Guest Post: THE TRAIL OF NENABOOZHOO and Other Creation Stories

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BLOG BONUS, Book Review, culture itself is sacred, Isaac Murdoch, Marijo Moore, THE TRAIL OF NENABOOZHOO and Other Creation Stories, Trace L Hentz, Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time, Vine Deloria Jr

BOOK REVIEW

THE TRAIL OF NENABOOZHOO and Other Creation Stories by Isaac Murdoch

Reviewed by MariJo Moore (Guest post)

There is no better way to begin to know the nature of a nation than through their sacred stories. Among Indigenous peoples, traditional stories preserve tribal histories in epics, as well as keeping spirituality alive. Traditional storytelling is a greatly respected skill; the storytellers are responsible for teaching as well as entertaining. To the storyteller, remembering is an art. He or she has committed to memory knowledge of medicine, tribal laws, ceremonies, dances, and rituals assuring their existence through future generations.  Isaac Murdoch, from Serpent River First Nation located on Anishinaabek Territory on the North Shore of Lake Huron, is a gifted, dedicated storyteller.  He shares in the thoughtful foreword,  “My journey for a good story has taken me all over the Great Lakes and beyond. I have made offerings for the stories I carry and the stories told in this book and I always followed our ways using our good manners, which means we never take a story or use it without asking and we always give something for it in exchange. This is the Anishinaabek way.”

Not only are the stories purposely told in proclamation of a people who are connected deeply to their land, they are excellent teaching tools.  All are magnificently illustrated in the enduring style of Ojibway pictographs by the author and Christi Belcourt, a Michif (Métis) community based visual artist, who also edited the collection. Through the story of Nenaboozhoo, the Ojibway creator spirit, as well as other creation and sacred stories, explanation is given as to the importance of all beings – spirits, humans, animals, fishes, birds, as well as the deep respect of the land and waters.  When reading these stories, one can experience a deep knowing of spiritual interconnectedness that resides in all souls.

Although thousands of distinct Indigenous languages have been silenced forever due to pandemics of smallpox and other diseases brought by European contact, acculturation, and total annihilation, many still exist and various nations are doing their best to keep their languages alive. Some of the stories in this collection are in both English and Anishinaabemowin, which is a descriptive, experiential language that embodies a whole culture. This beautiful and opportune book is a testament to the sustainability of the Anishinaabek people.

In this fast-paced world of microchips and sound bites, stories are a way to reconnect to the spirituality of all things. Sharing stories like the ones included in this collection entices one to question, to explore one’s beliefs and actions.

Isaac’s wise words tells us why he works so hard at all he does: “And so it’s with great hopes and encouragement that I offer these stories as a map to understand how to go back to the old ways. The old people always said we are going to go back to the old ways and I truly believe the time is now. We mustn’t wait.”

Sacred stories can help us to harmonize with the world, to rediscover the spirit dwelling inside ourselves that begs for a reprieve from technology. And perhaps most importantly in this day and time, to begin to see how we can help with clearing the paths for generations to come. To make sure they have decent land upon which to dwell and clean water to share.

As the last line of the book reveals, “Everything that we do now is going to matter in the future.”

I totally agree. This is a book I will share with my grandchildren. Perhaps others, regardless of nation or ethnicity, will do the same.

Isaac Murdock

Nimkii Aazhibikong

Read more about Isaac and his work on the Onaman Collective and Nimkii Aazhibikong websites.

BUY THE BOOK:

Fiction, 143pp | Kegedonce Press | $25.00

 

MariJo Moore, an award winning author/poet/artist/anthologist/seer is the author of over twenty books including Bear Quotes, Crow Quotes Revisited, The Diamond Doorknob and A Book of Spiritual Wisdom- for all days. She is also editor of numerous anthologies of Indigenous writers including Genocide of the Mind: New Writings; When Spirits Visit;  and Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time: Indigenous Thoughts Concerning the Universe, which is  dedicated to Vine Deloria, Jr and coedited by Trace DeMeyer Hentz. Currently she is compiling a new anthology of Indigenous writers/artists titled Power of the Storm, dedicated to John Trudell. She resides in Asheville, NC. She is of Cherokee/Irish descent.

Please visit: www.marijomoore.com

”All the tribes say the universe is just the product of mind … It fits perfectly with the Quantum. Indians believe the universe is mind, but they explore the spiritual end of it, not the physical end.”  –Vine Deloria Jr. (from the introduction in anthology Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time)

TOP PHOTO book cover

FYI: Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time: Indigenous Thoughts Concerning the Universe, which is  dedicated to Vine Deloria, Jr and coedited by Trace DeMeyer Hentz and MariJo Moore…  MariJo put out a call for Native American writers and many responded immediately with essays, poems and stories. Forty Native writers from across the world participated and this collection is dedicated to the late literary genius Vine Deloria, Jr. who himself has a extraordinary essay about quantum physics in this book.

I just finished re-reading God is Red, a classic by the late and brilliant scholar Vine Deloria. Watch this

Read more : Unraveling

 

Thanks for reading. I will be posting soon xoxox Lara/Trace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Next Standing Rock Is Everywhere | Another forgotten massacre | MMIWG | Repatriation from Finland | yəhaw̓ a decolonial exhibition

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#MMIWG, Arkansas, DECOLONIZE, Elaine Massacre, Lara Trace Hentz, Misty Upham, Repatriation, Seattle, Sleeps With Knives, Standing Rock Protectors, tribal lands, We are not supposed to know, who is running the planet, yəhaw̓

The lack of tribal consultation and, subsequently, shoddy environmental justice studies, are due in large part to the fact that the consultations and environmental justice studies, unlike clean air or water, are not protected by federal law, but by executive action.  As the past three years have shown, such protections therefore depend on the individual presidential administration.

In one of the more brazen attempts to skip out on tribal consultation entirely, Atlantic Coast Pipeline backers initially pointed to an environmental impact statement completed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that claimed the proposed route did not disproportionately affect any marginalized communities. But in an article for Science last fall, N.C. State associate professor and Lumbee Tribe member Dr. Ryan Emanuel reached strikingly different conclusions. “The nearly 30,000 Native Americans who live within [one mile] of the proposed pipeline make up 13.2 percent of the impacted population in North Carolina, where only 1.2 percent of the people is Native American,” Emanuel wrote. “Yet, the [draft environmental impact statement] reported that fewer than half of the areas along the proposed route had minority populations higher than county-level baseline proportions.”

“By ignoring that demographic disparity, they’re basically proliferating invisibility of Native people in North Carolina,” Emanuel told me. “If you ignore our existence in the preparation of these environmental documents, then you don’t acknowledge that we have any right to decide what happens on lands that are historically our territory, or places where our communities live today. Environmental justice and tribal consultation go hand-in-hand.”

BIG READ: The Next Standing Rock Is Everywhere | The New Republic

 

**

Then the real massacre began: For the next five days, Colonel Jencks and his troops, assisted by vigilantes, hunted black people over a 200-mile radius. They scorched and burned homes with families inside, slaughtered and tortured others. The troops were aided by seven machine guns.

**

My initial thoughts bring to mind the phrase: BIG SMOKE, NO FIRE. Don’t judge me for being skeptical because I come from a culture that lives with a 500-year history of over 500 broken treaties. Why wouldn’t I ask questions? The truth is politicians have been notorious for making promises that they do not intend to keep or cannot accomplish throughout the political spectrum.

