Censored: Texas border columnist Jay Johnson-Castro

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

DEL RIO, Texas -- Jay Johnson-Castro, who recently wrote "Gang Rape of the Borderlands," and has been a leader in exposing the imprisoned infants and children at Hutto prison in Texas, has been terminated as a columnist by the Rio Grande Guardian in Texas.

The termination Jay received today, by way of e-mail, is the clearest indication that Jay has not only been reporting the truth, but has done such incredible work that the newspaper publisher feels she must terminate and attempt to censor him.

What they don't know is that this effort to silence him will only increase his opportunity for truth-telling. Around the world now, more people will know that migrant and refugee infants and children are imprisoned at the T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor, Texas. It is the same prison that denied entrance to the United Nations Rapporteur on migrants, Jorge Bustamante, in May 2007.

Because of this termination, more people will now know that migrant women were sexually assaulted at the prison and chained to their beds during medical examinations.

This attempt at censorship will now lead to more people around the world knowing that the Bush administration has engaged in a media campaign of racism and xenophobia at the border, resulting in huge contracts for private prisons. Private prisons in Texas are receiving a huge chunk of those migrant prison dollars. Now every migrant has a price on his head.

Just this week, Johnson-Castro was celebrated as one of the Censored blog's outstanding uncensored media voices of 2007.

Today is Jay Johnson-Castro Day at the Censored Blog! Let's celebrate one more attempt at censorship giving us all a reason to shout the truth: "Free the children of Hutto Prison!"

Good luck to Jay on his border walks as a Border Ambassador. Thank you for joining the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas 2007 on Tohono O'odham land.

We look forward to more of Jay's coverage from the Texas border, as Homeland Security prepares to seize private lands using the law of eminent domain, including lands of the Lipan Apache, whose women and elderly are calling for support from around the world.

Now, without the constraints of newspaper censorship, Jay can tell more of the truth at the Texas border.

Cheer Jay on at:
host@villadelrio.com

Congratulations!

Juan Reza's comment published with permission:

Hi Jay! I just finished reading about your firing at the Rio Grande Guardian through Brenda Norrell’s site. With sincere and humble respect I render to you my Congratulations! I read several of your articles within the last few months, and I commend you for your steadfast, courageous reporting of critical information that the sell-out media owners and their accomplices are refusing to disseminate. I will be sending my prayers your way, that you may be strengthened even further in your resolve to provide truthful, highly ethical services to the people you really serve: God’s Children, your relatives, the poorest and most vulnerable ones. Where one is intelligently courageous for a noble purpose, others will be too. Wishing you the greatest of blessings possible, that according to the great Lakota Holy Man, Frank Fools Crow, are inner peace and Love. Juan Reza

Photo: Jay Johnson-Castro at the Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas, center, with Lakota, Oneida and delegation of Mohawks. The delegation was expressing the distress of watching fellow Indigenous Peoples being arrested on Tohono O'odham land, Mayans walking to a better life, near the border wall now under construction. Border wall on Tohono O'odham is in projected photo behind those seated. Photo Brenda Norrell

American Indian Genocide Museum: Russell goes to Washington

Steve Melendez, Pyramind Lake Paiute
President, American Indian Genocide Museum
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

HOUSTON -- In 1980 the United States government printed 500 hardcover books called, The Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission. It is on our Museum’s wish list.
In it on page 4 under the heading “Historical Survey," it makes the grand revelation on how this government is dealing with First Nations America.
Giving a history of its very own formation, it candidly reveals, “… to create a United States Court of Indian Claims. This court was to consist of three judges, have a 5-year filing period for all claims founded upon the Constitution, laws of Congress, treaties and contracts, and render a final decision within a 10 year life span. Thus, by 1930, the resolution of Indian claims was proposed under two forms of tribunal. In 1934 and early 1935, the proponents of an Indian court submitted two more bills to establish an Indian claims court. Both bills were ignored, largely because they were not, by this time, considered practical answers to the claims situation. In a report to the Senate committee on Indian Affairs, Secretary of Indian Affairs Harold Ickes argued against them and directed the Senators’ attention to a bill recently introduced in the House to create an Indian claims commission instead of a court which he considered preferable. With the introduction, in March 1935, of H.R. 6655, an act to create an Indian claims commission, the legislative movement to expedite Indian claims shifted irreversibly from the consideration of a judicial to a commission format. Both Congress and the Secretary of the Interior now felt that a commission rather than an adversary proceeding could better 'cut through” the red tape of Government agencies charged with the preparation of Indian cases. An investigatory commission appeared to be a better vehicle for “claims involving history and anthropology as much as law.' This bill, and three similar ones, aroused a good deal of debate throughout the 1930’s but no legislation resulted.”

In other words, this was and is the government’s boldface attempt to nullify all treaties made with First Nations America by circumventing the courts and the rule of law. The movement shifted from a “judicial to a commission format???" What hogwash!!!

Sure the Indian Claims Commission went out of business in 1980 but its rulings are still hanging over the heads of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone Nation and Dr.Russell Means and the Lakota Nation to the tune of $34 million and $800 million, respectively.

