March 28, 2012
O'odham Ofelia Rivas: Rights violators Border Patrol and Univ. of Ariz.
O'odham Ofelia Rivas: Human rights violators Border Patrol and University of Arizona
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
TUCSON – At the Native Nations Rights Symposium, Ofelia Rivas, O’odham shared a blessing and a welcome, then described how the US Border Patrol and the University of Arizona are violating the rights of the O’odham people to live in their way of life.
During her welcome, Rivas offered a water song for the forum which focused on health of water and protection of water.
Rivas, founder of the O'odham VOICE against the Wall, O'odham Rights Human Rights, described how O’odham have lived here since the beginning of the world.
“Take care how you walk because we consider our lands very sacred,” Rivas said during the rights symposium sponsored by Red Ink. She joined Debra White Plume, Lakota, Simon Ortiz, Acoma Pueblo, Dr. Karletta Chief, Dine’ and other Native American speakers at the community event held at the University of Arizona.
Rivas said, “I have been boycotting this university for 10 years because it develops technology that is used against our people.”
She described how the University of Arizona is advancing spyware technology used against the O’odham people while illegally occupying O’odham lands in what is known to others as the US and Mexico.
“Our lands are absolutely in a state of crisis,” she said of the devastation caused by the US Border Patrol and US security forces.
Rivas said all the technology that Homeland Security is developing here at this university goes against the humanity of O’odham.
“This is what this university does.”
Rivas also responded to the upcoming session of the United Nations Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples to be held at the University of Tucson.
“I have no voice here as a grassroots person and non-academic.”
Speaking on the violence carried out the by the US Border Patrol agents, she described how the Border Patrol agents ran over and killed Bennett Patricio, Jr., an 18-year-old O’odham walking on O’odham land.
“These foreign people invaded my lands and they got away with Bennetts' death."
Rivas described how Patricio’s mother took the case against the Border Patrol all the way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and justice was never delivered against the Border Patrol agents. When she could not find funding to fight the case any longer, she had to move away from Arizona to build a life for her children who are survivors.
When O’odham cross the so-called border in their O’odham homelands, they have to cross four checkpoints, she said.
“It dehumanizes you.
“There has been physical damage to a lot of people.”
The University of Arizona is part of the militarization and ongoing human rights violations on O’odham lands.
“I boycott this university. I don’t’ step foot on this university.”
"My presence is to Honor Debra White Plume for her courageous work."
She said besides the damage done to the O’odham by spyware and other technology developed at the university, it is not a healthy place.
“It is all concrete. It is not healthy for anyone.”
Rivas read the following statement to the water symposium:
O’odham Declaration of Allegiance to Mother Earth
In protest we write these foreign words as this is not our natural language, our O’odham language is not a written language which has existed in its oral form since the beginning of the world;
We declare our allegiance to Mother Earth and the Natural World. We are natural people of this world and original people of these lands now known as southern Arizona, United States and northern Sonora, Mexico.
We denounce the physical manipulation and destruction and alteration of the natural lands and people.
We denounce the contamination of the lands, water and air,
We denounce the destruction
of mountains, waterways and natural habitats of people, animals and plants,
We denounce the alteration of human life, animal and plant life as well as all mountains and waterways and natural habitats,
We denounce the illegal bisection of our lands and illegal occupation by two foreign countries, the United States and Mexico,
We denounce the militarization of our lands, every day of the year, every hour of the day there is presence of armed military in helicopters, jets and airplanes and unmanned airplanes, on jeeps, high profile trucks and pick-up trucks, on all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes, and on horseback,
We denounce the United States government aided and staged drug wars on our lands,
We denounce the United States enforcement of Immigration policies on the O’odham the original people of the lands,
We denounce the criminalization and de-humanizing of the O’odham, the original people of the lands;
· by three military check points existing the present Tohono O’odham Nation Indian Reservation,
· by monitoring and the surveillance of O’odham communities,
· by demanding of proof of citizenship of O’odham in our communities,
· by unwarranted illegal home invasions in O’odham communities,
· by illegal searches and detainments and deportation of O’odham,
· by physical and mental abuse and de-humanizing of the O’odham in our communities,
· by restriction of access to original O’odham lands.
We denounce the ongoing alteration of our people through forced indoctrination through religions, forced assimilation and acculturation.
We are the original people of these lands and we hereby demand you to stop the destruction, contamination and alteration of our home, the Natural World.
We are the O’odham, the original people of these lands, demand the restoration of our Human Rights and Right to Exist and Live by own sovereign government on our Original Ancestral lands. October 10, 2011
O’odham
Rights Human Rights
Ofelia Rivas
P.O. Box
1835
Sells,
Arizona 85634
Support O'odham human rights: http://solidarity-project.org/
Amnesty International: Human rights violations US Southwest
USA: In Hostile Terrain: Human rights violations in immigration enforcement in the US Southwest
http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/usa-in-hostile-terrain-human-rights-violations-in-immigration-enforcement-in-the-us-southwest?page=show
Special report on Indigenous Peoples, with US violations of rights of Tohono O'odham and Yaqui
"The architecture of international human rights law is built on the premise that all persons, by virtue of their essential humanity, should enjoy all human rights."