MMIWG: Misty Upham’s Father Writes about Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women — Native News Online

 

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The Hopi and Navajo are among 26 tribes that will see the return of ancestral remains from Finland, where the items have been held in a museum after being taken from Colorado almost 130 years ago.

Good News: Navajo, Hopi will have objects, human remains repatriated by Finland | Cronkite News – Arizona PBS

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SEATTLE — The word ‘decolonization’ has been bandied about all over national and regional arts outlets lately, but it is often misused or misunderstood. In Seattle, the term was used frequently to describe yəhaw̓, the first exhibition in the newly retrofitted, 7,500-square-foot Seattle Office of Arts & Culture ARTS Gallery, on the second floor of historic and still-operating King Street Station. The exhibition, which ran throughout the summer, was named for a Lushootsheed word that means “to proceed, go forward, and to do it,” and reflected “a nuanced, inclusive narrative that firmly establishes the vital contributions generated by Native thinkers and makers, here and now.”  Its three curators — Tracy Rector (Choctaw/Seminole), Asia Tail (Cherokee), and Satpreet Kahlon — have been lauded for decolonizing the exhibition by accepting artworks by all self-identified Indigenous artists submitted through an open call, and for featuring the work of over 200 Indigenous artists residing in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana, and British Columbia, with many more artists represented in two zine publications and multiple satellite exhibitions and public programs throughout King County.  But you won’t hear its curators call yəhaw̓ a decolonial exhibition. So what is it, if not that?

GREAT JOB: A Team of Curators Designs a System for Indigenous Artists to Thrive In

 

Note by LT:  These headlines are not in mainstream media but worth a read… I have decided that history was written badly and is meant to confuse us… there is so much we do not know or rather: we are not supposed to know… and I share the same confusion: who is running this planet?

What is that saying: “you can’t herd cats?”

I’m not sure it’s working on humans, either.

My new ebook:  Sleeps with Knives: Has it hit you yet?

Be back in November… xox … and most of all — THANKS for reading this blog.

‘We Will Not Give Up’ |Covering Climate Now | Faster than Predicted | Doom and Gloom | Feral Hogs | We Will Stand Up

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Canada Film Board, climate change, Covering Climate Now, Feral Hogs

Indigenous leaders vowed Thursday to protect their Alaskan lands from fossil fuel exploitation after the Trump administration moved closer to allowing drilling along the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—a move the House just tried to block.”

The Gwich’in are protectors,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, “and we will not give up.”

PLEASE READ: ‘We Will Not Give Up,’ Say Indigenous Groups, as Trump Admin Gets Closer to Fossil Fuel Pillage of Arctic Refuge | Common Dreams News

**

Some of the outlets participating in Covering Climate Now will share their climate coverage with one another, though this is by no means obligatory. Many outlets will publish or broadcast only stories they themselves produce. This decision is entirely up to each participating outlet. A full list of participating outlets follows.

FINALLY! Good: Covering Climate Now signs on over 170 news outlets – Columbia Journalism Review

Because the oceans cover three fifths of the globe, this correction implies that previous estimates of overall global warming have been too low. Moreover it was reported recently that in the one place where it was carefully measured, the underwater melting that is driving disintegration of ice sheets and glaciers is occurring far faster than predicted by theory—as much as two orders of magnitude faster—throwing current model projections of sea level rise further in doubt.

READ: Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change – Scientific American Blog Network

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“As somebody who lives here in Alaska — and I’ve reported all over the Arctic and I’ve been to the North Pole twice, 10 years apart — I have a pretty good idea of how bad [climate change] is, and I think most Americans have a pretty good idea of how bad it is. And I’m a lot more interested in what we’re doing about it, and I don’t think I’m alone,” Arnold said.

WHAT REPORTERS GET WRONG:  “They focus on gloom and doom, desensitizing readers to the subject.”

From my research, I’ve learned that there’s a huge body of research that shows that this gloom-and-doom narrative in climate change reporting leads people to TUNE OUT. This sort of daily drip of stories — the warmest year on record; the least amount of ice in the Bering sea; a month ago it was the decline of outdoor ice skating rinks in Canada — it just reaches this point where people feel hopeless and overwhelmed. And when we feel that way, psychologists say, we tend to just avoid and deny, and tune out.”

GOOD READ: Covering climate change: What reporters get wrong and how to get it right

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source: https://www.nps.gov/buff/learn/nature/feral-hogs.htm

US officials have warned that feral hogs heading across the border from Canada may pose a danger to the local environment.The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that sightings of the feral animals on the US-Canadian border have increased in recent years.

WHAT?: US officials warn of danger of feral hogs heading across the border from Canada

From the Intercept

Read our Complete CoverageClimate Crimes

** (oops, had to change the top photo, had used the wrong one)

nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up, Tasha Hubbard, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

LISTEN: nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up by Tasha Hubbard – NFB

News from Turtle Island: MMIWG, Ann Dunne, Native Vote 2020, Gold Miners burn Amazon Rainforest, Tricksters, Joy Harjo

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#MMIWG, Amazon Rainforest, Anne Dunn, Dressing Our Hidden Truths, Every Native Vote Counts, Highway of Tears, Illegal Gold Mines, Ireland Holocaust, Joy Harjo, Magdalene Laundry, MMIWG epidemic, Ojibwe Akiing, short film, State of Native art, The Wolf of Waubamik Woods, United States Poet Laureate

Native artist Cannupa Hanska Luger creates the ‘Every One” 2-ton art installation with two-inch clay beads created by hundreds of communities in the U.S. and Canada…Luger cited that Indigenous women are murdered at 10 times the national average rate on some reservations in the U.S. and that the U.S. has “continued to do little about it.”

Cannupa Hanska Luger: Every One & Kali Spitzer: Sister will be available for viewing at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum until January 12th.

Exhibit information here: https://www.gardinermuseum.on.ca/event/cannupa-hanska-luger-every-one-kali-spitzer-sister/

Exhibition Timeline:

August 30, 2019 – January 15, 2020 Gardiner Museum, Toronto Ontario
October 3 2018-March 17, 2019 Museum of Arts and Design, New York NY
August 11-September 16 2018 Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe NM
May 3-July 21 2018 ENT Gallery for Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs CO

** Lost

“And if our kids don’t have their stories they’re going to get lost on the journey. Lost,” Ojibwe storyteller Anne Dunn said. “We should be passing them on to our young people so they’ll have something to hold onto when they reach that dark hole. Because everybody’s going to be there some time. There’s a dark hole for all of us.”

Listen: Ojibwe storyteller writes down tales to help us survive ‘the dark hole’ | MPR News

** Gold and Fire

“You could drop a nuclear bomb on the forest, and it would be better than (gold) mining it.”

NEWS: The Global Demand For Gold Is Destroying The Amazon Rainforest

** Native Voters

But the best coverage of the forum hands down was by Indian Country Today, which covered the two-day event, start to finish, and even live-streamed big chunks of the event.

GOOD NEWS: Opinion: Native Americans could be decisive factor in presidential election

 

** Ireland’s Holocaust

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 In 2012 a mass grave holding the bodies of 796 children was discovered in Tuam, Ireland on the former site of St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, an institution run by the Bon Secours Sisters order of nuns from 1921 to 1965….Four pairs of giant glass scissors dangle from rosaries in the case, glittering in a very bright spotlight. Piles of long human hair lay in a heap on the floor of the case. Next to the case is a listening device where one can hear the voice of Catherine Whelan, born in 1935, now deceased, who recounts being conscripted to a Magdalene Laundry at the age of 14. She describes in detail how she was “punished” by the nuns, in particular the experience of being held down and having her hair cut off.

