Monthly Archives: September 2009
Secakuku: Hopi are Stewards of the Land, Despite the Coup
by Alph H. Secakuku,
Sipaulovi Council Representative, Village of Sipaulovi, Second Mesa, AZ, Hopiland
September 30, 2009:
The Hopi/Tewa people have always considered themselves to be the best environmentalists in the world.
We made a sacred covenant with Maasaw, our Supreme Being, to be good stewards of the Fourth World we live in today.
We, as people, all have the responsibility of being Caretakers of Mother Earth. You care for it and take from it only what you need, and it will provide for you.
I never thought I would see the day when being “Hopi” meant being anti-environment, pro-big corporate energy, and actually promoting pollution and global warming in favor of dollars/money.
This is the new world image of Hopi, thanks to Scott Canty, Nada Talayumptewa, Phillip Quotshytewa, Mary Felter, Ivan Sidney, Sr., and the rest of the illegally constituted Hopi Tribal Council…in essence, a coup.
It is a sad day for Hopi/Tewa people, and I am disappointed.
We, the Hopi/Tewa people, have worked closely for many years with our allies from the environmental community to protect sacred lands from development and to stop uranium mining from poisoning our water. Water is life, therefore, it is sacred.
We will continue to work together—tribal communities and other clean energy jobs advocates—to bring green economic development to our lands that respects our air and water.
Together with our partners in the environmental community, we are working to secure long term solution to energy, health and water issues in northern Arizona by cleaning up dirty coal plants and promoting solar and wind projects on the reservations. The time to transition from dirty old coal plants to clean energy from the wind and the sun is now.
We see a positive future ahead with results like the Navajo Nation’s recent unanimous green jobs resolution and will continue to support clean energy projects with Navajo and Hopi communities.
We all know that climate change is predicted to bring hotter and drier conditions to the Colorado Plateau, an area which may see even greater temperature increases than the rest of the country. This threatens our water supplies and livelihoods.
Fidel: Hands Off Honduras!
From Socialist Voice, a newsletter and content service that provides news and analysis of today’s struggles of the workers and oppressed, from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism, based in Canada but is international in scope.
By Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro’s reflections on current political developments are available at Reflexiones del compañero Fidel1. This article was published on September 24. The translation is by Socialist Voice.
Last July 16, I said that the coup d’état in Honduras “was conceived and organized by unscrupulous characters on the far-right – officials who had been in the confidence of George W. Bush and were promoted by him.”
I mentioned the names of Hugo Llorens, Robert Blau, Stephen McFarland and Robert Callahan, Yankee ambassadors to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua appointed by Bush in July and August 2008. The four pursued the line of John Negroponte and Otto Reich, two characters with murky histories.
I then indicated that the Yankee base at Soto Cano [Honduras] had provided the main backup to the coup and that “the idea of a peace initiative from Costa Rica was transmitted to the president of that country [Oscar Arias] from the State Department when Obama was in Moscow and was declaring at a Russian university that the only president of Honduras was Manuel Zelaya.” I added,
“With the Costa Rica meeting, the authority of the UN, the OAS and the other institutions that committed their support to the people of Honduras is being questioned. The only correct action at this moment is to demand that the government of the United States cease its intervention, stop giving military aid to the coup and pull out its Task Force from Honduras.”
The U.S. response to the coup d’état in that Central American country has been to strike an agreement with the government of Colombia in order to set up seven military bases similar to that of Soto Cano in that sister nation, thus menacing Venezuela, Brazil and all other peoples in South America.
At a critical moment, when the tragedy of the climate change and the international economic crisis are under discussion at a UN summit conference of heads of states, the putschists in Honduras are threatening the immunity of the Brazilian Embassy where President Zelaya, his family and a group of followers were forced to seek sanctuary.
The fact is that the government of Brazil had absolutely nothing to do with the situation created there.
Consequently, it is inadmissible – actually inconceivable – that the Brazilian Embassy would be assaulted by the fascist government, unless it intends to commit suicide, dragging the country to a direct intervention of foreign forces – as was the case in Haiti – which would mean the intervention of Yankee troops under the UN flag. Honduras is not a remote isolated country in the Caribbean. An intervention in Honduras with foreign forces would unleash a conflict in Central America and bring political chaos to the entire Latin American region.
