Occupy Wall Street « ::Native.Strength::

January 1, 2012

2011’s Memorable Quotes: Good and Bad Part 3

Every year Indian country is filled with leaders, politicians, broadcasters and talking heads provide memorable quotes for anyone listening to catch. Some ignorant, some out of touch, and some commendable. Indian Country Today Media Network has compiled a list of quotes that we will break down into three parts, Perceptions, Politics, and On The Past, the Present, the Future, that will be shared over the New Year’s weekend.

On the Past, the Present, the Future

“I remember the chaos. I remember bullets whizzing through the windows.”—Jessica Lynch, recalling the circumstances of her capture during the Gulf War and the heroism of her fellow soldier, Lori Piestewa who was killed in the attack.

“I had no one to turn to, not even God, because God’s representative on Earth was the one hurting me.”—Howard Wanna, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, in discussing the sexual abuse he remembers while attending a South Dakota boarding school.

“All those people burning and jumping out. Oh, I felt it.”—Les Albany, former World Trade Center worker, reflecting ten years later on the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

“We want to make sure that our way of life is not destroyed.”—Chief Roger Wesley, Constance Lake First Nation of the Matawa First Nations, lobbying for the Canadian government to change their environmental assessment plans for a massive chromite mine in the resource-rich Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario.

“Apathy is killing us with what we are eating now.”—Jamescita Peshlakai, making a case for American Indians to turn to the principles of the ‘Paleolithic Diet.’
“We’re going to try to make sure that all you kids grow up healthy, knowing what to eat, knowing how to exercise”—First Lady Michelle Obama to Native American children attending an event at the White House in June.

“Elouise will always be remembered by me as a woman who fought the battle many of us didn’t know how to fight, and she did it with integrity despite the bullets to her chest and the arrows in her back. She will be remembered as the one and only modern-day female warrior who honored all those individual land owners who passed before her.”—Jackie Trotchie, a friend of Cobell’s and an Indian advocate in Montana, upon Cobell’s death from cancer in October.

“Andrew Jackson was a total complete bastard! Some Native people refuse to use twenty dollar bills because of his face on it.” –Donna Loring, a Vietnam veteran, former representative for the Penobscot Indian Nation to the Maine legislature, and author of In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine, expressing her astonishment at the government’s use of Jackson as a legal precedent.

“I’m in everybody else’s books. It was never a priority to me (to have my poems published in book form). It was important to get my work out and there are other ways to do that, so I’ve been in a lot of journals and newspapers and anthologies. A lot of them are community poems written to serve the people and give people a way to articulate certain kinds of issues. Books have not been my choice of outlet. They take too long.” – Suzan Shown Harjo in talking about the work she has done throughout her career earlier this year with ICTMN.

“It really is a crisis. We are in a third-world situation.”—Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence on the substandard housing in her community that has put many people at risk as the onslaught of winter approaches.

“Indian gaming should be an American success story of an impoverished people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and addressing the social and economic needs of their people. Instead it’s painted as a special interest, with so many negative connotations. I’m sure Indian country would rather do something else, but gaming has proved to be the sole source of major economic development to lift up and build economies in Indian country.”—Brian Patterson, President of United South and Eastern Tribes discussing what gaming has meant to Indian country as a whole.

“We’re doing exactly what Tecumseh said we’d do 150 years ago – we’re splintering and each going our own way. What’s most important here is we’re losing the narrative, we’re losing our ability to tell our story, and pretty soon we’ll just become like Las Vegas – commercial gaming – because it’s becoming about the money. We need to be reminded that when you do something, it’s not just about you. Everyone in this room knows what’s the right thing to do about Carcieri. The question is will you do it?”—Lobbyist and activist Tom Rodgers on those lobbying against a clean Carcieri fix.

“Anytime tribal nations had something of value, someone was waiting in the wings to take it away from us!”—James C. Ramos, chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, discussing the paradox of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in its almost 25 years of existence.

“The per capita income of American Indians on reservations has been growing approximately three times more rapidly than the United States as a whole since the early 1990s…”—Kennedy School of Government Report

“I would hope that at some point OWS announces that it seeks, among other things, a true-cost ‘global market’ in which we incorporate real costs of continuing down the oil-slicked road and further engaging the carbon economy.”—ICTMN columnist Chase Iron Eyes on the potential for Occupy Wall Street to empower real change.

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November 9, 2011

42 Years Ago Today: The Ill-Fated First Attempt to Take Alcatraz

Filed under: Genealogy,Politics — Tags: AIM, American Indian History, American Indian Movement, Headline News, Indians of All Tribes, News, Occupy Alcatraz, Occupy Wall Street, Seeking Justice — ICTMN Staff @ 9:00 pm

The actual anniversary of the occupation of Alcatraz island will come on November 20, but today marks the 42^nd anniversary of the first attempt at taking the island that laid the ground work for the actual movement a couple weeks later.

On November 9, 1969 almost 100 Bay Area Indians arrived at Pier 39, ready and willing to take the island, an idea that generated from a couple different areas.

The first came when Adam Fortunate Eagle, Millie Ketcheshawno, Mvskoke, and others drafted a proposal for Alcatraz to be converted into an American Indian center after the Indian Center in San Francisco burned down on October 10, 1969. The proposal was overshadowed by a proposal from Texas millionaire Lamar Hunt to turn the island into a commercial venue, according to an article in Native Peoples Magazine in the Fall of 1999.