(A) Dressing Our Hidden Truths, at the National Museum of Ireland–Decorative Arts and History (Collins Barracks, Benburb Street, Dublin, Ireland) runs through May 2020. It was curated by Audrey Whitty.

EXHIBIT: A Memorial to Crimes Against Women and Children in Ghostly Glass

** Julie Buffalohead

Of course, animals in general are deeply ingrained in Native storytelling tradition. “I guess I just see animals as something you can learn from,” Buffalohead said. “I’m always waiting for them to talk again.”

Source: Julie Buffalohead on tricksters, colonizers, and the state of Native art –– Minneapolis Institute of Art

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Though she has mixed ancestry, including Muscogee, Cherokee, Irish and French nationalities, Harjo most closely identifies with her Native American ancestry.  On June 19, the Library of Congress named her the United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that position; she’ll officially take on the role in September. Although English is the only language Harjo spoke growing up, she has a deeply fraught relationship with it, seeing her own mastery of the language as a remnant of American settler efforts to destroy Native identity. Nevertheless, she has spent her career using English in poetic and musical expression, transforming collective indigenous trauma into healing. “Poetry uses language despite the confines of language, be it the oppressor’s language or any language,” Harjo says. “It is beyond language in essence.”

In An American Sunrise, Harjo’s 16th book of poetry, released by Norton in August, she continues to bear witness to the violence encountered by Native Americans in the aftermath of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.

GREAT NEWS: Joy Harjo’s New Poetry Collection Brings Native Issues to the Forefront | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian

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By LT

Hard news: water waves and wind have been churning as monster Hurricane Dorian destroys lives and property. Water water water: this is on my mind. Glaciers, melting ice caps, Trump’s crazy “Buy Greenland” proposal, so much on my mind… yet I’m asking… where will climate refugees go?

Good news… I have met Joy Harjo many times, and June 19, the Library of Congress named her the United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that position. WOW! That is a milestone worth celebrating.

Many years ago I interviewed renown author/storyteller Anne Dunn when I was editor of Ojibwe Akiing.  Her new book Fire in the Village is a “must read” for me this winter. Anne was a regular contributor at News From Indian Country, and simply prolific as a storyteller. (We were friends on Facebook but I’m not on FB anymore.)

I am also reading Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors.  The Marrow Thieves begins when French is 11, being chased by those Recruiters who want to take Indigenous people to schools to take their marrow.  That’s a specific reference to the residential schools of the past, where so much was taken from Native children.

I’m also (slowly) reading A Curse Upon the Nation (Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World) by historian Kay Wright Lewis… The theme of this blog is WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW (meaning I write lots about uncracking local and national Native American history while uncovering hidden facts) and this new book accurately reports that extermination (murder) was commonly used (more than we realize) but we still don’t think of America’s Founding Fathers as slave owners or as exterminators…

From the publisher: [Lewis foregrounds her readings in the long record of exterminatory warfare in Europe and its colonies, placing lopsided reprisals against African slave revolts -or even rumors of revolts – in a continuum with past brutal incursions against the Irish, Scots, Native Americans, and other groups out of favor with the empire.]

I started writing a post on how we vote (or choose a candidate) but it’s not ready yet…

and if you have a moment this fall, catch this short film on how First Nations women can go missing, then murdered:

Based on British Columbia’s “Highway of Tears,” The Wolf of Waubamik Woods follows the story of a young First Nations woman, Amber-Lynn, as she hitchhikes across Northern Canada.  She’s picked up by a local newspaper reporter who warns her of a wolf in the area that’s already claimed the life of one woman. Not wanting another fatality, the man offers her money for a bus and a place to stay until it comes. Once back at his cabin, Amber- Lynn relaxes and begins to open up about how she got where she is.  Before heading back to the bustop they walk to the man’s favorite lookout spot only to discover that the wolf may be closer than they had thought.

(MMIWG means Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and it’s happening now across North America.)

Source: The Wolf of Waubamik Woods (2013) – Plot Summary – IMDb

Welcome to all the new readers of this blog and I will do my best to follow your blogs, too. 

Let’s stay positive but more importantly please stay aware of coming water events…

We have an accelerating problem: Climate change is happening faster, and bringing with it more changes and impacts today than there were yesterday. And it will be faster still tomorrow; climate change is not a steady-state phenomenon, but gets worse and worse day-by-day. Read more: What if the Arctic melts, and we lose the great white shield? Interview with environmental policy expert Durwood Zaelke

check this website… Arctic sea ice keeps the polar regions cool and helps moderate global climate.

Protect Sacred Sites | Earth has a Fever | Waiapi Chief killed by illegal (gold) miners + more

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Amazon Rainforest, Charles Eisenstein, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Dr. Dick Cameron, Every Act is a Ceremony, glaciology, Mother Earth, Sacred Sites

…a Message from Chief Arvol Looking Horse

Posted on July 30, 2019

 

I, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations, ask you to understand an Indigenous perspective on what has happened in America, what we call “Turtle Island.” My words seek to unite the global community through a message from our sacred ceremonies to unite spiritually, each in our ways of beliefs in the Creator.

We have been warned from ancient prophecies of these times we live in today, but have also been given a vital message about a solution to turn these terrible times.

To understand the depth of this message, you must recognize the importance of Sacred Sites and realize the interconnectedness of what is happening today, in the reflection of the continued massacres that are occurring on other lands and our own Americas.

I have been learning about these important issues since the age of 12 when I received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and its teachings. Our people have strived to protect Sacred Sites from the beginning of time. These places have been violated for centuries and have brought us to the predicament that we are in at the global level.

Look around you. Our Mother Earth is very ill from these violations, and we are on the brink of destroying the possibility of a healthy and nurturing survival for generations to come, our children’s children.

Our ancestors have been trying to protect our Sacred Site called the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, “Heart of Everything That Is,” from continued violations. Our ancestors never saw a satellite view of this site, but now that those pictures are available, we see that it is in the shape of a heart and, when fast-forwarded, it looks like a heart pumping.

The Diné have been protecting Big Mountain, calling it the liver of the earth, and we are suffering and going to suffer more from the extraction of the coal there and the poisoning processes used in doing so.

The Aborigines have warned of the contaminating effects of global warming on the Coral Reefs, which they see as Mother Earth’s blood purifier.

The indigenous people of the rainforest say that the rainforests are the lungs of the planet and need protection.

The Gwich’in Nation in Alaska has had to face oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, also known to the Gwich’in as “Where life begins.”

The coastal plain is the birthplace of many life forms of the animal nations. The death of these animal nations will destroy indigenous nations in this territory.

As these destructive developments continue all over the world, we will witness much more extinct animal, plant, and human nations, because of humankind’s misuse of power and their lack of understanding of the “balance of life.”

The Indigenous people warn that these negative developments will cause havoc globally. There are many, many more original teachings and knowledge about Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites, her chakras, and connections to our spirit that will surely affect our future generations.

There needs to be a fast move toward other forms of energy that are safe for all Nations upon Mother Earth. We need to understand the types of minds that are continuing to destroy the spirit of our whole global community. Unless we do this, the powers of destruction will overwhelm us.

Our Ancestors foretold that water would someday be for sale. This Prophecy was hard to believe! The water was plentiful, pure, full of energy, nutrition, and spirit. Today we have to buy clean water, and even then the nutritional minerals have been taken out; it’s just clear liquid. Someday water will be like gold, too expensive to afford.

