Indigenous Books Banned In White Supremacist Arizona

Can we call it APARTHEID yet?

POLICE STATE? TYRANNY? DICTATORSHIP? BUSINESS AS USUAL?

Banning of Books Signals Revolution in Tucson

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Banned book includes Leslie Marmon Silko, Buffy Sainte Marie and Winona LaDuke

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Translation in French:
http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=577

UPDATE Jan. 18, 2012:
'Custer Huppenthal's Last Big Lie about Seized Books, by Censored News:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/01/custer-huppenthals-last-big-lie-seized.html

TUCSON -- Outrage was the response on Saturday to the news that Tucson schools has banned books, including "Rethinking Columbus," with an essay by award-winning Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko, who lives in Tucson, and works by Buffy Sainte Marie, Winona LaDuke, Leonard Peltier and Rigoberta Menchu.

All books and materials of the now forbidden Mexican American Studies classes were seized from the classrooms. This follows the 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the Tucson Unified School District board to succumb to the State of Arizona, and forbid Mexican American Studies, rather than fight the state decision.

Students said the books were seized from the classrooms and out of their hands after the vote banning Mexican American Studies, including a book of photos of Mexico. Crying, students said it was like Nazi Germany and they have been unable to sleep since it happened.

The banned book, "Rethinking Columbus," includes work by many Native Americans, as Debbie Reese of Nambe Pueblo reports. The book includes:

Suzan Shown Harjo's "We Have No Reason to Celebrate"
Buffy Sainte-Marie's "My Country, 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying"
Joseph Bruchac's "A Friend of the Indians"
Cornel Pewewardy's "A Barbie-Doll Pocahontas"
N. Scott Momaday's "The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee"
Michael Dorris's "Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving"
Leslie Marmon's "Ceremony"
Wendy Rose's "Three Thousand Dollar Death Song"
Winona LaDuke's "To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our Responsibility"

All books in the Mexican American Studies classrooms were seized. The reading list includes two books by Native American author Sherman Alexie and a book of poetry by O'odham poet Ofelia Zepeda.

Jeff Biggers writes in Salon:

The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook “Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years,” which features an essay by Tucson author Leslie Silko. Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic studies program.

Biggers said Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest," was also banned during the meeting this week. Administrators told Mexican-American studies teachers to stay away from any class units where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes."

Other banned books include “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by famed Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo Acuña, two books often singled out by Arizona state superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who campaigned in 2010 on the promise to “stop la raza.” Huppenthal, who once lectured state educators that he based his own school principles for children on corporate management schemes of the Fortune 500, compared Mexican-American studies to Hitler Jugend indoctrination last fall.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/13/whos_afraid_of_the_tempest/singleton/

Bill Bigelow, co-author of Rethinking Columbus, writes:

Imagine our surprise.
Rethinking Schools learned today that for the first time in its more-than-20-year history, our book Rethinking Columbus was banned by a school district: Tucson, Arizona ...

As I mentioned to Biggers when we spoke, the last time a book of mine was outlawed was during the state of emergency in apartheid South Africa in 1986, when the regime there banned the curriculum I’d written, Strangers in Their Own Country, likely because it included excerpts from a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Confronting massive opposition at home and abroad, the white minority government feared for its life in 1986. It’s worth asking what the school authorities in Arizona fear today.
http://rethinkingschoolsblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/rethinking-columbus-banned-in-tucson


Click to enlarge: Books in classrooms during audit.
Roberto Rodriguez, professor at University of Arizona, is also among the nation's top Chicano and Latino authors on the Mexican American Studies reading list. Rodriguez' column about this week's school board decision, posted at Censored News, is titled: "Tucson school officials caught on tape 'urinating' on Mexican students." http://drcintli.blogspot.com/

Rodriguez responded to Censored News on Sunday about the banning of his books at Tucson schools.

"The attacks in Arizona are mind-boggling. To ban the teaching of a discipline is draconian in and of itself. However, there is also now a banned books list that accompanies the ban. I believe 2 of my books are on the list, which includes: Justice: A Question of Race and The X in La Raza. Two others may also be on the list," Rodriguez said.

"That in itself is jarring, but we need to remember the proper context. This is not simply a book-banning; according to Tom Horne, the former state schools' superintendent who designed HB 2281, this is part of a civilizational war. He determined that Mexican American Studies is not based on Greco-Roman knowledge and thus, lies outside of Western Civilization.

"In a sense, he is correct. The philosophical foundation for MAS is a maiz-based philosophy that is both, thousands of years old and Indigenous to this continent. What has just happened is akin to an Auto de Fe -- akin to the 1562 book-burning of Maya books in 1562 at Mani, Yucatan. At TUSD, the list of banned books will total perhaps 50 books, including artwork and posters.

"For us here in Tucson, this is not over. If anything, the banning of books will let the world know precisely what kind of mindset is operating here; in that previous era, this would be referred to as a reduccion (cultural genocide) of all things Indigenous. In this era, it can too also be see as a reduccion."

The reading list includes world acclaimed Chicano and Latino authors, along with Native American authors. The list includes books by Corky Gonzales, along with Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street;” Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Black Mesa Poems,“ and L.A. Urreas’ “The Devil’s Highway.“ The authors include Henry David Thoreau and the popular book “Like Water for Chocolate.”

On the reading list are Native American author Sherman Alexie's books, “Ten Little Indians,“ and “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven.“ O’odham poet and professor Ofelia Zepeda’s “Ocean Power, Poems from the Desert” is also on the list.


DA Morales writes in Three Sonorans, at Tucson Citizen, about the role of state schools chief John Huppenthal. "Big Brother Huppenthal has taken his TEA Party vows to take back Arizona… take it back a few centuries with official book bans that include Shakespeare!"
http://tucsoncitizen.com/three-sonorans/2012/01/13/did-you-know-even-shakespeare-got-banned-from-tusd-with-mas-ruling/

BANNED MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES READING LIST
Curriculum Audit of the Mexican American Studies Department, Tucson Unified School District, May 2, 2011.
High School Course Texts and Reading Lists Table 20: American Government/Social Justice Education Project 1, 2 - Texts and Reading Lists

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998), by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson

The Latino Condition: A Critical Reader (1998), by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2001), by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000), by P. Freire

United States Government: Democracy in Action (2007), by R. C. Remy

Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006), by F. A. Rosales

Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1990), by H. Zinn

Table 21: American History/Mexican American Perspectives, 1, 2 - Texts and Reading Lists

Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (2004), by R. Acuna

The Anaya Reader (1995), by R. Anaya

The American Vision (2008), by J. Appleby et el.

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998), by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson

Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992), by J. A. Burciaga

Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings (1997), by C. Jiminez

De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views Multi-Colored Century (1998), by E. S. Martinez

500 Anos Del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1990), by E. S. Martinez

Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human (1998), by R. Rodriguez

The X in La Raza II (1996), by R. Rodriguez

Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006), by F. A. Rosales

A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (2003), by H. Zinn

Course: English/Latino Literature 7, 8

Ten Little Indians (2004), by S. Alexie

The Fire Next Time (1990), by J. Baldwin

Loverboys (2008), by A. Castillo

Women Hollering Creek (1992), by S. Cisneros

Mexican WhiteBoy (2008), by M. de la Pena

Drown (1997), by J. Diaz

Woodcuts of Women (2000), by D. Gilb

At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria (1965), by E. Guevara

Color Lines: "Does Anti-War Have to Be Anti-Racist Too?" (2003), by E. Martinez

Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy (1998), by R. Montoya et al.

Let Their Spirits Dance (2003) by S. Pope Duarte

Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1997), by M. Ruiz

The Tempest (1994), by W. Shakespeare

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993), by R. Takaki

The Devil's Highway (2004), by L. A. Urrea

Puro Teatro: A Latino Anthology (1999), by A. Sandoval-Sanchez & N. Saporta Sternbach

Twelve Impossible Things before Breakfast: Stories (1997), by J. Yolen

Voices of a People's History of the United States (2004), by H. Zinn

Course: English/Latino Literature 5, 6

Live from Death Row (1996), by J. Abu-Jamal

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1994), by S. Alexie

Zorro (2005), by I. Allende

Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1999), by G. Anzaldua

A Place to Stand (2002), by J. S. Baca

C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans (2002), by J. S. Baca

Healing Earthquakes: Poems (2001), by J. S. Baca

Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems (1990), by J. S. Baca

Black Mesa Poems (1989), by J. S. Baca

Martin & Mediations on the South Valley (1987), by J. S. Baca

The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (19950, by D. C. Berliner and B. J. Biddle

Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992), by J. A Burciaga

Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States (2005), by L. Carlson & O. Hijuielos

Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States (1995), by L. Carlson & O. Hijuielos

So Far From God (1993), by A. Castillo

Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (1985), by C. E. Chavez

Women Hollering Creek (1992), by S. Cisneros

House on Mango Street (1991), by S. Cisneros

Drown (1997), by J. Diaz

Suffer Smoke (2001), by E. Diaz Bjorkquist

Zapata's Discipline: Essays (1998), by M. Espada

Like Water for Chocolate (1995), by L. Esquievel

When Living was a Labor Camp (2000), by D. Garcia

La Llorona: Our Lady of Deformities (2000), by R. Garcia

Cantos Al Sexto Sol: An Anthology of Aztlanahuac Writing (2003), by C. Garcia-Camarilo, et al.