The heroic struggle of the Honduran people during almost 90 days of ceaseless battle has placed the fascist pro-Yankee government, which is crushing unarmed men and women, in a critical situation.
We have seen the emergence of a new consciousness among the Honduran people. A host of social fighters have gained experience in that battle. Zelaya delivered on his promise to return. He is entitled to his position in the government and to preside over the elections. New and admirable cadres have emerged in the combative social movements. They are capable of leading that people through the hazardous journey that awaits the peoples of Our America. A revolution is in the making there.
The current session of the United Nations General Assembly can be a historic one depending on its achievements or wrongs.
The world leaders have expounded on very interesting and complex subjects, which reflect the enormity of the tasks facing humanity and the little time available.
[For continuing coverage of the struggle in Honduras, Socialist Voice recommends
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2]
Palestine Solidarity Victories Alarm Pro-Israel Lobby
From Socialist Voice, a newsletter and content service that provides news and analysis of today’s struggles of the workers and oppressed, from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism, based in Canada but is international in scope.
By Art Young. The movement to call Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people is growing. It could eventually threaten the existence of the Zionist state by undermining support from its strongest backer, the US government.
That is the message from Howard Kohr, American Israel Public Affairs Committee executive director. AIPAC is one of the principal organisations lobbying publicly on behalf of Israel in the United States, where it is an important influence on foreign policy. In May Kohr told AIPAC’s policy conference that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement was “invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel.”
Kohr pointed to a series of recent actions and statements in a number of countries protesting Israel’s onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, including demonstrations in Spain and Germany. ‘Incredibly’, he added, ‘there now is even an Israel Apartheid Week conducted in cities across the globe.’ Most troubling for him was the progress of the Palestine solidarity movement in the United States, “where Israel stands accused of apartheid and genocide, where Zionism equals racism, where a former president of the United States can publicly accuse Israel of apartheid.”
To win support for Israel from the rulers in the US, Kohr argued, friends of Israel must address the fact that Israel is a Western outpost in the Middle East, the only democratic country in the region that looked West, and with Western values and vision. If that foundation of shared values was shaken, the rationale for the policies pursued today would be stripped away.
Kohr stressed that “the reasons the United States would continue to invest nearly US$3 billion [annually] in Israel’s security, the willingness to stand with Israel, even alone if need be [and its] readiness to defend Israel’s very existence” would all be “undermined and undone if Israel was seen to be unjust and unworthy.”
The argument that Israel is a garrison state – the front line of the defence of imperialist interests in the region – is not often stated in such forthright terms. But it is quite accurate, and speaks to the source of the conflict in the region.
Under Siege at the Embassy
Honduras’ legitimate president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, made a spectacular return after being ousted and driven from the country in a military-led coup at the end of June. But the coup regime, led by Roberto Micheletti, is threatening to attack the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where Zelaya remains–and police and soldiers are carrying out assaults on pro-democracy demonstrators gathered outside the embassy.
The confrontations mark a new stage in the struggle that has gripped the country since Zelaya’s ouster. Masses of Hondurans have defied the violence of the coup government to stand up in defense of Zelaya and democracy.
Oscar Estrada is a member of the Honduran resistance, and a filmmaker and independent journalist with HablaHonduras. Here, we republish his account of the events on September 25 from the Quotha Web site, a blog run by Adrienne Pine, author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras.
Pro-democracy demonstrators are facing severe repression in Honduras (Anarela Velez y Luis Méndez)
AS I write, I am speaking to a person who is inside of the Brazilian Embassy and reports that the building is being attacked with chemicals. They have the impression that the military is preparing to break in. This is the beginning of a new stage of the conflict which seems to get more violent with every passing day.
Yesterday was long, many things happened, and I am still trying to understand fully the consequences of the day. Certain fears around the march of the “whites” [supporters of the coup] in the end did not come to pass, and the morning was uneventful.