Not everyone will have the right to drink safe water. We fail to appreciate and honor our Sacred Sites, ripping out the minerals and gifts that lay underneath them as if Mother Earth were simply a resource, instead of the source of life itself.

Attacking nations and using more resources to carry out destruction in the name of peace is not the answer! We need to understand how all these decisions affect the global nation; we will not be immune to its repercussions. Allowing continual contamination of our food and land is affecting the way we think.

A “disease of the mind” has set in world leaders and many members of our global community, with their belief that a solution of retaliation and destruction of peoples will bring peace.

In our Prophecies it is told that we are now at the crossroads: Either unite spiritually as a global nation or faced with chaos, disasters, diseases, and tears from our relatives’ eyes.

We are the only species that is destroying the source of life, meaning Mother Earth, in the name of power, mineral resources, and ownership of land. Using chemicals and methods of warfare that are doing irreversible damage, as Mother Earth is becoming tired and cannot sustain any more impacts of war.

I ask you to join me in this endeavor. Our vision is for the peoples of all continents, regardless of their beliefs in the Creator, to come together as one at their Sacred Site.

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NASA – Satellite Thermometers Show Earth Has a Fever

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“We are in great danger”: In Amazon, indigenous Waiapi chief is killed by illegal (gold) miners

“They’re paying with their lives,” a human rights activist says about indigenous groups trying to protect the rainforest from mining and agribusiness.

Currently, there at least 10,000 (gold) miners illegally occupying and exploiting Brazil’s indigenous Yanomami land in northern Brazil.  These sorts of invasions have increased by 150 percent since Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, took power earlier this year, according to a report published in April by Amazon Watch, an indigenous rights and rainforest conservation advocacy group.

READ

via Peru, the largest gold producer in Latin America and the sixth largest in the world, has long struggled with illegal gold mining. 

Peru’s illegal gold mines are devastating the Amazon rain forest

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By LT

sad news… I was notified my Glaciologist friend Dr. Dick Cameron passed on July 21.  We were planning his first book of his prose and poetry this fall.  He’d just turned 89 on July 11 and was visiting a close colleague in WA state.  Right to the end, he was writing poetry, bless his heart.  He will be greatly missed… I send my deepest sympathy to his family.  (I still plan to work on Dick’s book(s)…)

“Humanity right now is entering into what I see as an initiation, an ordeal that will bring us to another level of our evolution. What is being offered to us is a completely different relationship to the rest of life on Earth. The planetary crisis that we call climate change is meant to bring us to that realisation, to bring us to that relationship of love because the losses that we’re seeing are connecting us with the reality of this living being here…. this new and ancient relationship to the rest of life.” ~ Charles Eisenstein

I want to share this story by Charles Eisenstein: Every Act is a Ceremony.  I can’t stop thinking about it and I read it a few months ago.

He also made this amazing video… A New Story of Climate Change: New Frontiers (2018) VIDEO

Blessing to everyone… and thanks for reading this blog 🙂

Breaking News: Canadian Inquiry Calls Killings of Indigenous Women GENOCIDE (NYT)

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#MMIWG, MMIWG epidemic, NYT, Red Power Media, Teen Vogue, The Final Report on the Canadian Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

Some 1,181 Indigenous women were killed or disappeared across the country from 1980 to 2012, according to a 2014 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Indigenous advocates, and the report, say the number is likely far higher since so many deaths have gone unreported.

BIG READ

The Final Report on the Canadian Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Monica Williamson

Report here.

“Reclaiming Power and Place

The National Inquiry’s Final Report reveals that persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. . The two volume report calls for transformative legal and social changes to resolve the crisis that has devastated Indigenous communities across the country.”

MORE:  https://redpowermedia.wordpress.com/2019/06/01/national-inquiry-deems-missing-murdered-indigenous-women-canadian-genocide-leaked-report/

My writing on MMIWG at Dean’s blog LEFT HOOK here

The federal government’s policy of termination against tribes lasted from 1887 to 1943. Native people were stripped of their cultures, languages, and ancestral instructions and expected to adopt the ways of the colonizer. Our ceremonies became illegal. Children and adults alike suffered and died to save them. These things survive today only because they continued in secret.

Throughout this time, mainstream society participated in our degradation and erasure. Pop culture hypersexualized native women with its “Pocahottie” imagery, and dehumanized us by saying we’re little more than a Halloween costume.

Today, we are still being hunted and killed.

There is an epidemic of missing and murdered native women throughout North America, but even though it’s been going on for decades and many native families on the continent can recount stories of loved ones who’ve gone missing or been murdered, there remains insufficient data on the problem because there’s been no centralized database for keeping that information.

In 2013, the Canadian government began a national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, but the United States has yet to take such action.

READ: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Need Your Support | Teen Vogue

The Seeds Have Been Planted #MMIWG (More Updates)

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Canada’s Missing Aboriginal Women, MMIWG epidemic, Savanna’s Act, Securing Urgent Resources Vital to Indian Victim Empowerment (SURVIVE) Act, The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, When They Were Here

Awareness of kidnappings and murders in Indian Country — and the need for policies to stem them — has grown in recent years.

Above, Kenny Still Smoking touches the tombstone of his 7-year-old daughter, Monica, who disappeared from school in 1979 and was found frozen on a mountain, as he visits her grave on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning this past summer.

A study released by a Native American nonprofit says numerous police departments in cities nationwide are not adequately identifying or reporting cases of missing and murdered indigenous women. [Researcher discusses importance of data for missing, murdered Native women ]

Native American women have long endured far higher rates of violence than other racial groups. The past year has seen a surge in awareness of this problem, and a suite of new proposals to address it. Perhaps the best-known of these is Savanna’s Act, currently before Congress, which would require the U.S. Department of Justice to develop protocols for missing-persons cases in Indian Country, and improve tribal access to criminal databases.

Meanwhile, Montana lawmakers are debating Hanna’s Act, which would authorize the state Department of Justice to assist with these cases, and create a missing persons specialist within the department. [Fortunately, common sense and bipartisanship ultimately prevailed — and to our great joy, on Legislative Day 85, Hanna’s Act headed to the governor’s desk for signing.]

“What we’re doing, and everything that we’re doing with the legislation, it goes hand-in-hand,” Ivy MacDonald told the audience over Skype. She and her brother Ivan, members of the Blackfeet Tribe, have been pressing for passage of these bills, and portraying the issue through film.

At Tuesday’s meeting in February, which drew about 40 guests, organizers screened three clips from their upcoming documentary, “When They Were Here.”

The first featured Susan Irvine Adams, who was found dead in Arlee about six decades ago, a trauma that lingers for her family.

The second featured members of the Box Elder High School girls’ basketball team, who highlighted the issue by wearing ribbons in their sneakers. “We wanted to show sort of the resilient side of some of these young women taking it upon themselves to raise awareness,” Ivy said.

The third clip showed the search for Bonnie Three Iron, who was found dead on the Crow Reservation in April 2017. Her friends and family members voiced deep dissatisfaction with police, a common sentiment among those whose Native loved ones have gone missing.

For Ivan and Ivy MacDonald, the topic is personal.

“Like with most indigenous people and families and communities, we had our own experience,” he said over the phone. Their cousin, 7-year-old Monica Still Smoking, was found frozen on a mountain on the Blackfeet Reservation in 1979; they’re also related to Ashley HeavyRunner Loring, who vanished in 2017 and has yet to be found.

“It’s just kind of always been a topic that’s been ever present in our lives,” he said.

