22, 2007 in the Black Hills of South Dakota. During the conference, the 13 Grandmothers will meet with Native Village director Gina Boltz who is assisting in the creation and publishing of their Internet Youth Forum for kids and young adults up to age 25.
Kids, we need your help. The 13 Indigenous Grandmothers -- elders, healers, wisdomkeepers and spiritual leaders held in the highest regard -- want to hear from our world's youth. If you could ask them one question, what would it be: How do we end global warming? Why can't people just get along? What can I do to become a better person? No matter the question, these wisest of women are here for you. All you have to do is ask.
Native Village will compile and present your questions to the Grandmothers during council. Your questions, along with the Grandmothers' answers, will later be posted in the Grandmothers Youth Forum housed on the Native Village website.
To post your message and for more information:
http://www.nativevillage.org/
The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers
www.grandmotherscouncil.com
Thank you for Speaking With the Grandmothers:
Warm Regards,
Gina Boltz, Director
Native Village Publications
http://www.nativevillage.org
The beginnings....
LIGHTING OF THE GRANDMOTHERS' SACRED FIRE
Source: Grandmothers Council the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet
Written by Carol Schaefer
Published by Trumpeter Books, Boston, 2006
"In a magical valley, protected by the ancient spirits of the towering Catskill Mountains, a sacred fire was lit.
"The flame that kindled the sacred fire was originally ignited in 1986 just outside the United Nations building by Chief Shenandoah of the Iroquois Nation. He rubbed two sticks together to create a spark, then lit a torch for peace in the International Year of Peace. That morning, in the gleaming sunlight of a beautiful sunrise, the UN building shone like the envisioned "Great Hall of Mica" spoken of in Hopi prophecy for over a thousand years. A message was to be delivered at an amazing shining place at the time of the "Great Turning" in hopes of ushering in a millennium of peace in the world. The Hopi knew the times described in the prophecy had come.
"Through extraordinary cooperation, the peace torch traveled from the Great hall of Mica around the world through sixty-two countries in eighty-six days. During the flame's miraculous journey, it was borne by thousands of runners and witnessed by millions of people, including many world leaders ... When the torch returned to the United Nations, there were many incredible stories about the powerful alchemical nature of the fire. Afterward, the flame was brought to the altar of the holy Santurario de Chimayo in New Mexico where it has since been kept burning, except for when it traveled to the hallowed land of the Iroquois in 2004.
"Surrounded by golden woods and in the cool, still, evening air of mid-October, 2004, the flame initiated an unprecedented and historic gathering of thirteen indigenous Grandmothers from around the world, keepers of their tribes' teachings from original times. The Grandmothers had come to fulfill another ancient prophecy, known by many of the world's indigenous tribes: "When the Grandmothers from the four directions, speak, anew time is coming..."
Special events in Oakland and New York City
The International Friendship House in Oakland welcomes the family of Richard Oakes, honored veterans of the Alcatraz Occupation and Dennis Banks on May 19, 2007
In New York City, the American Indian Community House and the Flying Eagle Woman Fund present John Trudell and Bad Dog on May 23, at 251 W. 30th St.Mohawk Nation News: US, Canada and John Graham
Kahentinetha Horn: "Since when did the U.S. ever go after someone for killing an Indian?"
ANOTHER LEONARD PELTIER SCANDAL IN THE MAKING - U.S. EXTRADITION ATTEMPT OF JOHN GRAHAM FOR ALLEGED MURDER OF ANNA MAE AQUASH
Mohawk Nation News
May 12, 2007
John Graham, an Indigenous man from the Northwest Territories in Canada, is being accused by the U.S. authorities of participating in the murder of Indigenous woman, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, another “Canadian”. This happened more than 30 years ago. Both were members of the American Indian Movement [AIM]. Since when did the U.S. ever go after someone for killing an Indian? What’s behind it? John Graham is currently awaiting an extradition hearing in Vancouver , scheduled for May 17th, 2007. He has been under house arrest there since his apprehension in December 2003.
John Graham is well known for his lobbying on Turtle Island and Europe against Uranium mining in Canada and the Black Hills in South Dakota. This could be a factor in his being victimized by the U.S. and the FBI. They want to destroy an articulate Indigenous spokesman.Due to his strict bail conditions he can’t work. His main resource is worldwide support for his advocacy.
Forgotten by the U.S. and FBI is the reign of terror in the 1970s on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota . This was after the take over of “ Wounded Knee ” by the Lakota and their supporters. There has never been an investigation into the deaths of 64 native people. Many of these cases have been well documented and made public since then. Authorities have done nothing to try to achieve justice in these cases.
Just like the Leonard Peltier case, true to form, U.S. government agents are not using real evidence against Graham because they have none. Their case is based on hearsay “evidence” concocted by coerced witnesses. Peltier was convicted over 30 years ago for allegedly killing two FBI agents in a shoot-out on Pine Ridge reservation. It’s all been discredited. This time they are relying on testimony of another Indigenous man even though it is “so full of big holes you could drive a truck through it,” as John Graham’s lawyer has put it.
A well known FBI tactic used as part of COINTELPRO [counter intelligence program] was “bad-jacketing” where AIM members were falsely accused in order to cause internal conflict. Other well documented FBI tactics are infiltration, also with the purpose of causing internal conflict, and falsely charging and jailing innocent people. One of the first rumors initiated by the FBI was that Anna Mae was an FBI informant. This was ridiculous! After her death, the FBI then spread the rumor that she was killed by AIM.
A lot of people know John. No one has seen any evidence that he is capable of violence. No matter what our people do, we don’t have a tradition of killing our own. We are not Europeans.
There are all kinds of weird issues like the two autopsy reports. After the first autopsy, the FBI said she died of exposure. The family insisted on a second autopsy, which clearly showed she was shot in the back of the head. There have been lots of violations of due process. Canada has not even asked to look at the evidence.
Why is Canada so anxious to turn John Graham over to the U.S. ? Is it to legitimize an unethical extradition treaty?
It’s a standard tactic to tie people up in court, take their resources and keep them from doing resistance work. This reflects the Canadian government’s racist approach. Canada is taking an unexamined approach to this case, passively following the U.S. lead.
The US and Canada have essentially agreed to rely on a handshake and a brief procedural review of the documents. Canada pretends to assume the US Government will act in good faith when prosecuting a case against a Canadian citizen. The lawyers are not allowed to see the evidence, even though they have raised many important issues which are not being addressed.
It is unconstitutional and a violation of international law for the Canadian Government to uphold only the rights of the United States in these proceedings. These practices do not allow Canadians to be protected as in other court proceedings. In this case, as an Indigenous person who never agreed to become “Canadian”, John isn’t a “citizen”. He’s deemed to be a citizen by the colonial state of Canada .
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and sovereignty are in question when it allows a foreign nation with such an evil history of prosecutorial abuse to override its laws. Canada fears defending this individual against the foreign government's claim, even though there is plenty of reason to expect that the charges are false and malicious.
At the very least the Government of Canada, and the Ministry of Justice should make sure there is hard evidence submitted that can withstand reasonable scrutiny; that John Graham be provided with sufficient funding to mount a complete defense; and that the proceedings for extradition be open and accountable to the public.
The U.S. is in the habit of walking all over Canada . They’ve done it time and time again. Amnesty International has condemned the FBI for using false evidence to extradite Leonard Peltier from Canada in 1976. He’s been in jail every since. Amnesty International has called for his immediate release on the grounds that he no longer has adequate recourse to justice.
Once again the US authorities are presenting questionable evidence, this time to extradite John Graham. Violations of established legal standards seems to have become habitual in the U.S. Note the international outcry over U.S. violations at Guantanamo Bay Cuba . We have to wonder why Canada is pandering to a known human rights abuser.
Amnesty International in 2003 demanded that “there must be scrupulous respect for due process and fair trial proceedings…” They demand to know about “possible political interference in the course of justice”.
This case is another example of what the U.S. does. They want to destroy Indigenous opposition by publicly crucifying us. They know we have the legal interest to the land and resources and will protect it. This is a tactic to scare us, by extraditing us and putting us on big public trials and a media show to try to paint us as criminal and unworthy people. The U.S. way relies on fascist policing and terrorizing the opposition.
The world community has to get involved. Human Rights organizations, First Nations Chiefs, trade unions and other groups have expressed their concern about John Graham's case. Please add your voice now in defense of justice by emailing or writing to the following:
The Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson, Justice Canada
East Memorial Building , 4th Floor, 284 Wellington Street
Ottawa , Ontario , Canada K1A 0H8
Telephone: (613) 992-4621 Fax: (613) 990-7255 E-mail: nicho.r@parl.gc.ca
Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada
E-mail: MacKay.P@parl.gc.ca
Contact: The John Graham Defense Committee, 15 Firth Road , WHITEHORSE Yukon Y1A 4R5 CANADA Phone 001 – 867 – 456 – 4340 info@grahamdefense.org
website: www.grahamdefense.org
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, workshops, speakers, to sign up, go to
www.mohawknationnews.com
Please sign Women Title Holders Petition
Books: “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” & “Warriors Hand Book” ($10 USD including postage)
ANOTHER LEONARD PELTIER SCANDAL IN THE MAKING - U.S. EXTRADITION ATTEMPT OF JOHN GRAHAM FOR ALLEGED MURDER OF ANNA MAE AQUASH
Mohawk Nation News
May 12, 2007
John Graham, an Indigenous man from the Northwest Territories in Canada, is being accused by the U.S. authorities of participating in the murder of Indigenous woman, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, another “Canadian”. This happened more than 30 years ago. Both were members of the American Indian Movement [AIM]. Since when did the U.S. ever go after someone for killing an Indian? What’s behind it? John Graham is currently awaiting an extradition hearing in Vancouver , scheduled for May 17th, 2007. He has been under house arrest there since his apprehension in December 2003.
John Graham is well known for his lobbying on Turtle Island and Europe against Uranium mining in Canada and the Black Hills in South Dakota. This could be a factor in his being victimized by the U.S. and the FBI. They want to destroy an articulate Indigenous spokesman.Due to his strict bail conditions he can’t work. His main resource is worldwide support for his advocacy.
Forgotten by the U.S. and FBI is the reign of terror in the 1970s on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota . This was after the take over of “ Wounded Knee ” by the Lakota and their supporters. There has never been an investigation into the deaths of 64 native people. Many of these cases have been well documented and made public since then. Authorities have done nothing to try to achieve justice in these cases.
Just like the Leonard Peltier case, true to form, U.S. government agents are not using real evidence against Graham because they have none. Their case is based on hearsay “evidence” concocted by coerced witnesses. Peltier was convicted over 30 years ago for allegedly killing two FBI agents in a shoot-out on Pine Ridge reservation. It’s all been discredited. This time they are relying on testimony of another Indigenous man even though it is “so full of big holes you could drive a truck through it,” as John Graham’s lawyer has put it.
A well known FBI tactic used as part of COINTELPRO [counter intelligence program] was “bad-jacketing” where AIM members were falsely accused in order to cause internal conflict. Other well documented FBI tactics are infiltration, also with the purpose of causing internal conflict, and falsely charging and jailing innocent people. One of the first rumors initiated by the FBI was that Anna Mae was an FBI informant. This was ridiculous! After her death, the FBI then spread the rumor that she was killed by AIM.
A lot of people know John. No one has seen any evidence that he is capable of violence. No matter what our people do, we don’t have a tradition of killing our own. We are not Europeans.
There are all kinds of weird issues like the two autopsy reports. After the first autopsy, the FBI said she died of exposure. The family insisted on a second autopsy, which clearly showed she was shot in the back of the head. There have been lots of violations of due process. Canada has not even asked to look at the evidence.
Why is Canada so anxious to turn John Graham over to the U.S. ? Is it to legitimize an unethical extradition treaty?
It’s a standard tactic to tie people up in court, take their resources and keep them from doing resistance work. This reflects the Canadian government’s racist approach. Canada is taking an unexamined approach to this case, passively following the U.S. lead.
The US and Canada have essentially agreed to rely on a handshake and a brief procedural review of the documents. Canada pretends to assume the US Government will act in good faith when prosecuting a case against a Canadian citizen. The lawyers are not allowed to see the evidence, even though they have raised many important issues which are not being addressed.
It is unconstitutional and a violation of international law for the Canadian Government to uphold only the rights of the United States in these proceedings. These practices do not allow Canadians to be protected as in other court proceedings. In this case, as an Indigenous person who never agreed to become “Canadian”, John isn’t a “citizen”. He’s deemed to be a citizen by the colonial state of Canada .
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and sovereignty are in question when it allows a foreign nation with such an evil history of prosecutorial abuse to override its laws. Canada fears defending this individual against the foreign government's claim, even though there is plenty of reason to expect that the charges are false and malicious.