With no options left, “we all decided November 9 would be the day we would all go out and just stay until they gave us the island,” Ketcheshawno says in the article.

Meanwhile, Richard Oaks, Mohawk, and student at then San Francisco State College, and other college students were also thinking about taking the island.

Fortunate Eagle and Oaks met at a Halloween party, shared their ideas, and then lead the unsuccessful attempt on November 9 according to Native Peoples Magazine.

Many activists had to be rescued by the Coast Guard after recklessly jumping into the cold water with its heavy current. Some of the college students did not agree with Fortunate Eagle’s ways and began distancing themselves from him and began to plan an invasion their way.

That invasion was the one of November 20, and lasted almost 19 months while drawing the attention of media around the world according to a CNN article from 2009.

“[The Alcatraz occupiers] wanted to focus attention on broken treaties, broken promises and termination of tribal areas,” said Professor Troy Johnson, chairman of the American Indian studies program at California State University, Long Beach, and author of several publications on the occupation in the CNN article.

Forty-two years ago, American Indians were beginning to take a stand that changed history in the Alcatraz occupation, much like the Occupy Wall Street movement is looking to do presently—by bringing attention and criticism to the U.S. government.

Indian Country Today Media Network’s Occupy Wall Street coverage:

A Haudenosaunee Observation of Occupy Wall Street

Will Rogers on Occupy Wall Street

Decolonize Wall Street Our Photo of the Week

Where the Future? Greed in America Old Song for Indians …

Decolonization and ‘Occupy Wall Street’

Attack on the Tribal Middle Class, Part I

Occupy Canada Takes 15 Cities

An Open Letter to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: a Shawnee-Lenape Perspective

Why I Am Occupying Wall Street

Indians Counter Occupy Wall Street Movement With Decolonize Wall Street

Why Are They Occupying Wall Street?

Looking at the Federal Budget as Metaphor

Columbus Day Protest Widens

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October 12, 2011

An Open Letter to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: A Shawnee-Lenape Perspective

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Capitalism, Doctrine of Christian Discovery, Greed, Occupy Wall Street — Steven T. Newcomb @ 8:33 pm

Greetings on Colonization Day,

I begin by prayerfully remembering our free and independent ancestors, the Lenape and all the Original Nations and Peoples of this vast Turtle Island (Mother Earth), and of the entire Western Hemisphere from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America.

As you ‘occupy Wall Street,’ I ask you to reflect: You are on the island upon which our Indigenous ancestors lived and thrived for thousands and thousands of years. Please take a moment to recognize that we, the Original Nations, still exist here on Turtle Island. We have the right to exist as free and distinct nations with full self-determination.

What is the true source of our many grievances? It is the mentality and behavior of greed. The word ‘America’ is the combination of two Latin words ame (a command form of ‘love!’) and rica (riches and wealth). The effects of an insatiable desire for and the pursuit of riches and wealth first afflicted our Indigenous nations and peoples, and now afflict all peoples. Clearly, we need to address and rectify the political economy of greed, and the destruction it has caused and continues to cause.

Greed is an unsustainable value, but it is also an illness that is rooted in addiction. It is maintained in keeping with the slogan, ‘The more you eat (consume), the more you want.’ The addict will stop at nothing to get a fix; he will sacrifice anyone and anything to feed his addiction. For this reason, an economy of greed has and will continue to sacrifice the health and well-being of women, children, men, and all living things on Mother Earth. As a great Anishinaabe leader has profoundly stated, “Their way of living is our way of dying.” It is rapidly becoming ‘the way of dying’ for everyone.

Today, after centuries of invasion and predatory consumption (‘devouring’) of our traditional lands, territories, and resources on Turtle Island and elsewhere, the waters of the rivers and streams that were once pure enough for our ancestors to drink from are now filthy and poisoned. Water is Life. The chemical contamination of Water, and, therefore, of Life itself, is emblematic of a way of life predicated upon patterns of greed that are destined to collapse.

The suffering of human beings and the destructiveness to life on Mother Earth has been a direct consequence of colonization, domination, dehumanization, militarization and war. Unfortunately, these conceptions and behaviors have become the metaphorical bricks and mortar of the current unsustainable world order. They are expressed in a number of documents issued in the fifteenth century by the Holy See at Vatican Hill in Rome; these documents called for the domination of all non-Christian peoples throughout the world, and for the theft of all our lands and territories. To this day, the ideas found in those papal documents are woven into US Indian law and policy.

Those Church documents unleashed claims to a right of conquest and domination in the name of a “right of Christian discovery.” The monarchies of Christendom used those documents to claim the territories of our nations in the Western hemisphere, simply because our territories were not yet in the possession of any Christian prince or dominator (‘dominorum christianorum’). This paradigm of domination has been used to give governments and corporations virtually unlimited access to our traditional lands and territories. If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline will be but the latest example.

Despite the destructive effects of more than five centuries of subjugation, as the Originally Free Nations and Peoples of Turtle Island, we still remember what it is to be truly free as exemplified by our ancestors. Our ancestors evolved life-ways and values that challenged European feudalism, medievalism, and lordship. Today, forces seem to be working toward neo-feudalism and neo-medievalism, with a long range plan for irreversible global domination in the name of ‘national security,’ under the unblinking eye of the surveillance state.

We have entered the ‘Brave New World’ written about by a prescient mind a generation ago. Not only have we survived, but we now have the capability of expressing ourselves in the language of the Colonizers, and we are maintaining the message that our great leaders tried to convey to your ancestors: Stop the patterns of destruction and greed before it is too late. The Chernobyl-scale release of radiation at Fukushima, Japan is a clarion call.