The Magic of Blood (1994), by D. Gilb

Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings (2001), by Rudolfo "Corky" Gonzales

Saving Our Schools: The Case for Public Education, Saying No to "No Child Left Behind" (2004) by Goodman, et al.

Feminism if for Everybody (2000), by b hooks

The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1999), by F. Jimenez

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1991), by J. Kozol

Zigzagger (2003), by M. Munoz

Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature (1993), by T. D. Rebolledo & E. S. Rivero

...y no se lo trago la tierra/And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1995), by T. Rivera

Always Running - La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (2005), by L. Rodriguez

Justice: A Question of Race (1997), by R. Rodriguez

The X in La Raza II (1996), by R. Rodriguez

Crisis in American Institutions (2006), by S. H. Skolnick & E. Currie

Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941 (1986), by T. Sheridan

Curandera (1993), by Carmen Tafolla

Mexican American Literature (1990), by C. M. Tatum

New Chicana/Chicano Writing (1993), by C. M. Tatum

Civil Disobedience (1993), by H. D. Thoreau

By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996), by L. A. Urrea

Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (2002), by L. A. Urrea

Zoot Suit and Other Plays (1992), by L. Valdez

Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995), by O. Zepeda

A Friend Of Poverty

Quote of the Day:

"Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."

- Christopher Hitchens

Cop Executions Up 13%

Some people push back.


Police deaths up 13 percent in 2011

By Peter Hermann

1:26 p.m. EST, December 28, 2011

The number of police officers killed in the line of duty in the U.S. jumped 13 percent this year -- 173 compared with 153 last year -- and for the first time in more than a decade more died from gunfire than by motor vehicle accident.

These figures come from the preliminary report compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks deaths of police officers.

Yes Timmy, They Abort QBs

Poor Tim Tebow.

After hooking up with right wing extremist group Focus On The Family to create an ad celebrating a doormat mother who did not abort him, Tim Tebow now faces post-natal abortion by the Denver Broncos.

Now it's obvious why he pandered to the misogynists at Focus: He wanted to displace his abortion fears onto women because the little fuck can't pass the football to save his life, let alone his career. Tim "Three-and-Out" Tebow is bum goods, and Denver's been had to the tune of eleven million dollars.

Serves you right, Fuckers.

Keep Tebowing to "god," Timmy. Maybe the Collector of Prepuces will send you the ability to pass the football at something more than the college level. Someday. John Elway sure as hell can't help you; he's out scouting for a new NFL quality quarterback every chance he gets.

You're a one-season joke, Timmy. And all that sales-pitch prayering ain't gonna convince anybody you deserve to play in the NFL. Not even your mother.

Somebody please feed this Christian extremist to the (Detroit) Lions already. He forgot that in the National Football League, the forward pass IS god.

Profs Call for Boycott Of CU

CU's treatment of Ward Churchill, Phil Mitchell makes it questionable employer, report finds


Professor Rights Group Condemns CU-Boulder Firings Of Ward Churchill, Phil Mitchell In New Report

The Other Way to Occupy Denver

Last night in Denver it snowed about six inches. The temperature as of this writing at lunchtime on November 2, 2011 is twenty-six degrees. Hundreds of people in Denver are houseless in this weather.

In the article below from Colorado Indymedia is a link to a website that will tell you all the empty, foreclosed houses that can be occupied to save a life.

Pass it on....

The Other Way to Occupy Denver

Submitted by igloosRforever on October 27, 2011 - 12:18pm

Denver#occupydenverforeclosureshomelessoccupationssquatting

The Other Way to “Occupy Denver”

As weather gets colder, DPD pushes homeless and occupiers further into a corner. Hancock plans to make sleeping on the sidewalk a crime and talks about ejecting the homeless from the 16th street mall. Meanwhile, as Occupy Denver concedes more and more ground to the authorities every day there are many that are beginning to doubt its effectiveness. The point of Occupy Anywhere should have never been to make a symbolic plea to our leaders to do the right thing, moving them with our dedication and now, as the winter begins and those sleeping outside have no other coverings allowed but tarps, moving them with our suffering.Martin Luther King and the christian pacifist early civil rights movement may have used the same tactic (for example putting kids in a situation where they'd be attacked by dogs, to make good press for the North) but at least the majority of the actions at that time were focused on direct defiance of the jim crow system. No luck in Denver, or most occupations. Such a movement can only succeed when directly challenging and uprooting the things that it protests, through action. Occupy Denver is doomed to failure if its content to be nothing more than a symbolic statement, along the lines of a “die in”, but with the real possibility of someone actually dying to make that point. An encampment is possible, and worth pursuing and attempting, but it will have to deal with two obstacles, a city government and police force bent on crushing any action taken to make houselessness survivable, and people in the occupation itself that actively sabotage the same attempts (it’s no coincidence that most of the second group has a place to go home to at the end of the GA).

Occupy Denver's 24/7 team, a name they have bestowed upon themselves, are those who are most vulnerable within this movement. Most of them are homeless or street youth. Yet the movement prefers to use them as publicity when convenient and then turn their backs on them when they choose to truly make the park their home. Last night a houseless veteran, Reno, was arrested after laying claim to Civic Center Park as his home and pitching his tent on the snow covered grass. He chose to defend his home and was arrested for it. But, where were the many other Occupiers when the police came for both Reno and his home? A small group shouted “shame” and other admonishments at DPD for their despicable actions, but no one sat down in the face of those officers to help this man defend his home and right to warmth.
The truth is that the city, state, and their army (DPD) will continue their assault on those who are most vulnerable and do not see tents at the park as a symbolic action, but rather see it as a necessity to ensure their survival during the winter months. How long will Occupy Denver sit idly by with their hands nervously wringing in their laps as they ponder whether this hurts the movement or furthers it? When will those within Occupy Denver who have a warm, safer place to call home at night stand in true solidarity with those who do not?

Seeing as Wall Street and "the banks" are the biggest targets of the occupy movement and a huge number of the people who've slept at, worked for, defended and gone to jail for the occupation have been houseless, squatting of foreclosed homes seems like one of the best responses. Squatting is direct disobedience of the target, that happens to leave the rebel drier, warmer and safer than those that stick around for the symbolism. Vacant, bank owned houses are abundant everywhere. Below are a few sites that track houses that could provide shelter to those without it. The first one tracks all vacant properties held by the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There are many more owned by other banks, absentee landlords and so on but this is the biggest accurate resource. The second is based on the post office, which addresses haven't received mail in the last six months, which is less reliable but yields more results. There are enough roofs in the Metro area to house everyone through the winter, and any action taken to prevent that housing from happening amounts to nothing less than murder.

http://www.huduser.org/REO/reo.html
(Directions… set up an account by clicking signup. Put in a name (any name) an email (doesn’t have to be real) and a password, create it, sign yourself in. Zoom in to the general area you want to check out, then when you’re close enough, check the box to the left hand side of the page saying “view properties”. They should show up.)

http://www.huduser.org/portal/da...

Native American Leader Elouise Cobell Dies At 65

What a woman for the people.

Hat Tip, AK48

Native American Leader Elouise Cobell Dies At 65

by The Associated Press

October 17, 2011 Elouise Cobell, the Blackfeet woman who led a 15-year legal fight to force the U.S. government to account for more than a century of mismanaged Indian land royalties, died Sunday. She was 65.

Cobell died at a Great Falls hospital of complications from cancer, spokesman Bill McAllister said.

Cobell was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in 1996 claiming the Interior Department had misspent, lost or stolen billions of dollars meant for Native American land trust account holders dating back to the 1880s.

After years of legal wrangling, the two sides in 2009 agreed to settle for $3.4 billion, the largest government class-action settlement in U.S. history. The beneficiaries are estimated to be about 500,000 people.

Asked what she wanted her legacy to be, she said she hoped she would inspire a new generation of Native Americans to fight for the rights of others and lift their community out of poverty.

"Maybe one of these days, they won't even think about me. They'll just keep going and say, 'This is because I did it,'" Cobell said. "I never started this case with any intentions of being a hero. I just wanted this case to give justice to people that didn't have it."

Cobell said she had heard stories since she was a child of how the government had shortchanged Native Americans with accounts for royalties from their land that was leased for resource development or farming.

Cobell said she became outraged when she actually started digging into how much money the government had squandered that belonged people who were living in dire poverty on the Blackfeet reservation in northwestern Montana.