The documentary began about two years ago, when he was completing his master’s degree in film studies at the University of Montana. “I approached Ivy and said, ‘Hey let’s do a short film,’” he remembers.

Both of Montana’s U.S. senators have been active on the issue. Michael LaValley, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s tribal liaison, gave an update and handed out a fact sheet on the various steps the Democrat had taken. In addition to Savanna’s Act, he and Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., have co-sponsored the Securing Urgent Resources Vital to Indian Victim Empowerment (SURVIVE) Act, which set aside Crime Victims Fund money for Indian Country. Tester has also introduced a bill that would direct the Government Accountability Office to comprehensively study the handling of missing-persons cases in Indian Country.

Amid these developments, Carole Meyers of Missoula came away encouraged from Tuesday’s event. “I hope we have more meetings like this,” she said. A member of the Oneida tribe, of Blackfeet and Seneca descent, she said, “our voices need to be heard [on this issue], and they’re going to be heard.”

“To be more involved is essential,” she said, especially when it comes to discussing the issue with friends and contacting Congress. “The seeds have been planted, and so we need to sprout them.”

Source: Film screening spotlights Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women | Local | missoulian.com

IN CANADA

MMIWG inquiry set to present final report in June

CBC.ca|19 days ago

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is set to present its final report June 3 in Gatineau, Que. The report comes after 24 hearings and statement gathering events across Canada in 2017 and 2018.

Missoula vigil keeps focus on missing and murdered indigenous women https://t.co/EVsbvd88px via @missoulian

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) April 29, 2019

Hey everyone, I’m still reading poetry and will be posting book reviews soon… This story is so important I needed to share it on Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in the US and Canada. Hunted and killed and missing today, in 2019?  Indeed. It is happening. Who wants us dead?

 

Published May 1, 2019

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — When Governor Mark Gordon of Wyoming recently traveled to the University of Wyoming, he expected to sign a proclamation establishing May 5 as “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Day.” To the surprise of the media and the many who had just completed the preceding “Keepers of the Fire” MMIW march, Governor Gordon (R-WY) opened his address at the Washakie Dining Center by committing to implement one of the strongest executive orders on MMIW yet enacted in any state.

READ: Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon Commits to Strong Executive Action to Address the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Crisis – Native News Online

Women are Disappearing and Dying in Indian Country. We must Act.

The picture can be even more dire for urban Indians. Recent reports by the Urban Indian Health Institute identified 506 cases of missing and murdered indigenous women across 71 urban cities – my state of New Mexico ranked number one for the highest number of MMIW cases with 78.

Source: Women are Disappearing and Dying in Indian Country. We must Act. – Native News Online

Monday, May 6, 2019 – The drive to solve the MMIW problem

The four Native American members of Congress just introduced a bill to create an advisory committee on missing and murdered Indigenous women. Some states like New Mexico and Wyoming assembled task forces to address the issue. Washington State is requiring the State Patrol to establish “best practices” for investigating missing Native Americans. Will more task forces, research reports and policy guidelines help solve the ongoing problem that disproportionately harms Native women? We’ll hear about some of the latest efforts and hear from experts about what the most promising approaches are.

What Climate Organizers Can Learn From Two Centuries of Indigenous Resistance | in-digit-ous | Why ICWA still matters | poets I love

Tags

Blue Hand Books, climate change, Ghost Dance, Goldwater Institute, healing cancer, Indian Child Welfare Act, Lara Trace Hentz, Nick Estes, poetry, Two Centuries of Indigenous Resistance

Q: Could you explain what you mean by the title phrase of your book, “our history is the future”?

I look at the Ghost Dance prophecy, which was an anticolonial uprising among particularly Lakota and Dakota people on the northern Plains in the late 19th century, but also a widespread spiritual movement that went up the west coast of Canada and down to parts of what is today Mexico. If they were completely harmless, then the United States wouldn’t have deployed its army against starving, horseless people at Wounded Knee. The reason it represented such a threat was not because Lakota and Dakota Ghost Dancers were going around and murdering white settlers — it was because it was a vision of the future. When you subjugate a people, you not only take their land and their language, their identity, and their sense of self — you also take away any notion of a future. The reason I chose this name is because in this particular era of neoliberal capitalism, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The argument I’m making is that within our own traditions of Indigenous resistance, we have always been a future-oriented people, whether it was taking up arms against the United States government, whether it was taking ceremonies underground into clandestine spaces, whether it was learning the enemy’s language. This pushes back against the dominant narrative that Indigenous people are a dying, diminishing race desperately holding on to the last vestiges of their culture or their land base. If that were the case, then I don’t think we would have an uprising such as Standing Rock or, today, Line 3 or Bayou Bridge, or the immense amount of mobilization around murdered and missing Indigenous women.

READ: What Climate Organizers Can Learn From Two Centuries of Indigenous Resistance

**

Bobby Bridger’s son coined a phrase for his dad’s project: in-digit-ous environment.

Source: Timeless thought meets modern tech: A new company puts indigenous philosophy and history into audiobook form | Arts | rapidcityjournal.com

**

Jered might not have seen his son again before the Indian Child Welfare Act. For decades beginning in the 1870s, native children as young as 5 were forcibly removed from their families and sent to authoritarian boarding schools in an effort to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Tribal law expert Matthew Fletcher, who is Anishinaabe, explains that boarding schools fell out of favor beginning in the 1930s, but whites still viewed native methods of child rearing, as well as concepts of family and community, with deep suspicion, and children were removed from their families for nearly any reason. It became standard policy, Fletcher says, to adopt them out to white families, all with an eye toward white acculturation. Often, they were never heard from again. “The wholesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today,” Congress declared in 1978. It passed ICWA after hearing hundreds of hours of testimony by tribal leaders and afflicted family members. By then, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association, an estimated 25 to 35 percent of all native children had been removed from their families.  Of those, 85 percent were placed in white homes, even, NICWA says, when suitable relatives were available.

GOOD READ: The Indian Child Welfare Act: Does a law meant to keep Native American children with their tribes help or harm them? – The Washington Post

The secretive Goldwater Institute is the force behind recent lawsuits in more than one state that wish to end the Indian Child Welfare Act.  This quote above explains WHY! ICWA is the gold standard for caring for Indian kids.

My story on being adopted out

Walking the Red Road

By LT

If I could read poetry and prose every single day, I certainly would.  Mystics live and breathe in today’s poets:

POETRY IS A CODE THE HEART UNDERSTANDS.

I will be posting book reviews of some of my favorite poets, who are also fantastic bloggers on my blog soon. (I plan to post their book links as well as links to their blogs.)

I want to thank everyone again for the love and support since last May’s cancer surgery. YES I am a cancer survivor now.  xox

Breaking: Court Fights Intensify Over Who Gets To Adopt Native American Children

Tags

#ICWA, 60s Scoop: Stolen Generations, Called Home: The RoadMap, Goldwater Institute, Trace Lara Hentz, Two Worlds: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects

A case before a federal appeals court last week could upend an historic adoption law meant to combat centuries of brutal discrimination against American Indians and keep their children with families and tribal communities. For the first time, a few states have sued to overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which Congress enacted in 1978 as an antidote to entrenched policies of uprooting Native children and assimilating them into mainstream white culture. Now, in a country roiled by debates over race and racial identity, there’s a chance the 41-year-old law could be overturned by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the country’s most conservative court. (The law applies to federally recognized tribes.)

“This is about attacking Indian law and Indian sovereignty,” said Chrissi Nimmo, deputy attorney general for the Cherokee Nation. “This is just the first step.” The Cherokee, Navajo, Oneida and Quinault Indian Nations, as well as the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, asked to be included as defendants in the lawsuit.

