Censored News March 2014

Here's some of our top articles, and original articles, during March 2014!

Indigenous Resistance

Lakota Allies Gather to Stand Sacred Ground

Bahe of Big Mountain: Gradual Resurgence of Land Based Resistance

Klee Benally on Democracy Now: Uranium mining and genocide

Border Militarization on Democracy Now: Alex Soto and Klee Benally

Leonard Peltier denied medication in prison

Robert Free: UN Game of Charades: Boycott World Indigenous Conference

Native Americans 'No!' to Tiger Lily casting and stereotype

Original articles by Brenda Norrell

Apartheid Israeli company receives border contract, includes building US spy towers on Tohono O'odham land:

Rage in the Desert, Tantoo Cardinal on Finding Voice: Live coverage of Agua Caliente Native Film Festival

Tantoo Cardinal receives Agua Caliente Indigenous Film Award during night of profound films

News Spin

Tucson Book Festival Photos Native Pavilion

Native Americans:'NO!' to Tiger Lily casting and stereotype

Tiger Lily in Peter Pan

Native Americans Demand Warner Brothers to Reconsider Casting of Rooney Mara for Role Of Tiger Lily in Peter Pan remake

By Jacqueline Keeler

Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry

Censored News

PORTLAND, Oregon – Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, a group of Native parents and their allies from across the country are asking Warner Brothers Pictures and director Joe Wright (Atonement, Hanna) to reconsider the casting of the actress Rooney Mara for the role of Tiger Lily. To this end they are conducting a “Twitterstorm” and have already trended the hashtag #NotYourTigerLily nationally to make their concerns about this historically problematic role of a Native American princess heard.

The depiction of a Native American tribe the Pickaninnies in the Disney version of Peter Pan is a regressive and stereotypical portrayal of Native American men as savages who speak in simple guttural speak and the portrayal of the silent "Indian Princess" Tiger Lily is also stereotypical and is one that most Native parents do not want their children to see. The Native parents of EONM were very disappointed that Disney chose to rerelease the film in 2013.

"What Disney tried to teach Native girls through Tiger Lily was that as native women, they were to accept violence and remain silent. They were shown that even as children they would be sexually objectified and that they needed to play into that role. They were taught that Natives were big "Spoofums" that could not be trusted and that they lacked the intelligence to protect them, that their only chance of rescue would come from the white man."

- EONM member Johnnie Jae (Jiwere-Nutachi/Chahta) Executive Managing Editor of Native Max and a freelance photographer

The recycling of such stereotypes in Hollywood history has not had a high

success rate as seen by the low box office figures of The Lone Ranger. Johnny Depp's attempt to remake Tonto, which earned him a Razzie was universally panned. We feel such attempts to rehabilitate controversial and racists tropes have a poor success record.

This leaves Native Americans like Jacqueline Keeler, a writer and an EONM member and Navajo/Yankton Sioux mother of two wondering "How will director Joe Wright achieve a Peter Pan remake that is 'international and multiracial' as he described in a recent interview by hiring a white actress to portray a character well-known to have been Native American in the original? Will he will be whitewashing the character and reducing the 'international and multiracial' quality of the film or be painting the actress in Redface? I am not sure which is worse--our erasure from stories or to have others 'Play Indian' today, in the 21st century 50 years after the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Movement."

EONM asks Warner Brothers Pictures and director Joe Wright to engage the Native American community in how the role of Tiger Lily will be portrayed.  They also call upon the studio, director and the actress Rooney Mara to reconsider the casting of the role.

The group EONM, has been fighting Redface in both media and in sports. They trended #NotYourMascot nationally during the Super Bowl and demanded and received an apology to Native parents and their children from Sonic Drive-in for a racist sign that appeared at a Sonic Drive-in in Belton, Missouri during a Washington Redsk*ns/Kansas City Chiefs game in December of last year. They also trended #NotYourTonto during the Oscars to protest the nomination of The Lone Ranger for makeup. Their goal is to eliminate the practice of Native Mascotry—the racist and stereotypical antics seen by fans at games dressed in Redface, and to improve the modern understanding of Native people and Indian Sovereignty to all Americans.

