Peace & Dignity Journeys Update
Dear Friends and Family,
Based on prophecy and the wisdom of our ancestors, the Peace and Dignity Journeys is a ceremonial movement designed to re-unite the Eagle and Condor Nations of Iztaxilatlan (North, Central, and South America). The Journeys does this through spiritual running. On May 1, 2008, two groups of runners will simultaneously set out from Alaska and Argentina and will run to hundreds of communities for over seven months en route to Panama.
The Peace and Dignity Journeys is a grassroots Inter-Tribal movement that utilizes indigenous lineages of Wisdom, Design, and Will that aims to bring forth a world that reflects the heart of creation.
Peace And Dignity Journeys has been conducting ceremonial runs since 1992. The Journeys is a grassroots movement that is directed by volunteers.
The Journeys takes place every four years and is dedicated to a specific theme:
• 1992 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance/Dedicated to the
Children
• 1996 Dedicated to the Elders
• 2000 Dedicated to the Families
• 2004 Dedicated to honor Women, feminine, especially Tonantzin
Tlalli (Sacred Mother Earth)
The 2008 Journeys is Dedicated to honor and preservation and protection of Sacred Sites.
This email includes information on upcoming meetings, information on routes, and our current needs. In addition, we will provide you with ways that you can get more involved.
We are now in the last stretch of the organizing and we need various types of support before embarking on the Journeys (May 1-November 17, 2008).
Upcoming Organizing Meetings:
* Organizing Trip to Chiapas, and Guatemala Jan. 26-Feb 5.
* Organizing Meeting in Vancouver, BC on Feb. 23. This meeting is to organize folks in BC, Yukon, and Alberta, Canada
* Organizing Meeting for New York Tributary route, Feb. 16, New York , NY
* Arizona Statewide Meeting, Feb. 9, Tucson, AZ
* California Statewide meeting on March 15, Oakland, CA
* Organizing trip through Sonora, Mexico, March 29-April 3. This trip is to organize with indigenous communities in northern Mexico.
* Plains Route Meeting in Oglala South Dakota TBA
* Plains route/Trail of Tears route Meeting in Chicago, IL TBA
* Organizing Meeting in Washington State TBA
2008 Peace and Dignity Routes
This year there will be approximately eight routes that runners will traverse throughout the North (Alaska-Panama). There will be two Main routes beginning from the North. Main routes are routs that are over 3,000 miles in length. Other routes are called tributary routes; tributary routes feed into main routes.
Main Routes
The West Coast Route will begin out of Alaska. Runners will run throughout the West Coast until reaching Panama. The Plains Route will also begin from Alaska. However, these runners will head south-east through Canada and enter the U.S. somewhere in the Plains (North Dakota or Minnesota). Then the runners will make their way to Colorado and New Mexico. The Plains Route will connect with the West Coast Route in Mexico, where they will merge and run together to Panama.
Tributary Routes:
New York Route
This route will probably from northern New York State and the runners will make their way west until connecting with the Plains route in a location TBA.
Trail of Tear Routes-----
This route will begin is still in the process of being organized. However, at this point it may begin in Tennessee and make its way to southern Illinois.
California Inland Route-----
This route will split form the West Coast Route and will head towards central California. From there it will head east into Arizona and will re-connect with the West Coast Route in Sonora, Mexico.
Tri-State Route-----
This route will also split form the West Coast Route in either Washington State or Oregon. These runners will run south east through Nevada and will run through northern Arizona and head south through eastern Arizona. This route will also re-connect with the West Coast route in Sonora, Mexico.
San Francisco Peaks Route------
There will be a group of runners that run from the San Francisco Peaks, Arizona and connect to the Tri-State Route.
There will be other tributary routes in the San Diego, California area and throughout Arizona.
Website
Organizers/ Coordinators you can now upload your information about your meetings, events and runs on the Peace and Dignity website (www.peaceanddignityjourenuys.com). This way your can advertise your events, gains support from other coordinators and let folks who are doing work for the Journeys throughout the hemisphere, know what is going on.