I will describe the march of the whites. They came in buses to the Palmira neighborhood, totaling approximately 5,000 people. This time, as always, the army and the police provided security following the threat that a few members of the resistance would boycott the march.
It was the usual mix: women and men from the upper class, who parked their luxurious cars half a block from the starting point; veterans of war and reservists from the army; public employees, mostly city employees; poor men and women who believe wholeheartedly in bourgeois democracy.
They convened in front of the United Nations, clamoring for the world to respect their disrespectful postures. “Dignity,” yelled one elegant woman. “The best Melista [supporter of Zelaya] is a dead Melista,” shouted another, who seemed to be an army official.
Later, they moved on toward the Brazilian Embassy, where the army blocked their access a block away, and they turned toward the American Embassy. The slogans were the same ones used by the resistance, but inverted: “People join us,” “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Melista,” “We will get that mule out of the embassy,” etc. Their signs, contrary to previous marches, looked poor and faded–handmade, without the usual slick graphics.
Something that caught my attention was an Israeli flag that was waving among the hands of the marchers, in thanks for the support provided for Honduran “democracy.” And they are right to thank Israel, since the weapons utilized in the recent protests–the screamer, the chemicals and the training–were provided by the Israeli military.
American Indian Movement at UN: The Right to Speak
PRESS RELEASE
AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT
GRAND GOVERNING COUNCIL
September 24,2009
The Right to Speak
In President Obama’s speech to the United Nations on September 23, 2009, he spoke of a ‘new direction’. Two years ago, four solitary nations voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, they were Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States of America. The Australian government has since reversed its vote and now support the international human rights standard toward Indigenous people.
The American Indian Movement asks the question of the Obama Administration: Will his administration recognize and support the international standard approved by the vast majority of the world’s nations?
The United Nations 64th year brings world leaders together to our sacred homeland to discuss the effects of the world’s problems to humankind. The American Indian Movement respects the right of all world leaders to speak. We support the right of Moammar Al Gathafi, leader of Libya. We respect the right of Evo Moralas, President of Bolivia. We respect the right of Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. We respect the right of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. We respect the right to speak at the United Nations of all the world leaders visiting our homeland.
We often talk in terms of the first world, or the west; or the second world, the east; or the third world, or the non-aligned nations. Another important dimension to this concept is the fourth world of natural and Indigenous people. Peoples whose populations oftentimes go beyond geo-political boundaries. While these struggles have been going on for hundreds of years, the international community has, for the most part, ignored this reality.
One of the greatest crimes against humanity occurred right here in the United States of America. Support for the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People is a start to right this great wrong.
Clyde Bellecourt, co-founder American Indian Movement
Bill Means, International Indian Treaty Council
Chief Terrance Nelson, Vice Chairman American Indian Movement
Canada Panics at Akwesasne
From Mohawk Nation News.
MNN. Sep. 20 2009. The Everett Report of March 17, 1922, found that, no attempt has ever been made to control the Indians on the St. Regis Reservation [Akwesasne] residing within the boundaries of Canada. The Chairman firmly believes that the St. Regis reservation lying within the boundaries of the State of New York is a separate and distinct territory from the control of the United States or State of New York as is the Canadian reservation. [p. 317]. This pertains to all of Great Turtle Island.
Just what are the rights of the aliens? Only what we gave them under the Great Law. Aliens are temporary. Should they cause loss, wrong, suffering or endanger the peace, the War Chiefs reprimand and expel them. [Wampum 74]. They have no voice in council. [Wampum 76]. Canada, US, Mexico or any foreigners cannot interfere with us.
The invaders washed up here with nothing. They stole, created money and intend to take everything from us. Their puppet band and tribal councils are more than willing to help them.
Red Jacket, Corn Planter and other Iroquois told Washington that they’re fighting over something that doesn’t belong to them – our lands, resources and waters. We own all the beds of all the waters of Great Turtle Island. [p. 186-7]
Their judicial and military hocus pocus shows they know that we never gave up anything. Canada, US, Ontario, Quebec and New York State promised to protect us from them.
International law provides that title to land is never taken away from the lawful, legal owner except in a legal and lawful manner. If it’s stolen and used for twenty years or a million years, they never get title.