We must invert the key symbol of domination. Once inverted, the patriarchal symbol of ‘the dome of domination’ becomes a bowl; when filled with water, the bowl is the symbol of the Sacred Feminine, as exemplified by the White Buffalo Calf Woman. She was the one who brought the Sacred Pipe to the Oglala Lakota Nation.

The Living Laws and Values of Turtle Island that the White Buffalo Calf Woman brought include: Honor and Respect; Compassion and Pity; Sharing and Caring (to carry the well-being of the People in one’s heart); Patience and Fortitude; Bravery and Courage; Humility; Seeking Wisdom and Seeking Understanding. In keeping with the White Buffalo Calf Woman’s teachings, Love and the Beautification of Life are healing values that need to replace the love of riches and wealth.

Next May, 2012, a year of great transformation, we will be in New York at the United Nations as part of our work toward decolonization at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The theme of the Permanent Forum will be the destructive legacy and deadly impact of the Doctrines of Discovery and Domination on Indigenous Nations and Peoples and on Mother Earth. We ask for your support by renouncing the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.

Steven Newcomb, Shawnee/Lenape, is co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and a columnist for the Indian Country Today Media Network.

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November 3, 2011

Attack on the Tribal Middle Class, Part II

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Gabriel Galanda, Occupy Wall Street — Gabriel S. Galanda @ 7:00 am

Throughout most of the last twocenturies, the United States sought to eliminate the political existence of American Indian tribes. The federal anti-tribal agenda appeared through laws, policies and programs encouraging or forcing Indian assimilation into the American middle class. But by the late 1960s, federal policymakers finally realized that Indian people and polities were not going away.

Informed by federal “Indian self-determination” policy, in the 1970s Congress began enacting a slew of programs and laws committed to involving Indians in the development and implementation of reservation programs and services. As a result, the economic development of Indian Country finally commenced in earnest. The “distinct legal and economic market opportunities” derived from the “sovereign status of tribes,” as described by Drs. Joseph Kalt and Stephen Cornell, has since played the largest role in evolving the American Indian middle class discussed in Part I, into a reservation-based middle class—into a distinctly tribal middle class.

Indian self-determination, in practice, began with the reclamation of tribal resources. Although tribal peoples fished commercially for centuries, the practice fell victim to the “no special treatment” adage of the assimilation era. Then, in 1968, under the tribal threats of Treaty enforcement litigation, Oregon and Washington re-established an Indian-only commercial fishery in the Columbia River. Likewise, after decades of timber harvesting stymied by federal control and red tape, in the 1970s tribes themselves began to reap the economic benefits of high-yield timber harvesting. The Indian commercial fisherman and logger emerged, earning enough money to no longer have their families live hand-to-mouth, and, in some instances, to live quite comfortably.

Then came the arrival of what Blackfeet Indian attorney Debora Juarez dubs “tribal contraband economies.” As the 1970s progressed, tribes and tribal members began to leverage tribal sovereign status to create market opportunities in high-stakes bingo and retail tobacco and fireworks sales. The absence of state regulatory or taxation authority over such on-reservation markets was (and remains) the lynchpin to their success. Like tribal commercial fisherman and loggers, Indian gaming, tobacco and fireworks entrepreneurs began earning sufficient income for their families to join the growing on-reservation tribal middle class. In the process, the tribal private sector, comprised of individual Indian- and tribal family-owned businesses, emerged.

In reaction to such Indian success, in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Colville decision. In an economically racist opinion, the Court proclaimed that unless tobacco products derived from “value generated on the reservation” by activities involving Indians, states could tax the sale of those goods. After Colville, tribal “value generated” economies emerged—hundreds of millions of dollars over—most notably in the form of Indian-produced tobacco products. Tribal entrepreneurs also continued to sell various other retail goods tax free, appreciating that, as the Colville Court admitted, states cannot cross reservation lines to enforce intrusive tax laws. Both tribal value generated and contraband economies sustain the tribal middle class to this day.

By the late 1980s, a Reagan Commission on Indian Reservation Economies found that federal procurement policy obstructed Indian-owned businesses from obtaining federal contracts being fulfilled on their own reservations. Changes to federal law ensued, exempting tribal corporations from “once in a lifetime” affiliation rules and caps on sole-source contracts. In the 1990s, tribal and Alaska Native businesses began venturing into the lucrative realm of federal “8(a) contracting” for construction, manufacturing, engineering, electronics, technology and other services. In turn, Indian corporate executives emerged, joining the insurgent tribal middle class.

Then of course there was, and is, Indian gaming. What began with high-stakes bingo on various reservations in the 1970s has since blossomed into a now steady $26 billion industry. Although Indian gaming has most certainly catapulted thousands of reservation Indian families out of poverty and into much higher income brackets, the new money of Indian gaming per capita distributions has created a unique, unemployed segment of the tribal middle class. In that limited way, some Indians, though of middle (if not upper) class income, may not have made the definitional “sacrifices to create a better life for themselves” discussed in Part One. Still, Indians reaping gaming per capita income help comprise the tribal middle class.

Most recently, Indian doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and other professionals, who received their higher or postgraduate education thanks to Indian self-determination programs and tribal scholarships funded by the proceeds of tribal gaming and other modes of self-sufficiency, are returning home and joining the tribal middle class.

