Mitakuye Oyasin

2009-02-19T23:02:00.000-08:00

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Mitakuye Oyasin!

Songs Played on "Mitakuye Oyasin," 2-5-2009

2009-02-05T15:12:00.001-08:00

"Exile" by Blackfire from their CD "One Nation Under."
"Fear Poem" by Joy Harjo from her CD "Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century."
"The Lights" by Robby Robertson from his CD "Contact from the Underworld of Redboy."
"Hanging from the Cross" by John Trudell from his CD "Bone Days."
"Four Harmonized Peyote Songs: Set One" by Verdel Primeaux with Terry Hanks from their CD "Stories Told: Harmonized Peyote Songs."
"Why I Will Never Buy a Jeep Cherokee" by D-Knowledge from his CD "All that in a Bag of Words."
"Four Harmonized Peyote Songs: Set Two" by Verdell Primeaux with Terry Hanks from their CD "Stories Told: Harmonized Peyote Songs."
"Crazy Horse" by John Trudell from his CD "Bone Days."
"Indian People" by Black Lodge from their CD "Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan."
"The Lady" by Black Lodge from their CD "Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan."
"The Hop" by Black Lodge from their CD "Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan."
"Those Days" by Black Lodge from their CD "Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan."
"Nightmares of the American Dream" by Annie Humphrey from her CD "Edge of America."
"History Lesson" by Jeanette Armstrong from the compilation CD "Till the Bars Break."
"All Eyes Were Stone" by Lunar Drive from their CD "All Together Here."
"Until Freedom Comes" by Arigon Starr from her CD "The Red Road."
"Downfall" by Blackfire from their CD "One Nation Under."
"Rich Man's War" by John Trudell from his CD "AKA Grafitti Man."
"Daddy'z Little Angel" by Natay from his CD "A Place Called Survival."

Native Americans Face Violence and Intimidation Over Mascot Removal in Carpinteria

2009-02-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

[read on "Mitakuye Oyasin," 2-5-2009. From Brenda Norrell's blog, Censored News.]

California: Native Americans face violence over mascot removal

Contact: Mark Anquoe
American Indian Movement - West (415) 566-5788 gazelbe@yahoo.com
http://www.aimwest.info
Corine Fairbanks, American Indian Movement – Santa Barbara (805) 212-4947 corine68@yahoo.com
http://www.myspace.com/aimsantabarbara

Native Americans Face Violence and Intimidation Over Mascot Removal in Carpinteria

By American Indian Movement
Photos by Jimbo Simmons/AIM

CARPINTERIA, California - The small town of Carpinteria, California is the latest battleground in Native Americans’ fight against racism. The controversy over a supposedly “harmless” high school sports mascot has alienated the Native American population of Carpinteria, who have come to fear violent reprisals from the non-Native community.

The Carpinteria “Warriors” mascot is the standard Indian chief stereotype, complete with generic plains-style war bonnet and stoic gaze. The school logo consists of a spear with dangling feathers; a visual symbol also associated with plains Indian cultures. Last spring, 15 year old Chumash youth Eli Cordero voiced his objections to the use of this stereotypical imagery by Carpinteria High School. On April 22nd, 2008, he brought his concerns before the school board which then voted to retire the use of all Native American imagery.

Since the April 2008 decision, many citizens of Carpinteria have waged a campaign of terror against those who supported the school board’s decision, as well as the school board itself. A local businessman placed a quarter-page ad in the local newspaper explicitly naming and targeting Eli Cordero, the young student who originally brought the issue to the school board. Since that time, the 15 year old has received death threats and his family has been harassed. Some citizens of Carpinteria shouted racial epithets at John Orendorff, a Native American Army Reserve colonel who spoke at a school board meeting in favor of removing the racist imagery. One school board member was accosted in her own home by intruders who forcibly entered her home in the middle of the night and demanded that she change her position on the mascot issue. Following the attack, local police began escorting school board members to and from school board meetings.

Some Native American people have moved out of Carpinteria due to the climate of fear and anti-Indian sentiment. Ashleigh Brown, until recently a resident of Carpinteria, spoke of her decision to move away, “There is a community member who refused to do our printing for our cultural awareness event. Her son…started telling my roommate to keep my nose out of Carpinteria issues, or else I might regret it…So after other townspeople found out where I lived I decided to move out of Carpinteria.”

An organization called “Recall CUSD - Warrior Spirit Never Dies” (http://www.recallcusd.org/), has waged a largely successful campaign to discredit and oust the school board members who supported the anti-mascot measure. Having successfully installed pro-mascot sympathizers on the school board, there is now a petition to rescind the earlier decision and keep the racist imagery at the public high school. On January 27th, local Native American people organized a protest to voice their objection to the measure, and were met with verbal abuse by drivers and passers-by. One protester was hit with a rock thrown by an adult man shouting obscenities. This occurred despite the presence of a representative of the federal justice department, who was sent from Los Angeles to ensure proper police conduct and the safety of the demonstrators. Many local Native Americans, while supporting the anti-mascot effort, refused to join the protest, fearing violent reprisals
by the townspeople.