At Akwesasne Canada Customs goons are desperately grabbing our cars and demanding $1000. Mohawks going home or visiting each other don’t have to report to foreign goons. It’s not enough these hoods grab us as we come over the bridge, take us out to the back and beat us up. We hear they might be advancing with a fleet of armored tow trucks to haul away more of our vehicles? Canada is threatening unarmed people with heavily armed RCMP, OPP, Cornwall and Akwesasne police forces.
CSIS mans the shack which illegally stops us. Like the Chinese water torture, Canada is trying to extort protection money from us one drop at a time.
Some of those community members who carry purple cards identifying themselves as Camel Toe Treaty people say it was signed in Central Park in New York City in 409 AD where Egyptian tombs were left behind. Their passport provides that we were signatories to the treaty that brought down the Roman Empire! This apparently gives Rotinoshonni:onwe freedom of movement. It has no basis in the Great Law or in history.
Death Walks on Tohono O’odham Nation
By Brenda Norrell of Censored News.
In southern Arizona, humanitarians putting out water for migrants are being charged with a crime, in the latest attempt by the US government to halt humanitarian aid to migrants dying in the Sonoran Desert. Thirteen humanitarians from No More Deaths, Samaritans and Humane Borders were arraigned in federal court in Tucson in September on charges of littering. Their crime was placing water on migrant trails where people are dying.
Today, broadcast on Censored News Blog Radio, Mike Wilson, Tohono O’odham, describes his water stations on the Tohono O’odham Nation and how the Tohono O’odham Nation has fought his efforts. While his water containers have been slashed and confiscated, Wilson continues to put out water for migrants. Wilson also describes searching for the bodies of migrants, including that of a young pregnant woman, where temperatures range from 105 to 117 in summer months. He also describes how young migrant children are imprisoned in a holding cell, known as the “dog cage,” on Tohono O’odham Nation land.
Wilson continues to be under attack by the Tohono O’odham Nation. “Tribal authorities have authorized the removal of my water stations from Baboquivari and Schuck Toac Districts.”
Wilson said the Tohono O’odham Nation is seeking to maximize a profit on the backs of destitute migrants, many who are Indigenous Peoples from Southern Mexico and Guatemala.
“The Nation is anxious to take blood money from the Department of Homeland Security. Shamefully, we who were once oppressed are now the willing oppressors.”
As volunteers are being charged, Wilson said he is now vulnerable to arrest, along with another Tohono O’odham, David Garcia, who assists him.
“The reality is that as tribal members of the Tohono O’odham Nation, David Garcia and I are now vulnerable to arrest and conviction for doing the same thing on Tohono O’odham tribal lands. The legal precedent has now been irreversibly set for federal prosecution of humanitarian volunteers, like us, for knowing placing gallons of water for migrants in distress on any federal properties, inclusive of Native American reservations.
“The truth is, despite our mythical notions of ‘sovereignty,’ reservations are first, foremost and manifestly, Federal Properties managed by the Department of Interior and its agent, the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Wilson said.
Listen to Wilson on “Death Walks on the Tohono O’odham Nation.” This talk was at the Indigenous Border Summit of Americas 2007. Currently conditions are intense for humanitarians putting out water, as migrants continue to die.
Censored Blog Talk Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Brenda-Norrell
Currently, the theater production in Los Angeles, “Visitor’s Guide to Arivaca,” includes a portrayal of the real life efforts of Wilson. The theater production was produced by Borderlands in Tucson. (Currently at Company of Angels at the Alexandria Hotel, 501 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends Oct. 4.)
Photos at: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.
Photos at summit: Water containers placed on Tohono O’odham Nation slashed. Photo 2: Mike Wilson points out where migrants are dying on the Tohono O’odham Nation. (Click photo to enlarge.) Photos by Brenda Norrell
Recorded at the Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas by http://www.earthcycles.net/ Guitar music by Ruben Romaro. Border Patrol yell recorded in Lordsburg, N.M.
Latest Zapatista Communique Acute; Redefines Mission
From Rory Dubhdara.