She realized the amount mismanaged since the 1880s could be hundreds of billions of dollars. She said she tried for years working with two U.S. government administrations to resolve the dispute, then decided to sue with four other Native Americans as plaintiffs when no progress was made.

The government dug in. Over the next 14 years, there were more than 3,600 court filings, 220 days of trial, 80 published court decisions and 10 appeals until the 2009 breakthrough.

Under the settlement, $1.4 billion would go to individual Indian account holders. Some $2 billion would be used by the government to buy up fractionated Indian lands from individual owners willing to sell, and then turn those lands over to tribes. Another $60 million would be used for a scholarship fund for young Indians.

Cobell spent the next year shuttling back and forth between her home in Browning to Washington, D.C., to lobby individual congressmen to approve the deal. She also logged thousands of miles traveling across Indian country to explain the deal to the potential beneficiaries.

She found unexpected resistance among some Native Americans. They questioned why it was so little, how much would be going to her and they attorneys or why it didn't include a more complete accounting of what happened to the money.

Congress approved the deal and President Barack Obama signed it in December of 2010, a year after it was first proposed. A federal judge approved the settlement in June, though there are still appeals of the settlement pending.

Cobell discovered she had cancer just a few weeks before the judge's approval in June. She traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for surgery.

Cobell was born with the Indian name Yellow Bird Woman, a great granddaughter of the famous leader Mountain Chief. She grew up with seven brothers and sisters on the Blackfeet reservation.

She graduated from Great Falls Business College and received honorary degrees from Montana State University, Rollins College and, earlier this year, Dartmouth College.

She was the Blackfeet nation's treasurer for 13 years, and in 1987 helped found the first U.S. bank to be owned by a tribe, the Blackfeet National Bank, which is now the Native American Bank.

Cobell was the executive director of the nonprofit Native American Community Development Corp., which promotes sustainable economic development in Indian Country.

She won a $300,000 "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1997 and used most of the money to help fund the lawsuit.

Cobell lived on a ranch 30 miles south of Browning with her husband Alvin. Her only son, Turk, lives in Las Vegas with his wife Bobbie and their children Olivia and Gabriella.

She has a brother and two sisters who live in Browning and a third sister who lives in Seattle.

Book Release: Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota

Thanks to Christine Stark for sending me this important announcement.

Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition and

Prostitution Research & Education release:

Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota

Melissa Farley, Nicole Matthews, Guadalupe Lopez, Sarah Deer, Christine Stark, Eileen Hudon

Date: October 27, 2011

Time: 2:30 PM

Location: William Mitchell College of Law

875 Summit Avenue Saint Paul MN 55105

Auditorium (Room 245)

RSVPs greatly appreciated - lynette.fraction@wmitchell.edu

Point of Contact: MIWSAC at 651-646-4800 or nmatthews@miwsac.org

www.miwsac.org www.prostitutionresearch.com
Research funded

Tar Sands Arrests At White House

Brenda Norrell has great pics and vids of all the brave people of conscience, including one of Denver's own, being arrested at the White House while protesting the Tar Sands pipeline.

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2011/09/natives-portraits-of-arrests-white.html

Book Announcement

Congrats to Christine Stark on the publication of her new book, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation.

Here's the announcement from Christine:

My novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation, is now available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, and you may order it through any bookstore.

Please feel free to repost widely!

Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation

"...a perfect genius that makes the impossible in expression, possible; the unknowable in experience, knowable"
--Anya Achtenberg, author of The Stories of Devil-Girl

Nickels follows a biracial girl named "Little Miss So and So", from age 4 into adulthood. Told in a series of prose poems, Nickels' lyrical and inventive language conveys the dissociative states born of a world formed by persistent and brutal incest and homophobia. The dissociative states enable the child's survival and, ultimately, the adult's healing. The story is both heartbreaking and triumphant. Nickels is the groundbreaking debut of Minneapolis-area author and artist Christine Stark.

"Christine Stark has crafted a language and a diction commensurate with the shredding of consciousness that is a consequence of childhood sexual abuse. She brings us a wholly original voice in a riveting novel of desperation and love. Every sentence vibrates with a terrible beauty. Every sentence brings the news."
--Patricia Weaver Francisco, author of Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery

"To be taken into the mind of a child can be an enchanting adventure, but to be taken into the mind of a child who is abused, confused, and taken for granted is a lingering, livid journey. I applaud her fortitude to bring an olden--too long ignored-- truth out of the darkness with blazing, innovative light."
--MariJo Moore, author of The Diamond Doorknob

"In Nickels, Christine Stark, powerfully portrays the story of abuse and its impact on our lives. When this beautifully written and compelling story leaves, you are left wanting more. It's riveting; a book that will capture you from the beginning and carry you through the end. Everyone should read this book."
--Olga Trujillo, author of The Sum of My Parts

From the Reflections of America Series at Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com

Learn more at www.ChristineStark.com

FIC044000 Fiction : Contemporary Women
FIC018000 Fiction : Lesbian
SOC010000 Social Science : Feminism & Feminist Theory
____________________

Christine Stark
www.christinestark.com

Countdown to 911 ad nauseam

Countdown to 911 ad nauseam.

If I could be bothered to give a damn, I'd put up a picture like this everyday till September 11, 2011 - the 38th anniversary of the day the US-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet stole control of Chile from the democratically elected Salvador Allende.

We reap the terror we sow.

Denver Settles Democratic National Convention 'Indiscriminate Arrests' Lawsuit For $200,000

Exacting a price for state terrorism:

Denver Settles Democratic National Convention 'Indiscriminate Arrests' Lawsuit For $200,000

The city of Denver has settled the 2008 ACLU lawsuit for $200,000 that accused Denver Police of indiscriminate arrests during the Democratic National Convention.

Part of the settlement terms include a demand for improvement in the police policy on crowd control and training, according to an ACLU press release.

The lawsuit charged that Denver Police unlawfully arrested protestors, including ACLU clients, without probable cause and persecuted them for crimes they did not commit. According to the lawsuit, police issued a non-existant "dispersal" order and locked up those arrested into holding cells in a nearby warehouse converted into a detention center for DNC-related arrests.

Are You Buying MREs? Denver's Joint Terrorism Task Force Wants to Know

From the town that brought you the Spy Files, now we have the Denver JTTF and the FBI sending out this flyer to local military surplus stores.

Did you buy waterproof matches, you commie scum bag?

We're the secret police and we want to know.

And Then She Was Five! Fire Witch Rising's 5th Anniversary

Fwah! Five years strong and no end in sight.

I don't post as much as I used to, but it's still great knowing I have a place to sound off when no other place will do.

Thanks to all who keep reading and contributing.

Here's to another great year.

New Age Guru Guilty in Sweat Lodge Deaths

Hat Tip, AK48

New Age Nutters cooked alive in a hippie sauna. Guru found guilty.

Justice!

New Age Guru Guilty in Sweat Lodge Deaths

By MARC LACEY
Published: June 22, 2011

PHOENIX — A jury found James A. Ray, a self-help guru, guilty of negligent homicide on Wednesday in the deaths of three of his followers during a botched sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona in October 2009.

The decision, delivered after a nearly four-month trial in Yavapai County Superior Court in Camp Verde, Ariz., means Mr. Ray was found to have caused the deaths of Kirby Brown, 38, of Westtown, N.Y.; James Shore, 40, of Milwaukee; and Liz Neuman, 49, of Prior Lake, Minn., but did not necessarily recognize the risk he put them in. He could face anywhere from probation to more than 30 years in prison on the three guilty counts as court proceedings continue next week.

The prosecutor, Sheila Polk, had pursued a more serious charge of manslaughter, arguing that Mr. Ray should have known that the way he ran the two-hour ceremony, in which hot stones were piled in the center of the sweltering lodge, risked death and that he disregarded that risk.

The case drew international attention, largely because of the bizarre circumstances and because the deaths took place at a pristine campground within sight of the red rocks of Sedona, a well-known New Age gathering place.

A motivational speaker and author, Mr. Ray seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when he was found not guilty on the first manslaughter charge. But he looked stunned a moment later when the guilty verdicts came in. Watching the verdict were relatives of Mr. Ray as well as family members and friends of the victims, many of them holding hands as the decision was read.

Capitalist Pigs U2 Protested For Tax Evasion

"Non-violence" bigot Bono gets a measure of comeuppance. Not as much as the assclown deserves, but it's a start.

Violence erupts as U2 rocks Glastonbury

By Tom Morgan

U2 and its frontman Bono, known for their global poverty-fighting efforts, were accused of dodging taxes in Ireland by activists who crashed their performance at England's Glastonbury festival.

The anti-capitalist group Art Uncut inflated a 6-metre balloon emblazoned with the message "U Pay Your Tax 2." Security guards wrestled them to the ground before deflating the balloon and taking it away. About 30 people were involved in the angry clash.

Bono fan Gary Noble, 45, said he found the security response "all a bit shocking."

"I love U2 but I think everyone should pay their taxes. The campaigners have a right to voice their opinion," he said.

