Canada: Protests and blockades

Canada: National Day of Action, see breaking news on protests at Google:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Mohawks&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n

JUNE 29 DAY OF PROTEST

Mohawk Nation News

9:00 am. Discussions with Shawn Brant to open up Number 2 to Marysville. Little Mouselini Fantino said he has a present for Shawn Brant that he wants to give him within the hour. The OPP closed the TransCanada Highway 401. The CN CP rail were closed by the rail companies. They put up the blockades. Are they turning Indian? At any rate, now we know how to close down the colonial operation. We just have to say we’re g0ing to do it and they do it themselves. Shawn Brant said, “We have been pre-empted by CN”.

Maybe the situation isn’t so funny after all.

A Kanehsatake Mohawk saw an armed Canadian Naval Frigate docked in Montreal port as of Wednesday, June 28th. What a coincidence!
Or what? Good thing they didn’t see him. They might have shot him like Champlain shot the first Mohawks he saw.

Highway 30 that surrounds Montreal on the south shore was blocked this morning by Mohawks of Kahnawake at 6:30 am. for about half an hour. Now one lane is open. It goes from St. Constant to Chateauguay . The government sanctioned squatters are squirming because they have vivid and distressing memories about their inconvenience caused by the blockade of the Mercier Bridge during the Mohawk Oka Crisis of 1990. They all smiled at us and were so grateful and relieved when they got waved through.

At 12:00 noon today there will be a march from Kahnawake, over the Mercier Bridge to the Seaway span, flags will be hoisted and then the marchers will return to the south end of the bridge.

MCK band council of Kahnwake is holding a press conference at the Services Complex. They have to make sure they’re in on the action. it’s funny how the people have the initiative and the colonial politicians take the credit, as ever.

Report from Ottawa : Some toilets have been blocked and plumbers are working overtime at Parliament Hill. Is this a sign that someone’s constipation has ended and they finally had a bowel movement? We will all flush at 3:00 pm. in their honor to encourage Canadian politicians to get rid of their shit.

As far as we can see, they don’t appear anywhere in sight. There is a run on Diapers, Port-a-potties, Rolaids and Pepto-Bismol on Parliament Hill. What could they possibly be worried about?

The BBC in London called to get the lowdown on what’s happening in the colonies.

MNN has received calls from journalists at various times in the past. We provided leads for their stories on the Mohawks and Indigenous issues. Sometimes they publish. Sometimes they don’t. We have been advised of an occasion when a Canadian journalist was fired under circumstances that make it appear that his investigation into this kind of information was at issue. Do you still believe in freedom of the press among the colonial cultures on Turtle Island .

At the International bridge in Akwesasne [which is located in colonial Ontario , Quebec and New York State ] there were many Mohawks with tires which the OPP came by and took away. We just hope they aren’t going to come back and take the tires off our cars.

A letter from a supporter to Ottawa : “It is an absolute crime the way your government treats the Aboriginal people. This is to let you know that your white Nazi approach to solving problems is despicable! The world is being made aware of your neglect of the aboriginal people”.

MNN Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
Katenies20@yahoo.com

Arizona border: In the shadow of the spy tower

By Brenda Norrell

My friends and I drove out to one of the new spy towers that isn't working along the U.S./Mexico border.
All along the border, people are outraged that their right to privacy has been violated, as new spy towers are up, with cameras ready to capture their every move.
Border residents are scrambling to look for a draft environmental impact statement, if one exists, and information on how the microwaves will damage their health. They want to know how the radar will harm bats and other creatures that pollinate the delicate ecosystem of the desert.
The Secure Border Initiative, Project 28, is turning into one of the U.S. government's grandest fiasco's. And there's lots of competition there.
Suddenly, without Arizona land owners having an opportunity to comment, these spy cameras are ready to view everyone in the privacy of their backyards and backseats.
The U.S. contractor, Boeing, was able to keep one fact a secret along the border. The firm that is working with Boeing on this spy fence, Israeli-owned Elbit Systems, is the same one building the Apartheid Fence in occupied Palestine.
In a separate case, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen for torture flights to secret prisons.
At the same time on the Arizona border, the ancestors of Tohono O'odham were dug up and removed from tribal land for the border vehicle barrier on tribal land. Ofelia Rivas, O'odham Voice Against the Wall, says it was a violation of federal law and O'odham want their ancestors returned and reburied.
Needless, to say, everyone is looking for attorneys to file lawsuits.
Back at the spy tower, my friends and I had a little picnic of chocolates and grapes, in the shadow of the defunct spy tower, just as the final light of day disappeared in the desert mountains.
I should mention, that these friends are probably the only two people in the world that would do such a thing, calmly. We sat, as dark fell, having a picnic beneath a non-functioning border spy tower -- a tower that violates everything Americans have celebrated: human rights, respect, rights to privacy and the rights in the Constitution.
In the shadow of the spy tower, with its red light blinking in the desert night, the only thing we observed was a very nervous young guard sitting in his white truck at the spy tower.
Across the vast rolling hills, thunder clouds threatened.
We'll keep you posted.
--Brenda Norrell
Here's one document on the Secure Border Initiative that few people can find. We're still searching for that draft environmental impact statement, if one exists:
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS80699
Here's another US document:
http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS80669

