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January 20, 2016
Women's Boat to Gaza
January 19, 2016
Apache March to Freedom: Oak Flat Feb. 26 -- 27, 2016
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| Apache One Year Memorial March to Freedom to Oak Flat will be Feb. 26 -- 27, 2016 |
Apache Stronghold
Censored News
January 2, 2016
Greetings to all and May the Creator bless each and everyone of you as we once again journey in life during the upcoming four seasons.
I write this letter to reach out to you and everyone else in the hopes that what we have learned in 2015 will advance the spiritual journey of healing for 2016. The past year has educated me through each of your efforts through your experience, wisdom and religious beliefs. Through you, I have come to learn that we are facing the battle to destroy colonization, but not just for Indian country, for every society that makes up America.
Every non-Indian society suffers from colonization, which comes directly from the first day the Europeans set foot in North America. Their purpose was never to claim the new lands as home but to take all the natural resources that would enrich their country and status.
In the forefront of this adventure were Kings, governments, corporations, religious leaders and yes, mining. This became the fabric in creating the foundation of what is called the United States of America. In order to achieve their manifest destiny, the decision to eliminate the first people of this country had to be accomplished. This began the ugly process of killing 90% of Native people from North America, a horrible Atrocity in human history.
Our people of men, women, children, and elders were forced marched and placed in concentration camps. Native leaders and religious leaders were crucified for what they had believe God had given them.
So today, these places that were concentration camps or prisons are now recognized as Reservations, from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
This act of genocide lead to the denial of a human race to exercise the freedom that was given by the Creator. For what reason, all to accommodate power, greed, control and the evil source of ownership. After all that we had encountered, the United States government pledged to protect our interests as prisoners and now a member of a federally recognized tribe.
The United States promised they would exercise their trust responsibility to ensure that we, forever, would be taken care of. Our trust and confidence was placed in the hands of the government but not knowing we were to be deceived. Our ancestral homelands were given away, water was divided up by the state of Arizona, even the Reservation, by executive order, partials were taken for mining.
What still remains is our holy places that are located directly on U.S. Forest service lands which are to be protected. They too have now been given to foreign companies by our very own U.S. Government. Resolution copper/ Rio Tinto were given exemptions from all federal laws that we and every American must follow.
If not, we would be violating the laws and punishment would be at the discretion of a U.S. Federal court. This takes me back to my opening remarks of how this country was founded. For this very reason we must acknowledge the truth and begin the process of true healing for all people.
Our country cannot continue surviving on the path created by those who live for greed, power and injustice for the human race. We clearly can still witness this by the actions of John McCain, Ann Kirkpatrick, Jeff Flake and cruel misguiding statements made by Paul Gosar.
So please, join us in prayer and support as we continue the healing of freedom. We will once again walk off the reservation freeing ourselves from the bondage of federal policies and the inaccuracies of the history of this country.
We will no longer be invisible, for God, the Creator, who is known throughout the world, has spoken once again, through all his creations, that healing must begin to save what is left. So that those yet to be born will embrace the true spirit of life. The upcoming events are planned to occur on February 26th and 27th, 2016.
January 17, 2016
Journalists: The Gift of Being Present
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
Photo: On the road to Zapatista Stronghold by Brenda Norrell
It is often the simplest memory, the simplest truth, that is the most profound: Riding in the back of a cargo truck through Zapatista country in Chiapas, wearing our red bandannas; driving into Pine Ridge from the south, with the sky as a painter's palette; and hiking outside my log cabin in the Navajo Chuskas, watching for wild turkey, black bear and acorns.
It is often the simplest truth in a news story that returns to our minds in the years that follow: Hopi and Japanese revealing how water has intelligence and changes its appearance in response to positive words, or Navajo elder Howard McKinley remembering eating wild baked yucca bananas in Tse Ho Tso and how the ice from Blue Canyon was cut, hauled by wagon, and stored in the rock houses of finely chiseled stone.
This is why it matters to be present as journalists. The new cyber journalism, with editors telling journalists that it is OK to stay home and plagiarize the web, or rewrite others hard work and add a phone call interview to disguise it, are committing a crime of journalism. Besides being paid for others work, and publishing articles with content errors, these editors are denying journalists a precious gift.
It is the gift of being present. It is the gift of great and beautiful memories. It is the gift of sharing some vital truth when you see the speakers eyes, smell the blue corn cooking for lunch, taste the tamales steamed in banana leaves, and see the resilience within the young mother grinding corn.
It is the gift of riding horseback on Arapaho's Wind River, and on the back of a Harley in Green Bay. It is the gift of crossing the border one more time, going beyond the saguaros at sunset and seeing just one more time, where the desert meets the sea. It is the gift of smelling the damp red earth after a great rain and hearing words spoken which may never be spoken again.
It is the gift of swimming in rivers.
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Brenda Norrell has been a reporter in Indian country for 34 years, beginning as a staff reporter for Navajo Times and stringer for AP and USA Today. After serving as a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today, she was censored and terminated. As a result, she created Censored News, now in its 10th year with no ads or grants. She is blacklisted by all the paying media.
For permission to republish this article: brendanorrell@gmail.com
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| Photos by Brenda Norrell: Photo 1: Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham and Mark Maracle, Mohawk, Indigenous Border Summit, San Xavier, Tohono O'odham land in Arizona. Photo 2: Bolivia, in mountains and home community of President Evo Morales as Morales played soccer, during Mother Earth Conference 2010. Photo 3: Dine' (Navajo) relocation resister Roberta Blackgoat protesting Peabody Coal mining and aquifer theft on Black Mesa, during Flagstaff, Arizona, protest. Photo 4: Jean Whitehorse, Dine', exposing the sterilization of American Indian women during AIM West Conference in San Francisco. Photo 5: Comcaac (Seri) in Sonora, Mexico. |
Photos below from Sonora, Mexico by Brenda Norrell
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