Art Uncut argues that while Bono campaigns against poverty in the developing world, his group has avoided paying Irish taxes at a time when his austerity-hit country desperately needs money.

Ireland, which has already accepted an international bailout, is suffering through deep spending cuts, tax hikes and rising unemployment as it tries to pull the debt-burdened economy back from brink of bankruptcy."

Tax(es) nestling in the band's bank account should be helping to keep open the hospitals, schools and libraries that are closing all over Ireland," Art Uncut member Charlie Dewar said ahead of the protest.

U2, the country's most successful band, was heavily criticised in 2006 for moving its corporate base from Ireland to the Netherlands, where royalties on music incur virtually no tax.

Bono, guitarist The Edge and U2's other members - bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen - are among the country's wealthiest residents. Forbes magazine has estimated the band earned $US195 million ($A185.68 million) last year, mostly through its hugely profitable 360 Degrees world tour.

During the years when Ireland was a booming "Celtic Tiger" economy, the members of U2invested in a wide range of Dublin properties, including a luxury riverside hotel and a planned Norman Foster-designed skyscraper on the River Liffey. Plans for the "U2 Tower" were shelved when property prices collapsed in 2008.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/violence-erupts-as-u2-rocks-glastonbury-20110625-1gkbg.html#ixzz1QIwAUJ1y

Monitoring of First Nations beefed up in '06: documents

Hat tip, AK48
Monitoring of First Nations beefed up in '06: documents

Aboriginal affairs minister's office says First Nations not only public safety areas targeted

By Marlene Habib, CBC News Posted: Jun 13, 2011 10:35 AM ET Last Updated: Jun 13, 2011 3:51 PM ET

The federal government stepped up surveillance of First Nations across Canada shortly after the 2006 election to better monitor political action such as protests over land claims, according to internal Indian Affairs and RCMP documents obtained by a Mohawk policy analyst.

The goal of the beefed up monitoring, after Stephen Harper first became prime minister, was to identify First Nations leaders, participants and supporters of occupations and protests, and closely monitor their moves, according to Russell Diabo, who obtained the documents under an Access to Information request.

The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) was given the lead role to monitor First Nations, according to the documents, copies of which were given to CBC News.

To do this, INAC established a “hot spot reporting system” — weekly reports highlighting First Nations that engaged in "direct action" to protect their lands and communities, said Diabo, who is based in Orillia, Ont.

In one document, titled "Aboriginal Hot Spots and Public Safety," and dated March 30, 2007, it was noted that the vast majority of "hot spots" were related to lands and resources, and led by "splinter groups" in protests including the Douglas Creek Estates occupation in Caledonia, Ont., and the Grassy Narrows blockade of the Trans-Canada Highway by environmentalists.

Read more...

Colorado Supreme Court to hear Ward Churchill's appeal for CU job

Colorado Supreme Court to hear Ward Churchill's appeal for CU job

By The Denver Post
Posted: 05/31/2011 10:58:34 AM MDTUpdated: 05/31/2011 11:49:30 AM MDT

Churchill hearing set for July 1

Ward Churchill's fight to regain his job at the University of Colorado got a new life today when the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal.

Churchill, who has argued that he lost academic tenure and his teaching job as a result of his controversial essays, will get to argue that his First Amendment rights were violated when he was fired in 2007.

Read more...

Church Report Cites Social Tumult in Priest Scandals

Hat Tip, AK 48.

The New York Times
May 17, 2011

Church Report Cites Social Tumult in Priest Scandals

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.

Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

But this study is likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America. The study, initiated in 2006, was conducted by a team of researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City at a cost of $1.8 million. About half was provided by the bishops, with additional money contributed by Catholic organizations and foundations. The National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the United States Department of Justice, supplied about $280,000.

The report was released Wednesday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, but the Religion News Service published an account of the report on its Web site on Tuesday. A copy of the report was also obtained by The New York Times. The bishops have said they hope the report will advance the understanding and prevention of child sexual abuse in society at large.

The researchers concluded that it was not possible for the church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance. Priests who abused minors have no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or mood disorders that distinguished them from priests who had not abused, the researchers found.

Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse, while liberals have argued that the all-male, celibate culture of the priesthood was the cause. This report will satisfy neither flank.

The report notes that homosexual men began entering the seminaries “in noticeable numbers” from the late 1970s through the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, the reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. If anything, the report says, the abuse decreased as more gay priests began serving the church.

Many more boys than girls were victimized, the report says, not because the perpetrators were gay, but simply because the priests had more access to boys than to girls, in parishes, schools and extracurricular activities.

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

The report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2002,” is the second produced by researchers at John Jay College. The first, on the “nature and scope” of the problem, was released in 2004.

Even before seeing it, victims advocates attacked the report as suspect because it relies on data provided by the church’s dioceses and religious orders.

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Web site that compiles reports on abuse cases, said, “There aren’t many dioceses where prosecutors have gotten involved, but in every single instance there’s a vast gap — a multiplier of two, three or four times — between the numbers of perpetrators that the prosecutors find and what the bishops released.”

David Clohessy, national director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that while the report contained no surprises, it had nonetheless been a disappointment because it did not include recommendations for far-reaching reforms, including limiting the power of bishops. Mr. Clohessy said this was critical because bishops had covered up many instances of sexual abuse by priests in the past.

“Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that says what they’ve said all along, and what they wanted to hear back,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’ve found that they needn’t even consider any substantive changes.”

Robert M. Hoatson, a priest and a founder of Road to Recovery, which offers counseling and referrals to victims, said the idea that the sexual and social upheavals of past decades were to blame for the abuse of children was an attempt to shift responsibility from church leaders. Mr. Hoatson said he had been among those who had been abused.“It deflects responsibility from the bishops and puts it on to a sociological problem,” he said. “This is a people problem. It wasn’t because of the ’70s, and it wasn’t the ’60s, and it wasn’t because of the 1450s. This was something individuals did.”

Kristine Ward, the chairwoman of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition, said the cultural explanation did not appear to explain why abuse cases within the Catholic church have shaken places from Australia and Ireland to South America. “Does the culture of the U.S. in the 1960s explain that? It’s hard to believe,” she said.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a conservative Catholic group, however said he believes permissiveness in the church in the 1960s and 1970s - particularly at seminaries - had been a significant reason for the rise in sexual abuse. Mr. Donohue said that while he generally supported the report’s findings, he believed that the study seemed to have purposefully avoided linking abuse cases with the increase in the number of gay men who became priests during the 1960s and 1970s. “The authors go through all sorts of contortions to deny the obvious - that obviously, homosexuality was at work,” Mr. Donohue said.

In Philadelphia, where a grand jury in February found that as many as 37 priests suspected of behavior ranging from sexual abuse to inappropriate actions were still serving in ministry. The archdiocese initially rejected the grand jury’s findings, but soon suspended 26 priests from ministry.

An essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal last week by Ana Maria Catanzaro, who heads the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s sexual-abuse review board, which is supposed to advise the archdiocese on how to handle abuse cases, said that the board was shocked to learn about the dozens of cases uncovered by the grand jury. Her essay raised questions about whether bishops provide accurate data even to their own, in-house review boards.

Still, the John Jay report says that when it comes to analyzing the incidence and causes of sexual abuse, “No organization has undertaken a study of itself in the manner of the Catholic Church.”

Because there are no comparable studies conducted by other institutions, religious or secular, the report says, “It is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organizations.”

Press Release: Statement from Harlyn Geronimo

From the All Nations Alliance list:

For Immediate Release

May 5, 2011

Press Contact:
Sarah Sloan at 202-904-7949

This following statement is being submitted to the official record of the United States Senate Commission on Indian Affairs Oversight Hearing on "Stolen Identities: The Impact of Racist Stereotypes on Indigenous People,” taking place Thursday, May 5, 2011, at 2:15pm in Dirksen-628.

Statement from Harlyn Geronimo on behalf of himself and other surviving lineal descendants of the Historic Apache Leader Geronimo

Whether it was intended only to name the military operation to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden or to give Osama Bin Laden himself the code name Geronimo, either was an outrageous insult and mistake. And it is clear from the military records released that the name Geronimo was used at times by military personnel involved for both the military operation and for Osama Bin Laden himself.

Obviously to equate Geronimo with Osama Bin Laden is an unpardonable slander of Native America and its most famous leader in history.

And to call the operation to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden by the name Geronimo is such a subversion of history that it also defames a great human spirit and Native American leader. For Geronimo himself was the focus of precisely such an operation by the U.S. military, an operation that assured Geronimo a lasting place in American and human history.

The Encyclopedia Britannica (1967, Volume 10, page 362) has described the real Operation Geronimo in the following words:

During this last campaign, which lasted 18 months, no fewer than 5,000 troops and 500 Indian auxiliaries had been employed in the apprehension of a band of Apaches comprising only 35 men, 8 boys and 101 women, who operated in two countries without bases of supply. Army and civilian losses totaled 95; Mexican losses were heavy, but unknown; Geronimo’s losses were 13 killed, but none from direct U.S. Army action.