At the very least the Government of Canada, and the Ministry of Justice should make sure there is hard evidence submitted that can withstand reasonable scrutiny; that John Graham be provided with sufficient funding to mount a complete defense; and that the proceedings for extradition be open and accountable to the public.
The U.S. is in the habit of walking all over Canada . They’ve done it time and time again. Amnesty International has condemned the FBI for using false evidence to extradite Leonard Peltier from Canada in 1976. He’s been in jail every since. Amnesty International has called for his immediate release on the grounds that he no longer has adequate recourse to justice.
Once again the US authorities are presenting questionable evidence, this time to extradite John Graham. Violations of established legal standards seems to have become habitual in the U.S. Note the international outcry over U.S. violations at Guantanamo Bay Cuba . We have to wonder why Canada is pandering to a known human rights abuser.
Amnesty International in 2003 demanded that “there must be scrupulous respect for due process and fair trial proceedings…” They demand to know about “possible political interference in the course of justice”.
This case is another example of what the U.S. does. They want to destroy Indigenous opposition by publicly crucifying us. They know we have the legal interest to the land and resources and will protect it. This is a tactic to scare us, by extraditing us and putting us on big public trials and a media show to try to paint us as criminal and unworthy people. The U.S. way relies on fascist policing and terrorizing the opposition.
The world community has to get involved. Human Rights organizations, First Nations Chiefs, trade unions and other groups have expressed their concern about John Graham's case. Please add your voice now in defense of justice by emailing or writing to the following:
The Honourable Robert Douglas Nicholson, Justice Canada
East Memorial Building , 4th Floor, 284 Wellington Street
Ottawa , Ontario , Canada K1A 0H8
Telephone: (613) 992-4621 Fax: (613) 990-7255 E-mail: nicho.r@parl.gc.ca
Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada
E-mail: MacKay.P@parl.gc.ca
Contact: The John Graham Defense Committee, 15 Firth Road , WHITEHORSE Yukon Y1A 4R5 CANADA Phone 001 – 867 – 456 – 4340 info@grahamdefense.org
website: www.grahamdefense.org
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, workshops, speakers, to sign up, go to
www.mohawknationnews.com
Please sign Women Title Holders Petition
Books: “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” & “Warriors Hand Book” ($10 USD including postage)
Venezuela: US DEA is a Drug Cartel
Venezuela says US DEA is a Drug Cartel:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2291/
Below:
"Ethnic Cleansing in Jamestown, America's Two-Headed Dragon"
by Steve Melendez, president of the American Indian Genocide Museum
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2291/
Below:
"Ethnic Cleansing in Jamestown, America's Two-Headed Dragon"
by Steve Melendez, president of the American Indian Genocide Museum
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
AP's 'Sprawling' Vocabulary
"Sprawling" AP news:
When AP and other media write about the Navajo Nation, reporters often use the word "sprawling."
If your flesh crawls everytime you read these articles, here's why.
Read the definition below from Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. The word sprawling refers to spreading carelessly and awkwardy, without restraint.
Reporters don't say that "Arizona is sprawling."
The word sprawling does not mean large. When used to refer to tribal lands, it is an insult. Reporters often use the word to refer to other tribal lands, including the Tohono O'odham.
Here's the definition:
1 a archaic : to lie thrashing or tossing about b : to creep or clamber awkwardly
2 : to lie or sit with arms and legs spread out
3 : to spread or develop irregularly or without restraint (bushes) (sprawling)transitive verb : to cause to spread out carelessly or awkwardly (sprawled)
Here's an example in today's news:
By Felicia Fonseca -- Associated Press
CHINLE, Ariz. (AP) - With only about 80 jail beds on the sprawling 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, authorities increasingly face a quandary ...
When AP and other media write about the Navajo Nation, reporters often use the word "sprawling."
If your flesh crawls everytime you read these articles, here's why.
Read the definition below from Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. The word sprawling refers to spreading carelessly and awkwardy, without restraint.
Reporters don't say that "Arizona is sprawling."
The word sprawling does not mean large. When used to refer to tribal lands, it is an insult. Reporters often use the word to refer to other tribal lands, including the Tohono O'odham.
Here's the definition:
1 a archaic : to lie thrashing or tossing about b : to creep or clamber awkwardly
2 : to lie or sit with arms and legs spread out
3 : to spread or develop irregularly or without restraint (bushes) (sprawling)transitive verb : to cause to spread out carelessly or awkwardly (sprawled)
Here's an example in today's news:
By Felicia Fonseca -- Associated Press
CHINLE, Ariz. (AP) - With only about 80 jail beds on the sprawling 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, authorities increasingly face a quandary ...
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Tribute to mothers and women in Indian country
A tribute to women and mothers on this special day. (Photos Brenda Norrell. Photos of Blackfire band and Ofelia Rivas with Dalai Lama are courtesy photos.)
Ethnic Cleansing at Jamestown, America's Two-Headed Dragon
Commentary by Steve Melendez
Pyramid Lake Paiute, President of the American Indian Genocide Museum
Like Two-Headed Dragons, the United States and Canada conceal their own histories of ethnic cleansing and genocide, posturing for the world
HOUSTON -- An article of 1-18-05 entitled, "When French Settlers Were the Victims of Ethnic Cleansing in North America," by John Mack Farager tells how, “…colonial officials systematically rounded up approximately seven thousand French-speaking Catholic Acadians.”
Some were deported to France, others were deported to what is now Louisiana “…and became the ancestors of today’s Cajuns. Mr. Faragher is Arthur Unobskey Professor of American History at Yale University. His article begins, “In December of 2003 the Canadian government announced that Governor- General Adrianne Clarkson, the Queen’s representative in Canada, had signed a Royal Proclamation acknowledging responsibility for 'the decision to deport the Acadian people' from the British province of Nova Scotia in 1755, and regretting the 'tragic consequences.'”
It would be nice if Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip would announce a Royal Proclamation acknowledging the laws of ethnic cleansing in Jamestown, Virginia when they visit to help commemorate the founding of Jamestown 400 years ago.
One law said, “It is enacted that if any Englishman be murdered, the next town of Indians shall be answerable for it with their lives or liberties.” Losing their liberties meant that the parents would be deported or killed and the children enslaved. The children, it said, would one day be free on reaching the age of 24:“…or they be Twenty four Years Old, when he, she, they, or any of them, the said Indians so bound, is to be and are hereby Declared Free,Provided always that if any of the said Indians, after they are Free, do presume to Settle or Inhabit in any Indian Town, such Indian or Indians so settling or Inhabiting shall be Lyable to Transportation and shall be Transported beyond Sea to England or Some of the Iselands and there bound or Sold for Seven Years .…”
The children were freed at the age of 24, but only providing that they not attempt to re-inhabit any former Indian village or they would be deported and sold into slavery again. These are clearly laws of ethnic cleansing. This same law which can be found in the Laws of Virginia: Being a Supplement to Henning’s The Statutes At Large: 1700-1750 Pg. 41-43, went on to draw circular boundaries around two neighboring Indian Villages. It read: “… And be it further Enacted By the Authority Affor said that the Bounds for the Nottoway Indians Lands shall be Ascertained in manner Following (to Witt) the Bounds of the Land on which they now live shall be laid out by a Circle running three Miles Round their fort, … And Be it further Enacted that the Bounds for the Meheren Indians Lands shall be laid out as followes …as much land as will be Equal in Quantity to a Circle Three Miles Round their Town.”
This, in effect, made Indians illegal in their own land.
You would think that this perverted sense of the “rule of law” would come out of a place like Jonestown and not Jamestown. How does one reconcile the fact that such un-Christian-like values came out of Jamestown? Didn’t they just this past week plant crosses on the beach at Jamestown and rededicate America back to its Christian roots?
After all, what started in Jamestown did not end in Jamestown.
It was repeated over and over again, tribe after tribe.
In order to understand American history, one must understand John Smith, who was elected the President of Jamestown in 1608.
In David A. Price’s book, Love and Hate in Jamestown, we learn that John Smith was a mercenary and that he studied Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Caesar who expanded the Roman Empire by conquest for 20 years. It says he read Pyrotechnia which taught how to make gunpowder and hollow, exploding cannon balls, complete with a fuse. It says he read The Art of War by Niccolo Machiavelli.
If John Smith studied Machiavelli, then we have to consider that maybe America was also founded a Machiavellian nation.
We do have a separation of church and state.
Professor Neal Wood explains Machiavelli’s philosophy in the introduction of the book The Art of War, “War was war, a no-holds-barred contest. Victory is the aim to which all other considerations on the battlefield must be subordinated. Behavior toward the enemy is not subject to common moral considerations. Every type of trickery and violence is legitimate when used against the enemy. The ideal military commander is one capable of constantly devising new tactics and stratagems to deceive and overpower the enemy.”
As we stand on the high hill of history, we can look back on our past and see a pattern emerge from all the deceit, destruction and death.
We see every tribe that ever came into contact with the colonists being subjected to “every type of trickery and violence."
Think of all the treaties that were made as though they were never meant to be honored.
This is Machiavellianism--just another “stratagem to deceive and overpower the enemy."
Yes, America was founded a Christian nation and yes, America was founded a Machiavellian nation.
It is a separation of church and state that begins at the neck of the dragon. America is a dragon that honors God with one head while its other head is far from God.
This is what we have been seeing not only in America’s past but also in the present. Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone out in Nevada may never have their Treaty of Ruby Valley honored because the false prophet head has given all its power to the war mongering “all-is-fair-in-war” head.
How else can you explain that American corporations have been paying death squads in Columbia? Or how can you explain that the United States was caught waging civil war in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration?
It is as though “regime change” is nothing more than a euphemism for “civil war” and “civil war” is nothing more than a euphemism for “genocide."
During our film festival here in Houston last year, we showed the documentary, Trudell.
The film begins with John Trudell reciting one of his poems that begins, “Babylon falling down…” This quote is from the book of Revelation 18 in the bible where God finally judges the “Great Harlot”, “Mystery Babylon” who says one thing and is out doing quite another.
Related links:
Commentary on the celebration of genocide in Virginia, "The Discovery Racket."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_507328.html
It is also posted at:
http://www.pechanga.net/ (Native News section)
It is featured at Indianz.com:
http://www.indianz.com/
"The News Scam, Silencing Genocide"
By Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-scam-silencing-genocide.html
U.S. Role in Paramilitary Deaths in Colombia
Narco News
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/5/12/11400/0057
From the Most-Censored list, the Stop Lewis and Clark Movement:
http://www.stoplewisandclark.org/photos.html
Return to Censored homepage:http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Pyramid Lake Paiute, President of the American Indian Genocide Museum
Like Two-Headed Dragons, the United States and Canada conceal their own histories of ethnic cleansing and genocide, posturing for the world
HOUSTON -- An article of 1-18-05 entitled, "When French Settlers Were the Victims of Ethnic Cleansing in North America," by John Mack Farager tells how, “…colonial officials systematically rounded up approximately seven thousand French-speaking Catholic Acadians.”
Some were deported to France, others were deported to what is now Louisiana “…and became the ancestors of today’s Cajuns. Mr. Faragher is Arthur Unobskey Professor of American History at Yale University. His article begins, “In December of 2003 the Canadian government announced that Governor- General Adrianne Clarkson, the Queen’s representative in Canada, had signed a Royal Proclamation acknowledging responsibility for 'the decision to deport the Acadian people' from the British province of Nova Scotia in 1755, and regretting the 'tragic consequences.'”
It would be nice if Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip would announce a Royal Proclamation acknowledging the laws of ethnic cleansing in Jamestown, Virginia when they visit to help commemorate the founding of Jamestown 400 years ago.
One law said, “It is enacted that if any Englishman be murdered, the next town of Indians shall be answerable for it with their lives or liberties.” Losing their liberties meant that the parents would be deported or killed and the children enslaved. The children, it said, would one day be free on reaching the age of 24:“…or they be Twenty four Years Old, when he, she, they, or any of them, the said Indians so bound, is to be and are hereby Declared Free,Provided always that if any of the said Indians, after they are Free, do presume to Settle or Inhabit in any Indian Town, such Indian or Indians so settling or Inhabiting shall be Lyable to Transportation and shall be Transported beyond Sea to England or Some of the Iselands and there bound or Sold for Seven Years .…”
The children were freed at the age of 24, but only providing that they not attempt to re-inhabit any former Indian village or they would be deported and sold into slavery again. These are clearly laws of ethnic cleansing. This same law which can be found in the Laws of Virginia: Being a Supplement to Henning’s The Statutes At Large: 1700-1750 Pg. 41-43, went on to draw circular boundaries around two neighboring Indian Villages. It read: “… And be it further Enacted By the Authority Affor said that the Bounds for the Nottoway Indians Lands shall be Ascertained in manner Following (to Witt) the Bounds of the Land on which they now live shall be laid out by a Circle running three Miles Round their fort, … And Be it further Enacted that the Bounds for the Meheren Indians Lands shall be laid out as followes …as much land as will be Equal in Quantity to a Circle Three Miles Round their Town.”