Empirically, between the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, reservation Indian income levels rose by 33% and the poverty rate dropped by 7%, with little difference shown between those tribal governments with gaming operations and those without gaming. Tribal data from the 2010 Census will no doubt correlate to the $11 billion to $26 billion growth in Indian gaming from 2000 to 2010, and show even more dramatic income gains in Indian Country during the first decade of this 21^st Century. As Indian self-determination firmly took hold, so too has a tribal middle class.

In Part Three, I will describe the rising attack on Indian economies vis-à-vis the tribal middle class and why that assault is far more consequential than the financial downfall suffered in all corners of the Great Recession economy. Instead, the attack is a telling indication of how past policies of assimilation and termination still motivate state and local governments’ as well as Congress’ behavior towards Indian Country; of how they see the existence of tribal governments and a strong tribal middle class as a zero-sum threat to the economic vitality of states and non-Indian businesses.

Gabriel S. Galanda, an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, is a partner with Galanda Broadman, PLLC, in Seattle. He represents tribal governments, businesses and members in all varieties of dispute and business dealing. Gabe can be reached at (206) 691-3631 or gabe@galandabroadman.com.

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October 10, 2011

Columbus Day Protest Widens

Filed under: Genealogy,Politics — Tags: American Indian History, Columbus Day, Columbus Day Parade, Columbus Day Parade Protests, Culture, Headline News, Indigenous People, Indigenous Peoples, Keystone XL Pipeline, News, Occupy Wall Street, Washington DC — Carol Berry @ 7:15 pm

Smoldering and flaming, copies of two documents that initiated the destruction of Native cultures went up in smoke to loud cheers October 8, as opponents of the Columbus Day Parade in Denver widened their attack to include Wall Street, the Keystone XL pipeline, sacred sites desecration, and other manifestations of the Columbian legacy.

Burned were a Papal Bull approving the subjugation of Natives and the theft of their lands, as well as a copy of Johnson v. McIntosh, which in 1823 concocted a legal basis for the seizure of Indian lands.

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Sky Roosevelt-Morris, 20, Shawnee/White Mountain Apache burning a Papal Bull and copy of Johnson v. McIntosh during the Columbus Day Parade protest in Denver on October 8. (Carol Berry)

It was street theater worthy of Denver’s earlier Columbus Day Parade protests, which have included the pouring of ceremonial blood in the streets, dolls representing infants killed by invading Spaniards, burnt tipis and other creative expressions of outrage.

The parade protest is almost a Denver tradition. Beginning in 1989 with about 50 dissenters, only three years later the number had swelled to more than 1,000 who, following the red banner of the American Indian Movement (AIM), shouted at parade participants for honoring Columbus, a man they called a mass murderer and slave trader.

This year, parade opponents took Wall Street to task for its human rights failures and, to a lesser extent, charged the local Occupy Wall Street group with failing to acknowledge tribal lands, including Denver, as already occupied and indigenous people as disproportionately afflicted by the fallout from the Columbus-initiated invasion of present-day North America.

Although icy rain diminished parade spectators to a handful, about 100 shouting dissenters held up posters and signs in front of barricades and a line of silent police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. The parade opponents condemned the Columbian legacy of brutality and inequality, sacred sites desecration, and the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, expected to be approved by President Barack Obama, who “will be held accountable” about it when he visits Denver October 24.

The Native dissenters in Denver are among the first who are telling the growing anti-Wall Street protest movement, including Occupy Denver, that indigenous issues should be foremost when they castigate the financial sector for corporate malfeasance and greed.

The Native critics also said they would “stand in solidarity with the Cree nations,” whose territories are located in occupied northern Alberta, Canada, in their opposition to the tar sands development, “the largest industrial project on earth.” They are requesting that Obama prohibit domestic transportation or use of tar sands-derived oil.

“If this (Occupy Denver) movement is serious about confronting the foundational assumptions of the current U.S. system, then it must begin by addressing the original crimes of the U.S. colonizing system against indigenous nations,” stated a position paper issued by local AIM. “Without addressing justice for Indigenous Peoples, there can never be a genuine movement for justice and equality in the United States.”

The Native dissidents called on Occupy Denver to adopt a number of positions that included repudiating the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, endorsing indigenous self-determination, and requiring the “free, prior and informed consent” of Indigenous Peoples before potentially adverse actions are taken affecting their lands or resources.

Make no mistake, one protester said, an end is still sought to Columbus Day—which began in Denver in 1907—and a farewell to the parade, sponsored by the Sons of Italy New Generation. But this year’s protestors emphasized that they don’t “hate Italians” and that the Wall Street, pipeline, and other issues are an outgrowth of the Columbian legacy of greed, excess, exploitation and materialism.

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Lilliah Walker, 5, Omaha/Winnebago/Lakota joined in the protest of Columbus Day. (Carol Berry)

Participants in the anti-Columbus rally ranged in age from 70-plus Virginia Allrunner, Cheyenne powwow dancer and activist, to Lilliah Walker, 5, Omaha/Winnebago and Lakota. In the AIM tradition, a young girl carrying the canupa led the group confronting the parade: she was Shyela Cross, 11, Oglala Lakota.

Among coordinators of the Native youth protesting the parade were Sky Roosevelt-Morris, Shawnee/White Mountain Apache, 20; Tessa McLean, Ojibwe, 23; Scott Jacket, Ute Mountain Ute/Dine’, 24, and Glenn Morris, Shawnee, a leader of Colorado AIM and a professor of political science at the University of Colorado-Denver, all of whom addressed the demonstrators.

