US Apartheid Wall under construction on Tohono O'odham lands

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SAN MIGUEL GATE, TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION (Arizona) -- The United States' Apartheid Wall is under construction on Tohono O'odham Nation lands, shown here at the San Miguel Gate. Minutes after this photo was taken, a delegation of Mohawks and other Native people stood before the Border Patrol with fists held high in solidarity and would have intervened in the arrest of Mayans, if the Border Patrol had not packed the Mayans into a vehicle and sped away. Delegates from the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas were disgusted to see the border wall going up on Indian land; the "cage" where men women and children are held on Indian land; and the arrests of Mayans, mostly women and children, on Tohono O'odham land. The construction of the border wall on O'odham land has already resulted in the digging up the ancestors of the O'odham from their final resting place, on the western side of Tohono O'odham Nation lands by the contractor Boeing. The border wall will also be a barrier for the traditional ceremonial route of O'odham. Although it is endorsed by the Tohono O'odham Nation government, individual O'odham are protesting the wall with support from Indigenous Peoples throughout the Americas. (Photo Jay Johnson-Castro)

On Big Warm Creek, Living as a Free People

By Brenda Norrell

Special to Navajo Times

Part II of III

BIG WARM CREEK, Montana – Vernie White Cow Main of the White Clay People, remembers the log house where she grew up, the June berries she once picked and the wild horses in the mountains. She also remembers her son Jim Main, Jr., incarcerated in a bordertown for a crime he said he did not commit.
Seated at the table in her kitchen, eating fresh salmon brought to
her by friends, the Sohappy family of the Columbia River Indian Nation, Vernie remembers life along Big Warm Creek on Fort Belknap Nation lands.
Seated at her kitchen table, near the huge wood stove for heat and surrounded by family photos and deer antlers, she looks out back at the log cabin where she grew up.
"I was born in there. My whole family was born in there. We had 14 children," Vernie Main says of her childhood, remembering two sets of twins.

Read article:

http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-big-warm-creek-living-as-free-people.html

Blackfire, sounding out strength and resistance!

Special thanks to Jeneda, Klee and Clayson Benally and their father Jones Benally for driving all those miles to perform in San Xavier for the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas! Thanks for your good words to protect San Francisco Peaks from wastewater and support for Navajos resisting the power plant at Desert Rock, the self-determination movement of the Maori who were arrested recently, the struggle of Apaches for Mount Graham, the Zapatistas movement for Indigenous autonomy and justice and all the of the struggles for dignity and humanity for the sake of the Seven Generations to come.

Ake'hee

Photos: Jones Benally, who sang traditional Dine' songs with the family band, with KXCI Radio News Director Amanda Shauger. (2)Rockin' out sounds. (3)Jeneda with her 15-month-0ld daughter. Photos Brenda Norrell

Yaqui delegation detained enroute to Indigenous Border Summit

A delegation of Yaquis from Sonora, Mexico, were detained at the US/Mexico border for 11 hours without food or water, enroute to the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas 2007. The delegation persevered and arrived to share their critical information on how pesticides banned in the United States are killing Yaqui in Rio Sonora, six hours drive south of the border. "Jelly babies," babies born without bones, have been born in the Yaqui Pueblos. The other place the "jelly babies" are found is in the Pacific Islands, where mothers are the victims of extensive nuclear testing. (Photo: Members of the Yaqui delegation from Sonora interviewed on earthcycles.net for summit webcast. Photo Brenda Norrell) Article coming ...