This, in effect, made Indians illegal in their own land.
You would think that this perverted sense of the “rule of law” would come out of a place like Jonestown and not Jamestown. How does one reconcile the fact that such un-Christian-like values came out of Jamestown? Didn’t they just this past week plant crosses on the beach at Jamestown and rededicate America back to its Christian roots?
After all, what started in Jamestown did not end in Jamestown.
It was repeated over and over again, tribe after tribe.
In order to understand American history, one must understand John Smith, who was elected the President of Jamestown in 1608.
In David A. Price’s book, Love and Hate in Jamestown, we learn that John Smith was a mercenary and that he studied Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Caesar who expanded the Roman Empire by conquest for 20 years. It says he read Pyrotechnia which taught how to make gunpowder and hollow, exploding cannon balls, complete with a fuse. It says he read The Art of War by Niccolo Machiavelli.
If John Smith studied Machiavelli, then we have to consider that maybe America was also founded a Machiavellian nation.
We do have a separation of church and state.
Professor Neal Wood explains Machiavelli’s philosophy in the introduction of the book The Art of War, “War was war, a no-holds-barred contest. Victory is the aim to which all other considerations on the battlefield must be subordinated. Behavior toward the enemy is not subject to common moral considerations. Every type of trickery and violence is legitimate when used against the enemy. The ideal military commander is one capable of constantly devising new tactics and stratagems to deceive and overpower the enemy.”
As we stand on the high hill of history, we can look back on our past and see a pattern emerge from all the deceit, destruction and death.
We see every tribe that ever came into contact with the colonists being subjected to “every type of trickery and violence."
Think of all the treaties that were made as though they were never meant to be honored.
This is Machiavellianism--just another “stratagem to deceive and overpower the enemy."
Yes, America was founded a Christian nation and yes, America was founded a Machiavellian nation.
It is a separation of church and state that begins at the neck of the dragon. America is a dragon that honors God with one head while its other head is far from God.
This is what we have been seeing not only in America’s past but also in the present. Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone out in Nevada may never have their Treaty of Ruby Valley honored because the false prophet head has given all its power to the war mongering “all-is-fair-in-war” head.
How else can you explain that American corporations have been paying death squads in Columbia? Or how can you explain that the United States was caught waging civil war in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration?
It is as though “regime change” is nothing more than a euphemism for “civil war” and “civil war” is nothing more than a euphemism for “genocide."
During our film festival here in Houston last year, we showed the documentary, Trudell.
The film begins with John Trudell reciting one of his poems that begins, “Babylon falling down…” This quote is from the book of Revelation 18 in the bible where God finally judges the “Great Harlot”, “Mystery Babylon” who says one thing and is out doing quite another.
Related links:
Commentary on the celebration of genocide in Virginia, "The Discovery Racket."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_507328.html
It is also posted at:
http://www.pechanga.net/ (Native News section)
It is featured at Indianz.com:
http://www.indianz.com/
"The News Scam, Silencing Genocide"
By Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-scam-silencing-genocide.html
U.S. Role in Paramilitary Deaths in Colombia
Narco News
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/5/12/11400/0057
From the Most-Censored list, the Stop Lewis and Clark Movement:
http://www.stoplewisandclark.org/photos.html
Return to Censored homepage:http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Mohawk Nation News: Canada's Political Con Game
MOHAWK SHAWN BRANT CHARGED – “LITTLE MOUSELINI” FANTINO GOOSE STEPS UP TO ONTARIO PLATE
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 12, 2007.
Hey! Which comes first, corporate greed or state toadyism? In April the Mohawks of Tyendinaga reclaimed part of the “Culbertson Tract”, which was stolen in 1832. In 2003 talks began to repatriate our land and compensate us. Nothing happened.
We took over the quarry run by Thurlow Aggregates. We demanded that Ontario revoke the illegal license for the quarry. Meanwhile, the operator carried away 100,000 tons of rocks a year and dumped toxic waste into our ground. This seeped into our drinking water.
Where can we go to when a state is in cahoots with the thieves? Their only concern is blind greed and profit. Screw the environment! Screw anyone who gets in their way, like us! The corporate media coverage of our issues has made our actions look totally irrational. The public remains unaware of the assault on the environment we are trying to stop.
In desperation we blocked the CN rail line for 30 hours. It runs through our land without our consent. Dozens of trains were stopped.
CN Rail launched a $108 million civil suit against three Tyendinaga community members and the band council of the “Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte ”. They site “damages arising from a First Nations blockade of its tracks”. CN wants to ban all future blockades [and anything we do they don’t like].
Criminal charges have been laid against one of the Mohawks, Shawn Brant. This is very interesting. Despite all the crimes committed against us, ranging from genocide, theft and destruction of our environment, criminal charges have never been laid against “our” abusers. Canada waited until all the abusers and pedophiles in the residential schools were dead before looking at the crime. Now they are waiting for all the abused students to die off so they won’t have to pay compensation.
The decision to press charges came directly from Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian “Little Mouselini” Fantino. His fascist tactics of intimidation should send a chill down the spine of any decent citizen who believes in the rule of law, but is afraid to stand up to police brutality.
The fascist state is one “goose step” away from domination. Fantino, our Little Mousilini, wants to make sure the trains run on time. There we are sitting on the train tracks, eating sandwiches, demanding law and order and trying to stop the imminent arrival of the Ontario storm troops, newly outfitted in black shirts just liked their fascist predecessors. Déjà vu! Or what?
The plan is to confiscate Indian “reserves” through phony civil suits in the colonial courts.
The corporations, like CN, or the waste management companies and developers, start the law suits against us. They're about our land and resources. They go to court, get a judgment against us, the band council and Shawn Brant! Then bingo! No more reserves! They think! The people hold the land and we have to surrender it legitimately. A court order won’t do it!
The corporations, federal/ provincial governments, police and Indian Affairs are all part of this nest of “cabalistic” vipers behind this scam. It’s their blind greed and knee jerk made up stereotypes about us. They think we don’t have a right to live, to our laws, decency, fair treatment, property rights and environmental protection.
It’s called “compounded theft”. CN Rail is a federal crown corporation suing the band council which is a colonial arm of the federal government. The railways used our money to build them.
These law suits are meant to stop our rightful opposition to abuse. We keep complaining about the theft and environmental damage to our lands. We keep making “silly complaints” against police brutality.
State police and civil courts have been co-opted into mercenary service for corporate greed. Anyone who opposes them had better watch out. They will face the full brutality of the state. The multinational corporations in British Columbia stopped opposition to clear cutting by suing the demonstrators and putting them in jail.
We are already into the long slide, back into the despotic age of feudalism that Europeans tried to escape by coming to Turtle Island . Who are the puppet masters in this evil revival of medieval tyranny?
The Supreme Court of Canada has declared that the Canadian state has an obligation to protect us. You can bet they won’t be hiring top ranking lawyers to defend us. We have to put on bake sales and raffles for pennies to defend ourselves. Shawn Brant gets his support from the street people of Toronto .
The Crown, Canadian and provincial governments do not want to come out in the open about what they ‘re doing. They’re happy to let “hit men” like CN and Little Mouselini do their dirty work. Their “goon squad” tactics failed.
Recently Ontario politician, John Tory, stated that anyone opposing the government “should be held liable”. What about him? As leader of the opposition, shouldn’t he be sued? Is the Parliamentary system being obliterated and everything will now be done by civil suits in the colonial courts?
He comes from one of the biggest law firms, Tory and Tory, which will benefit greatly from this tactic. The corporations involved have deep pockets which are the Canadian taxpayers. They turn on a big money tap right into off shore bank accounts of lawyers who work for law firms like Tory and Tory.
It’s a political con game. All the moves have been calculated to rip us off. They know we can’t mount a defense. Canada will only hire lawyers for us if it serves their colonial agenda which is to disinherit us and our future generations.
14,000 people just applied for 100 jobs at CSIS [the spy agency] in order to snoop on us and those who are being falsely fingered as “insurgents” and “terrorists”. In the new world order, you are either going to be a spy or be spied upon. You have to join the thugs so you don’t get beat up. The only people protected by the state are those working for it.
Recently the Conservatives did a lot of polling. They’ve demonize us as “gangsters, thieves and smugglers,” to win the next election.
This is disgusting! Canadians are living in government-inspired fear using us as their scapegoats. The “powers that think so much of themselves” are pushing the public to focus their hatred on us instead of the real corporate culprits who are enslaving them. How low can they go? The real issue of land and resource theft, environmental desecration and pollution are being deliberately hidden along with, the illegal toxic waste in the quarry.
This case should be thrown out of court. The railway company, the Canadian state and province of Ontario are all trespassing. They’re breaking international accords concerning environmental protection.
If all else fails, they’ll try to send in the troops to kill us. The world is watching, Canada !
There is no legitimate way for us to be heard in Canada . This should be properly dealt with by a neutral international court that does not have a vested interest in the outcome, not by a court of the colonizing state. We are under attack from all directions. Your support, comments, assistance and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cohorts like Stockwell Day and John Tory are brought before the international courts for the crime of genocide, will the Canadian taxpayers have to pay for their defense? [Email Prime Minister http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=harper.s@parl.gc.ca; Indian Affairs http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=prentice.j@parl.gc.ca; Public Security http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=day.s@parl.gc.ca; Governor General http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=gg@gg.ca UN an anyone else you can think of]
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, workshops, speakers, to sign on, go to
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/
Please sign Women title Holders petititon
For sale “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” & “Warriors Hand Book”
By Karonhiaktajeh ($10 postage included)
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 12, 2007.
Hey! Which comes first, corporate greed or state toadyism? In April the Mohawks of Tyendinaga reclaimed part of the “Culbertson Tract”, which was stolen in 1832. In 2003 talks began to repatriate our land and compensate us. Nothing happened.
We took over the quarry run by Thurlow Aggregates. We demanded that Ontario revoke the illegal license for the quarry. Meanwhile, the operator carried away 100,000 tons of rocks a year and dumped toxic waste into our ground. This seeped into our drinking water.
Where can we go to when a state is in cahoots with the thieves? Their only concern is blind greed and profit. Screw the environment! Screw anyone who gets in their way, like us! The corporate media coverage of our issues has made our actions look totally irrational. The public remains unaware of the assault on the environment we are trying to stop.
In desperation we blocked the CN rail line for 30 hours. It runs through our land without our consent. Dozens of trains were stopped.
CN Rail launched a $108 million civil suit against three Tyendinaga community members and the band council of the “Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte ”. They site “damages arising from a First Nations blockade of its tracks”. CN wants to ban all future blockades [and anything we do they don’t like].
Criminal charges have been laid against one of the Mohawks, Shawn Brant. This is very interesting. Despite all the crimes committed against us, ranging from genocide, theft and destruction of our environment, criminal charges have never been laid against “our” abusers. Canada waited until all the abusers and pedophiles in the residential schools were dead before looking at the crime. Now they are waiting for all the abused students to die off so they won’t have to pay compensation.
The decision to press charges came directly from Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian “Little Mouselini” Fantino. His fascist tactics of intimidation should send a chill down the spine of any decent citizen who believes in the rule of law, but is afraid to stand up to police brutality.
The fascist state is one “goose step” away from domination. Fantino, our Little Mousilini, wants to make sure the trains run on time. There we are sitting on the train tracks, eating sandwiches, demanding law and order and trying to stop the imminent arrival of the Ontario storm troops, newly outfitted in black shirts just liked their fascist predecessors. Déjà vu! Or what?
The plan is to confiscate Indian “reserves” through phony civil suits in the colonial courts.
The corporations, like CN, or the waste management companies and developers, start the law suits against us. They're about our land and resources. They go to court, get a judgment against us, the band council and Shawn Brant! Then bingo! No more reserves! They think! The people hold the land and we have to surrender it legitimately. A court order won’t do it!
The corporations, federal/ provincial governments, police and Indian Affairs are all part of this nest of “cabalistic” vipers behind this scam. It’s their blind greed and knee jerk made up stereotypes about us. They think we don’t have a right to live, to our laws, decency, fair treatment, property rights and environmental protection.
It’s called “compounded theft”. CN Rail is a federal crown corporation suing the band council which is a colonial arm of the federal government. The railways used our money to build them.
These law suits are meant to stop our rightful opposition to abuse. We keep complaining about the theft and environmental damage to our lands. We keep making “silly complaints” against police brutality.
State police and civil courts have been co-opted into mercenary service for corporate greed. Anyone who opposes them had better watch out. They will face the full brutality of the state. The multinational corporations in British Columbia stopped opposition to clear cutting by suing the demonstrators and putting them in jail.