“We are the youth and we are here to step up to the plate,” Jacket said. Morris termed Columbus “a poster boy for imperialism and colonialism” and “the first white guy who showed up.”

Spiritual leaders were George “Tink” Tinker, Osage, of the Iliff School of Theology, and Robert Cross, Oglala Lakota. Dissenters included a loose coalition of AIM, Transform Columbus Day Alliance, Denver CopWatch, Denver Anarchist Black Cross and others.

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October 23, 2011

Decolonization and ‘Occupy Wall Street’

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Arab Spring, Colonialism, Decolonize Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, Sandy Lake, Winona LaDuke — Robert Desjarlait @ 9:41 pm

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest has become a matter of debate in Indian country. Some have chosen to be included under the slogan “We Are The 99%”; others, like me, have not. Many of those who support OWS have come up with their own slogan: “Decolonize Wall Street.” But I simply don’t believe that the indigenous nations on Turtle Island are a part of that 99% equation, let alone that the OWS movement is about decolonization.

One protester, Brendan Burke, said: “Everyone has this problem. White, black. Rich or poor. Where you live. Everyone has a financial inequity oppressing them.”

I assume from his statement that Burke only sees things in white and black. Apparently he is color blind when it comes to red and brown.

As far as financial inequity is concerned, we, the red and the brown peoples of the Americas, have suffered financial inequity ever since the oppressors first invaded our shores. Socio-economic inequity began with the subjugation of our lands through treaties. Annuity payments were late and never the amount negotiated under the treaty. Supplies and food rations that were part of annuity payments were often appropriated by Indian agents and resold for higher prices.

The tragedy at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag (Sandy Lake) exemplifies the socio-economic inequity of annuity payments. In the fall of 1850, nineteen Anishinaabeg bands from Wisconsin journeyed to Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag for annual annuity payments and supplies. The annuity payments and supplies were late and the people had to wait until early December before they received limited sums of money and available supplies. Trying to survive on spoiled and inadequate government rations while waiting for the annuities, 150 Anishinaabeg people died from dysentery and measles at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag. Two-hundred and fifty more, mostly women, children and elders, died on their way back home to Wisconsin. This is but one example of the economic inequity that has been part of the indigenous experience in the United States.

OWS organizers have repeatedly stated the inspiration for their protest is the Arab Spring movement. If this is the case, one may ask how did the indigenous peoples of the Middle East fare from the Arab Spring?

In September 2011, Daniel Gabriel, the SUA Human Rights and UN NGO Director, stated: “While the media focuses all its energy on the Palestinian search for Statehood and the ‘Arab Spring’, it is the reduced indigenous populations of the Middle East who continue to lose out. Time and time again, the world demands justice, democracy and freedom in the Middle East, but it fails in its obligation to demand the same for the minority groups like the Arameans. Today we barely survive in our homeland. But tomorrow we may silently vanish from existence.”

If Arab Spring didn’t flourish for indigenous peoples in the Middle East, how can we expect it to flourish here? If the indigenous peoples in the Middle East are barely surviving in their homelands, can we expect the Arab Spring inspired movement on Wall Street to lessen the oppression in our homelands? Will the actions on Wall Street abate our youth crisis, our teen suicide rate, our domestic and sexual abuse, or our alcohol and substance abuse in Indian Country? Will it heal our broken families and communities? Will Wall Street stop the rape and plunder of Mother Earth by the mining, oil and energy interests? Will it halt the ecocide, ethnocide, linguicide, and genocide of the indigenous peoples in North America? If Gabriel’s words offer any insight, then our historical trauma will not lessen but increase. It will increase in the present generation to the Seventh Generation—and beyond.

Then there is the matter of decolonization. The question is: the decolonization of what, of whom? How can decolonization be a part of the process if the occupiers are occupying occupied land?

The dominance of a white majority involved with the OWS movement explains why decolonization isn’t included in the proposed list of demands issued on September 3. The list of demands includes

Separate Investment Banking from Commercial Banks;
Use Congressional authority to prosecute the Wall Street criminals responsible for 2008 crisis;
Cap the ability of corporations to contribute to political campaigns;
Congress pass the Buffett Rule, i.e., fair taxation of the rich and corporations;
Revamping Securities and Exchange Commission;
Pass effective law to limit the influence of lobbyists;
Pass law prohibiting former regulators to join corporations later.

Where in this proposed list of demands is there anything remotely connected to decolonization? At its core, OWS is about corporate greed, financial accountability, and economic inequity. It’s about a change in the system, although, as Gabriel points out, an Arab Spring doesn’t bring change to the voices of the indigenous. If change is the basic tenant of the OWS movement, then this change should not be the exclusion of indigenous populations in the United States, rather, change should be inclusive.

The OWS movement is, at the present time, about money. The core message seems to be that corporate America and the wealthy need to share the profits. But the question is: How are those profits made? The profits of the wealthy are made through the industries they own. These industries fuel and generate profits. And they create jobs and programs.

The mining, oil, and energy industries generate enormous profits. Those profits come at a cost to Indian country, to say nothing of the environment in general. The new Indian Wars are about the opposition to ecocidal legislative policies and industries that endanger our homelands and our Mother Earth. Part of the struggle is trying to rise above the marginalization that began with colonization and continues through the corporate policies of the mining, oil, and energy industries.

According to Belinda Morris, ”Marginalization is as much a result of colonialism as it is corporatism. One is social, the other economic. From the indigenous standpoint … the struggle does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it must not allow itself to be subsumed by a movement that, to date, has shown little—if any—recognition of it, let alone respect for it.”