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), an indigenous movement based in Chiapas, Mexico, released a new mission statement on July 1, resolving to increase the group’s political activity to fight for the rights of the nation’s poor and indigenous peoples.
The Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona, released by the group in three communiqués during the final week of June, affirming, “What we are going to do in Mexico and in the world, we are going to do without arms, with a civil and peaceful movement, and without neglecting or ceasing to support our communities.”
The declaration stated the EZLN will form new relationships with international groups “resisting and struggling against Neoliberalism.” It also outlined a plan for working domestically, saying they would expand their fight for the indigenous peoples of Mexico to include all who are “exploited and dispossessed.”
The EZLN plans to build a national campaign against oppression, rebuild the political process to better serve poor communities, and struggle to write a new constitution that recognizes “the rights and liberties of the people, and which defends the weak in the face of the powerful.”
“It is time that the EZLN amplifies its ties because if it stays with the indigenous fight, it would not be able to attain what its own name says: national liberation,” Amaranta Cornejo, an employee of the Chiapas Media Project, said in an e-mail from Chiapas. “With this [becoming a political organization] they are risking a lot—they run the risk of losing support—but I believe they could also win more sincere supporters.”
Guillermo de la Peña, a Professor of Anthropology at the Center of Research and Superior Studies in Social Anthropology in Guadalajara, Mexico, said in an e-mail, that although the indigenous issues in Mexico have declined recently, “It would be regrettable if the EZLN puts its ethnic banners aside in favor of a discourse which simply attacks ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘globalization’.”
The EZLN first took action New Year’s Day, 1994 when they coordinated an armed uprising throughout the province of Chiapas. The rebellion coincided with the implementation of North American Free Trade Agreement, a trade agreement they believed threatened indigenous ways of life because of increasing pressures of globalization. After two-weeks of violence, the group signed a tenuous cease-fire with the Mexican government, agreeing to seek greater autonomy through peaceful means.
“Pack Up and Get Out”
Why the Tobique First Nation took control of their territory’s hydro dam
From The Dominion, by Daniel Thau-Eleff
A hydroelectric dam near Grand Falls, NB. Many dams have been built on Maliseet land despite the objections of the original inhabitants of the area.
TOBIQUE FIRST NATION, NB—A group from the Tobique First Nation walked peacefully into the hydro station just outside their reserve on the morning of Monday, June 8. Stephen (Red Feather) Perley approached the New Brunswick Power Corporation (NB Power) employees and said, “You guys have fifteen minutes to pack up and get out.” The employees left. Perley and others wrapped a chain around the gate and locked it. The dam was now the property of the Tobique First Nation.
Tobique, the largest Maliseet reserve in the province, first rejected a developer’s bid to build a hydro dam on its territory in 1844. The next such bid came in 1895 and was also rejected. As New Brunswick’s Telegraph Journal reported in a series of historical pieces, the Tobique River was then “part of what may well have been the greatest salmon river system in the world;” hundreds of thousands of fish swam up these rivers each year to spawn. The abundant salmon defined the community’s way of life, providing food and employment—many worked as guides in the summer months.
Individual developers eventually gave way to provincial and federal agencies. In 1950 New Brunswick’s premier approved the construction of a dam at Tobique, this time without consulting the land’s Maliseet owners. By the end of that year, construction on the dam had begun.
When Tobique’s chief learned of the plan, he wrote to Indian Affairs, demanding “suitable action to protect our rights.” He continued, “If the building [of the dam] cannot be stopped, we demand compensation,” suggesting “free electricity for all domestic uses [and] business on the reservation.” This was never honoured—as soon as the community had power lines, they received power bills. The Band Council paid these bills for Elders and people on social assistance.
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Today, few wild salmon make their way up the Tobique river. The dam has eroded the reserve’s riverbanks, leading to “trees being washed away and homes in danger of falling into the river,” according to Maliseet activist Terry Sappier. Many of the edible and medicinal plants are gone—the islands they grew on are underwater. And ironically, because they are considered a rural area, Tobique residents are charged among the highest electricity rates in the province.