Geronimo was not killed and was not captured. After the Chiricahua Band of Apaches were taken from reservations in Arizona Territory and New Mexico to Ft. Marion, Florida, Geronimo and his warriors saw no chance of reuniting with their people except by surrender with the promise that they would be reunited with their tribe.

General Miles promised: "There is plenty of timber, water, and grass in the land to which I will send you. You will live with your tribe and with your family. If you agree to this treaty you shall see your family within five days." None of the promises were kept.

Nearly half the Chiricahua band, the band of Cochise, died in Florida and later in Alabama within several years before being moved to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Geronimo was held a prisoner of war for the remaining 23 years of his life, though he was a major attraction at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904 and was second only to President Elect Theodore Roosevelt in the applause received along the Inaugural Parade route of 1905.

But Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Ft. Sill in February 1909. His bodily remains, if none were removed as has been alleged, are to this day in the Ft. Sill Apache Prisoner of War Cemetery despite his repeated requests to return to the headwaters of the Gila River in the Gila National Forest and within what was the first forest wilderness area designated in the U.S., in western New Mexico.

As the son of a grandson of Geronimo, who as a U.S. soldier fought at Omaha Beach on D Day and across West Europe to the Rhine in World War II, and having myself served two tours of duty in Vietnam during that war, I must respectfully request from the President, our Commander-in-Chief, or his Secretary at the Department of Defense, a full explanation of how this disgraceful use of my great grandfather’s name occurred, a full apology for the grievous insult after all that Native Americans have suffered and the expungement from all the records of the U.S. government this use of the name Geronimo. Leaving only for history the fact this insult to Native Americans occurred in all its pity.

Native American Farmers, Ranchers and USDA Reach Historic Settlement

From the All Nations Alliance list.


Native American Farmers, Ranchers and USDA Reach Historic Settlement

10/19/2010

USDA to pay $760 million in damages and debt relief to settle credit discrimination claims and improve farm loan services for Native Americans

(WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oct. 19, 2010) Native American farmers and ranchers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced an historic agreement to settle a nationwide class action lawsuit (Keepseagle v. Vilsack) that alleged discrimination in USDA’s farm loan program dating back to 1981. The agreement brings to an end 11 years of litigation, and marks the beginning of what is expected to be a new partnership between USDA and the Native American community.

Under the agreement, which was unveiled in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. before Judge Emmet Sullivan, USDA will pay $680 million in damages to thousands of Native American farmers and ranchers and forgive up to $80 million worth of outstanding farm loan debt.

The settlement also provides for a host of initiatives that will improve USDA’s farm loan services for Native Americans. Those initiatives include the creation of a Native American Farmer and Rancher Council, where top USDA officials and Native American advocates will collaborate to make USDA’s programs more accessible for Native Americans farmers and ranchers, as well as enhanced delivery of technical assistance to Native American borrowers, the creation of sub-offices on tribal lands, a systematic review of the farm loan program rules to improve accessibility to Native Americans and other measures designed to improve the provision of farm loan services to Native Americans.

“This settlement marks a major turning point in the important relationship between Native Americans, our Nation’s first farmers and ranchers, and the USDA,” says lead plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph M. Sellers, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, PLLC, in Washington, D.C. “After three decades, Native American farmers and ranchers will receive the justice they deserve, and the USDA has committed to improving the farm loan system in ways that will aid Native Americans for generations to come.”

The Keepseagle action was filed nearly 11 years ago, on the eve of Thanksgiving, 1999. The Plaintiffs alleged that Native American farmers and ranchers were denied the same opportunities as white farmers to obtain low-interest rate loans from USDA. Congress has charged the USDA with serving as the “lender of last resort” for family farmers who can’t obtain credit from commercial banks. According to an expert report prepared by a former USDA economist, Native Americans suffered actual economic losses amounting to $776 million between 1981 and 2007 as a result of receiving less than their fair share of credit opportunities from the USDA.

The settlement was greeted with relief and jubilation by the lead plaintiffs Marilyn and George Keepseagle, who have ranched for decades in Fort Yates, N.D., near Bismarck, N.D. “We have been waiting nearly three decades for this day to come,” said Marilyn Keepseagle. “This settlement will help thousands of Native Americans who are still farming and ranching. But more important, through this settlement we will leave to our children and grandchildren a farm loan system far more responsive to our community than the system we inherited from our parents.”

The settlement has three major components that are expected to become effective in early 2011.

First, it provides a payment of $680 million in damages to class members for the economic losses they suffered due to the denial of loans or loan servicing by the USDA.

Second, the USDA will forgive up to $80 million in debt currently held by class members who succeed in obtaining damages. Once the Court gives preliminary approval to the agreement, the USDA will establish a moratorium on foreclosures, debt accelerations and debt offsets not already referred to the Treasury Department. The moratorium will last until the debt relief process has concluded and class members’ debt has been forgiven. After the debt relief is provided, USDA will engage in a round of loan servicing for all class members who are delinquent on any outstanding USDA farm loan debt.

Third, the settlement agreement provides for changes to USDA’s farm loan program to improve the delivery and responsiveness to Native American farmers and ranchers, including through the creation of the Native American Farmer and Rancher Council, a new federal advisory committee.

“While the damage awards and debt relief are vital elements of this settlement, the Native American Farmer and Rancher Council will help ensure that the reforms to USDA’s programs are lasting and that USDA honors the civil rights of Native Americans for years to come,” said Plaintiffs’ co-counsel David Frantz, partner, Conlon, Frantz & Phelan.

The new Council will have 15 members, 11 of whom will be Native Americans or represent Native American interests and four of whom will be top USDA officials. Members will meet at least twice a year for the next five years to discuss how to make USDA’s programs more accessible for Native Americans farmers and ranchers, including changes to Farm Service Administration (FSA) regulations and internal guidance. The Council will report its recommendations directly to senior UDSA officials.

In addition to the Council, the USDA will: 1) create 10 to 15 USDA regional sub-offices that will provide education and technical assistance to Native American farmers and ranchers and their advocates; 2) undertake a systematic review of its farm loan policies to determine how its regulations and policies can be reformed to better assist Native American farmers and ranchers; 3) create a customer guide on applying for credit from the USDA; 4) create the Office of the Ombudsperson to address concerns of all socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers; and, 5) regularly collect and report data on how well Native Americans fare under USDA’s farm loan programs.

Full Press Release - October 19, 2010 [PDF]

Settlement Agreement - November 1, 2010 [PDF]

Order on Preliminary Approval - November 1, 2010 [PDF]

Detailed Notice to Potential Class Members [PDF]

Summary Notice to Potential Class Members [PDF]

Notice Suspending Foreclosures, Debt Accelerations and Administrative Offsets Due to Settlement [PDF]

Fact Sheets:

Damages Award [PDF]
Loan Debt Relief [PDF]
Native American Farmers and Ranchers Council [PDF]
Keepseagle v. Vilsack Named Plaintiffs [PDF]


Additional information about the Keepseagle v. Vilsack settlement is available at www.IndianFarmClass.com, or by calling, toll free, 1-888-233-5506.

Fuckwit Bigots Aplenty

Indians Aplenty

Read this outstanding Letter to the Editor in response to anti-Indian racism, then watch as Tiffany Fitzgerald, the Editor in Thief, tries to assert her white male authority in defending John Lindquist's "right" to hate speech and ethnic intimidation.

What else could be expected from a "Tiffany," but a silver-spoon, barbie-doll whine about John Lindquist's hurt feelings?

Shame on you, bigots.

Letter to the Editor: Jokes in event preview crossed line, offended native students

By Brighton Dawn Finger, Tessa McLean, and Scott Jacket

Published: Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Updated: Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Dear Editor in Chief Tiffany Fitzgerald,

In the recent print of The Advocate, from March 16-29, 2011, Volume 27, Issue 25, Backend Writer John Lindquist wrote "Indians aplenty." UCD Native students were outraged by the facetious remark about "…the opportunity to remember that, oh yeah, not all Native Americans died 200 years ago. (Just most of them.)." History books often leave out evidence that American Indians, First Nations and other Indigenous Peoples of North America were historically subjected to genocide, first by colonizers of the Americas and later including the United States government. Indigenous peoples of this land did not simply ‘die'; they were massacred through strategic campaigns, tortured, hanged and burned to death, beaten to death, starved to death, and forced to endure policies of cultural destruction that have been well documented. All of this terror began with an invasion in 1492 – not 200 years ago as Lindquist quips – as a pattern developed in which Native lands were stolen and Treaties were repeatedly broken and manipulated by the conquerors.