We are already into the long slide, back into the despotic age of feudalism that Europeans tried to escape by coming to Turtle Island . Who are the puppet masters in this evil revival of medieval tyranny?
The Supreme Court of Canada has declared that the Canadian state has an obligation to protect us. You can bet they won’t be hiring top ranking lawyers to defend us. We have to put on bake sales and raffles for pennies to defend ourselves. Shawn Brant gets his support from the street people of Toronto .
The Crown, Canadian and provincial governments do not want to come out in the open about what they ‘re doing. They’re happy to let “hit men” like CN and Little Mouselini do their dirty work. Their “goon squad” tactics failed.
Recently Ontario politician, John Tory, stated that anyone opposing the government “should be held liable”. What about him? As leader of the opposition, shouldn’t he be sued? Is the Parliamentary system being obliterated and everything will now be done by civil suits in the colonial courts?
He comes from one of the biggest law firms, Tory and Tory, which will benefit greatly from this tactic. The corporations involved have deep pockets which are the Canadian taxpayers. They turn on a big money tap right into off shore bank accounts of lawyers who work for law firms like Tory and Tory.
It’s a political con game. All the moves have been calculated to rip us off. They know we can’t mount a defense. Canada will only hire lawyers for us if it serves their colonial agenda which is to disinherit us and our future generations.
14,000 people just applied for 100 jobs at CSIS [the spy agency] in order to snoop on us and those who are being falsely fingered as “insurgents” and “terrorists”. In the new world order, you are either going to be a spy or be spied upon. You have to join the thugs so you don’t get beat up. The only people protected by the state are those working for it.
Recently the Conservatives did a lot of polling. They’ve demonize us as “gangsters, thieves and smugglers,” to win the next election.
This is disgusting! Canadians are living in government-inspired fear using us as their scapegoats. The “powers that think so much of themselves” are pushing the public to focus their hatred on us instead of the real corporate culprits who are enslaving them. How low can they go? The real issue of land and resource theft, environmental desecration and pollution are being deliberately hidden along with, the illegal toxic waste in the quarry.
This case should be thrown out of court. The railway company, the Canadian state and province of Ontario are all trespassing. They’re breaking international accords concerning environmental protection.
If all else fails, they’ll try to send in the troops to kill us. The world is watching, Canada !
There is no legitimate way for us to be heard in Canada . This should be properly dealt with by a neutral international court that does not have a vested interest in the outcome, not by a court of the colonizing state. We are under attack from all directions. Your support, comments, assistance and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cohorts like Stockwell Day and John Tory are brought before the international courts for the crime of genocide, will the Canadian taxpayers have to pay for their defense? [Email Prime Minister http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=harper.s@parl.gc.ca; Indian Affairs http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=prentice.j@parl.gc.ca; Public Security http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=day.s@parl.gc.ca; Governor General http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=gg@gg.ca UN an anyone else you can think of]
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, workshops, speakers, to sign on, go to
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/
Please sign Women title Holders petititon
For sale “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” & “Warriors Hand Book”
By Karonhiaktajeh ($10 postage included)
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Protests at Jamestown and Denver
From the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston:
Protest in Jamestown:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070512/ap_on_re_us/jamestown_anniversary
Black and American Indian protesters at Jamestown:
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-now-protestsmy12,0,5553444.story?coll=dp-news-local-final
American Indians: Dems Failed Them On Columbus Day
by Steven K. P
aulson, AP Writer
File Photo Brenda Norrell/Denver Columbus Day protest
(AP) DENVER Protesters who say Columbus introduced genocide to the Americas accused Democratic state lawmakers Tuesday of letting them down when they refused to repeal Columbus Day in Colorado.Glenn Morris, a member of the American Indian Movement leadership council, said AIM's leaders were rebuffed when they asked legislative leaders to pass a bill revoking the commemoration, now in its 100th year in Colorado.He said AIM felt the recent turnover that put Democrats in charge of the House, the Senate and the governor's office for the first time in 42 years was a good opportunity after Republicans rejected previous attempts.Morris said Indian leaders were stunned when they were told by Democratic leaders and Gov. Bill Ritter that the time wasn't right because it would be too divisive."It's not divisive to have a racist holiday?" Morris asked on the steps of the Capitol.Morris said AIM members told Ritter they expected greater moral leadership from him.Ritter's spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said the administration is working on issues important to American Indians."We're focusing on improving health care and education as well as protecting civil rights, improving public safety and fighting racial discrimination," he said. "The governor and lieutenant governor feel very strongly about doing all we can in these areas, and we are," Dreyer said.House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, said no one talked to him about the issue, He said he's willing to meet with both sides to see if there is common ground."I know it's an issue where people have very strong feelings," Romanoff said.Tom Satriano, a member of Progressive Italians to Transform Columbus Holiday, said he was ashamed at the annual holiday, which is marked by a parade in Denver in early October. He said Columbus is not even honored in Italy, his native country."I'm embarrassed to be an Italian today," he said.Morris said if Denver goes ahead with the parade, AIM members will turn out in protest.Denver's parade has a troubled history of arrests and confrontations between Columbus supporters and detractors.Protesters have called him a slave trader who touched off centuries of genocide and oppression against native people. Parade supporters say he was a brave explorer who opened a new world.Colorado is credited with being the first to make Columbus Day a state holiday.
Protest in Jamestown:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070512/ap_on_re_us/jamestown_anniversary
Black and American Indian protesters at Jamestown:
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-now-protestsmy12,0,5553444.story?coll=dp-news-local-final
American Indians: Dems Failed Them On Columbus Day
by Steven K. P
aulson, AP WriterFile Photo Brenda Norrell/Denver Columbus Day protest
(AP) DENVER Protesters who say Columbus introduced genocide to the Americas accused Democratic state lawmakers Tuesday of letting them down when they refused to repeal Columbus Day in Colorado.Glenn Morris, a member of the American Indian Movement leadership council, said AIM's leaders were rebuffed when they asked legislative leaders to pass a bill revoking the commemoration, now in its 100th year in Colorado.He said AIM felt the recent turnover that put Democrats in charge of the House, the Senate and the governor's office for the first time in 42 years was a good opportunity after Republicans rejected previous attempts.Morris said Indian leaders were stunned when they were told by Democratic leaders and Gov. Bill Ritter that the time wasn't right because it would be too divisive."It's not divisive to have a racist holiday?" Morris asked on the steps of the Capitol.Morris said AIM members told Ritter they expected greater moral leadership from him.Ritter's spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said the administration is working on issues important to American Indians."We're focusing on improving health care and education as well as protecting civil rights, improving public safety and fighting racial discrimination," he said. "The governor and lieutenant governor feel very strongly about doing all we can in these areas, and we are," Dreyer said.House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, said no one talked to him about the issue, He said he's willing to meet with both sides to see if there is common ground."I know it's an issue where people have very strong feelings," Romanoff said.Tom Satriano, a member of Progressive Italians to Transform Columbus Holiday, said he was ashamed at the annual holiday, which is marked by a parade in Denver in early October. He said Columbus is not even honored in Italy, his native country."I'm embarrassed to be an Italian today," he said.Morris said if Denver goes ahead with the parade, AIM members will turn out in protest.Denver's parade has a troubled history of arrests and confrontations between Columbus supporters and detractors.Protesters have called him a slave trader who touched off centuries of genocide and oppression against native people. Parade supporters say he was a brave explorer who opened a new world.Colorado is credited with being the first to make Columbus Day a state holiday.
Friday, May 11, 2007
New Sanctuary Movement Launched
http://www.newsanctuarymovement.org/
Interfaith New Sanctuary Movement Is Launched
Responding to a moral imperative to address the need for just and humane treatment of immigrants, clergy and communities of faith across the country are offering sanctuary to immigrants with deportation orders.
Rooted in the 1980's sanctuary campaign, the New Sanctuary Movement launches on May 9th with public events in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and San Diego.
Interfaith New Sanctuary Movement Is Launched
Responding to a moral imperative to address the need for just and humane treatment of immigrants, clergy and communities of faith across the country are offering sanctuary to immigrants with deportation orders.
Rooted in the 1980's sanctuary campaign, the New Sanctuary Movement launches on May 9th with public events in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and San Diego.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Turtle Mountain Chippewa excludes insulting author
Turtle Mountain Chippewa Nation passes exclusion order for insulting author
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Council unanimously passed a resolution banning Rob Port from tribal lands for insulting comments about the tribe and its members posted on sayanything.com and published in the Dakota Beacon. The resolution was passed Thursday at 3 p.m.
The resolution states:
"WHEREAS, there has been no effort made on the part of the Dakota Beacon to retract the article, amidst numerous complaints by tribal members; and
WHEREAS, Rob Port, author of the article and webmaster of SayanythingBlog.com has made no effort to either retract or apologize to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; now
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, Rob Port, author of the aforementioned article and webmaster of SayAnythingBlog.com, be excluded and removed from all land on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in the State of North Dakota and from such other lands as may be acquired on behalf of said Tribe and be added thereto under the laws of the United States and pursuant to Title 39 of the Turtle Mountain Tribal Code, in order that the peace, health, political integrity, economic security and general welfare of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa be secured; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon, and Dakota Beacon, Inc. publicly retract the January 2007 article “The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations” by issuing a letter to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, with said letter placed by the tribe for publication in regional news outlets and issuance to each of the other tribes in the State of North Dakota; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution be transmitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, North Dakota Congressional Delegation Members, the Governor of the State of North Dakota and the North Dakota State Indian Affairs Commission for follow-through, oversight and information."
.
Here's Rob Port's response:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/so_one_day_i_came_home_and_found_out_id_been_banned_from_an_indian_reservat/
KXMB CBS 12 Bismark:
http://www.kxmb.com/t/indian-reservation/122859.asp
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Council unanimously passed a resolution banning Rob Port from tribal lands for insulting comments about the tribe and its members posted on sayanything.com and published in the Dakota Beacon. The resolution was passed Thursday at 3 p.m.
The resolution states:
"WHEREAS, there has been no effort made on the part of the Dakota Beacon to retract the article, amidst numerous complaints by tribal members; and
WHEREAS, Rob Port, author of the article and webmaster of SayanythingBlog.com has made no effort to either retract or apologize to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; now
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, Rob Port, author of the aforementioned article and webmaster of SayAnythingBlog.com, be excluded and removed from all land on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in the State of North Dakota and from such other lands as may be acquired on behalf of said Tribe and be added thereto under the laws of the United States and pursuant to Title 39 of the Turtle Mountain Tribal Code, in order that the peace, health, political integrity, economic security and general welfare of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa be secured; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, Steve Cates, publisher of the Dakota Beacon, and Dakota Beacon, Inc. publicly retract the January 2007 article “The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations” by issuing a letter to the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, with said letter placed by the tribe for publication in regional news outlets and issuance to each of the other tribes in the State of North Dakota; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this resolution be transmitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, North Dakota Congressional Delegation Members, the Governor of the State of North Dakota and the North Dakota State Indian Affairs Commission for follow-through, oversight and information."
.
Here's Rob Port's response:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/so_one_day_i_came_home_and_found_out_id_been_banned_from_an_indian_reservat/
KXMB CBS 12 Bismark:
http://www.kxmb.com/t/indian-reservation/122859.asp
Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Reunion with Western Shoshone Corbin Harney in Nevada
(Corbin Harney at Nuclear Test Site 2006 Photo Deanna Taylor)
From Peace Camp, near the Nuclear Test Site:
May 9, 2007
Hello Everyone,
The Ceremony has already begun. We're in it now.
Thank you for your prayers and positive thoughts for the benefit of this Reunion with Corbin. He looks great. He sounds great. He's strong & positive. Please continue to send him loving energy and prayers. He says that's the only reason why he's alive, and we all know the power of prayer! Also, please include in your prayers, his caretaker Patricia, Poo Ha Bah, Shundahi Network, Johnnie Bob's Spirit Run and all the Elders & participants who are coming together this weekend to honor Corbin and protect all Life and Mother Earth.
Thank you for all the organizations, Spiritual People, activists and those who are contributing to the success of this event. Like Corbin always says, "We have to help each other and unite ourselves together. We have to work together and appreciate one another."
Please, everyone, come prepared to create a logistics and volunteer crew, as we have none.
We're so excited to see and be with all of you. Travel safely! Many Blessings.
Shundahai,
Julia Moon Sparrow
MOTHER’S DAY REUNION
WITH CORBIN
AT PEACE CAMP 2007
Thursday, May 10th
Wade’s kitchen arrives with Peter S. to Peace Camp.
Crew needed to assist at Peace Camp.
[15 people needed to set up shade tent.]
Building Sweat Lodge at Peace Camp. Lodge built by Johnnie Bobb and Spirit Runners – possible helpers needed.