As evidenced by their proposed list of demands, the OWS movement has no intentions of recognizing indigenous concerns or demarginalizing indigenous peoples in the United States. And that’s because the mindset of the majority of occupiers is an intergenerational extension of a colonized mindset. In her Foreword to The New Resource Wars, Winona LaDuke provides insight into the colonized mindset. Regarding “Industrial society, or as some call it, ‘settler society,’” LaDuke writes:

“In industrial society, ‘man’s dominion over nature,’ has preempted the perception of Natural Law as central. Linear concepts of ‘progress’ dominate this worldview. From this perception of ‘progress’ as an essential component of societal development comes the perception of the natural world as a wilderness. This, of course, is the philosophical underpinning of colonialism and ‘conquest.’”

This way of thinking is also present in scientific systems of thought like ‘Darwinism,’ as well as in social interpretations of human behavior such as ‘Manifest Destiny,’ with its belief in some god-ordained right of some humans to dominate the earth. These concepts are central to the … present state of relations between native and settler in North America and elsewhere.”

The “settler society” that LaDuke refers to isn’t from the historical past. It is present in non-indigenous society today. It is the mentality of this “settler society” permeating the mindset of the OWS movement. Their demands aren’t about decolonization. Rather, their demands are about wanting a share of the profits, profits that come from the rape and plunder of the earth and our indigenous homelands.

This isn’t to say that the OWS movement lacks merit. Economic inequities, corporate greed, the mortgage crisis, the unequal distribution of wealth are legitimate concerns. But those concerns have nothing to do with decolonization no environmental justice. As such, the 99% slogan is not inclusive of the myriad of environmental problems that plague both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in the United States.

Wendy Makoons Geniusz writes: “Because of the colonization process, many of us no longer see the strength of our indigenous knowledge. Our minds have been colonized along with our land, resources, people. For us Anishinaabeg, the decolonization of gikendaasowin (Anishinaabe knowledge) is also part of the decolonization of ourselves.”

Geniusz points out that biskaabiiyang means to “to return to ourselves, to decolonize ourselves.”

For many of us, biskaabiiyang is a lifelong process. It is a journey to heal our traumatized inner spirit of the historical past and the historical present. For many of us, our involvement in the struggles that our communities and our homelands face is a part of that healing journey. From this prism, the Occupy movement can be viewed as recognizing the national trauma endured under Corporate America. But it isn’t about the biskaabiiyang of the American people. Rather, it’s about the collusion of corporations and the government to keep us under the yoke of economic inequity and the public’s demand for reformation of a corrupt capitalist system that has infested the world under the umbrella of globalization. And it is the reformation of this system that has led to the present movement of people on the streets of America.

However, should any kind of reformation occur, indigenous peoples will undoubtedly continue to be marginalized and their natural resources exploited. And, as before, we will continue our struggles in the shadows of democracy.

We will need to do this lest we silently vanish from existence.

Robert Desjarlait is from the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation. He is a free-lance journalist and has been published on issues regarding Indian country. He is a co-founder of Protect Our Manoomin, an Anishinaabe grassroots organization battling against copper mining in northern Minnesota.

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October 24, 2011

History of Oppression Told

Filed under: Business,News Alerts,Politics — Tags: AIM, American Indian Movement, Economic Development, Headline News, Indigenous People, Indigenous Peoples, Keystone XL Pipeline, News, Occupy Denver, Occupy Wall Street, Protests, Tribal Government, Washington DC — Carol Berry @ 1:30 pm

The fall temperatures were mild but the rhetoric was heated as some of the 1,000-strong Occupy Denver participants heard Glenn Morris, a leader of the American Indian Movement – Colorado (AIM), condemn centuries of occupation.

“‘Occupied’ doesn’t always have a good connotation for us,” he said to loud applause. “We’ve been ‘occupied’ for 519 years.”

He spoke in the amphitheater of Denver’s City Center Park on October 22, with the state capitol at one end of the park and the city-county building at the other. The annual Zombie Crawl, attended by an estimated 3,000 people was nearby and street marches by that group and Occupy Denver intersected at several points, with some zombie-clad youths holding up signs calling for change and assertions that “Corporations Are Not People.”

The concept of corporate person-hood is not new to Indian people, because “corporations were people before we were” in federal law, Morris said in his speech to Occupy Denver.

The audience reacted enthusiastically to Morris’ statements of mutual solidarity and support for rallies against the positions of President Barack Obama—termed “not our president”—particularly on the $13 billion Keystone XL Pipeline, which intersects a number of tribal lands from its origin in Alberta southward to the U.S. Gulf coast, in what he termed “the largest industrial project on earth.”

“We’ve got something to say about this,” he said. “The pipeline crosses the Ogallala Aquifer that provides your water. We want that pipeline stopped.”

Letters of eminent domain—which would take farmers’ and ranchers’ land in a sometimes-forced sale—have already been sent by XL Keystone officials to farmers in Nebraska, he said, urging listeners to “tell Barack Obama (in his visit to Denver October 24-25) that we are standing against the pipeline.”

Earlier, Morris noted that the Denver area was once the homeland of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples, and said that Occupy Denver was the first city to adopt an AIM indigenous platform, with Phoenix, Oakland, Seattle and other cities adopting the proposal in principle.

“In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression,” the platform states, and incorporation of the Doctrine of Discovery into law justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory and established a framework of “corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America to the present.”