The next school board meeting in Carpinteria is scheduled for February 10th. At this meeting the board will hear from a committee which was formed to assess each specific Native American image on display at Carpinteria High School. The school board is then expected to adjourn until February 24th, when the vote to rescind the previous ruling will be held. Protests and counter-protests are expected at both board meetings.

Kevin Annett: Why There is No Healing and Reconciliation

2009-02-05T15:06:00.001-08:00

[read on "Mitakuye Oyasin," 2-5-2009 from Brenda Norrell's blog, Censored News.]

Kevin Annett: Why There is No Healing and Reconciliation

Harry Wilson, Continued: Why There is No Healing and Reconciliation

by Kevin Annett

I was going to begin this by observing that the poor, made and kept poor by us, are the only antidote to our self-deceptions. But to say so would be to repeat the crime, and use them, again, for our purpose.

Instead, let his life judge us:

Harry Wilson of the Heiltsuk nation, kidnapped and sodomized by Christians at age six, and for nine years after, at the United Church's Alberni Indian residential school; a witness to the violent murder of friends and relatives, and the discoverer of a young girl's dead body on the grounds of the school; drugged and straight-jacketed for a year when he spoke of what he saw to the Principal, another child rapist, who has never gone to jail.
..................

Harry Wilson sleeps most nights now on the cold ground of Oppenheimer Park on pieces of cardboard he collects from nearby alleyways in Vancouver's downtown eastside. When he gets too cold, he risks dozing in the pews of nearby First United Church, where he usually gets beaten up and robbed.

Last week, when I came across Harry slouched against a wall during one of my nightly walkabouts, the blood was still congealing over his swollen face. He wore no jacket, even though it was below freezing.

"They took it when I was sleeping in the church" Harry muttered.

"Took my coat, my watch, all my money. Then they socked me a few times."

"Where was the night staff?" I asked him.

"Aw, smoking crack outside. They don't do nothin' ..."

First United Church proudly announced its "out of the cold" gimmick in December, opening their doors to the homeless at night thanks to a gift of $30,000 from city taxpayers to do what churches are supposed to be doing anyway. Before the handout, First United's doors stayed locked every night.

One wonders what the $30,000 is being spent on, when Harry and other homeless aboriginals - made homeless by the torture they endured at the hands of the same United Church of Canada - can be so easily violated, once again. Beaten and robbed, while taxpayers fund crack-head church employees to sit outside.

And they say the abuse stopped long ago.

..................

East Hastings is like the Gaza strip: an urban concentration camp where the conquered are penned in and slaughtered when required. Harry is a veteran of the slaughter, somehow surviving it into his fifty sixth year. But he doesn't have much time left.

Harry's steps are slower now, his face more sagging and worn, the scars bloodier and deeper each week, his hours utterly drowned by alcohol. He is dying in front of me, his life squeezed out by the same forces, to feed the same people.

When the U.S. Army bombs civilians to pieces and then sends in their medics to treat the survivors, it's behaving exactly like the United Church of Canada, who first rape and kill innocent children in their residential schools, and then offer "healing" programs to those who survived. That's how the winners in history get to behave.

The only real evidence of their crimes is people like Harry, and the bones of his friends who never made it out of the residential school. But church and state have shoved both Harry and those little corpses out of sight and mind: Harry to rot and die in obscurity on East Hastings street, and the bones of the dead to be dug up and destroyed.

The digging is happening again, in just a few days, at the very place that robbed Harry of his childhood and life. The United Church's old residential school building in Port Alberni is being demolished by the government and its trained seals called the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council, even though it's a proven crime site where hundreds of kids lie in unmarked graves.

"When the girls were raped by the staff, they'd abort the babies and bury them between the walls, where nobody would find them" described Harriett Nahanee, who witnessed a murder at the school in 1946.

"That old building is full of bones. They even had a cold storage room in the cellar where they kept the bodies before they buried them in the hills out back."

That evidence will be obliterated on February 10, as the world watches and does nothing, as unmoved as when Harry tries to choose between a beating and merciless cold each night.

The United Church will stand by and do nothing, pretending that it hasn't murdered Harry and thousands of others.

The RCMP will stand by and do nothing, either, since they helped to bury the slaughtered children. But they have warned me not to interfere with their latest destruction of evidence of a crime.

The killing and coverup continues.

Welcome to "Beautiful British Columbia."

.........................................................................................................
5 February, 2009
Kevin D. Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. V9R 2H8
250-753-3345 / 1-888-265-1007

The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared
http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/
Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org

“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“A courageous and inspiring man." (referring to Kevin Annett)
- Mairead Corrigan-Maguire
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Belfast , Northern Ireland

The very lands we all along enjoyed
they ravished from the people they destroyed ...
All the long pretenses of descent
are shams of right to prop up government.
' Tis all invasion, usurpation all;
' Tis all by fraud and force that we possess,
and length of time can make no crime the less;
Religion's always on the strongest side.