Friday, May 11th
Sunrise Ceremony, Peace Camp.
Dinner by Wade / Ops Council
Special feature screening at sundown of “Trespassing”, courtesy of producer, Carlos DeMendez.
Shuttles needed for Elders, etc. who are staying at Cactus Springs for Sunrise Cermonies.
Sunrise Ceremony Sacred Fire to be continued night & day for all three days.
Fire keepers needed for Friday & Saturday nights.
Saturday, May 12th
Sunrise Ceremony, Peace Camp.
Welcome the Spirit Run. Lodge for Spirit Run participants, only. Breakfast. In shade tent: M/C: Honor Corbin Speakers: Corbin Harney, Katherine Blossom, Darlene Graham, Ernestine Moore, Anne Key, Julia Moon Sparrow, Willie Fragosa, Carlos DeMendez. Honoring Corbin Non-violence training for those who are line crossing and need or want training. Ceremony and speaking honoring those who’ve crossed over to Spirit World (led by Willy, location determined by Willy.
Dinner and Raffle (to provide fundraising for Gathering expenses.) Shuttles needed for Elders, etc. who are staying at Cactus Springs for Sunrise Cermonies.
Sunday May 13th
Sunrise Ceremony. Note: All Sweat Lodge participants to arrive at Sunrise Ceremony with appropriate Sweat Lodge clothing layered underneath. Bring towels to Sunrise Ceremony. Water will be provided outside of Lodge afterward. Sweat Lodge conducted by Darlene immediately after sunrise. No changing of clothes, or waiting for late comers.
Breakfast at Peace Camp. Corbin to Bless the People before procession to the front gate.
Procession. Front Gate Activities, at the line and lunch
From Peace Camp, near the Nuclear Test Site:
May 9, 2007
Hello Everyone,
The Ceremony has already begun. We're in it now.
Thank you for your prayers and positive thoughts for the benefit of this Reunion with Corbin. He looks great. He sounds great. He's strong & positive. Please continue to send him loving energy and prayers. He says that's the only reason why he's alive, and we all know the power of prayer! Also, please include in your prayers, his caretaker Patricia, Poo Ha Bah, Shundahi Network, Johnnie Bob's Spirit Run and all the Elders & participants who are coming together this weekend to honor Corbin and protect all Life and Mother Earth.
Thank you for all the organizations, Spiritual People, activists and those who are contributing to the success of this event. Like Corbin always says, "We have to help each other and unite ourselves together. We have to work together and appreciate one another."
Please, everyone, come prepared to create a logistics and volunteer crew, as we have none.
We're so excited to see and be with all of you. Travel safely! Many Blessings.
Shundahai,
Julia Moon Sparrow
MOTHER’S DAY REUNION
WITH CORBIN
AT PEACE CAMP 2007
Thursday, May 10th
Wade’s kitchen arrives with Peter S. to Peace Camp.
Crew needed to assist at Peace Camp.
[15 people needed to set up shade tent.]
Building Sweat Lodge at Peace Camp. Lodge built by Johnnie Bobb and Spirit Runners – possible helpers needed.
Friday, May 11th
Sunrise Ceremony, Peace Camp.
Dinner by Wade / Ops Council
Special feature screening at sundown of “Trespassing”, courtesy of producer, Carlos DeMendez.
Shuttles needed for Elders, etc. who are staying at Cactus Springs for Sunrise Cermonies.
Sunrise Ceremony Sacred Fire to be continued night & day for all three days.
Fire keepers needed for Friday & Saturday nights.
Saturday, May 12th
Sunrise Ceremony, Peace Camp.
Welcome the Spirit Run. Lodge for Spirit Run participants, only. Breakfast. In shade tent: M/C: Honor Corbin Speakers: Corbin Harney, Katherine Blossom, Darlene Graham, Ernestine Moore, Anne Key, Julia Moon Sparrow, Willie Fragosa, Carlos DeMendez. Honoring Corbin Non-violence training for those who are line crossing and need or want training. Ceremony and speaking honoring those who’ve crossed over to Spirit World (led by Willy, location determined by Willy.
Dinner and Raffle (to provide fundraising for Gathering expenses.) Shuttles needed for Elders, etc. who are staying at Cactus Springs for Sunrise Cermonies.
Sunday May 13th
Sunrise Ceremony. Note: All Sweat Lodge participants to arrive at Sunrise Ceremony with appropriate Sweat Lodge clothing layered underneath. Bring towels to Sunrise Ceremony. Water will be provided outside of Lodge afterward. Sweat Lodge conducted by Darlene immediately after sunrise. No changing of clothes, or waiting for late comers.
Breakfast at Peace Camp. Corbin to Bless the People before procession to the front gate.
Procession. Front Gate Activities, at the line and lunch
On the road in Montana Indian country
Please watch for an upcoming series that I'll be posting from Montana Indian lands.
Best, Brenda
Best, Brenda
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Indigenous Alliance Without Borders
Alianza IndÃgena Sin Fronteras Gathering
Indigenous Peoples' communities and their aboriginal territories are dissected by the international border from Texas to California, including the Kickapoo, Tigua, Yaqui, O'odham, Cocopah, Pima, Yavapai, Apache and Kumeyaay
.
.
.
.
.
.
Photos: Indigenous Alliance without Borders/Photo Brenda Norrell; Below: Shannon Rivers, Gila River O'otham and David Garcia, Tohono O'odham/Photo Norrell; Below: Photo: Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham/Courtesy photo
By Christina Leza
Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras
TUCSON, Ariz. -- On Saturday April 28th the Alianza IndÃgena Sin Fronteras/Indigenous Alliance Without Borders held a gathering for its members in Tucson, Arizona near the U.S.-Mexico international border in the Southwestern United States. The gathering was attended by both Alianza members and staff, as well as invited members of indigenous and human rights organizations and local indigenous communities. Representatives of the indigenous peoples community development organization Tonatierra were present to talk about their work in the international indigenous movement and its relationship to the indigenous border rights issues addressed by the Alianza IndÃgena Sin Fronteras. Tupac Enrique Acosta of Tonatierra also delivered a message from Gerald One Feather of the Oceti Sakowin (Lakota Nation) inviting the Alianza and the Yaqui people to a Seven Council Fires ceremonial event in July to discuss shared goals in gaining recognition for indigenous rights of passage across U.S. international borders. At this recent Alianza gathering, the need to establish a North-South U.S. indigenous border alliance was discussed as a critical goal for developing policy recommendations that address the rights of indigenous peoples along U.S. borders.
The Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras is an indigenous grassroots organization comm
itted to promoting respect and protection of indigenous rights for indigenous peoples on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly rights of mobility and passage for members of indigenous communities divided by the southern international border. The Alianza was founded in August of 1997, when indigenous peoples on the southern border gathered in the lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Southern Arizona to discuss U.S. border crossing policies impacting indigenous communities along the border. Since this time, the alliance formed of individual tribal community members has worked to protect the rights of indigenous ceremonial participants to safely move across the border that now divides formerly united indigenous communities. Since the tragedy of 9/11, policies to heighten U.S. border security have increased the difficulty of indigenous community members to maintain their rights of passage and traditional ties to their communities. U.S. southern indigenous nations affected by such policies include the Kumeyaay in California, the Cocopah, the Tohono O’odham, the Akimel O’Odham, and the Yavapai-Apache in Arizona, and the Kickapoo in Texas. To better secure safe border passage for members in these communities, the Alianza discussed plans to conduct Know Your Rights workshops within indigenous communities in Sonora, Mexico and strengthen connections to indigenous councils and organizations in Mexico. The organization also discussed plans to hold passport application workshops for U.S. tribal members along the southern border in preparation for new U.S. international travel requirements beginning in January 2008 that will require presentation of a valid passport from anyone crossing between the U.S. and Mexico by land or sea, in addition to travel by air—a requirement that will severely affect border indigenous community members who travel across the border regularly to maintain family and community ties.
Following the gathering, two members of the Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras further addressed such policy issues as part of a discussion panel on indigenous border issues that concluded the “Braving Borders Building Bridges: A Journey for Human Rights” tour hosted by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) in partnership with the CoalicÃon de Derechos Humanos and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Alianza panel members Anabel Galindo and David Jaimez, also of the Yoeme Commission for Human Rights on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation, along with Tohono O’odham activist Ofelia Rivas of O’odham Voice Against the Wall, spoke of human rights violations against indigenous peoples along the border. Such discussions between human rights organizations is significant, as the Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras Project Director Jose Matus recently stated, “The social change and justice movement must come together as one human movement and develop alliances with indigenous rights, immigrant rights, LGBT, labor, religious groups, youth, and other people of color human/civil rights movements to foster leadership development in order to promote common purposes, mutual support and resource sharing among organizations.” Also discussed at the Alianza gathering were plans to increase communication with indigenous community members and activist organizations to create a resolution for an indigenous “Border Justice Campaign” plan of action.
On the
following Saturday, May 5th, a staff representative of the Alianza and Ofelia Rivas of O’odham Voice Against the Wall also spoke with Jorge Bustamante, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, during a visit to Tucson by Mr. Bustamante to hear testimonies of human rights abuses on the southern border. The fact that many of the migrants who are criminalized for their passage through unauthorized ports of entry to the U.S. or who die in the Sonora desert attempting this entry are indigenous peoples from throughout Latin America whose potential earnings in the U.S. contribute to the economic and cultural survival of their home communities was addressed during this discussion. Also addressed was the difficulty of obtaining U.S. support and recognition for existing international law supporting rights of international passage for the cultural and economic activities of indigenous peoples, such as ILO Convention 169 which expressly states the responsibility of governments, “to take appropriate measures, including by means of international agreements, to facilitate contacts and co-operation between indigenous and tribal peoples across borders,” (International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, Part VII, “Contacts and Co-operation Across Borders,” Article 32 1991). Mr. Bustamente promised to deliver information provided by representatives of both indigenous organizations to Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras is an indigenous grassroots organization comm
itted to promoting respect and protection of indigenous rights for indigenous peoples on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly rights of mobility and passage for members of indigenous communities divided by the southern international border. The Alianza was founded in August of 1997, when indigenous peoples on the southern border gathered in the lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Southern Arizona to discuss U.S. border crossing policies impacting indigenous communities along the border. Since this time, the alliance formed of individual tribal community members has worked to protect the rights of indigenous ceremonial participants to safely move across the border that now divides formerly united indigenous communities. Since the tragedy of 9/11, policies to heighten U.S. border security have increased the difficulty of indigenous community members to maintain their rights of passage and traditional ties to their communities. U.S. southern indigenous nations affected by such policies include the Kumeyaay in California, the Cocopah, the Tohono O’odham, the Akimel O’Odham, and the Yavapai-Apache in Arizona, and the Kickapoo in Texas. To better secure safe border passage for members in these communities, the Alianza discussed plans to conduct Know Your Rights workshops within indigenous communities in Sonora, Mexico and strengthen connections to indigenous councils and organizations in Mexico. The organization also discussed plans to hold passport application workshops for U.S. tribal members along the southern border in preparation for new U.S. international travel requirements beginning in January 2008 that will require presentation of a valid passport from anyone crossing between the U.S. and Mexico by land or sea, in addition to travel by air—a requirement that will severely affect border indigenous community members who travel across the border regularly to maintain family and community ties.Following the gathering, two members of the Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras further addressed such policy issues as part of a discussion panel on indigenous border issues that concluded the “Braving Borders Building Bridges: A Journey for Human Rights” tour hosted by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) in partnership with the CoalicÃon de Derechos Humanos and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Alianza panel members Anabel Galindo and David Jaimez, also of the Yoeme Commission for Human Rights on the Pascua Yaqui Reservation, along with Tohono O’odham activist Ofelia Rivas of O’odham Voice Against the Wall, spoke of human rights violations against indigenous peoples along the border. Such discussions between human rights organizations is significant, as the Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras Project Director Jose Matus recently stated, “The social change and justice movement must come together as one human movement and develop alliances with indigenous rights, immigrant rights, LGBT, labor, religious groups, youth, and other people of color human/civil rights movements to foster leadership development in order to promote common purposes, mutual support and resource sharing among organizations.” Also discussed at the Alianza gathering were plans to increase communication with indigenous community members and activist organizations to create a resolution for an indigenous “Border Justice Campaign” plan of action.