The Tobique Band Council is currently around $20 million in debt and, last spring, Canada’s Department of Indian and Northern Affairs put Tobique’s finances under third party management. The new manager stopped paying the power bills of Elders, and in April of 2008 these households began receiving bills for thousands of dollars.
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Indigenous Resistance in the Americas and the Legacy of Mariátegui
Now that socialism is back in the forefront of the Indigenous movement, most visibly in Bolivia with Evo Morales’s political party MAS (Movement Toward Socialism), Becker’s book is timely and an important source for those on the left seeking to comprehend Indigenous struggles and aspirations, as well as for Indigenous communities.
This article is a review of Marc Becker’s Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements (Duke University Press) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
Roxanne is a longtime activist, historian, writer, and professor emeritus at California State University East Bay, has published numerous articles and books on the history and issues of Indigenous peoples, including Indians of the Americas: Human Rights and Self-Determination and her three book memoir (Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 and Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War.)
Evo Morales (right) with the other two faces of Latin American socialism, Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro
Following the 2005 election of the first Indigenous president of any country in the Americas — Evo Morales in Bolivia — I commented in MRzine on the fact that many were taken by surprise by this seemingly sudden occurrence out of nowhere, but only because they had not been paying attention to the development of the international Indigenous movement over the past three decades.
I called attention to the Indigenous mass movements in the Americas during the 1960s and 1970s that gave rise to the international Indigenous movement that, in turn, brought mass-based Indigenous movements into the United Nations. At that forum, significant work was done to develop international law norms for the protection of Indigenous communities and nations, in order to found collective rights analogous to those established in international law by the process of decolonization, the outstanding achievement of the United Nations. Historian Marc Becker, in his invaluable new book, goes deeper in locating the roots of those twentieth century mass movements, focusing on Ecuador.
Sixteen years before Evo Morales, in another Andean region, Indigenous peoples rose up and paralyzed Ecuador for a week. Becker begins with this moment in a chapter titled, “What Is an Indian?” He describes how the protesters blocked highways, halting all traffic in the country, and then massed in the streets of Quito, the capital, presenting sixteen demands focused on land, culture, and political rights. The pan-Indigenous organization, CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador), founded in 1986, provided both leadership and an ideological frame for the future of Indigenous movements in that country. Becker focuses on the extraordinary role of women’s leadership and participation as well (“gendered histories”). Although Becker doesn’t refer to it, CONAIE had been actively participating in the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, and after 1990, the Ecuadorian government included Indigenous representatives in its delegations to the United Nations.
Becker observes that, following the 1990 uprising: “In a manner rarely seen in Latin America, Indigenous activism in Ecuador spawned an academic ‘Generation of 1990’ with numerous articles, books, and doctoral dissertations on the subject of Indigenous politics. Anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists analyzed the uprising and the ideological shifts engendered within the Indigenous world. Academics came to see the uprising, the organizational process leading to it, and the political negotiations following it as representing the birth of a new Indigenous ideology and organizational structure.”
Carlisle: The Children Who Never Came Home
Remembering the children who never came home
Article and photos by Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
These photos, taken at the cemetery at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, are posted for the families of the children who never came home
CARLISLE, Penn. — Most American Indian children in US boarding schools were kidnapped, stolen from their parents. At Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Native American children were part of the US experiment which became the prototype of the boarding schools that followed. Across the US, Indian children were forbidden to speak their language, which carried their songs and ceremonies. Their hair was cut in an attempt to cut the Indian-ness from them.
In boarding schools, children were routinely abused, beaten and sexually abused. Many were tortured and locked in cellars. Some were shot trying to escape. Many died of malnutrition and pneumonia. Others died of tuberculosis and genocide: Children with TB were housed with healthy children, producing the rampant spread of tuberculosis.
The young boys who survived were militarized, made into US soldiers.
At Haskell, the unmarked graves in the marsh tell the rest of the story. Many of the children who died, or were murdered, were buried in unmarked graves without gravestones.
This pattern of genocide was repeated in Australia and Canada. In Canada, at the residential schools operated by churches, there is new evidence that children were raped and murdered.