Daniel Defoe, Jure Divino (England, 1706)

Photo: Protestor at the Second Annual Aboriginal Holocaust Remembrance Day, outside Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, Vancouver, April 15, 2006 http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Songs Played on January 22, 2009 Program

2009-01-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

"AIM Song" by Blackfire from their CD "Silence is a Weapon"
"Sacrifice" by Robby Robertson and Leonard Peltier from Robby Robertson's CD "Contact from the Underworld of Redboy"
"Song for Leonard Peltier" by Jim Page from the compilation CD "Songs for Leonard Peltier"
"Museum Cases" by Ulali from their CD "Makh Jchi"
"Makh Jchi" by Ulali from their CD "Makh Jchi"
"Dancing People" by Black Lodge from their CD "Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan"
"Ruebens" by Black Lodge from their CD "Spo'Mo'Kin'Nan"
"All Eyes Were Stone" by Lunar Drive from their CD "All Together Here"
"Oka Ain't Over" by The Fire Next Time from the compilation CD "Til' the Bars Break"
"I'm in Love with a Navajo Boy" by Lunar Drive from their CD "All Together Here"

Lori Goodman from Dine' CARE Interviewed, Navajo Land Threatened with Another Coal-Powered Electric Plant

2009-01-22T14:04:00.000-08:00

Lori Goodman was interviewed today. She described the glad-handing between the defunct Bush administration and the Navajo tribal council, in an effort for the EPA to put yet another coal-powered electric plant on tribal land. She and the Dine' people breathe a collective sigh of relief with the inauguration of President Obama, looking forward to a new day. The tribe has requested about 12 FOIA's (Freedom of Information Act) over the past two years, and these have yet to be delivered by the federal government. Obama has stated that all FOIA's should be released immediately.

In 2006, Navajo elders formed a blockade to the proposed power agency. Some elders had been swindled out of their grazing lands by unscrupulous agents of the power agency. Lori pointed out the recent dumping of coal ash into rivers as a disastrous consequence of coal plants, as well as the huge increase in respiratory ailments among the tribal members.

One of the most encouraging outcomes has been a proposal from the tribe to develop renewal energy sources on tribal lands, such as solar power and wind power. When this information was translated to the elders, the traditional stories were used and they agreed that the renewable energy was compatible with their stories and values.

Please check out the information at www.desert-rock-blog.com

Contact:
Lori Goodman Dine' CARE
10 A Town Plaza, PMB 138
Durango, CO 81301
Phone: 970.259.0199
Fax: 970.259.2300
Cell: 970.759.1908
email kiyaani@frontier.net

Leonard Peltier Transferred to Canann US Penitentiary, Receives Beating and Isolation

2009-01-22T13:54:00.001-08:00

A representative Who is Leonard Peltier, Carrie, was interviewed today on KBOO's Mitakuye Oyasin. Leonard was transferred on 1/12/09 to Canaan US Penitentiary. He was beaten badly by other inmates, then put into solitary. He received only one meal that day, which is another potential health hazard for him since he is diabetic.

Leonard remains a political prisoner; for more information about the history of why he is inside, please read the book, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse", or watch the movie, "Incident at Oglala".

If you wish to support Leonard, you can check out the website www.whoisleonardpeltier.info, or call or write the prison in support of him, and ask for him to be treated humanely. Here is information to do that:

Pursuant to Betty Ann Peltier Solano’s letter (scroll down for this letter) about her brother,let the Bureau of Prisons know that the public will hold themaccountable for the safety and wellbeing of Leonard Peltier.
Please include the following information in appeals for his safety:
Leonard Peltier #89637-132 USP-Canaan
U.S. Penitentiary
PO Box 300
Waymart, PA 18472
——————————–
Warden Ronnie R. Holt, Warden
USP-Canaan
U.S. Penitentiary
3057 Easton Turnpike
Waymart, PA 18472
Phone: 570-488-8000
Fax: 570-488-8130
E-mail address: CAA/EXECASSISTANT@BOP.GOV

D. Scott Dodrill, Director
Northeast Regional Office
Federal Bureau of Prisons
2nd & Chesnut Streets., 7th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Phone: 215-521-7301
E-mail: NERO/EXECASSISTANT@BOP.GOV

Harley G. Lappin, Director
Bureau of Prisons
U.S. Department of Justice
320 First Street, NW, Room 654
Washington, DC 20534
Phone: 202-307-3250
Fax: 202-514-6878

Ask President Obama to investigate this incident:

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
Fax: 202-456-2461
E-mail: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Welcome to Mitakuye Oyasin

2009-01-22T13:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome! This blog is set up to get out the information from the biweekly show on 90.7 KBOO, Mitakuye Oyasin. The show can be heard every other Thursday from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., either on your handy-dandy radio set, or streaming at kboo.fm

Mitakuye Oyasin means, in Lakota, "All My Relations". The show is designed to be a collective, so if you want to be part, contact us here on this blog.