On the
following Saturday, May 5th, a staff representative of the Alianza and Ofelia Rivas of O’odham Voice Against the Wall also spoke with Jorge Bustamante, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, during a visit to Tucson by Mr. Bustamante to hear testimonies of human rights abuses on the southern border. The fact that many of the migrants who are criminalized for their passage through unauthorized ports of entry to the U.S. or who die in the Sonora desert attempting this entry are indigenous peoples from throughout Latin America whose potential earnings in the U.S. contribute to the economic and cultural survival of their home communities was addressed during this discussion. Also addressed was the difficulty of obtaining U.S. support and recognition for existing international law supporting rights of international passage for the cultural and economic activities of indigenous peoples, such as ILO Convention 169 which expressly states the responsibility of governments, “to take appropriate measures, including by means of international agreements, to facilitate contacts and co-operation between indigenous and tribal peoples across borders,” (International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, Part VII, “Contacts and Co-operation Across Borders,” Article 32 1991). Mr. Bustamente promised to deliver information provided by representatives of both indigenous organizations to Professor Rodolfo Stavenhagen, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples.Return to Censored homepage:
Friday, May 4, 2007
Flagstaff: KKK supporter threatened assault on Cinco de Mayo celebration
Cinco de Mayo celebration to continue, man arrested after threatening attack
Web threat suspect jailed until after Cinco de Mayo
By LARRY HENDRICKS
Assistant City Editor
Arizona Daily Sun
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- A Flagstaff man accused by federal authorities of threatening to disrupt the local Cinco de Mayo festivities will remain behind bars until at least the end of the festival.
James Wesley Cheek, 55, was arrested Friday by FBI agents after he was accused of a felony charge of making threats via e-mail by attempting a posting on the Arizona Daily Sun Web site.
The editor of the newspaper contacted the FBI after receiving a story comment to be posted below a story on the newspaper’s Web site April 18. The commenter, using a pseudonym, said he was “gearing up” for the Cinco de Mayo festivities, where “Virginia might pale in comparison ...” The message was never posted.
Agents tracked down the anonymous poster through the message’s Internet Protocol address. Even though the suspect is a Flagstaff resident, the message traveled across state lines to get to the newspaper’s server, making it a federal offense.
Cheek was in U.S. Magistrate Court in Flagstaff Monday to determine if he should be released from jail pending trial for the charge.
Cheek’s attorney, Mik Jordahl, found out through questioning Cheek’s spouse that he has never been violent. He has no criminal record except for a concealed weapon arrest that was dismissed. Cheek has injuries so severe that he is permanently on disability.
Cheek’s spouse also talked about how he tried to commit suicide twice and suffers from anxiety and depression — for which he takes medication — because he can no longer support his family like he wants to.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Camille Bibles, questioning the lead investigator in the case, revealed a person who has a strong dislike for Hispanics. Cheek has begun to flirt with becoming a member of the Ku Klux Klan, even distributing fliers promoting the group. And he owns about a half-dozen guns including a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol.
When confronted with the e-mail, Cheek readily admitted to sending the e-mail. The agent, in his testimony, was adamant about Cheek never intending violence. Cheek just wanted the celebrations to be canceled.
U.S. Magistrate Mark Aspey said he found himself in a “quandary” because he wanted more information about Cheek’s psychiatric status from medical records.
Jordahl suggested the hearing be postponed a week. That would give time for the judge to review the medical records, and it will see the Cinco de Mayo festivities come and go.
Conviction for the offense of making threats via e-mail carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.
Larry Hendricks can be reached at 556-2262 or lhendricks@azdailysun.com.
(KVOA.com) FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- A Flagstaff man who allegedly e-mailed the local paper threatening a Virginia Tech-like incident during the city's Cinco de Mayo celebration was arrested by FBI agents Friday.
James Wesley Cheek made an initial appearance in federal court on a charge related to making threats via interstate communications, said Camille Bibles, assistant U.S. attorney in Flagstaff. Cheek, whose age was unavailable, is being held pending a detention hearing set for Monday. It wasn't known if he had a lawyer.
An editor at the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff received a comment to be posted below a story on the paper's Web site on April 18, considered it threatening and passed it on to Editor Randy Wilson, according to a complaint filed in federal court.
Wilson contacted the FBI and turned over the e-mail, along with several others sent by a person who signed their name "dr. richard cameron."
An FBI agent traced the Internet Protocol address of the person who posted the comment to Cheek, who was interviewed at his home, according to an FBI affidavit supporting the complaint.
"He admitted to having recently posted a message under the pseudonym 'dr. richard cameron' on the Arizona Daily Sun Web site because he has 'an aversion to Mexicans' and intended to disrupt Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Flagstaff, Arizona," the agent wrote. "... by posting a threat to commit violence on a greater scale than that which had occurred on the Virginia Tech campus a few days prior to the posting, he intended for the celebrations to be canceled."
A student at Virginia Tech went on a murderous rampage at the university on April 16, killing 32 people before taking his own life.
Postings to the Daily Sun's Web site can be made anonymously, but Wilson said those making threats of violence can expect police to be called.
"This comment, coming two days after the Virginia Tech shootings, raised a red flag that we felt should be handled by the police," Wilson said. "We are hosting a community conversation, not a bulletin board for threats of violence or other criminal acts."
The comment traveled across state lines to the paper's e-mail server and became a federal offense, according to the FBI affidavit. A conviction can bring a a penalty of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
___
Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, http://www.azdailysun.com/
Invitation to event:
COME AND JOIN THE CINCO DE MAYO PARADE AND EVENTS TOMORROW, SATURDAY. PARADE BEGINS 9AM AT COCONINO HIGH SCHOOL AND WILL TRAVEL ALONG CEDAR TO FOURTH STREET WHERE FESTIVITIES WILL CONTINUE.
MANY ARE AWARE FROM THE NEWS, THAT THIS EVENT WAS THREATENED BY A PERSON WHO SAID HE "HATES IMMIGRANTS, AND HAS AN AVERSION TO THOSE FROM MEXICO." THIS MAN IS CURRENTLY IN CUSTODY. HE THREATENED VIOLENCE IN ATTEMPTS TO DISRUPT THE EVENT BY SAYING, "VIRGINIA [TECH] MIGHT PALE IN COMPARISON..."
JOIN IN SOLIDARITY TO SHOW THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE THAT THIS TYPE OF HATRED, INTOLERANCE AND THREAT OF VIOLENCE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. THESE THREATS WON'T STRIP AWAY THE HEART, SOUL AND INTEGRITY OF OUR COMMUNITY.
READ THE E-MAIL BELOW, SENT OUT BY PROF. MIGUEL VASQUEZ, WHO ELOQUENTLY ADDRESSES THE ISSUES FURTHER.
Hola everybody,
There has been some concern expressed by NAU students, staff, and faculty in the last few days about recent racist threats to participants in the 5 de mayo parade made by an apparently sick individual here in Flagstaff. This man is allegedly affiliated with the KKK and says he hates immigrants and all Mexicans and made reference to the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I have spoken with authorities and been assured that the man is currently in custody at least until Monday after the parade and is being investigated by the FBI.It is my belief that once the threat has been neutralized as it has, rather than allowing ourselves to be coerced into submission, we should unite to show that we will never permit this kind of intimidation -- against anyone in our community. In these last few years, we have allowed our country to slip into a climate of fear, trepidation, and uncertainty. We are better than this. I would like to encourage and invite everyone this Saturday - to the 5 de mayo parade and festival - starting at 9am at Coconino HS and marching to Cedar and down 4th Street thru the East Side.We have a chance, all of us, to make a statement here and now regarding this climate of hate, disrespect, and fear. Please distribute this to anyone you know who would be interested.
Bienvenidos Todos, miguel.
COINTELPRO tactics and spying bolstered by Patriot Act
Photo School of Americas Watch
The United States' School of Americas training handbook is declassified. The handbook, used to train Latin military, recommended torture and the targeting of civilians, resulting in the torture and murder of masses of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas. Women were raped and children murdered, as lands were seized for U.S. and multi-national corporations. Those who organized to hold onto their lands were tortured, their labors exploited. The situation continues in Mexico, Central America and South America.
The handbook is online at:
http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=98
Declassified FBI Files Reveal Years of Surveillance of SOA Watch by FBI's Counterterrorism Division
May 4, 2007 http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=98
Declassified FBI Files Reveal Years of Surveillance of SOA Watch by FBI's Counterterrorism Division
http://www.americas.org/item_27247
Resource Center of the Americas
The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond
ACLU and School of the Americas Watch filed for documents; FBI blacks out information, refuses to declassify some pages
The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Georgia last week released new evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting counterterrorism investigations into School of the Americas Watch. As we’ve seen time and again when the FBI targets social change organizations, the files demonstrate a clear attempt to stifle political opposition. In the released documents, the FBI noted that “the [SOA Watch November vigil] has grown dramatically over the past several years.” The FBI elevated its concern to “priority” level and subjected SOA Watch to “counterterrorism” surveillance. The Bureau monitored the media attention that the annual November vigil and the trials of people arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience received, and agents noted which court tactics had chilling effects on people’s decisions to participate in civil disobedience.Nothing in the FBI files justifies counterterrorism as a basis for the spying. In fact, the FBI never identifies any criminal activity outside of public civil disobedience, and they consistently describe the SOA Watch Vigil as “peaceful.”
These files unmask the political nature of the actions of the FBI, an agency that has a long history of being used as “political police,” targeting groups in the United States who are working for social change.When congressional investigations, political trials and other traditional legal methods of repression failed to counter the growing movements of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the FBI moved outside the law. They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally-protected political activity.
The purpose of “COINTELPRO,” the FBI's domestic counterintelligence program, was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own words, to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize" specific groups and individuals.
The FBI’s targets in this period included the American Indian Movement, the Communist Party, Black Nationalist groups, and many social justice activists, including Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez.According to Brian Glick, in War at Home, COINTELPRO used a broad array of methods, including infiltration; psychological warfare from the outside (false media stories, forged correspondence); harassment through the legal system; and extralegal force and violence (in the case of radical Black, Puerto Rican and Native American activists, these attacks, including political assassinations, were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can only be accurately called a form of official "terrorism").
But COINTELPRO tactics are clearly not a thing of the past.
In September of 2005, 72-year-old Filiberto Ojeda Rios, a leading figure in the fight for Puerto Rican independence, was killed by the FBI in a raid that coincided with the Grito de Lares, the annual pro-independence celebration of the 1868 anticolonial revolt in Puerto Rico. Ojeda Rios was wanted by the FBI for his role in a 1983 bank heist. (Click here for more info).The death of Ojeda Rios and the spying against SOA Watch – and many partner peace organizations like the American Friends Service Committee and the Thomas Merton Center, as revealed by other ACLU filings – illustrate the dangerously vague, politicized and expanding definition of "terrorism" employed by the Bush administration.
Instead of responding to political opposition with political means, the U.S. government is responding to it as a threat. This same type of mindset responds to Latin American protests against social inequalities with the training of repressive militaries at the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC).When military action is the default solution for any problem abroad and the FBI is being employed against social justice activists in the United States, it becomes vividly clear that none of us are safe.
The actions and values of the U.S. government are out of alignment with the majority of the people of the Americas.Now is the time when it’s more important than ever that we build principled alliances with other social change organizations and build stronger ties with fellow movements for justice. Together we can overcome the racist system of violence and domination to work towards a culture of justice and peace.
This article was originally published by the sources above and is copyrighted by the sources above. We offer it here as an educational tool to increase understanding of global economics and social justice issues. We believe this is 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. AMERICAS.ORG is a nonprofit Web site with the goal of educating and informing.
Related articles:
Denver police spy files on American Indians and peace activists:
For decades, Denver police intelligence officers kept secret spy files on American Indians and their supporters, including American Indian Movement leaders and members, attorneys of the Native American Rights Fund, former South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, historian and author Vine Deloria and supporters of Leonard Peltier and Navajos resisting forced relocation:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22American+Indians%22+spy+files
Canada's draft counterinsugrency manual named Mohawks with international terrorists and recommended ambuses and assassinations:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/04/canadian-government-back-peddles.html
TUCSON: TORTURE ON TRIAL
Priests arrested at Fort Huachuca to speak on torture:
Come to a talk by Fr. Louis Vitale and Fr. Stephen Kellyin Tucson on Thursday evening, May 17
at Southside Presbyterian Church, 317 W. 23rd (1 block south of 22nd St. at 10th Ave.)
6:30 pm potluck (please bring a dish to share) 7:30 pm talk
Fr. Louis Vitale, a Franciscan priest, is an Action Advocate for Pace e Bene, co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience and SOA Watch Prisoner of Conscience.
Fr. Stephen Kelly, a Jesuit priest, has served time in prison for his participation in several Plowshares direct disarmament actions. In December, 2005, he served as chaplain for Witness to Torture, a delegation which marched through Cuba to the gates of the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
They will talk about the U.S. role in torture, Fort Huachuca & U.S. interrogation tactics, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the School of the Americas and their upcoming trial.