BREAKING NEWS: Court Fights Intensify Over Who Gets To Adopt Native American Children | HuffPost

Lost Birds and Lost Children Book Series

My readers know I am an adoptee and the author of a book series by and for Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects, 60s Scoop and ARENA in the US and Canada.

This latest attack on Indian Country is about land.

If you adopt and take children and erase their identity, isolated and unable to open their adoption, eventually there will be no more Indians (in their way – anywhere.)

The American Indian Adoptees blog has coverage : /https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com/

Defying US Borders, Asserting Territorial Rights | Bad Movies | Children Strike | Wayfarers and The Fork in the Road

Tags

Border Wall, climate change, Donald J Trump, Federally recognized tribes should brace for possible termination policy under Trump, Glenn Kay Evans Farms, Homelessness, J. Glenn Evans, Trace L Hentz, Wayfarers

We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” That’s the message from communities who live with the troubled legacy of colonialism today—the descendants of Native peoples who have survived in defiance of the national divides that strafe their lands and run counter to their cultural inheritance.

Such a move, (THE WALL) according to the resolution, would threaten territorial rights, “further divide historic tribal lands and communities,” “militarize the lands on the southern boundary,” and “disturb or destroy tribal archeological, sacred sites, and human remains.”

READ: Defying US Borders, Native Americans Are Asserting Their Territorial Rights | The Nation

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BAD MOVIES? A final, crucial step to being a responsible media consumer is to look for works made by Indigenous artists or in collaboration with Indigenous artists.

GOOD READ: Native American Stereotypes in Popular Media – SAPIENS

**

For her 16th birthday, Maddy Fernands asked her parents for an unusual gift: to switch the family to wind power.  She didn’t want an iPhone, new clothes or — banish the thought — a car.  Cars and trucks account for about a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, and a significant amount of Fernands’s climate anxiety. “Sometimes we’ll be stuck in traffic and I’ll look outside and watch the exhaust coming out of the car in front of me and I’ll freak out,” she told me. “I feel so powerless to stop it.” Fernands has been struggling with that sense of helplessness since she first became keyed into the accelerating timetable of climate change in seventh grade. “It seemed like the end of the world,” she said. “But the apocalyptic message wasn’t being broadcast. Nobody was taking correct action to put us on a path away from climate catastrophe.” Because her parents and teachers didn’t seem to share her urgency, Fernands decided that she herself would have to sound the alarm over climate.

Climate change is causing mental anguish in people of all ages, according to Lise Van Susteren, a psychiatrist and member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance. “When you’re hearing day in and day out that we’ve got 12 years, we’ve got 11 years, the oceans are collapsing, fires are burning, air quality is terrible, wear a mask, the anxiety is inescapable,” said Van Susteren.

READ: Young People Feel Betrayed by Adults Over the Climate Crisis. Today, They’re Going on Strike.

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Turn at fork in the road

book review: Truly prolific writer poet community organizer

By LT

J Glenn’s visionary fiction novel Wayfarers – Where No One Is an Outcast is about an interesting mix of homeless people who want to help other homeless people. Do we need it? Timely? Absolutely.

Right to the end of his fiction novel, suspense abounds.

In real life: There are always two groups of people: the Have’s and the Have Not’s.  Can there be a Happy Ending?  The brilliant idea from Wayfarers story leads the author to buy land in Oklahoma for this very purpose: a farm where the homeless can resettle in 2019.  I interviewed the author in Jan. 2015.

J Glenn is an elder, a man of vision and great wisdom. He is a good friend and a true inspiration. He has shared his ideas on this blog HERE HERE

FORK IN THE ROAD

WEWOKA, OKLAHOMA — He arrived at this latest fork in the road pretty late.

Glenn Evans is 88 now but excited about what he calls his last hurrah, an idea he would like to try out on this plot of land.

A visitor asks, “Why in the world would you want to leave Washington State, one of the gardens spots of the U.S. to here?”

Evans makes a circle with his finger beside his head and chuckles, “I’m a little nuts.”

He grew up on a farm near Wewoka where most of his family’s food needs were met with a big garden.

Glenn’s family moved to town though.

On a walk through tall weeds on his new land, his guest asks, “Are we bushwhacking your trail?”

Evans says, “No we’re just starting one. We’re pioneers!”

He went off to school and chased success as a stock broker.

He left that and turned to a career in writing.

Several books in he wrote a novel called ‘Wayfarers‘ about a group of homeless people who want to help other homeless people.

His thoughts while writing, “I want to do something for people. Create a place where they can live together as a family.”

Evans started walking around and thinking what worked in fiction might work in real life.

“I wanted to make my first place right here in Oklahoma,” he says.

So here’s his new idea.

Invite people, maybe homeless, he’s not sure, to open up this acreage to folks who want to grow their own food, who want to live off their gardens like his family did.

“Food and shelter, and you’re part of a family,” he suggests.

They use no till farming methods, plant some fruit trees, and live in underground houses to stay cool in the summer, warm in winter, and safe in the spring.

Of living underground, Evans says, “It’s good for tornadoes.”

It took him a couple of hours to walk through the brush and get a good gauge on the property.

The only road on it leads to a pump jack, but J. Glenn sees a successful future here.

“Is the land good,” asks his visitor?

“Oh. I think it’s good and rich,” he responds. Look at the soil. It’s had years of composting.”

Call him a visionary, or call him a crazy old man.

Glenn Evans just needs a few more crazy people like him to unplug and dig in, to make this fork in the road a little bit wider.

Glenn currently makes his home in Olympia, Washington.

VIDEO: https://kfor.com/2018/07/20/he-grew-up-on-a-farm-at-88-j-glenn-evans-hopes-he-can-lure-people-back/

To learn more about his work go to http://www.poetswest.com

Book Description: Wayfarers

From Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, this picaresque novel takes on the issues of homelessness, big city corruption, and corporate greed. An engaging, rollicking tale of those who are mostly down on their luck and chafe under the rules and regulations imposed by those in authority.  They were small in numbers, inexperienced, and some of them uneducated but they made up for it in a passionate belief in themselves.  Wayfarers is an adventure story about a homeless half Cherokee who sets out to do something for the homeless with the help of such characters as a prostitute, a disbarred lawyer, a cuckolded preacher turned prospector, ex-CIA man, a veteran turned warrior for the good and a small Indian tribe. The two main protagonists, RB (Chief) and Warrior, each has his own way to bring justice into the world: one that allows the Native American culture to nourish and restore health to the planet. The other protagonist, Warrior, has a strong sense of justice laced with a mission to punish the evil-doers. Against this backdrop are the greedy power-brokers hell-bent on imposing their views on society. What will be the final outcome and whose philosophy will be the winner? A regenerative culture vs the competitive materialistic one? The wayfarers seek to provide alternatives to living on the street or to incarceration. There is a wisdom of indigenous peoples that we can use to help put our post-industrial society on a more ecological basis. Laced with the honesty of Steinbeck – both religious and profane, dangerous and divine – this pot boiler keeps rolling to the finish line.

I can’t wait to visit the Glenn Kay Evans Farms

LT

p.s. I had a very good check up in February and see my doctors again in May – my one year cancer anniversary.  Thank you all for the good thoughts and prayers and kind words. I’m doing GREAT!