Peace and Dignity E-Newsletter
Rene Reyes, our webmaster has created a Peace and Dignity E-Newsletter. This medium will allow folks to track the progress o f runners throughout the span o f this years Journey. In addition, this newsletter will provide coordinators with a way to gain support from the broader public. Keep in mind that the E-Newsletter will provide folks with the option to accept or decline receiving this information from the Journeys.
Your Email Contacts are Needed
Although the Journeys touch thousands and thousands of people it is sometimes difficult to maintain communications with all of the stakeholders. Therefore, we are asking all of the coordinators from Alaska through Panama to send us your email contacts of people who are involved or may want to get involved in the Journeys. This way they can have access to the newsletter and other communiqués from throughout the North. Please send your emails contacts to Rene Reyes
( rene_reyes@yahoo.com ).
Needs
Vehicles
We need at least six vans (12-16 passenger) and three lead vehicles such as a Toyota 4runner, Nissan Pathfinder or something similar. We don't want new vehicles, as long as they can make it to Alaska and then all the way to Panama. Vans carry runners and their equipment. Lead vehicles are used by coordinators support the runners by taking care of various logistical matters. Some of these logistics are making sure that the runners have food and coordinating events with hundreds of hosting communities.
Funds
Our target is to raise at least $100,000. If anyone is interested in learning more our fundraising efforts, please let me know.
Tlazo,
Jose Malvido
Peace and Dignity Journeys Northern Coordinator
Alaska-Panama
www.peaceanddignityjourneys.com
Share This
Tecpatl
Our Word is Our Weapon, if you have anything you would like us to publish please send us an email @ maiz_centeotl_chicomecoatl@riseup.net
Subscribe To Maiz Today!!!!
Posts
All Comments
1/11/08
Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
As the Rebel Year Turns
Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
By JOHN ROSS
La Garrucha, Chiapas.
http://www.counterpunch.com/ross01082008.html
Dozens of Zapatista companeras, many of them Tzeltal Maya from the Chiapas lowlands decked out in rainbow-hued ribbons and ruffles, their dark eyes framed by "pasamontanas" and "paliacates" that masked their personas, emerged from the rustic auditorium to the applause of hundreds of international feminists gathered outside at the conclusion of the opening session of an all-women's "Encuentro" hosted by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) here at year's end.
The Tzeltaleras' line of march which resembled a colorful if bizarre fashion parade, seemed an auspicious start to the rebels' third "encounter" this year between "the peoples of the world" and the Zapatista communities and comandantes - an anti-globalization conclave last December and an "Encuentro" in defense of indigenous land this summer preceded the womens' gathering.
Although the call for the event was issued under the pen of the EZLN's quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, the author of a recently published erotic coffee table book in which his penis plays the role of a masked guerrillero, the impetus for the women's "Encuentro" sprung from the loins of the Zapatista companeras.
Last July, at the conclusion of a meeting with farmers from a dozen counties in the hamlet with the haunting name of La Realidad ("The Reality"), a young rebel from that community, "Evarilda", apparently without clearing the invitation with the EZLN's General Command, called for the all-womens' encounter, explaining that men were invited to help with the logistics but would be asked to stay home and mind the children and the farm animals while the women plotted against capitalism.
True to Evarilda's word, at the December 29th-31st gathering which drew 300-500 non-Mexican mostly women activists to this village, officially the autonomous municipality of Francisco Gomez, and which honored the memory of the late Comandanta Ramona (d. January 2006), men took a decidedly secondary role. Signs posted around the "Caracol" called "Resistance Until the New Dawn", a sort of Zapatista cultural/political center, advised the companeros that they could not act as "spokespersons, translators, or representatives in the plenary sessions." Instead, their activities should be confined "to preparing and serving food, washing dishes, sweeping, cleaning out the latrines, fetching firewood, and minding the children."