Everyone who knows the story of Carrie Dann knows the story of how the indigenous people have been criminalized for standing up for Native civil rights. And yes, treaty rights are guaranteed and protected by the U.S. Constitution under article 6--supposedly.

And laws supposedly should be enforced but they are not. This is just the latest example of the racial discrimination that our people have had to endure for the last 500 years.

When Columbus waded ashore and said that he, “…was taking possession of this island for the King and Queen," why is it not right for Dr. Russell Means to go to Washington and do the same thing.

Black’s Law Dictionary tells me on Pg.1502 that a treaty is “An agreement, league, or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns.”

Did the United States honor their end of the international agreement called the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868? In the summer of 1874 Gen. Philip Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills to verify the rumor that gold had been found. Miners had been showing up with gold. He had an entourage of about 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons, two or three gatling guns, a cannon, a sixteen piece brass band mounted on white horses and two miners who were the experts on gold. He was there in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land, the treaty of 1868. When he found gold, he sent a dispatch back to Ft. Laramie: “Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have on my table 40 or 50 small particles of pure gold. In size, averaging in size that of a small pinhead, and most of it taken today from one panful of earth.”

The following year, President Ulysses S. Grant stood before Congress and said,“…The Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his discretion.”

Volume 9 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Page 4306 President Ulysses S. Grant’s 7th Annual Message To the Senate and House of Representatives, December 7, 1875.

“Sustenance” is food and withholding food from people is a government policy of starvation. Previously, the U.S. Army supported the extermination of the buffalo in order to control the native people. Why wait for the hammer to drop again? Why not support Dr. Means before the hammer drops on this economy and $800 won’t buy bread let alone buffalo. Ask not what the U.S. Government can do for one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, ask what is the price for reparations for genocide. If ever you find that you are a part of a deceptive system called Mystery Babylon you are instructed to, “Come out or her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes."

Sometimes, to be right is worth more than all the gold they stole out of the Homestake Gold Mine, "a portion of the Sioux Reservation."

To read more on the Homestake Gold Mine http://www.aigenom.com/homestakegoldmine.html

Photos: Lakota Freedom Delegation.
http://picasaweb.google.com/LakotaFree/PressConference121907

Alex and Debra White Plume's home burns to the ground

Friends,
Alex and Debra White Plume's home burned to the ground on Pine Ridge. They lost everything. Our Lakota friends have given their all, always championing justice for the people and protection of the land and sacred ways. Hopefully now we can return something to them. Brenda Norrell

From Kent Lebsock:
Yesterday, the home of my good friends, Alex and Debra White Plume, burnt to the ground. Gratefully, no one was injured. Nonetheless, they had built the home themselves and raised their children and grandchildren there. Because they had the chance to build their own home, they did not have to live in the government housing designed to keep our people from the land. The home was their shelter on the territory of the Lakota Nation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

I don’t suppose there is anyway to understand this kind of loss. On TV, in these kinds of disasters, they always say, ‘well, it was only things that were lost and thank god everyone got out ok.’ True enough about the people. But I don’t believe that in a real home it’s only things: there is a spirit there, like anywhere, and that spirit nurtures us. When it is wounded we are wounded.

All of the excellent work that Alex and Debra have done for our people all of these years came out of this home. All of Debra and Alex’s records, books, reports, studies, art, and irreplaceable records of the Native and Indigenous movement over the past 40 years were, of course, lost along with their home. Consequently, their loss is a loss to all of us interested in the preservation of our culture and history.

I love Alex and Debra like the family they are and admire them more than I can express. I have had no idea of how to respond to this tragedy. Everyone is offering to do what they can, but what can we really do besides pray and invoke the spirit of the ancestors who share in the tragedies of all our people and help us, in their wisdom, to heal. Well, I thought, I can at least donate some money and ask our network of family, allies and friends to do the same. None of us are wealthy people but I’ve seen, through my work with Debra and Alex, what allies united can achieve. Even if it’s only $5, they can buy a 12 pack of socks or $20 will get a pair of coveralls at Walmart. Banding together, I think we really can be of help in the short term.

This is not tax deductible. This isn’t a contribution for any advocacy or any of our work. It’s just to help friends. I admit that this is somewhat selfish on my part because I feel so helpless and felt the need to do something. But if any of you feel the same way, let’s come together and help out.

Checks or money orders or I suppose even cash can be sent to Alex and Debra White Plume, PO Box 535 , Manderson , SD 57756 . If you have any questions, give me a call in New York at 917-751-4239.

Pila maya yelo.
Kent Lebsock
Owe Aku (Bring Back the Way)
International Justice & Human Rights Project
917-751-4239
iamkent@verizon.net

Santa Monica Mirror: Martial law and migrant detention camps

Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?
Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg, Santa Monica Mirror Online Contributing Writers
"Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the U.S government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and non-citizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of 'an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.' Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build hundreds of detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees." Read article:
http://www.smmirror.com/MainPages/DisplayArticleDetails.asp?eid=6892