Among other things, the platform Morris cited called upon Occupy Denver to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, repeal the Columbus Day holiday, endorse indigenous self-determination, enforce all treaties, recognize the right to repatriation of human remains and funeral objects, stand in solidarity with the Cree nations in opposing tar sands development, and immediately release from federal prison Leonard Peltier, a Native activist charged with murder in the aftermath of Indian/FBI conflicts in the 1970s in South Dakota.

“We’ve been waiting 519 years for this moment—a moment that says we want a new America” characterized by mutual respect, sustainability, and other qualities, he said. “We had that homeland, and we want it back.”

Although the audience was predominantly non-Native, a number of Indian youth and some adults were present. Calvin Standing Bear, Oglala/Sicangu Lakota, a prominent flutist and singer, held a sign reading “We R the World.”

The daytime event was peaceful, despite a significant police and state patrol presence.

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October 6, 2011

Indians Counter Occupy Wall Street Movement With Decolonize Wall Street

Filed under: Business,Canada,First Nations,M√©tis,Politics — Tags: Corporate Greed, Decolonize Wall Street, Headline News, Jessica Yee, JohnPaul Montano, News, Occupy Wall Street, Seeking Justice — ICTMN Staff @ 6:11 pm

This artwork was created by Erin Konsmo, a Métis/Cree Indigenous Feminist from Innisfail, Alberta. She is currently an intern for the Native Youth Sexual Health Network and on the National Aboriginal Youth Council on HIV/AIDS. She is an Indigenous artist, focusing on art forms that incorporate traditional knowledge while telling stories of struggle, resistance, self-determination, identity and sexual and reproductive justice.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has taken root across the nation. Organizers say protestors are drawing attention to the 1% of the population who have destroyed the country and its values through greed.

While many people in Indian Country can sympathize with the protestors’ claims, there is also some growing criticism for the idea behind its name, which overlooks the first occupants of the Wall Street area. This has given rise to the response from Native bloggers and activists to not Occupy Wall Street but Decolonize Wall Street.

“The ‘OCCUPY WALL STREET’ slogan has gone viral and international now. From the protests on the streets of WALL STREET in the name of ‘ending capitalism’—organizers, protestors, and activists have been encouraged to ‘occupy’ different places that symbolize greed and power. There’s just one problem: THE UNITED STATES IS ALREADY BEING OCCUPIED. THIS IS INDIGENOUS LAND. And it’s been occupied for quite some time now,” stated Jessica Yee (Mohawk), the executive director for The Native Youth Sexual Health Network, in a blog post originally posted on Racialicious.

“I also need to mention that New York City is Haudenosaunee territory and home to many other First Nations, ” Yee wrote.

Still, Yee clarifies that she supports the mission and integrity of Occupy Wall Street. “I’m not against ending capitalism and I’m not against people organizing to hold big corporations accountable for the extreme damage they are causing,” Yee wrote. “Yes, we need to end globalization. What I am saying is that I have all kinds of problems when to get to ‘ending capitalism’ we step on other people’s rights—and in this case erode Indigenous rights—to make the point.”

Yee goes on to excerpt a blog post from “An Open Letter to the Occupy Wall Street Activist” published by JohnPaul Montano in Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory & Practice. Montano describes himself on his Twitter account as a “Nishnaabe-language acquirer naïvely believing that multilingualism, JavaScript and respect for indigenous sovereignty lead to less crabbiness and more peace.”

I hope you would make mention of the fact that the very land upon which you are protesting does not belong to you – that you are guests upon that stolen indigenous land. I had hoped mention would be made of the indigenous nation whose land that is. I had hoped that you would address the centuries-long history that we indigenous peoples of this continent have endured being subject to the countless ‘-isms’ of do-gooders claiming to be building a “more just society,” a “better world,” a “land of freedom” on top of our indigenous societies, on our indigenous lands, while destroying and/or ignoring our ways of life. I had hoped that you would acknowledge that, since you are settlers on indigenous land, you need and want our indigenous consent to your building anything on our land—never mind an entire society.

The blog People of Color details the history of the occupation of Wall Street, in which enslaved African peoples constructed the wall “that barricaded the land white men had seized from native peoples.”

PeopleofColor decolonizewallstreet Indians Counter Occupy Wall Street Movement With Decolonize Wall Street

Courtesy of http://pococcupywallstreet.tumblr.com/

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November 23, 2011

Native Americans Occupy Indian Country in Tulsa

Filed under: Business,Politics — Tags: Economic Development, Headline News, News, Occupy Tulsa, Occupy UC Davis, Occupy Wall Street, Protests, Washington DC — Wilhelm Murg @ 7:15 pm

TULSA, Okla – Like Occupy movements all over the country, the Occupy Tulsa movement has been going on for weeks with no end in sight. On November 2^nd the Tulsa Police Department used pepper spray on the handful of protesters who were violating the curfew law at Centennial Green in downtown Tulsa’s financial district. While the incident was not as widely reported as the November 18^th pepper spraying at Occupy UC Davis, the Tulsa Police Department only used pepper spray that one night. From that point the arrests were kept fairly low key until the night of November 13^th, when a helicopter was deployed while the police dealt with six protesters who had volunteered for civil disobedience.