News Spin

News Spin

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

Here's some of the strategies used by the media to keep poisoning the earth, either to appease their advertisers, or because of their personal prejudices. 
(1) Distraction: Focus on safe and easy issues that are not controversial, including those that take up a lot of time. 
(2) One-sided PR spin, such as in the statement of Tex Hall on indianz.com and the pro oil and gas 'news' article on Navajo Times.
(3) Reporters refuse to be present on news stories, either out of their own laziness because they rewrite the web and post links from their homes, as in the case of most reporters at Indian Country Today, or because their publishers will not pay the expenses, or both. The result is a lack of facts for readers and profiteering for armchair reporters who never leave their homes. They make their money by plagiarizing, or rewriting, the hard work of reporters and unpaid activists.
(4) The Power of Pressure: Political control by local power mongers, politicians, money men or because of bullies in the news room. 
(5) Corruption and deception at the top: Editors who maintain their positions in less than honorable ways.

Brenda Norrell has been a news reporter in Indian country for 32 years. During the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation, she was a reporter first for Navajo Times, then a stringer for AP and USA Today. After serving as a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today, she was censored, then terminated, in 2006. She began Censored News as a result, now in its 8th year with no advertising and 3 million pageviews.

Lakota Allies Gather to Stand Their Sacred Ground

Lakota Allies Gather to Stand Their Sacred Ground

by Natalie Hand and Kent Lebsock, Owe Aku International Justice Project (www.oweakuinternational.org)

Censored News

“We sought spiritual guidance and were told that the spirit of Unci Maka will awaken people to protect her. For us it has always been about protecting sacred water, whether it's uranium mining or KXL.”  Debra White Plume, Owe Aku, Moccasins on the Ground.

The grassroots people of the Kul Wicasa Oyate (Lower Brule) immediately put out a call to action when they learned that their Tribal Council (1934 Indian Reorganization Act government) agreed to allow the construction of a power station and power lines on treaty land necessary to move tarsands oil through the KXL pipeline.  Despite efforts of the grassroots leaders to obtain documentation from the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, their attempts were unanswered.  The Lower Brule Sioux tribal council is comprised of six people including President Michael Jandreau, who has served in tribal government since 1973, with the most recent decades in the office of the President.  Inquiries to the Council by several tribal members resulted first in denial, then in confirmation (without documentation) and finally an admission that the ‘carrot’ to the Tribal Council is the construction of wind turbines and free electricity for tribal members.    
Lakota people from Rosebud Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux reservations and surrounding towns and urban areas, as well as members of Owe Aku's Moccasins on the Ground, headquartered on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation, answered the call to action. The grassroots people served the evening meal to the gathering of about 200 people and spiritual protocol was followed with the offering of prayer and honor songs by Kul Wicasa singers.  George Estes, a member of the Kul Wicasa Oyate and world renowned Lakota flutist, shared a song for Mother Earth to strengthen the growing spirit of collective action.
"We answered the call to action to stand in solidarity with our relatives who want to protect sacred water and lands from Transcanada's HUGE power station needed to pump tarsands through our treaty territory. According to everything we have learned, their tribal council is taking action behind the peoples backs.  We will stand with our relatives and, as one young man said, ‘lets take it right to them,” stated White Plume.
“We’re up against a well-established council.  They had to have signed an agreement,” said Kevin Wright, co-organizer of the meeting.  Power line leases are entered into with local utilities and power corporations (under South Dakota Public Utilities Commission regulations), in this case Basin Electric who intends to provide electrical power to Keystone XL.
The grassroots people of Kul Wicasa oppose the development of the power line infrastructure planned by Basin Electric.  The Lower Brule substation is to be located two miles from the Big Bend Damn.  The thick, corrosive nature of tarsands oil (which in its natural state is the consistency of peanut butter) requires a constant temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit and necessary dilutants to liquify it enough to be slurried through the pipeline. This will require an enormous amount of power.  Basin Electric stated at a public utilities commission meeting in Winner, SD “the pipeline apparently moves oil under 1440 pounds of pressure per square inch. If the line is to move 700,000 barrels of crude per day, each pumping station requires three 6500 hp electric motors running on 17 megawatts of power night and

day.  If the flow rate is increased to 900,000 barrels per day, five 6500hp electric motors are required.  That would use 25 megawatts of power.”