Irene Favel, survivor of Muscowequan Catholic residential school in Lestock, Saskatchewan, describes seeing a newborn baby thrown alive into a furnace at that school by a priest in 1944. An Indian girl had been raped by a priest and given birth. Watch Favel’s video interview and read more at Hidden from History: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/
Carlisle was built on the premise of a prison.
At Carlisle, Richard H. Pratt designed the school, based on his experience at St. Augustine prison in Florida.
“Kill the Indian, and save the man,” Pratt said, stating his theory of education.
2 Horns of a Dilemma: 6 Nations & Akwesasne
From Mohawk Nation News.
MNN. Sep. 13, 2009. What’s happening in Six Nations and Akwesasne on Mohawk jurisdiction issues? Everybody knows the invaders have no jurisdiction over Ongwehonwe anywhere. The band and tribal councils are mum about their dealings with Canada, Ontario, Quebec, US and New York State, the five colonial meddlers at Akwesasne.
Ever wonder why the border goons scampered away so fast from the imaginary line [border] on Kawenoke Island last May 31, 2009? We hear money is in the bank for a new low level bridge over the St. Lawrence River from Cornwall Ontario to Kawenoke [formerly Cornwall Island] to US soil. It looks like a construction barge has already finished a pylon on the US side without consulting the Mohawk Nation.
Canada has installed a temporary Canada customs shack at the foot of the bridge in Cornwall. The land has already been cleared for what could be a new low level bridge to touch down from Kawenoke, along with a new multi-million dollar customs complex like the new one on the US side.
Is Mike Mitchell, the grand chief, getting big bucks to help Ottawa? We don’t want the border or the new bridge in Kawenoke. Never did! Never will! No one is singing “Baby, come back”.
Meanwhile, the Ontario Provincial police OPP are constantly exceeding their jurisdiction by foraying into Six Nations. Shouldn’t the Six Nations cops be curbing the build-up of OPP activities by taking OPP badge and car numbers, reporting it and escorting them off? Rogue cops could be sent in to try to stir up trouble. If caught, they must leave and stay away. It looks like some of our guys are holding the fort. They are there on behalf of Great Turtle Island with all Ongwehonwe standing with them.
New York State also has a dilemma. They are facing a big court case with the Haudenosaunee whom the NYS Troopers attacked in Onondaga in 1997. Most victims don’t want to settle for money. Instead they want the Troopers to stand trial. They are anxious to see if the trail leads to NYS Governor George Pataki’s office for ordering the attack. NYS is acting quiet, peaceful and accommodating. They don’t want to be seen as big bad guys like Canada, beating up Indigenous people for no reason. In fact, that is what the US is known for. That’s why they’re in court.
Meantime, the band and tribal councilors think their $hip has come in. They just have to sell out their own people. We hear Mike Flathead Mitchell is now waiting for a statue of himself to be erected at the entrance on Kawenoke [Cornwall Island], with made-in-China replicas to be sold at Wal Mart. The pigeons will love him.
Cry Me a River: Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country
These are words that mark the graves, words that name the cancers, words that mark the rivers and words that give rise to names
Article and photos by Brenda Norrell, Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Photos top: Tombstones of the children who never came home at Carlisle Indian School in Penn. (Click on photo to enlarge) Photo 2: Gilbert Badoni, Navajo from Cudei near Shiprock, N.M., shows a poster of his family in a southwestern Colorado uranium mining camp. All the members of his family developed cancer or lung disease, including his later father who died of cancer. Gilbert, as a child in lower left, said the United States government used Navajos as guinea pigs in Cold War uranium mining camps.
CHUSKA MOUNTAINS, N.M. — When Paul Zimmerman writes in his new book about the Rio Puerco and the Four Corners, he calls out the names of the cancers and gives voice to the poisoned places and streams. Zimmerman is not just writing empty words.
Zimmerman writes of the national sacrifice area that the mainstream media and the spin doctors would have everyone forget, where the corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet, in his new book, A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uran
ium Weapons and Fraudulent Science.
“A report in 1972 by the National Academy of Science suggested that the Four Corners area be designated a ‘national sacrifice area,’” he writes.