Tulsa has one of the highest Native American populations in the country, so many Indian people are a part of the protest, including Jesse (Creek) and Adrian (Creek/ Seminole) Childers, who have brought five of their children out to the protests many times.

childers family 270x202 Native Americans Occupy Indian Country in Tulsa

Jesse (Creek) and Adrian (Creek/ Seminole) Childers, who have brought five of their children out to the protests many times. (Wilhelm Murg)

“We’re standing firm with these sisters and brothers,” Jesse Childers said. “We hope that a new generation will see that we’re making waves in order for their generation to have a better way so they don’t have to go through the madness that we’ve gone through.”

One of the videographers of the movement is Joe Briggs Jr., who is Cheyenne-Arapaho. He has been arrested three times and received a citation, so far.

Briggs started capturing video with his cellphone at the Occupy Tulsa protest for a documentary project. “After they got pepper sprayed I started hanging out with Occupy Tulsa more, and actually became involved with what they were doing,” Briggs said. “I’d been with these guys for quite a few days, I kept up with them on the Internet, and it became personal. After the pepper spray, I went from being just a historian to actually wanting to be more involved as a protester. So the next night I came out with these guys and went ahead and got arrested.”

Briggs has no doubt that the Tulsa Police Department stopped using pepper spray due to the videos being posted on YouTube.com. “After the national media exposure that they got from everybody filming there wasn’t anything to try and deny, so the second night they weren’t as aggressive,” Briggs said. As Occupy Tulsa has a legal team with paperwork ready, he has only had to spend a few hours in jail.

Briggs has a full time job as a telemarketer, so after getting out of jail he went home, changed his clothes, took a shower, and went to work. He says he is getting only a few hours of sleep a day between his job and the protest. “I have no personal life,” he joked.

Over the weekend the Occupy Tulsa movement relocated to a location in Tulsa’s entertainment center, The Brady District, across from the historic Cain’s Ballroom, so they would not disrupt The Williams Route 66 Marathon run that occurred on November 19^th. However, after their Thanksgiving dinner Thursday afternoon they plan to set back up at the Centennial Green.

Occupy Wall Street is apparently planning a major protest at Federal Courthouses on January 20^thacross the country and Briggs says he and Occupy Tulsa plan on occupying at least until that date. He bought a tent and a sleeping bag over the weekend for the long winter ahead.

Briggs has posted his video on YouTube.com for any media relations that wish to use it under the name TeamBritneyTULSA.

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March 2, 2012

Obama Will Need Indian Votes to Be Reelected

Filed under: Barack Obama — Tags: 2012 Presidential Election, Carlos Dews, General Motors, GM, Newt Gingrich, Occupy Wall Street, UAW, United Auto Workers — Chuck Trimble @ 4:45 am

The price of gasoline at the pump is skyrocketing and is expected to flatten the upward trend on the stock market charts, thus maybe even stalling the economic recovery from the Republican recession of 2009 and 2010. In a strange twist, this is making many millionaire and billionaire stockholders happy. Why? Because President Obama will get the blame, and perhaps if we are in an economic nosedive come election time, Obama will be defeated.

I have an elderly friend whom I visit regularly. He’s well along in retirement but stays in his office which is like the control room of an ICBM launch site with computer equipment of all sorts. He is solidly in the right wing of the Republican Party. When I praise American industry for the amazing recovery of General Motors to the top of the world market from the depths of bankruptcy only three years ago, he is not pleased. And especially with Chrysler Corporation’s return to competitiveness from years of pedestrian design, trash pile reliability, and negative sales, one would think that my friend would be ecstatic. No way….and why? Because both of these American corporations were beneficiary to Obama’s bail out strategy, especially his firing of their top management and replacement with proven talent of his choice. In addition, Obama’s negotiators placed a third of the ownership of General Motors in the hands of the United Auto Workers union in payment for their retirement and insurance benefits that went down the drain in the near demise of the corporation. Nevertheless, Obama rightly claims much credit for his administration in this recovery, and a whole bunch of rust belt jobs survivors hail him as their savior.

Leading the GOP attack is Newt Gingrich, the Guru in the traveling circus that is the slate of Republican candidates shredding each other for the party’s nomination to take on their political piñata, Barak Obama. Gingrich says that the General Motors and Chrysler corporations should have been allowed to go into bankruptcy and work their way out through the process of reorganization. Problem is that there was no source that would have invested in those losers after they proved their ineptness and stiffed so many investors and Unions in getting to the sorry state they were in. Reorganization and refinancing would have taken too much time, and they likely would have gone down anyway.

Nevertheless, the slow recovery of the overall economy and the slow pace of employment recovery, in the minds the Republican Right, justify their hatred for the President, and camouflage their racism in trying from the day of Obama’s inauguration to discredit him and destroy him. Indeed, they don’t say it outright, but it is written all over them: “Get that nigger out of the White House,” where in their minds he should never have been allowed to enter in the first place.

Two years ago, I read an article by Dr. Carlos Dews, author and professor of English literature, titled “The Nigger Show.” He wrote, “I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009. I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the president lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support.”

The mighty one-percenters may even suppress their greed and force a downturn in the economy to embarrass and defeat the President, so great is their hatred for him. So it is that even against any of the clowns that have entertained America since the Iowa crap-shoot, a second term will be no shoe in for President Obama. Despite the continued signs of economic and employment recovery, slow but steady, he will have a tough campaign against the big Super PACs.

Indian country has a proven friend in Barack Obama, and it’s in our interest to work for his re-election in November, whether or not he chooses to apologize to our people for past treatment at the hands of the European colonizers.

Charles “Chuck” Trimble was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1969, and served as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972 to 1978. He is retired and lives in Omaha, Nebraska. His website is IktomisWeb.com.

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