This increasing demand for electricity forces the need for the additional power station at Lower Brule. Transmission studies indicate the current system has reached its load limit.   Given the location of the Lower Brule substation, 2 miles south of the Big Bend Damn, it is apparent Missouri River water will be used to produce electricity.
The 230-kV transmission line would impact the landscape along the Missouri River.  This area provides a recreational and tourism based economy to the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.  According to TransCanada’s own Supplemental Environmental Impact Study, “the 75-mile transmission line would have a 125-foot-wide right of way; therefore, approximately 1,150 acres of land would be affected by construction… An average of 6.6 support structures per mile would be required. The average height of the structures would be 110 feet, and each would span an average of 800 feet.”
Both TransCanada and Basin Electric admit the impacts of the power lines would be permanent, including destruction of soil and vegetation along the right of access and though TransCanada has agreed to mitigate this damage, there are no guarantees.  This could negatively impact the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe’s environmentally sound economic development project called Lakota Foods, started seven years ago with popcorn, kidney and pinto beans, including processing and packaging facilities.  These products are grown on the reservation and the enterprise provides jobs to the people most immediately affected by the proposed KXL pipeline’s need for electrical expansion.  (http://www.americanindianfoods.com/products/lakota-foods/)
In June 2011, Canada’s National Energy Board inspectors revealed pump stations in four locations lacked a required “alternate source of power capable of operating each station’s emergency shut-down system,” finding TransCanada is non-compliant with board regulations.  Evan Vokes, a “whistleblower” who has challenged TransCanada’s methods stated, “an audit based on paper and interviews only cannot catch non-compliance in the field. In my experience, TransCanada’s management failings are systemic and won’t be fixed simply by reviewing what TransCanada says its policies are on paper. These kind of reviews have not fixed the problem in the past and they aren’t sufficient now. Time and again, TransCanada’s internal and third-party audit systems have failed to catch the repeated substandard practice of engineering in the construction and maintenance of its pipelines.”  (http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/03/07/whistleblower-s-evidence-against-transcanada-whitewashed-regulators.)
Kevin Wright of the Kul Wicasa Oyate stated, “even one inch is too much” when it comes to collaboration that leads to the construction of KXL tarsands pipeline on Lakota treaty territory. “The electric power necessary to move tarsands bitumen does not come close to the power of the Lakota Oyate to protect our sacred water,” stated Natalie Hand.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe is in the same situation.  Although Transcanada has carefully avoided routing the pipeline across reservation land, they too are impacted by KXL’s necessary infrastructure.  Russell Eagle Bear of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council, which has officially opposed the Pipeline, stated that power lines are planned to cross the Rosebud reservation.  He said construction of a man camp is planned literally across a narrow dirt road from the reservation.   “We told the Bureau of Indian Affairs, do not let the transmission line through our territory.”
White Plume warned of the devastation that will be caused by TransCanada infrastructure, whether it’s the pipeline, the electrical infrastructure or the bad man camps that will each house up to two thousand imported workers.  “In this work we’ve learned a lot about the tarsands mines up north, we have friends and allies who live in a spiritual way who come from there. They've been displaced from their land because some of their band members signed agreements with corporations and the First Nations peoples had to move off the land; the land isn't even there now; it's an oil mine; there was a lake there that was 200 miles long and 100 miles wide.  Now, the elders are saying, for the first time, the shoreline is receding and the rocks at the bottom of the lake are exposed.  Water is being taken from the rivers and lakes to support the destruction by the tarsands mine.   I'm shocked this tribal council has signed agreements with KXL since we are supposed to be standing together as Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires).  Fat Taker never stops and will run over anybody to feed themselves.”  As Kevin Wright of the Kul Wicasa Oyate stated, “if we do not stand up to the Black Snake, when our sacred water is gone, all we will have left to drink is our tears.”
The Kul Wicasa Oyate have partnered with Owe Aku to host an educational and action meeting on March 30th, 2014 at Lower Brule.  For more information contact Kevin Wright at 605-220-0394 or Louis Grass Rope at 605-208-6151.  The Kul Wicasa have scheduled a Treaty Meeting for March 29, 2014.
The message of the grassroots meeting: we are one Lakota Oyate and we will not permit the destruction of our lands and waters, we will protect it for future generations.