-- David Weissbrodt, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Non-Citizens
Amnesty International’s report, In Hostile Terrain: Human rights violations in immigration enforcement in the US Southwest, examines the human rights violations associated with immigration enforcement at the border and in the interior of the United States. While the development and implementation of immigration policies are a matter for individual governments, such policies must be compatible with international human rights law and standards. All immigrants, irrespective of their legal status, have human rights. This report shows that the USA is failing in its obligations under international law to ensure these rights. Among its findings are:
- Recent immigration policy in certain border areas has pushed undocumented immigrants into using dangerous routes through the US desert; hundreds of people die each year as a result.
- Immigration enforcement in the USA is a federal responsibility. Federal immigration officials are increasingly working in collaboration with state and local law enforcement agencies but improper oversight of state and local law enforcement has led to increased racial profiling.
- Increasingly, state laws and local policies are creating barriers to immigrants accessing their basic human rights, including rights to education and essential health care services. While these laws are targeting non-citizens, these policies are also impacting US citizen children.
- Recent legislation enacted or proposed in several states targets immigrant communities and places them, Indigenous communities and other minority communities at risk of discrimination.
- Immigrant communities also face a range of barriers to justice when they are victims of crime such as human trafficking, domestic violence or bias crimes.
March 25, 2012
Debra White Plume: 'Wasichu' fat takers are the 1 percent
“They like the pageantry, the colorfulness and the beat of that drum – they really like our beautiful culture -- but they don’t like us." -- Debra White Plume
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
First in a series
White Plume joined Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz, O’odham Ofelia Rivas, and other Native Americans speaking on the preciousness of water, climate change and the destruction of Mother Earth at the forum hosted by Red Ink magazine.
White Plume shared the essence of why the protection of the relatives is required for the continuance of humankind.
“For our people water is sacred. Through water there is life,” White Plume said, describing how Lakota are born into this world in the womb of water, arriving from the Star Nation. Then water is placed in the mouth of the newborn.
White Plume described the fight against Canadian owned Cameco which has targeted Lakota sacred lands with uranium mining. White Plume described how Owe Aku, Bring Back the Way, was created for the work around the world.
White Plume said Lakota know the dimension of responsibility to their relatives. Those relatives include the four-legged, winged ones and standing silent ones, which are the plants. “Everything that crawls and swims is a relative. Water is our relative, Mother Earth is our relative, and the Star Nation is our relative.”
“In the Lakota way, you protect your relatives.”
She said for Lakota, there is no line, like in the western world, between human beings and the environment.
Lakota asked the US Environmental Protection Agency, because it has the word “protection” in its name, “What are you protecting us from?”
They could not answer the question.
Lakota, however, know what they are protecting, and what they are protecting relatives from.
“With this philosophy of everything being related, there comes a time when you have to make a decision.”
“Do you stand by while your mother is being raped, abused and misused?”
She said there are many ways to protect Mother Earth. These include becoming a scientist and learning one’s ancient ways to protect those ways. Another way is to use the western system to stall a company, as Lakota have done in halting Cameco from beginning new uranium mining.
“In seven years, they haven’t turned a shovel,” she said of Cameco.
“We’re guided in our role of a protector,” she said, adding that it is both a duty and a privilege to answer that call.
She said all land is sacred, but some hold special significance, like Crow Butte, located near what is called Fort Robinson.
Crow Butte is where Crazy Horse went to seek a vision with his Pipe and to send his voice to the universe. It has long been a spiritual place for Lakota.
“Now we can’t go there anymore, because there is uranium mining there. It is against the law for us to go there.”
“The US has made laws to make it hard for us to live our way of life,” she said, adding that there are other places, including Bear Butte, where ceremonies continue.
She said the government believes that sources of energy are more important than the Lakota and their way of life.
“For them, getting that uranium is more important than our people having the right to live our way of life.” She said Lakota have used all means to fight the corporations, from the courts to the United Nation.
Then she told of the coming of a white man in heavy winter when there was deep snow. He was covered with hair.
In those early times, fat was tied in the trees in a bladder or stomach bag of the buffalo. Fat was a very valuable substance because there is no fat on buffalo, elk or deer, except for a little around the kidneys. The fat is used for medicine, a source of fire and a lubricant.
The starving white man came for the bundles of fat.
“He took them all, stuffed them all down his mouth.”
“We called him the fat taker. He thought only of himself. He didn’t think of the women who worked for five months to gather the fat so we would have it through the five months of winter.”
“He took it all for himself.”
She said in those days, “We didn’t kill people. We didn’t murder people.”
“So we call him the fat taker.”
“Wasichu is taker of the fat, fat taker, meaning selfishness, pettiness and greediness. Those are all contrary to Lakota thought and philosophy, the way of life.”
“I spoke at Occupy Wall Street and said, ‘We call them waichu. You call them the 1 percent. They understood.”
“These fat takers are mining uranium, not only on my homeland, but down here, wherever they find it,” she said, adding that Indigenous in Australia are also fighting Cameco uranium mining.
“These fat takers are everywhere, they are disrespectful. They showed disrespect to us, our sacred ways and our sacred water.”
"Their greed for money outweighs our way of life and our relevance in this world.”
She also described how upsetting it is at home, on Pine Ridge Indian land, when wasichu come and want the little children to dance for them.
“They like the pageantry, the colorfulness and the beat of that drum – they really like our beautiful culture -- but they don’t like us.”
“They want to have our cultural experience, but they don’t want us.”
“We are trying to make that change at home, whenever the people come and want to see the little children to dance.”
White Plume said colonization is a requirement for fat takers to keep mining.
“Our identity is being a relative with Ina Maka Mother Earth.”
Watch for the next article in this series from the Native Nation Water Rights Symposium at Censored News. http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Copyright Censored News.
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