Within the United States, there is current legal debate as to whether Hate Speech in America should be extended to include areas where historically people have been brutalized and murdered. The Supreme Court has held that words that "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are not constitutionally protected. Contemporary legal discussion in this country includes the argument that racial insults that injure and do not explore reality should be included in future regulations on Hate Speech, in a context that is least restrictive of protected speech. We view this humor at The Advocate as written in a way that blames the victims while encouraging a continuation and reinforcement of degrading stereotypes. We believe that the aforementioned joke in "Indians aplenty" supports biases based in privilege disguised as tasteless humor. This facetious treatment of the topic of genocide triggers a cellular memory for us in relation to the heinous crimes that were carried out against our ancestors. Even if you say something that you don't believe in, you are still responsible for the message that you put forth through The Advocate. Regarding current US legal debate on Hate Speech, we contend that dismissive jokes about cultural genocide should be included within the parameters of forms of speech that are unprotected by the first amendment (example: Nazi sympathy is outlawed in Germany).

Moreover, Denver is home to a very large and diverse Native community, and the University of Colorado Denver is a hub for Native students. We are members of the Native American Student Organization (NASO), the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and advocates of American Indian Student Educational Programs and Outreach (AISEPO) within the UCD Office of Diversity and Inclusion. In addition, we continue to represent UCD at the international level as student delegates to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) at the UN headquarters in New York. As Indigenous diplomats of the University, we ask that you grant us the awareness and dignity that you maintain for other groups that have survived genocide. Before writers at The Advocate decide to use jokes about our social gatherings (i.e. the Denver March Powwow) to mask the context of the terror that reigned down upon our ancestors, we ask that you confront the true history by giving respect to our existence as First Nations of the Great Mother we call America.

Brighton Dawn Finger (Cherokee/Western Shoshone)

Tessa McLean (Anishinaabe)

Scott Jacket (Ute Mountain Ute)

---


Dear Readers,

I must defend John Lindquist, our design editor, from the charge of hate speech presented in the above letter to the editor.

At no time does Mr. Lindquist commit hate speech in his Backend promotion, "Indians Aplenty."

The fact that John Lindquist's writing is not hate speech is not open to interpretation. My letter, this statement of exemption, must be connected to Finger's, McLean's, and Jacket's letter because every time a future employer inputs Lindquist's name into a Google search, their letter will show up and implicate him as a person who practices writing hate speech and who deserves a comparison to Nazi sympathizers—an incredibly damaging statement to him on a personal and professional level.

It is partially my responsibility to absolve Lindquist from such an accusation so that I am not party to printing libelous statements against him.

With that aside, I appreciate any time our readers write in with their opinions, and letters to the editors, like these are a paramount to a free press.

I would normally never run an accompanying letter like this with a printed letter to the editor in lieu of simply editing libelous statements, but in this case, and considering that Brighton Dawn Finger is running in the upcoming election, I thought it necessary to print the complete letter while countering the posited statements. Thank you.

Tiffany Fitzgerald

Editor in Chief

Veterans advocate kills self after war tours

Guess this Vet woke up one day to realize he was nothing more than a gangbanging nazi.

Who wants to go on living as a bad guy?


Veterans advocate kills self after war tours

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press – Fri Apr 15, 9:20 am ET

WASHINGTON – Handsome and friendly, Clay Hunt so epitomized a vibrant Iraq veteran that he was chosen for a public service announcement reminding veterans that they aren't alone.

The 28-year-old former Marine corporal earned a Purple Heart after taking a sniper's bullet in his left wrist. He returned to combat in Afghanistan. Upon his return home, he lobbied for veterans on Capitol Hill, road-biked with wounded veterans and performed humanitarian work in Haiti and Chile.

Then, on March 31, Hunt bolted himself in his Houston apartment and shot himself.

Friends and family say he was wracked with survivor's guilt, depression and other emotional struggles after combat.

Hunt's death has shaken many veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who knew him wonder why someone who seemed to be doing all the right things to deal with combat-related issues is now dead.

Rap News 7: #Revolution

Hat Tip to Anonymous, who left this link to a fab vid that ridicules dozens of AmeriKKKan sacred cows, including Bono.

New Documentary: Columbus Day Legacy

http://www.nativetelecom.org/columbus_day_legacy

Columbus Day Legacy

Examine the quintessential American issues of free speech and ethnic pride against the backdrop of the ongoing Columbus Day Parade controversy in Denver, Colorado.

Since its incarnation in 1992, the 500th Anniversary of America's "discovery," the Italian-American community in Denver has publicly and wholeheartedly celebrated its revered holiday, much to the dismay of many local Native Americans. The film conveys the strong sense of community that each of these groups hold.

The history of the annual parade in Denver is peppered with both verbal and physical violence, as well as numerous instances in which city leaders have had to reconcile issues of political correctness and freedom assembly.

Tensions rise as Denver's Native American and Italian-American communities publicly fight over race, history and what it means to be an "American."

In Social Media Postings, a Trove for Investigators

Hat Tip, AK48.

Loose lips still sink ships. Don't help the pigs make the links.

In Social Media Postings, a Trove for Investigators

As Twitter, Facebook and other forms of public electronic communication embed themselves in people’s lives, the postings, rants and messages that appear online are emerging as a new trove for the police and prosecutors to sift through after crimes. Such sites are often the first place they go.

The phenomenon arose again this week, when investigators went online to make sense of a stabbing in an East New York, Brooklyn, apartment. A few clicks away, some of the clues were there for the world to see.

In the hours leading up to the crime, Kayla Henriques, 18, was feuding on Facebook with a friend, Kamisha Richards, 22. The focal point of the argument was a misspent $20, which Ms. Richards had apparently lent to Ms. Henriques for baby food and diapers. In a public exchange of messages on Facebook, Ms. Richards told Ms. Henriques at one point that she would have the last laugh. Ms. Henriques replied, “We will see.”

Ms. Henriques was later charged with murdering Ms. Richards.

Though social media postings have emerged only recently as an element of prosecutions, those in the legal arena are fast learning that Facebook, MySpace and Twitter can help to pin down the whereabouts of suspects and shed light on motives.

Guru's trial over Arizona sweat lodge deaths starts

Stealing ceremony can get you killed. Don't pay to pray.

Guru's trial over Arizona sweat lodge deaths starts

Reuters
By Tim Gaynor | Reuters – Tue, 1 Mar, 2011 8:56 PM EST

CAMP VERDE, Ariz (Reuters) - An Arizona jury on Tuesday heard how participants in a sweat lodge became delirious and passed out in scorching heat at a seminar hosted by self-help guru James Arthur Ray where three people died of heat-related causes.

Ray is charged with three counts of manslaughter in the deaths of three participants in his October 2009 personal growth seminar, near scenic Sedona, Arizona, a popular destination for New Age retreats.

The 56 participants in Ray's "spiritual warrior" retreat were crammed into a four-foot tall sweat lodge, packed with superheated rocks.

In an opening statement for the prosecution, Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk said instead of finding "enlightenment," the three participants "found death" at the five-day retreat, for which they paid nearly $10,000 each.

Polk played an audio tape made at the retreat, where Ray warned participants they should expect "the most intense heat" they had ever experienced.

"You will feel as if you are going to die. I guarantee that," he said in the recording. "... You will have to get to a point where you surrender, where it's OK to die."

Polk said the jury would hear testimony about one sweat lodge participant who screamed he was having a heart attack, and passed out as he tried to crawl outside for fresh air.

Other participants were in distress, vomiting or delirious during the sauna-like cleansing, Polk said. One man slipped and burned himself on hot rocks, which left his arm with "chunks of flesh falling off," the prosecutor said.

"Despite of all this chaos, Mr. Ray did not stop the ceremony," Polk said. "Mr. Ray continued to bring in more superheated rocks, more water and more ... steam."

"A TRAGIC ACCIDENT"

Luis Li, an attorney for the California-based motivational speaker on trial, in opening arguments said participants were sent waivers months before joining the ceremony at the Angel Valley Retreat Center, so they knew what the seminar involved.

"I am here to say they died as a result of a tragic accident, not a crime," he told jurors.

The attorney added that participants were "all adults," and could make decisions for themselves.

"They were doctors, dentists, regular folks," Li said. "Nobody was coerced."

On the day in question, 21 participants in the seminar were taken for treatment to nearby hospitals, where James Shore, 40, and Kirby Brown, 38, were pronounced dead. Liz Neuman, 49, died several days later in hospital.

Television news images of the sweat dome showed a windowless structure, covered in black roofing material.

Sweat or medicine lodges -- smaller domed or oblong structures warmed with heated stones -- have traditionally been used in ceremonies by some Native American cultures.

Li said doctors initially reported that they suspected toxins from treated wood involved in construction of the dome could have been involved, and accused the prosecution of failing to pursue the possibility.

The trial continues this week and is expected to last three to four months.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Greg McCune)

Parading Their Ignorance: The South Celebrates Jefferson Davis' Inauguration

Yeah, racists parading their ignorance in the streets fire those goddamn cannons here in Denver, too. But Denver gets assclowns celebrating Columbus and Manifest Destiny, while Alabama gets white supremacists celebrating Jefferson Davis' inauguration.