Then, too, he writes of the Rio Puerco, the wash that flowed near my home when I lived in Houck, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation in the 1980s. The radioactive water flowed from the Churck Rock, N.M., tailings spill on down to Sanders, where non-Indians were also dying of cancer, and it flowed by New Lands, Nahata Dziil Chapter, where Navajos were relocated from their homes on Black Mesa. They moved there from communities like Dinnebeto. Some elderly Navajos died there in New Lands, not just from the new cancers, but from broken hearts.
Zimmerman points out there was plenty of evidence of cancers from Cold War uranium mining and radioactive tailings left behind, but few studies were commissioned to document it. In the early 1980s, I asked the Indian Health Service about the rates of death around the uranium mines and power plants. No studies were ever conducted, according to the IHS press officer. I was shocked. Fresh out of graduate school with a master’s degree in health for developing nations, I really could not believe it.
This week, Zimmerman released a chapter of his new book to aid the struggles of Indigenous Peoples, after reading about the Havasupai Gathering to Halt Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon.
As I read his chapter, I am flooded with memories, memories of people dying, radioactive rocks and the deception and censorship that continues on the Navajo Nation.
In the 1990s, USA Today asked me to report on the uranium tailings and deaths at Red Valley and Cove near Shiprock, N.M. In every home I visited, at least one Navajo had cancer and their family members had died of cancer. In some homes, every family member had cancer. In one home, an eighty-year-old Navajo woman looked at the huge rocks that her home was made of. She said some men came with a Geiger counter and told her the rocks were extremely radioactive. Then, on another day, I walked beside the radioactive rocks strewn in Gilbert Badoni’s backyard near Shiprock.
The dust we breathed at Red Valley and Cove was radioactive. Read the rest of this entry
Venezuela’s Education Law Restructures, Democratizes Elite Institutions
United Socialist Party of Venezuela mobilizes to defend new education law
On Aug.14, the National Assembly of Venezuela passed the Organic Education Law, which seeks to restructure the university system, opening it to the working class.
Indigenous venezuelans demonstrate in support of the Organic Education law.
The first draft of the law was completed in 2001 and became part of a national debate, carried out in virtually every sector of society over the last eight years, to uphold key constitutional principles.
Article 102 of the Bolivarian Constitution, ratified by popular referendum in 1999, states that “education is a human right and a fundamental social duty; it is democratic, free of charge, and obligatory.” The Organic Education Law establishes the institutional structures and the guiding principles for the state to make this right a reality for all Venezuelans.
For months, major opposition groups, including the association of rectors of Venezuela’s major autonomous and private universities, all major opposition parties, the privately owned media and the Catholic Church have waged a campaign against the legislation. Demonstrations held by these groups often turned violent, and their campaign has only intensified since the signing of the legislation into law on August 14.
With classes set to begin Sept. 15, the right-wing opposition has threatened to sabotage any attempt at change in the education system. The president of Venezuela’s Chamber of Private Education, Octavio de Lamo, declared publicly, “We are organizing national networks that will connect with public establishments to confront the law, and avoid government intervention.” (Venezuelaanalysis.com, Aug 21)
The right-wing opposition, led by large sections of the Venezuelan ruling class and supported by U.S. imperialism, is bent on destroying the gains of the Bolivarian revolution. They have engaged in coup attempts, violent demonstrations, propaganda campaigns, referendums and more to achieve their aims.
But the Venezuelan people and the Bolivarian government have successfully blocked their efforts.
In response to open calls for the sabotage of the Organic Education Law, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) will designate the defense of the new legislation as one of the immediate tasks of newly formed Workers Patrols.
These Workers Patrols were formed as part of an internal reorganization of the party in the lead up to its national congress in October. The local units will be comprised of 20 to 30 party militants within a community, workplace or education center. According to the PSUV’s newspaper, the patrols will be the organizational basis for a “process of collective construction that will take the message of socialism house to house, street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood, and parish by parish.” (A La Izquierda, Aug. 10)
Indeed, among the stated functions of the Workers Patrols include the “organization of workers from the job site” and the preparation of “conditions for the building of socialism in the process of production and distribution of social wealth” and the “taking on of tasks of social control in the stages of planning, processing, and distribution.”