On June 4 or 6, Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly will stand trial in federal court in Tucson on charges of trespass and failure to obey an officer's orders for their nonviolent witness on Nov. 19, 2006 at Fort Huachuca. They attempted to give a letter to the post commander of Fort Huachuca because of the leading role that the Fort has played in the development of the manuals advocating torture used at the SOA and current interrogation techniques being used by the Army.
Sponsored by Tucson SOA Watch and the Nuclear Resister.
Today's news from the southern border to the northern border
--Canada ready to pull oxygen plugs on Mohawk elderly
--Zapatista Comandantes interrogated by federal troops in northern Mexico
--Western Shoshone and Australian Aboriginals tell Barrick Gold to leave, two activists arrested in peaceful outdoor protest at stockholder meeting in Toronto
--Zapatistas arrive at northern border, plan Indigenous Intercontinental Conference in Yaqui territory, Mexico
--Los Angeles police beat and shoot with rubber bullets legal observers and families at migrant gathering
--Zapatista Comandantes interrogated by federal troops in northern Mexico
--Western Shoshone and Australian Aboriginals tell Barrick Gold to leave, two activists arrested in peaceful outdoor protest at stockholder meeting in Toronto
--Zapatistas arrive at northern border, plan Indigenous Intercontinental Conference in Yaqui territory, Mexico
--Los Angeles police beat and shoot with rubber bullets legal observers and families at migrant gathering
...scroll down for articles...
Photo: In Memory of Warrior Women: Roberta Blackgoat, with son Danny Blackgoat, protesting Black Mesa coal mine slurry. Blackgoat, longtime resister of forced relocation on Navajoland, later passed to the Spirit World. Photo Brenda Norrell
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Canada ready to pull oxygen plugs on Mohawk elderly
CANADA CANNIBALIZES MOHAWK ELDERS
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 3, 2007.
Canada is bankrupt in more ways than one. It’s morally bankrupt in what it’s trying to do to the elders of Akwesasne Mohawk community.
When tyranny sets into a country, it starts by attacking the fringes of society who are the weakest - the Indigenous people, elders, homeless, youth, babies and welfare recipients. Then they slowly work their way into the core of society.
After receiving a letter from the Canadian government, on May 2 there was a meeting of elders called in Akwesasne at the old age home. It was attended by Mohawks up to 90 years old and beyond. This is a new attack on us. Canada seems bent on showing us they have no conscience, as if we didn’t already know that.
Canada wants the elders to sign waivers so they can investigate their “worldwide income”. The United States government has already given Canada all this information anyway. Right now they can’t use it because the elders have to give their consent. Once they get it, they can get any information anywhere and use it.
Some of us have had so many jobs, we can’t even remember them all. We aren’t at the top of the corporate hierarchy where we can hire platoons of lawyers and accountants to help us get away with murder.
Canada, you’re playing hardball with our old folks. It’s like a “shakedown by gangsters”. The civil servant, otherwise known as the “loan shark”, showed up at the meeting, faced the elders, and told them in no uncertain terms, “If you don’t sign these waivers in 60 days, you’re done for”. The trucks will be here to take away your wheel chairs, oxygen tanks and convalescent beds. You’re reminding us what a rotten system you have. We should ask Hugo Chavez for help. Viva Hugo Chavez!
They want to cut off our pensions sooner because of the huge influx of the “baby boomers” coming up to pension age real soon. They just don’t want us to enjoy a peaceful old age. They are meddling into our lives and private affairs just to put pressure on us. Is it a make work program for civil servants? Or is it part of a generalized cultural belief that it is proper to harass lndigenous people by any means possible? That pressure might kill some of us off. Obviously, you don’t care. We’re just living too long for your purposes.
Ottawa has thousands of these “economic hit men” who are ready to converge on other people after they successfully wipe out the Mohawk elders.
We are not part of Canada . You are squatting on our land. Stop harassing your landlords. These pensions are due to us because we are denied use of our territory to make a living on.
Canada, you’re on the verge of hysteria to go after our old people. You are afraid you’re not going to be able to eat unless you get rid of what you call “useless eaters”. This phrase was coined by Henry Kissinger. So you attack the weakest, our elders, whom you plan to throw out with no money. Why, because Canada is taking orders from the U.S. Because of how you treated us, you cursed our land for yourselves. To save yourselves you must pay homage to us.
Canada, are you going crazy? What’s wrong? What you’re doing reminds us of the sinking of the Titanic! As the ship was going down, they kept the poor people down in the holes. The rich people were jumping into the lifeboats and killing each other to get on. They pushed and shoved women and children out of the way. This happens when the ship goes down.
The rich think they can escape the devastation. One way or another the invaders to Turtle Island are going down. That is why you are starting to attack and cannibalize our weak. Then slowly you’ll go after everybody else.
Canada, you are going against all natural laws by doing away with the weak – the minorities, old age pensions, mother’s allowance, welfare and other pensions and social services like medicare. You have turned around everything that is natural for the sake of filthy lucre. Instead of honoring the owners of the land, you’re hell-bent on putting us in the line of fire first.
Is this pushing Indigenous people into thinking about going off the grid and surviving “underground”?
We hear there is an Ombudsman Privacy Commission in Ottawa appointed by the loan shark’s henchmen. If you can drag him away from his fancy lunch at the Parliamentary restaurant, they could put their mind onto protecting peoples’ rights to confidentiality. The government pays them. Do you think they are going to object if the government wants to intrude on everybody’s life?
The old are afraid. We worked for these pensions, no matter where. Getting a delegation to go to Ottawa won’t mean much unless we have support from all our friends and allies.
If the person refuses to sign, families will have to take them out of hospital and care for them at home. The elders were told they can be charged criminally. Under what section of the Criminal Code will they be charged? It looks like a new crime has been invented without the sanction of parliament. It’s like taking away our children to residential schools to be killed by threatening to charge us criminally.
In Canadian tax law the government says they have a right to know about the worldwide income of all its citizens. Firstly, we are not Canadians and never will be. If that’s the case, then why do they need our permission to get this information legally? Obviously they can’t have this information unless we allow it.
If we are receiving both U.S. and Canadian pensions, they will not cut us off completely, they say. Pensions are really government run insurance schemes, not income. Are they going to cut off private insurance next? They have no rights to the proceeds of an insurance scheme.
They want to create criminals out of nothing! They have been selective about their victims. They want to steal those pensions that Indigenous people have worked for legitimately in the U.S. and paid their dues. Canada wants to lower their money and benefits in Canada .
The government “hit man” told them, “We could be hard on you if you don’t sign these documents”. How much courage does it take to browbeat a 90 year old in a wheel chair or a 100 year old in a convalescent bed?
Should we trust them? If you give them an inch, they will take a mile. What they are trying is illegal. They want to search anywhere in the world for information about us. This waiver will be used to check anything they want, bank accounts, go into our communities and even look under our beds. This will give them carte blanche and give the Gestapo economic police a right to check for any hidden money. Even in our bras! Isn’t this a real invasion of privacy?
We shouldn’t sign this. Us elders should say, “F—k you”. We won’t let you economically blackmail us to give up our right to privacy. Hope they don’t plan to do cavity searches!
They cannot make us sign papers that give all rights over us. You can be sure the rich elites don’t have to put up with this. They are the ones busy putting this thievery into effect. A pickpocket has more class. At least he’ll drop your wallet in an alley so we can get back our ID. But the government keeps everything. In other words, we are the richest poor people in the world.
Tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=harper.s@parl.gc.ca; Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=prentice.j@parl.gc.ca; Governor General of Canada at http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=gg@gg.gc.ca; and anyone else you can think of to stop this genocide. Nia:wen.
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Kahentientha2@yahoo.com & http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, speakers, workshops, to sign on, go to
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/
Please sign the Women’sTitleholders petition
Coming soon online books on Mohawk issues
Available: “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” and the “Warriors Hand Book”.
Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 3, 2007.
Canada is bankrupt in more ways than one. It’s morally bankrupt in what it’s trying to do to the elders of Akwesasne Mohawk community.
When tyranny sets into a country, it starts by attacking the fringes of society who are the weakest - the Indigenous people, elders, homeless, youth, babies and welfare recipients. Then they slowly work their way into the core of society.
After receiving a letter from the Canadian government, on May 2 there was a meeting of elders called in Akwesasne at the old age home. It was attended by Mohawks up to 90 years old and beyond. This is a new attack on us. Canada seems bent on showing us they have no conscience, as if we didn’t already know that.
Canada wants the elders to sign waivers so they can investigate their “worldwide income”. The United States government has already given Canada all this information anyway. Right now they can’t use it because the elders have to give their consent. Once they get it, they can get any information anywhere and use it.
Some of us have had so many jobs, we can’t even remember them all. We aren’t at the top of the corporate hierarchy where we can hire platoons of lawyers and accountants to help us get away with murder.
Canada, you’re playing hardball with our old folks. It’s like a “shakedown by gangsters”. The civil servant, otherwise known as the “loan shark”, showed up at the meeting, faced the elders, and told them in no uncertain terms, “If you don’t sign these waivers in 60 days, you’re done for”. The trucks will be here to take away your wheel chairs, oxygen tanks and convalescent beds. You’re reminding us what a rotten system you have. We should ask Hugo Chavez for help. Viva Hugo Chavez!
They want to cut off our pensions sooner because of the huge influx of the “baby boomers” coming up to pension age real soon. They just don’t want us to enjoy a peaceful old age. They are meddling into our lives and private affairs just to put pressure on us. Is it a make work program for civil servants? Or is it part of a generalized cultural belief that it is proper to harass lndigenous people by any means possible? That pressure might kill some of us off. Obviously, you don’t care. We’re just living too long for your purposes.
Ottawa has thousands of these “economic hit men” who are ready to converge on other people after they successfully wipe out the Mohawk elders.
We are not part of Canada . You are squatting on our land. Stop harassing your landlords. These pensions are due to us because we are denied use of our territory to make a living on.
Canada, you’re on the verge of hysteria to go after our old people. You are afraid you’re not going to be able to eat unless you get rid of what you call “useless eaters”. This phrase was coined by Henry Kissinger. So you attack the weakest, our elders, whom you plan to throw out with no money. Why, because Canada is taking orders from the U.S. Because of how you treated us, you cursed our land for yourselves. To save yourselves you must pay homage to us.
Canada, are you going crazy? What’s wrong? What you’re doing reminds us of the sinking of the Titanic! As the ship was going down, they kept the poor people down in the holes. The rich people were jumping into the lifeboats and killing each other to get on. They pushed and shoved women and children out of the way. This happens when the ship goes down.
The rich think they can escape the devastation. One way or another the invaders to Turtle Island are going down. That is why you are starting to attack and cannibalize our weak. Then slowly you’ll go after everybody else.
Canada, you are going against all natural laws by doing away with the weak – the minorities, old age pensions, mother’s allowance, welfare and other pensions and social services like medicare. You have turned around everything that is natural for the sake of filthy lucre. Instead of honoring the owners of the land, you’re hell-bent on putting us in the line of fire first.
Is this pushing Indigenous people into thinking about going off the grid and surviving “underground”?
We hear there is an Ombudsman Privacy Commission in Ottawa appointed by the loan shark’s henchmen. If you can drag him away from his fancy lunch at the Parliamentary restaurant, they could put their mind onto protecting peoples’ rights to confidentiality. The government pays them. Do you think they are going to object if the government wants to intrude on everybody’s life?
The old are afraid. We worked for these pensions, no matter where. Getting a delegation to go to Ottawa won’t mean much unless we have support from all our friends and allies.
If the person refuses to sign, families will have to take them out of hospital and care for them at home. The elders were told they can be charged criminally. Under what section of the Criminal Code will they be charged? It looks like a new crime has been invented without the sanction of parliament. It’s like taking away our children to residential schools to be killed by threatening to charge us criminally.
In Canadian tax law the government says they have a right to know about the worldwide income of all its citizens. Firstly, we are not Canadians and never will be. If that’s the case, then why do they need our permission to get this information legally? Obviously they can’t have this information unless we allow it.
If we are receiving both U.S. and Canadian pensions, they will not cut us off completely, they say. Pensions are really government run insurance schemes, not income. Are they going to cut off private insurance next? They have no rights to the proceeds of an insurance scheme.
They want to create criminals out of nothing! They have been selective about their victims. They want to steal those pensions that Indigenous people have worked for legitimately in the U.S. and paid their dues. Canada wants to lower their money and benefits in Canada .
The government “hit man” told them, “We could be hard on you if you don’t sign these documents”. How much courage does it take to browbeat a 90 year old in a wheel chair or a 100 year old in a convalescent bed?
Should we trust them? If you give them an inch, they will take a mile. What they are trying is illegal. They want to search anywhere in the world for information about us. This waiver will be used to check anything they want, bank accounts, go into our communities and even look under our beds. This will give them carte blanche and give the Gestapo economic police a right to check for any hidden money. Even in our bras! Isn’t this a real invasion of privacy?