Waiting for the rains

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

TUCSON -- This is the worst time of year, the heat is insufferable. After 15 minutes of walking in this 107 degrees baking-oven, I run into an ice-cold cafe for an ice-cold green tea.
What makes it worse this year, is most people can't afford to run their air conditioners at home, or own a car with air conditioning.
This is the hardest time of year here, when there is no relief from the sun, the time before the monsoon rains.
Then, I remember all those people headed north from Mexico, Guatemala and the south. Their families are hungry or a wife or child is sick and there is no medicine. They walk in this torturous heat and risk dieing in the baking desert.
Many do not make it. Their bodies are found out there, beneath mesquite trees or on the dry-baked earth. Many have died of heat exposure or dehydration. Some have been shot, others have been raped and shot.
The heat, and those images, are difficult to convey in words.
Photographer Michael Hyatt has captured images to tell this story. Hyatt's photos are of the mementos that migrants leave behind. He has just released a book of photos, Migrant Artifacts: Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert (Great Circle Books, $30).
At the book's opening show in Tucson Saturday night, one photo told the sad story of one life. A pair of leather sands, worn sandals like the kind that Indigenous wear in Chiapas, Oaxaca and most other places in the south, were left in the sand. They were left there, as if the person walking had simply stepped out of them during a slow and purposeful stride, stepped out of them and gone onto the next world.
More than 4,000 people have died crossing this desert along the border, each mourned by a mother, father, brother, sister, daughter or son.
Still, there are those volunteers out there each day trying to save lives. The volunteers from No More Deaths and the Samaritans look for those dieing in the desert. Humane Borders volunteers leave water in gallon jugs and small tanks for those dieing of thirst. Tohono O'odham Mike Wilson is one of those. The water, and the volunteers, are not enough to cover the vastness of the desert.
Derechos Humanos Coalition is struggling to protect migrant rights, including those shot and raped by border agents. The Indigenous Alliance Without Borders is fighting for the right for safe passage for Indigenous at the border.
The O'odham Voice Against the Wall is struggling to protect the ceremonial routes from the intrusion of the border wall and the return of their ancestors, following the recently vandalized graves by U.S. border construction.
Everyone is struggling, everyone is waiting for it to rain.
--Brenda Norrell

Photos by Michael Hyatt from his new book: "Migrant Artifacts: Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert"
"Our Lady of Guadalupe on the Migrant Trail," 2003.
"Anne Frank in Migrant Camp," 2004.

Authentic journalism, beyond money and even glory

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

There are a handful of heroes writing authentic journalism with courage and boldness, including Al Giordano at Narco News. Narco News exposes the fraudulent "war on drugs," while covering the Americas, including extensive coverage of the Zapatistas.

Giordano recently turned down an award from Project Censored, pointing out that the book publishing company would be making big bucks off the story. Giordano's work is a labor of love and passion. Like most authentic journalists, he works for little pay.

Other journalists, like myself, came kicking and screaming to the use of blogs to write authentic journalism. It was only after getting fired twice by a leading national Indian newspaper, where I served as a staff writer, that I realized that the only way to do it, is to do it myself. (I have no sponsors and receive no pay for this blog.)

When I saw an article I wrote today on the website of Indian Country Today -- the newspaper that fired me twice and forced me into bankruptcy -- it was troubling.

The link is to the story of a murdered Lakota woman, Lillian "Sunshine" Wright, a homeless woman on the streets of Tucson who brought out the best in people, in her life and death.

It is interesting that while I was writing that article, after Sunshine's memorial last week, I kept thinking of how the managing editor of Indian Country Today in 2005 had repeatedly demanded that I stop writing about grassroots people.

Would Indian Country Today have printed an article about Sunshine while she was alive and living on the streets? It is doubtful. I was told to write about politicians.

There's still a lot of "Sunshines" out there.

It also seems a good time, with Indian Country Today traffic headed this way, to point out some of the stories that remain censored at the newspaper. Just to name a few censored issues, there's the ongoing federal probe of some reporters' sweetheart, Congressman Rick Renzi, R-Ariz.; any issue referring to Leonard Peltier and finally, the Zapatistas' Other Campaign at the Mexican border.

In closing, here's Giordano's comments to Project Censored.

"The same indignant passions provoked in me when an unelected group of bean counters stole the votes from the Mexican people – that led me to investigate and publish that series of reports – are recurrent today when I read the heavy-handed manner in which your project seeks to sell or give my work to a commercial publisher of dubious ethics and motives without my permission."

By the way, Project Censored contacted me as well. They wanted to talk. I'm still waiting for that phone call. But like Giordano, I'm not holding my breath in hopes that anything good will come out of it.

--Brenda Norrell
Read more:
Narco News
http://www.narconews.com/
"Remembering Sunshine, murdered Lakota woman, special spirit"
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/06/remembering-sunshine-murdered-lakota.html