Again and again, these racist celebrations of someone else's subjugation rightly face being booed off the streets.

Go away, losers! You're on the wrong side of history - the hater side.

Across the South, the Civil War is an enduring conflict

By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
By Stacy Pearsall, AP

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — With the firing of a cannon, the raising of the Stars and Bars and the singing of Dixie, people in antebellum finery will come Saturday to re-enact a most divisive moment in U.S. history: Jefferson Davis' inauguration 150 years ago as president of the Confederacy.

There will be a parade to the state Capitol along Davis' 1861 route, a landscape that since has become the Jerusalem of Southern memory — sacred to both the Confederacy and the civil rights movement.

The procession will start near the spot where, in 1955, black seamstress Rosa Parks boarded a public bus and refused to give her seat to a white man, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott. It will go up the avenue where Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers completed the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march in 1965. It will pass the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the first congregation King served as pastor, whose parsonage was firebombed in 1956 while King's wife and baby daughter were there.

And it will come within two blocks of the old Greyhound station where Freedom Riders, trying to desegregate interstate bus travel, were beaten bloody by a white mob in 1961 as police stood by.

"The ironies are rich," says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, "and particularly ugly. This is a racist event, celebrating a government that stood on a foundation of slavery." Bernard Simelton of the Alabama NAACP likens the re-enactment to "celebrating the Holocaust."

Honoring Art, Honoring Artists

Hat tip, AK48.

Honoring Art, Honoring Artists

By JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI

WHEN the Denver Art Museum’s signature American Indian art galleries reopened last week after a seven-month overhaul, the biggest change wasn’t the new display cases or the dramatic lighting. Rather, it was in a less obvious place: the wall labels.

For the first time many of the works on display are attributed to individual artists instead of just their tribes. It is a revolution in museum practice that many scholars hope will spread, raising the stature of American Indian artists and elevating their work from the category of artifacts to the more exalted realm of art.

So the museum’s “Wild Man of the Woods” mask, made in 1900 and previously identified only as “Kwakiutl,” will be attributed to Willie Seaweed, a Canadian carver who died in 1967. In another gallery an exhibition of more than 30 pieces of pottery will celebrate the extraordinary skill of Nampeyo, a Hopi woman born around 1860. Other objects, thought to be the work of single unknown creators — like a selection of Navajo “eyedazzler” weavings dated 1885-1900 — will be grouped together with labels reading, “Artist not known.”

Art museums have collected American Indian objects for decades, but, like natural history and anthropology museums, they have tended to treat them as ethnographic pieces, illustrative of the cultures they came from. Wall labels have generally steered clear even of the “anonymous” designation commonly used for Western artworks of unknown authorship and in cases where Indian artists left signature marks — as Chilkat weavers of the Pacific Northwest long have, for example — this evidence has often been ignored.

Nor did the early collectors of Indian art care much about authorship. To cite one example, George Gustav Heye, whose collections form the core of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, routinely bought pieces without noting anything other than the tribe and date. But Nancy Blomberg, the curator of native arts at the Denver Art Museum, was determined to do things differently when she reconceived the galleries, choosing nearly 700 works from the museum’s world-class 18,000-piece collection. “I want to signal that there are artists on this floor,” she said.

Although some museums have made scattershot efforts to identify the artists behind pre-20th-century Indian pieces, the Denver museum has now embraced attribution more completely and comprehensively than any other institution. Ms. Blomberg’s message begins in the introductory panel, which celebrates the individual artists on the floor, and continues in the labels beside the artworks, for which she drew on her own work and the research of other scholars. With excitement in her voice she told of one recent discovery.

Arizona-style Immigration Bill to Die in Colorado

No surprise about this news. Anglos, thankfully, are a numerical minority in Denver. And the state of Colorado is currently shaded blue politically. To boot, the last time Washington tried to pass anti-migrant legislation, over one hundred thousand people turned out in the streets of Denver to protest. This crap never had a chance in a community as politicized as ours is.

Give it up, haters. Colorado doesn't want you.

Arizona-style immigration bill to die in Colo.

Feb 9, 2011 2:00pm

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado lawmaker sponsoring an Arizona-style crackdown on illegal immigration says he's backing off the effort because he worries it would cost taxpayers if it is challenged in court.

Republican Rep. Randy Baumgardner told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he plans to ask fellow lawmakers to effectively kill the bill.

The measure would have allowed police to arrest illegal immigrants without warrant if law enforcement had probable cause to believe they were in the country illegally. It also would have required immigrants to always carry their documents and made it illegal for undocumented immigrants to work in Colorado.

Baumgardner said some aspects of the bill "could be construed as unconstitutional," leading to legal challenges. He said he doesn't know whether he'll bring the proposal back another year.

Post-The Denver Post: Recovering Newspaper Veteran Moves On

Hat tip, AK48. This is good news! Maybe soon we will be rid of the Denver Post entirely.

Susan Greene

Journalist
Posted: January 26, 2011 10:36 AM

My name is Susan and I'm a recovering newspaper writer.

I'm happy to report that I'm back to work.

The work, now online at the Huffington Post, is about folks who aren't getting ink, as well as some of the political news and social justice issues that otherwise aren't being covered. It'll be much like my former column for the Denver Post -- minus the dead trees and sacred cows.

There's a saying posted in the lobby of the paper's newsroom: "'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado." Likewise, it has been a privilege to have covered our state, worked with some of the West's best journalists and sat next to Mike Littwin.

There's another inscription across the hallway. It reads, "O Justice, when expelled from other habitations, make this thy dwelling place." Editors would be wise to follow that creed.

Two months after leaving the paper, I'm recovering from the joylessness that's all too common in daily print journalism. What once made newspapers great -- challenging authority, giving voice to the community, being bold -- is becoming the exception rather than the rule. The industry has lost its way.

In my own experience, staying true to the Denver Post brand required a certain type of Stockholm syndrome. It meant internalizing what you figure your boss and your boss's boss might deem inconvenient to print, say, before they hop on the train to Frontier Days with a posse of politicians and advertisers.

Their directives were loud and clear. No mas with the undocumented immigrants, one editor told me. Enough already about police brutality and mental illness, winced another. Ixnay the grit, they warned. And for God's sake, they said, give it a rest about the baby Jesus on the steps of City Hall.

My days were numbered after my colleague, reporter Miles Moffeit, accepted a job in Dallas last year. The Post booted him from the building for mentioning the financial troubles of its parent company, MediaNews Group, in a Westword interview about his departure. Management went on to spike my unrelated column about the influences his investigative projects had on people and policies in Colorado.

Later came their refusal to publish a column about unnecessary body searches on female state prison inmates. It was distasteful, apparently, for a family newspaper.

My columns were getting spiked. And readers were being told again and again that I was taking time off.

The disconnect between my immediate boss and the real world was never so clear as the day word came that Tim Masters would walk free. She rolled her eyes at news of Colorado's first DNA murder exoneration and remarked something like, "Great, so he can just go kill somebody else?"

This isn't to say that there aren't plenty of editors and reporters remaining at the Post who want to continue practicing journalism at the highest levels. But I worry for their futures when such a stifling culture has infected the newsroom, as it has many others.

Now more than ever, there are questions to be asked that span beyond the interests of Colorado's paper of record.

Who else might be locked up in prison, innocent, pacing their cell?

What does Gov. John Hickenlooper plan on labor reform?

Why, six months after Marvin Booker's homicide in Denver's jail, is the city still hiding videotapes of deputies shocking him with a Taser?

Where, given the effect of climate change on Colorado River supplies, are we going to glean our water?

When will someone finally stand up and speak out about District Attorney Carol Chambers and her pattern of apparent abuses?

Let's say what we need to say.

Bring on your tips and column ideas. Leak what ought to be leaked and blow your whistles, if need be.

Oh justice, make this your dwelling place. I promise to take notes.

Susan can be reached at greeneindenver@gmail.com

Getting Chicked

Even mainstream readers of Runner's World get outraged at fucker-think. Check out this reader commentary from the December 2010 issue.

"Including the phrase 'getting chicked' as need-to-know vocabulary in your Trail-Running Guide ('Say What?') legitimizes the idea that women are inferior to men and that getting passed by a woman is something to be embarrassed about. The phrase 'getting chicked' is offensive, even more so when the definition includes the objectifying language 'tough trail women wear skirts. And look hot.'"

Dakota Radical Scholar Contacted By FBI After Speech

From Denver ABC:

Dakota radical scholar contacted by FBI after speech

Posted on January 8, 2011 by denverabc

St. Paul, Minn- A Minnesota American Indian scholar’s remarks that the Dakota people might have to reclaim lost tribal lands “by any means necessary” has drawn the scrutiny of federal authorities.

The Dakota historian who goes by the name Waziyatawin said she received a call this week from the FBI to discuss remarks she made in November at Winona State University.