BREAKING: Double Standard? | Native Women present shawl to Sen. Warren #MMIWG

Tags

Donald J Trump, MMIWG epidemic, Racist comments, Rep. Deb Haaland, Sen. Warren

Part of the reason for why McCarthy’s scandal got little or no attention is because there isn’t an unspooled Democratic leader firing off out horrendously racist “Pocahontas” and Trail of Tears tweets as Trump keeps doing about Warren.  (The troll-in-chief has to troll.)

Consequently, the television news media doesn’t pay any attention to the McCarthy story, which means voters don’t pay attention either. And when reporters notice that voters don’t care, the conventional wisdom calcifies.

The circle of crapola goes the other way, too: Trump says “Pocahontas” is a fraud; the news media picks up the tweets and runs them without debunking them; voter outrage grows; the Beltway reporters note the outrage and then tell Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that it’s a disqualifying scandal for Warren because voters are pissed.

But why are they pissed, if they actually are? Because the press told them to be.

See?

And Trump wonders why Democrats are so angry.

As if that weren’t objectionable enough, there’s never any effort to put the Native American story in the proper context. How does Warren’s thing stack up to other scandals? Is this as bad or worse than Kevin McCarthy’s brother-in-law receiving millions in taxpayer funds because he claimed membership in a disputed tribe? Should we care about this as much as, say, the fact that literally every major organization linked to the Trump family is under state and federal investigation for rampant fraud?

Context be damned in the face of publishing more screamer headlines about — say it with me — Democrats in disarray.

WOW: Scandal double standard: Dems pay the price for every misdeed, while the GOP skates | Salon.com

Thanks to KC for letting me know about this… This is the playbook both sides use to control the mainstream media…

Deb and Liz

TOP PHOTO: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is presented with a shawl of thanks from Native American women.

Elizabeth Warren receives standing ovation at surprise visit to Native American conference: report

“The alarming number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls continues to grow,” the senator says

Warren spoke at the National Indian Women’s “Supporting Each Other” lunch, where she introduced Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, the chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah in Massachusetts, HuffPost first reported. The luncheon took place during an annual meeting of the National Congress of American Indians.

In her speech, Warren praised Native American women, specifically Reps. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) and Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) — the first two Native women elected to Congress. The progressive lawmaker, who reportedly received a standing ovation from tribal leaders and other Native attendees as she approached the stage, detailed several legislative priorities related to the Native American community.

“The alarming number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (#MMIWG) continues to grow,” she said, according to The Daily Beast. “But Congress failed to pass legislation to address this epidemic.”

“Every day, there’s a racist tweet, a hateful tweet – something really dark and ugly,” Warren said of Trump. “And what are we, as candidates, as activists, the press, going to do about it? Are we going to let him use those to divide us?”

SOURCE

Breaking News: Land Art at Desert X | Frontline: Predator | 12M Fakes

Tags

Breaking News, IHS, Native American art fraud case, Native art, predator

This week, the second edition of the biennial opened under the dual themes of politics and poetics, with works that engaged with environmental catastrophes, mass migration, Indigenous rights, and architectural and industrial colonization.

 

The curators are a group of young, energetic curators from distinct backgrounds and points of views. The artistic director Neville Wakefield is an art star known for his work in performance, site installations, and partnerships with fashion brands such as Supreme, Nike, and Calvin Klein. The biennial’s executive director, Jenny Gil, who is from Spain, formerly worked for Faena. The curator Amanda Hunt recently worked at the Studio Museum before joining MOCA. The LA-based writer and curator Matthew Schum was informed by his doctoral research on site-specific happenings, including the Istanbul Biennial. They have selected a broad group of artists of diverse nationalities, ages, and practices, supporting the conception, construction, and installation of each of the works. A budget of $25,000 or (much) more per work was offered by donors such as the Coachella Music Festival (which donated over $100,000) and electric car company Evelozcity. On 55 miles spread between the Wildland Park in the northwest and the Salton Sea in the southeast, the installations take the visitor on a road trip on a circuitous path of highways, windmill farms, gas stations, hot spring spas, residential compounds, and Modernist homes. The works will be up until April 21 and are accessible free of charge, alongside a series of performances and events.

Land Art is no longer a romantic and heroic gesture in the vastness of nature. It is by essence a political act.

Big Read: The Land Art at Desert X Confronts Borders and Politics on Indigenous Territory

TONITE: Predator on the Reservation https://t.co/oBtuHN9OQE via @frontlinepbs

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) February 12, 2019

A Summary of the Ongoing Indian Health Services Sexual Assault Scandal by @joe_flood https://t.co/oLWgfpm1l8

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) February 12, 2019

**

History’s largest Native American art fraud case will come through the courts this year after multiple family businesses manufactured, imported, and falsely distributed Native American-style jewelry as genuine between 2010 and 2015. The trade value reached nearly $12 million across 300 shipments in five years — now, five men and two businesses are charged with violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, importation by false or fraudulent practice, and failure to mark goods with their country of origin as required by customs law.

Congress passed the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (IACA) of 1990, to include the importation of knock-offs which undercut Native American economies and cultural heritage.

During the court hearing, Native American artist Liz Wallace said, “I don’t think calling this cultural appropriation is adequate. It’s economic colonization.”

Source: World’s Largest Native American Art Forgery Ring Distributed $12M of Fakes

“Yellowtail” | Indian Country News | #ICWA | Food Insecurity

Tags

#ICWA, Allotment, Blue Indians, climate change, Colonization, European slaughter of Native Americans changed the climate, federal Indian Policy, food insecure, John Trudell, land grabs and treaty abrogations, Navajo, SNAP, The Poor People's Campaign, Trump, Utah, YellowTail

Yellowtail from Keenan Wetzel on Vimeo.

“Yellowtail” by Keenan Wetzel

A poetic short by Detroit-based director Keenan Wetzel, “Yellowtail” tells the story of a young Native American cowboy (Stephen Yellowtail) searching for purpose amidst a chaotic lifestyle. (previously featured here). Shot in Wyoming and the Crow Reservation in Montana, “Yellowtail” tells the story of a young Native American cowboy (Stephen Yellowtail) searching for purpose as his chaotic lifestyle begins

READ: Premiere: “Yellowtail” by Keenan Wetzel – BOOOOOOOM TV – A daily selection of the best short films, music videos, and animations.

You will recognize that narrator’s voice – it is John Trudell!

In the News

The Navajo Nation and Utah Governor signed an inter-governmental agreement Monday, Feb. 4, 2019, to strengthen and further protect the Indian Child Welfare Act for the benefit of Navajo children in the State of Utah. Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer met with Governor Gary Herbert to make it official at the Utah State Capitol during the annual American Indian Caucus Day.

Read why ICWA is so important

GOOD NEWS: Navajo Leaders Boost ICWA with Utah | News for Page Lake Powell Arizona

Let’s take a quick look at the erratic history of federal Indian policy.

In the early republic, the federal government made treaties of friendship with Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. In the 1830s, it stopped feeling friendly and removed the eastern Indians to the West. It set up reservations for eastern and western tribes and solemnly promised in treaties that the land would be theirs forever. In 1871, Congress decided there would be no more treaties, because Indian nations were no longer sovereigns; the courts soon confirmed that Congress could void any treaty without the consent of the tribes that had signed it. Next, from the 1880s until the 1930s, came the “allotment era.” The government decided to break up the reservations and “allot” much of the land to individuals, who could sell them. By the 1930s tribes had lost 60 percent of their previous land base. The New Deal was a brief respite: Allotment ended and tribes were allowed to re-form their governments. Then in 1953 came the “termination era,” when Congress decided that the federal government would no longer provide services to tribes, or deal with their governments. It sold off some tribes’ reservation lands and proclaimed that those tribes no longer existed.