We shouldn’t sign this. Us elders should say, “F—k you”. We won’t let you economically blackmail us to give up our right to privacy. Hope they don’t plan to do cavity searches!
They cannot make us sign papers that give all rights over us. You can be sure the rich elites don’t have to put up with this. They are the ones busy putting this thievery into effect. A pickpocket has more class. At least he’ll drop your wallet in an alley so we can get back our ID. But the government keeps everything. In other words, we are the richest poor people in the world.
Tell Prime Minister Stephen Harper http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=harper.s@parl.gc.ca; Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=prentice.j@parl.gc.ca; Governor General of Canada at http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=gg@gg.gc.ca; and anyone else you can think of to stop this genocide. Nia:wen.
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Kahentientha2@yahoo.com & http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Katenies20@yahoo.com
For updates, speakers, workshops, to sign on, go to
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/
Please sign the Women’sTitleholders petition
Coming soon online books on Mohawk issues
Available: “Rebuilding the Iroquois Confederacy” and the “Warriors Hand Book”.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Federal Troops Interrogate Zapatista Comandantes in the North
Subcomandante Marcos: "If the federal government has decided to close this civil route also and opts now for the reinitiating of the war in the Mexican Southeast, they should say so clearly. In whatever case, we are ready. For one thing or the other. We make a call to all honest and noble people to come out against this harassment. Democracy! Liberty! Justice!" (Photo Brenda Norrell)
Federal Army Troops Harass the Sixth Commission Delegates
By Subcomandante Marcos
Troops Aggressively Interrogated Civilians Who Accompanied the Zapatista DelegationBy the Sixth Commission EZLN (Translated by El Kilombo) Communiqué from the Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation Sixth Commission of the EZLNMexico
April 30th, 2007
To the People of Mexico: To the People of the World: To the Other Campaign:The EZLN makes the following public denouncement:First: Elements of the Federal Army harassed the delegates of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN that are carrying out the work of the Other Campaign in the Northeast region of our country.Second: On April 29th at around 7:30p.m., the convoy of adherents of the Other Campaign that is accompanying Comandantas Miriam and Eucaria and Comandante Zebedeo were detained at a military checkpoint stationed on the highway between Montemorelos and Linares, Nuevo Leon.The soldiers aggressively searched and interrogated the civilians that accompanied the Zapatista delegation, took pictures of them and of their vehicles, and searched the vehicles exhaustively.Third: Since the beginning of our direct participation in the Other Campaign, various federal and state police agencies, as well as army intelligence and the CISEN, have dedicated themselves to vigilance over the Sixth Commission, taking photos, collecting information, and in some cases, harassing the people that accompany us or who we listen to on our journey.These spies and undercover agents have confirmed that the EZLN is not promoting armed struggle but rather people’s civil participation. They know that, in contrast to the government and political parties, we are not telling lies, but rather listening and making echo of the injustices that our people suffer in all of the national territory. They also know that we do not transport weapons or drugs.In the last part of the first phase, this harassment was even greater, and now, on this occasion, the aggression was directly against the Zapatista delegation.Fourth: With the movement of the Other Campaign, the EZLN has followed a civil and pacifist path of struggle. It is public and provable that the EZLN has nothing to do with organized crime, neither within nor outside of governmental or political party spheres. This is a ridiculous pretext with no substantiation, used as an excuse to assault our compañeros.Fifth: If the federal government has decided to close this civil route also and opts now for the reinitiating of the war in the Mexican Southeast, they should say so clearly. In whatever case, we are ready. For one thing or the other.Sixth: We make a call to all honest and noble people to come out against this harassment.Democracy!Liberty!Justice!
From the Other Mexican North.For the Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
En Espanol:
From: Narco News (includes translations into numerous languages)http://www.narconews.com/
Western Shoshone and Australian Aboriginals tell Barrick Gold: "LEAVE!"
Western Shoshone and Wiradjuri Nation tell Barrick Gold: LEAVE!Peaceful protesters arrested outside Barrick meeting
UPDATE: http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/209897
Barrick takes rare loss on hit to unwind hedge
Anti-mine activists arrested outside annual meeting of shareholders
May 03, 2007
Lisa WrightBusiness Reporter
TORONTO STAR
Two anti-mining protesters were arrested yesterday outside Barrick GoldCorp.'s annual meeting at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre just asthe company celebrated a long-awaited milestone with the elimination ofits controversial hedge book.A woman in her late 20s who was handing out pamphlets about the negativeimpacts of global gold mining and a Toronto man in his early 40s, whotried to intervene during her arrest, were hauled off in a police van atabout 9:30 a.m., accused of trespassing and obstructing officers, policesaid."They're free to get their point across but they were on privateproperty," Sgt. Mark Hayward told the Toronto Star."They were asked to leave and they refused to leave so they werearrested," he said, adding a handful of others complied and moved acrossFront St. The woman was released and not charged, while details of theman's status were not immediately available.He added that eight officers were waiting at the scene this morningafter receiving intelligence of potential protests against Barrick, theworld's largest gold miner and a favourite target of environmentalactivists for their mining practices."We want to raise awareness about the significant ecological damage thattheir projects have caused in remote communities," said Natalie Lowreyof Friends of the Earth Australia.A Barrick spokesperson said the police were simply doing their jobprotecting the public.Another small rally was held outside Barrick's head office on Bay St.late yesterday to continue the day of protest in tandem with the annualmeeting in the John Bassett Theatre, with some environmentalists giventime to speak to shareholders.Barrick reported a net loss of $159 million (U.S.) in the first quarter- its first quarterly loss in five years - after taking a hit of $557million to unwind its hedge book.Barrick is now free to sell all production from its 27 mines at spotprices. Gold fell by $2.10 to close at $672.30 yesterday in New York.The strategy of forward selling production was a $2 billion windfallover the late 1980s and 1990s when bullion continued to tumble. ButBarrick's share price took a beating as gold began to climb over thelast five years."When you look at the whole ball of wax, in the 20 or so years ofBarrick hedging, it's probably been an even sum game for them, but Ithink the market will take it kindly," said analyst Michael Fowler ofDesjardins Securities.Flamboyant company founder Peter Munk told the audience Barrick has done"a superb job" in growing to the top of the heap globally and that thelagging stock price should reflect that."We're very pleased about what we've accomplished because the market islooking for unhedged producers and there's a very bullish sentiment onthe gold price now," said chief financial officer Jamie Sokalsky.Barrick boosted its annual dividend 36 per cent and has $3 billion incash. Shares jumped $1.56 (Canadian,) or 5 per cent, the most in almosta year, to close at $32.71 in Toronto.
TORONTO – May 2, 2007 - Western Shoshone and Wiradjuri Nation Aboriginals told Barrick Gold Corporation to leave their lands during the annual stockholder meeting here. Western Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP), a grassroots Native American group based in Nevada attended, with support from the Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization. Dedicated to protecting the land rights and preserving the homelands of the Western Shoshone people, the WSDP is concerned about Barrick's plans to mine on Mount Tenabo and Horse Canyon, important spiritual areas in Northern Nevada and home to Shoshone creation stories. "As the world's largest gold mining company, Barrick should be an industry leader and respect the rights of communities to give their free, prior, and informed consent to all mining projects proposed on their lands," said Keith Slack, senior policy advisor for Oxfam America. "Respecting the right of consent is critical for protecting indigenous peoples’ sacred sites.""The United Nations has recognized that the U.S. government and the mining companies are violating Western Shoshone land rights," said Larson Bill, community organizer for the Western Shoshone Defense Project. "We have repeatedly tried to engage with Barrick regarding their plans to mine on Mount Tenabo, but all they have done is bring in more drilling rigs and put up fences.""We are bringing a petition signed by over 18,500 people telling Barrick to stop all activity on Mount Tenabo and Horse Canyon. These are people all over the country who understand that this is Western Shoshone land and the mining companies have no right to destroy it," said Bill. Slack continued, "Today's meeting is an opportunity for the WSDP to take their concerns directly to Barrick and its shareholders."Oxfam America works to ensure the oil, gas, and mining industries respect the rights of community members impacted by extractive industries projects, and that projects contribute to the long-term reduction of poverty. For more information, or for an interview with Keith Slack or Larson Bill, please contact Helen DaSilva at hdasilva@oxfamamerica.org, (617) 728-2409 (office) or (617) 331-2984 (cell).
From Wiradjuri Nation in Australia:
2 MAY 2007
Peter Munk, Chair of Barrick Gold Admits Liability for The Desecration Of Lake Cowal Sacred Site, Australia
At today’s Barrick Gold AGM held at the Convention Centre in Toronto, Neville ‘Chappy’ Williams, traditional owner of Lake Cowal and Western Shoshone delegates from Nevada successfully questioned the Barrick Gold Board of Directors during the live webcast. Shareholders were amazed and concerned the interveners had traveled so far to raise their objections Peter Munk tried to explain why Barrick Gold shares continued their ‘disappointing’ decline in value whilst the mining industry is “drowning in liquidity” as he put it. Peter Munk blamed Barrick Gold’s demise on NGOs who pressure governments to require too many permits before mining can commence. He cited 500 permits before the controversial Pascua Lama could begin construction in a glacier area on the border of Chile and Argentina. The Western Shoshone delegate, granddaughter of the late Mary Dann articulated her intense opposition to Barrick’s plan to mine her Peoples’ sacred mountain. Next Neville ‘Chappy’ Williams too the microphone and passionately put his case and personally served a Notice to Quit on Peter Munk and the Board of Dirctors. He stated: “On April 07, Barrick’s mines manager, Bill Shallvey, refused to be served this document. As an elder of the Wiradjuri Nation I serve this document on Barrick Gold on behalf of the Mooka and Kalara united families within the Wiradjuri Nation.” The Notice to Cease Illegal Occupation of Lake Cowal includes: “Under Wiradjuri custom, tradition and Law/Lore you have received your three warnings. You must now respect the unceded sovereignty of the Wiradjuri Nation and cease all operations; restore the landscape; remove all equipment and replace all artifacts to their GPS’d positions.” We reserve our right to take further action as necessary.” After the AGM Neville ‘Chappy’ Williams approached Peter Munk and stressed that Barrick Gold is desecrating the sacred site of Lake Cowal. Peter Munk tried to say he had so many employees he didn’t really know what Barrick Gold was doing. Eleanor Gilbert, challenged this by saying: “But the buck stops with you Mr Munk. Ultimately you are the one responsible.” Peter Munk agreed. Neville Williams continued by detailing the desecration and stressed his right to religious freedom under section 116 of the Australian Constitution. As Peter Munk moved away he turned to Neville Williams and with a haunted look in his eyes said: “I’m so sorry.” Media from Quebec and Chile recorded Peter Munk’s admission of liability. Later a shareholder approached Neville Williams saying: “I’ve got shares in Barrick. I’m thinking now whether I should sell my shares in Barrick Gold.” In a peaceful demonstration outside the AGM supporters were handing out the Alternative Annual Report for Barrick Gold [www.protestbarrick.net] when two were roughly arrested for trespassing whilst they stood on the sidewalk. Contact Neville Williams 647 268 4440 or +61 421 795 639
Photos: GOLD MINING CORES OUT MOUNTAINS: Newmont gold mining on Western Shoshone land/Project Underground. (R) Lake Cowall gold mine processing plant in Australia. Image: Natalie Lowrey
MIGRANT RALLY: Los Angeles Police Beat Women, Shoot Rubber Bullets at Families
Now being censored by much of the print media, but shown on television news, Los Angeles police fired rubber bullets at families and even beat a female legal observer with a baton during the migrant rally in a park on Tuesday:
Photo and article by Leslie Radford:
http://la.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=1437&category_id=3
Photo and article by Leslie Radford:
http://la.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=1437&category_id=3
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Border Guardians Spew Hatred During Migrant March in Tucson
TUCSON, Ariz. -- Thousands marched for migrant rights here on Tuesday, as less than a dozen members of the hate group Border Guardians yelled profanity and racial slurs at marchers. Photos by Brenda Norrell: (Above) Russ Dove, member of Border Guardians, attempts to provoke marchers with racial insults and obscenities. (Below) Sebastian Quinac, Mayan Cakchiquel from Guatemala, stands as Border Guardians assemble behind him and insult marchers. Photo 3: Mario Guardo rode his motorcycle with an American flag and the sign, "Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime." Photo 4: Thousands marched, shouting, "Cesar Chavez," and "No More Deaths," through the streets of Tucson. 
News articles on marches for migrant rights in Tucson and Phoenix:
COMMENT POST: In response to the comment posted, I don't have video posted, but there are two videos at You Tube of Border Guardians in Phoenix, see link below. Tucson TV stations were present at the Tucson rally, so the stations may have news video available.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