Waziyatawin, a professor of indigenous history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who used to go by the name Angela Cavender Wilson, told students that it’s time for American Indians to abandon symbolic demonstrations. Truth-telling efforts haven’t achieved anything, she said, according to a recording of the speech obtained by the Winona Post.

“We’re going to need to take a different kind of action,” said Waziyatawin, who grew up on the Upper Sioux Reservation in southwestern Minnesota. “All of you are going to have to figure out your role. For Dakota people, I know we’re going to need to recover our land base, by any means necessary.”

In an interview, Waziyatawin said her lecture was not a threat to commit violence as some have suggested. But she admits she’s no pacifist. An author of books on Minnesota’s history of oppressing, and then exiling, the Dakota people, she said removing people from their comfort zone is her job.

Read the rest...

Colorado Senator Suzanne Williams Involved In Car Accident

Many American Indian students have received college scholarships thanks to Senator Williams, who sponsored the bill creating the American Indian Scholars license plate. Heartfelt prayers go out to all involved in this tragic accident.
Hat Tip, AK48.

Statement From Colo. State Sen. Involved In Deadly Crash

Deb Stanley, 7NEWS Producer

POSTED: 10:20 am MST December 28, 2010
UPDATED: 3:16 pm MST December 28, 2010
Statement From Colo. State Sen. Involved In Deadly Crash
The Colorado state senator involved in a deadly crash in Texas issued a statement Tuesday.

"I cannot express the horror, sadness and grief I feel for an accident that will change forever the lives of a young family," said Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora. "It is a burden I will carry with me for the rest of my life."

Williams was driving a 2010 Honda CRV north on U.S. Highway 385 southwest of Channing, Texas, at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, when her car crossed the center lane and collided with a southbound 2003 GMC Yukon driven by Eric James Gomez of Amarillo, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Brianna Gomez, 30, was sitting in the front passenger seat of the Yukon. She was flown to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, where an emergency Cesarean section was performed. Gomez was pronounced dead after her baby boy was delivered. The infant was in critical condition Monday evening.

Williams, of Aurora, was wearing a seat belt and was treated and released on Monday. Her son, Todd Edward Williams, 41, of Denver, was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle, the Highway Patrol said. He was listed in serious condition at an Amarillo hospital.

Two grandchildren, Tristan Williams, 3, of Denver and Tyler Williams, 7, of Denver were also not wearing seat belts and were ejected in the crash. Tristan was treated and later released from the hospital. Tyler was in satisfactory condition Tuesday.

Williams’ husband, Ed, said he drove from Denver to Texas on Sunday to be with her.

"She’s doing all right, but our son isn’t," he told the Aurora Sentinel. "Our grandkids are out of the hospital now."

Sen. Williams serves as vice chair of the transportation committee.

Pimpin' Columbus For A Bloody Eclipse

Hat Tip AK 48:

You'd think we could have a simple lunar eclipse without reference to this murdering, thieving rapist - but oh, no - the these ignorant hacks just gotta pimp some bullshit story about Columbus.

www.Globalnews.ca/story.html?id=4009255

...
Lunar eclipses have long been associated with superstitions and signs of ill omen, especially in battle.

The defeat of the Persian king Darius III by Alexander the Great in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC was foretold by soothsayers when the Moon turned blood-red a few days earlier.

And an eclipse is credited with saving the life of Christopher Columbus and his crew when they were stranded without supplies on the coast of Jamaica.

According to legend, Columbus, looking at an astronomical almanac compiled by a German mathematician, realised that a total eclipse of the Moon would occur on February 29, 1504.

He called the native leaders and warned them if they did not help, he would make the Moon disappear the following night.

The warning, of course, came true, prompting the terrified people to beg Columbus to restore the Moon -- which he did, in return for as much food as his men needed. He and the crew were rescued on June 29, 1504.

The last total lunar eclipse took place on February 21 2008. Next year, says Espenak, will see two: on June 15 and December 10.

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon swings between the Earth and the Sun.
© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.


Read it on Global News: Lunar eclipse makes memorable solstice

Justice For Annie Mae

Hat Tip, AK48.

Violence against women is not traditional.

Assembly of First Nations : AFN Welcomes Annie Mae Pictou Aquash Verdict: Continues Call to End Violence Against Indigenous Women

OTTAWA, Dec. 13 - Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo and AFN Regional Chief for Nova Scotia-Newfoundland Rick Simon today expressed hope for the many families of the almost 600 unresolved cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada following the December 10 verdict in the murder of Mi'kmaq woman Annie Mae Pictou Aquash.


"On behalf of the Assembly of First Nations, it is my hope that this verdict will help bring a sense of closure, peace and justice to the family and friends of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash," said AFN National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo. "Thirty-five years is far too long to have justice served and many unanswered questions remain. It is essential that we all work together to end violence against Indigenous women. The AFN has stood with First Nation and women's organizations and called specifically on the federal government to work with us on a national action plan to address the root causes of why so many Indigenous women remain unsafe."

Last Friday, the 7th Circuit Court in Rapid City, South Dakota, found John Graham guilty of felony murder in the 1975 slaying of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash. Pictou Aquash was from Indian Brook, Nova Scotia. She was prominent in the American Indian Movement and participated in the 71-day occupation of the South Dakota reservation town of Wounded Knee two years before her death. She was found murdered at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1976.

"Annie Mae will be remembered here in Canada, the United States and around the world for her important role in bringing further attention to the need to end violence against Indigenous women. She was the first to be named in the Sisters in Spirit campaign which has been influential in supporting community-based initiatives to keep Indigenous women safe," said AFN Regional Chief for Nova Scotia-Newfoundland Rick Simon said. "To the families and friends of missing and murdered Aboriginal women across the country, this is a message of hope and inspiration. It is my hope that the strength of Annie Mae and now her family and friends will provide support to the far too many families also seeking justice."

The Assembly of First Nations is the national organization representing First Nation citizens in Canada.


For further information:

Jenna Young, Assembly of First Nations Communications Officer at 613-241-6789, ext 401, 613-314-8157 or jyoung[at]afn.ca

Alain Garon, AFN Bilingual Communications Officer 613-241-6789, ext 382, 613 292-0857 or agaron[at]afn.ca

Border Agent Shot Dead In Arizona

That's just awful, awful, awful - that they've "caught" four suspects.


Border agent shot dead in Arizona, four arrested

Reuters

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot dead by assailants close to the Mexico border in southern Arizona and four suspects have been arrested, authorities said on Wednesday.

Agent Brian A. Terry was shot dead while on patrol near the border city of Nogales on Tuesday night, Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman Mario Escalante said.

"We have four subjects in custody and we are continuing the search for more subjects," Escalante told Reuters.

Arizona straddles a furiously trafficked corridor for human and drug smugglers from Mexico.

Escalante said the FBI was leading the investigation into the shooting and would provide further details during the day.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor, editing by Peter Bohan)

Resisting Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex

The Denver Anarchist Black Cross continues to confront the three-headed hydra of racism, classism, and sexism in this latest post concerning violence against women, and women who use violence to stop it.

Yes, this what armed struggle looks like.

Resisting Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex

An interview with Victoria Law

By Angola 3 News

Victoria Law is a longtime prison activist and the author of the 2009 book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women(PM Press). Law’s essay “Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self Defense,” is featured in the new book, entitled The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, edited by Dan Berger.

In this interview, Law discusses her new article, which provides a history of radical feminist resistance to the criminalization of women who have defended themselves from gender violence. Furthermore, Law presents a prison abolitionist critique of how the mainstream women’s movement has embraced the US criminal justice system as a solution for combating violence against women.

Previously interviewed by Angola 3 News about the torture of women in US prisons, Law is now on the road with the Community and Resistance Tour.

Angola 3 News: In your essay “Sick of the Abuse,” you write that “a woman’s right to defend herself (and her children) from assault became a feminist rallying point throughout the 1970s.” You focus on the four separate stories of Yvonne Wanrow, Inez Garcia, Joan Little, and Dessie Woods. All four women were arrested for self-defense and their cases received national attention with the support of the radical women’s movement. Can you briefly explain their cases and why they were so important for the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s?

Victoria Law: Yvonne Wanrow was an American Indian mother of two living in Washington State in the 1970s. In 1972, her 11-year-old son was grabbed from his bike by William Wesler, a known child molester. He escaped and fled to the house of a family friend named Shirley Hooper, whose 7-year-old daughter had been raped by Wesler earlier that year. When Hooper called the police, they refused to arrest Wesler.

Understandably shaken, Hooper called Yvonne Wanrow and asked her to spend the night. Wanrow, who was 5 foot, 4 inches, and had recently broken her leg, brought her gun. At five in the morning, Wesler came to their house. When he refused to leave, Wanrow went to the front door to yell for help. She turned around to find Wesler, who, at 6 foot 2, was towering over her. She shot and killed him.

Read the complete post...