BIG READ: Herrera v. Wyoming: Can U.S. Void Any Tribe’s Treaty? – The Atlantic

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No records of the size of Native American populations before 1492 and the arrival of Europeans survive. A new study has found answers.

WOW: European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population and caused global cooling

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University College London researchers estimate that settlers killed 56 million indigenous people, causing farmland to be reforested. That increase in vegetation resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

WOW: European slaughter of Native Americans changed the climate, study says – CNN

I call this the (his)story “We’re Not Supposed to Know”

 

**

But they conceal another side of Columbus: the exploitation and repression of Native Americans, said the Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame. It is a “darker side of this story, a side we must acknowledge,” Jenkins said in a letter Sunday.

READ: Notre Dame to cover 19th century Columbus murals due to portrayal of Native Americans | CBC News

**

By LT

In December 2018, the Trump administration plotted to gut SNAP, the food assistance program more than 40 million Americans rely on to feed themselves.  (I have friends and relatives on SNAP, what used to be food stamps).  This attack on the poor would impose oppressive work requirements that will have a devastating impact on our nation’s most vulnerable and the “food insecure.”    This rule will drive 755,000 poor folks deeper into poverty across the country over the next three years.  It’s a cruel and cynical attempt to chip away at our social safety net by defining who is and who isn’t suffering in our nation.  Read about the Poor People’s Campaign.

Food insecurity is very real and a war on the poor.  And when the climate fails and disaster hits, what new countries start a new land grab?  Will they hit Third World Countries? Indian Country?  Will they take children to accomplish this again?  History repeats itself over and over until we get it right…and so we are entering a dangerous new age of food insecurity… and climate change.

If I were in charge, I’d have two priorities: ending poverty and improving the existing infrastructure.

Trudell said it best in an interview I have in my new book Mental Midgets | Musqonocihte :

“I called the album Blue Indians because there is a kind of spiritual and cultural genocide perpetrated on everyone that is poor in this country,” Trudell said. “The advance of technology has put all of us on a kind of reservation.  These are the people who can’t educate their children, or afford health care. They’ve been robbed of life, which is what happened to Native people, so in that context, we’re all Indians.”

I follow up in a few weeks with my doctors… See you soon! xox

 

Rest in Peace Karen Vigneault, the woman who made miracles for Native adoptees

Tags

adoptee reunions, Karen Vigneault, Native American Adoptees, Search Angel

Kimberly Linebarger, left, with sister Gudrun Drofn Emilsdottir, in lobby of Seven Clans First Council Casino Hotel, Newkirk, Oklahoma, November 19, 2018.

Guðrún Emilsdóttir, circa 1967, baby picture

Guðrún Emilsdóttir, adopted shortly after birth, was 28 before she tracked down her birth mother.

Her birth mother gave Emilsdottir her birth certificate, which named her father, Henry Linwood Jackson.

“My nephew started looking for Henry,” she said.

Eventually, he contacted Native American genealogist Karen Vigneault, a member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel in California who was profiled in an earlier VOA story.  On Vigneault’s advice, Emilsdottir took a DNA blood test; they uploaded the results onto an online database and waited.

(PHOTO: Iceland covered the story too) (Karen Vigneault, an enrolled tribal member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel and college and tribal librarian, has a face tattoo.)

(READ Long-lost Native American Sisters Reunite for a Joyous Thanksgiving)

Emilsdottir has returned to Iceland but is planning to return to Oklahoma in July 2019 for the “Encampment,” a pow wow the Otoe-Missouria tribe has held annually for more than 130 years. It’s an occasion for the tribe to sing, drum, dance and remember their history and traditions. And celebrate family, lost and found.

Henry Linwood Jackson, Otoe-Missouria tribe member, ca. 1965.

BIG READ: Long-lost Native American Sisters Reunite for a Joyous Thanksgiving

The reunion happened because of the tireless methodical work of librarian and tribal genealogist Karen Vigneault; she and I have worked together since 2013.

I learned yesterday that Karen has passed away in San Diego at her home.

She made miracles and reunions for adoptees, like these sisters.

It is impossible to put into words the impact she had on me and the lives of many adoptees she helped. She worked to find adoption records, tribal histories, family genealogy and find relatives that adoptees could contact and meet.

This loss is personal and devastating.

Not just to me but to readers of this blog who are still searching and hoping and waiting and wanting to find their families.

Karen traveled to Iceland late last year to meet Guðrún and the Iceland media covered it. Her wish was to reunite Guðrún with her tribe and relatives. She succeeded.

District of Despair: Montana Reservation Schools | Alone | Loot | Bansky | Zinke gone

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Banksy, Chelsea Bayouth, Cherokee, Fort Peck, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Looting, Montana, Museum Loot, residential schools, Shan Goshorn

Just half of Wolf Point’s Native students graduate from high school, compared with about three-quarters of their white peers. In June 2017, the Tribal Executive Board of Fort Peck filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights requesting a federal investigation into its contention that the Wolf Point school system discriminates against Native students.

“I think the sensitivity to different cultures, sometimes it ends with Native people,” said Ron Lessard, the acting executive director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education since 2017.

Source: District of Despair: On a Montana Reservation, Schools… — ProPublica

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ALONE: 2018 QUOTE

In her essay “Alone in Company,” Chelsea Bayouth reflects on the role of an artist at the end of 2018:  “For me, it is to fear that every word or image is a window into public, political, and social tumult.  It means you have to be more vulnerable than you or anyone in times previous has ever been…. Social capital is the currency, and if you have none you are poor. ”

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Royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey in Benin, displayed at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris; they are among the works slated to be returned to Benin as soon as possible (photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra via Flickr)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ivory Coast is demanding that France return 148 works once looted from the country.  The Ivory Coast’s culture minister, Maurice Bandaman, confirmed that a list of works were sent to France and are set to be returned in 2019.  Bandaman also told Agence-France Presse, “At least 50 museums around the world have Ivorian works, and this does not include private collection,” indicating that France is not the only country with looted works. [Agence France-Presse]

The British Museum’s ‘Looting’ Problem  …headlines across the internet announced that the British Museum was to “return looted antiquities to Iraq.”

Clearly, the United States has an aversion to facing its past and is long overdue for a moment of truth and reconciliation. Read:  The Field Museum’s Native North American Hall starts to ask who it represents | Feature | Chicago Reader

One more: As Belgium Reopens Africa Museum, DR Congo Demands Restitution of Artifacts

(This is a trend I am very glad to see)

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Bansky

A new work by Banksy has appeared at the back of a car garage in Port Talbot, Wales last week. Since then, crowds have gathered at the scene, with local authorities having to manage and organize the groups of people. Banksy claimed responsibility for the work on his website and Instagram. The garage is owned by Ivan Lewis, a local steelworker. “I’ve never experienced anything like this,” said Lewis. “My phone is ringing, on my house phone there’s 1,000 messages on it.” [Art Daily]

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Shan Goshorn, “a Cherokee artist and activist known for her contemporary approach to traditional basket-weaving,” died of cancer at the age of 61. [Tulsa World]

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Under a cloud of scandal… the toxic Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is gone (fired) (top photo)

Can we call it a year now?  2017 and 2018 wore me out.  Cancer didn’t help but I feel woke enough.

02019 – please, do us a favor? Be kind to us. We deserve better!

xoxoxox

LT