Indeed, some young Zapatista men donned aprons imprinted with legends like "tomato" and "EZLN" to work in the kitchens. Meanwhile, older men sat quietly on wooden benches outside of the auditorium, sometimes signaling amongst themselves when a companera made a strong point or smiling in pride after a daughter or wife or sister or mother spoke their histories to the assembly.
The role of women within the Zapatista structure has been crucial since the rebellion's gestation. When the founders of the EZLN, radicals from northern Mexican cities, first arrived in the Tzeltal-Tojolabal lowlands or "Canadas" of southeastern Chiapas, women were still being sold by their families as chattel in marriage. Often, they were kept monolingual by the husbands as a means of control, turned into baby factories, and had little standing in the community. Those from the outside offered independence and invited the young women to the training camps in the mountain where they would learn to wield a weapon and a smattering of Spanish and become a part of the EZLN's fighting force. 14 years ago, on January 1st 1994, when the Zapatistas seized the cities of San Cristobal and Ocosingo and five other county seats, women comprised a third of the rebel army - women fighters were martyred in the bloody battle for Ocosingo.
Key to bringing the companeras to the rebel cause was "The Revolutionary Law of Women", officially promulgated that first January 1st from the balcony of the San Cristobal city hall which decreed that women should have control over their own lives and their bodies. The law, which had been carried into the Indian communities by Comandantas Susana and Ramona, often meeting with hostility from the companeros, was "our toughest battle" Sub Marcos would later note.
Integrating women into the military structure, which was not tied to local community, proved easier than cultivating participation in the civil structure, which was rooted in the life of the villages. Although women occupied five seats on the 19-member Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI), the EZLN's General Command, their numbers fell far shorter in 29 autonomous municipal councils and the five "Juntas de Buen Gobierno" ("Good Government Committees") which administrate Zapatista regional autonomy.
But as the Zapatista social infrastructure grew, women became health and education promoters and leaders in the commissions that planned these campaigns and their profile has improved in the JBGs and autonomias.
Women's Lib a la Zapatista has been boosted by the rebels' prohibitions against the consumption of alcohol in their communities. Whereas many inland Maya towns like San Juan Chamula are saturated in alcohol with soaring rates of spousal and child abuse, the Zapatista zone has the lowest abuse indicators in the state, according to numbers offered by the womens' commission of the Chiapas state congress. As a state, Chiapas has one of the highest numbers of feminicides in the Mexican union - 1456 women were murdered here between 1993 and 2004, more than doubling Chihuahua (604) in which the notorious "Muertas" of Ciudad Juarez are recorded. The low incidence of violence against women in the zone of Zapatista influence is more remarkable because much of the lowland rebel territory straddles the Guatemalan border, a country where 500 women are murdered each year.
With the men tending the kids and cleaning latrines, the women told their stories in the plenaries. Many of the younger companeras like Evarilda had grown up in the rebellion - which is now in its 24th year (14 on public display) - and spoke of learning to read and write in rebel schools and their work as social promoters or as teachers or as farmers and mothers. Zapatista grandmothers told of the first years of the rebellion and veteran comandantas like Susana, who spoke movingly of her longtime companera Ramona, "the smallest of the small", recalled how in the war, the men and the women learned to share housekeeping tasks like cooking and washing clothes.
"Many of the companeros still do not want to understand our demands," Comandanta Sandra admonished, "but we cannot struggle against the mal gobierno without them."
The Zapatista companeras' struggle for inclusion and parity with their male counterparts grates against separatist politics that some militant first-world feminists who journeyed to the jungle espouse. Lesbian couples and collectives seemed a substantial faction in the first-world feminist delegations. Although no Zapatista women has publicly come out, the EZLN has been zealous in its inclusion of Lesbians and Gays and incorporate their struggles in the rainbow of marginated constitutioncies with whose cause they align themselves.
Sadly, the Encuentro of the Women of the World with the Zapatista Women did not provoke much formal interchange between the rebel companeras and first-world feminists - who were limited to five-minute presentations on the final day of the event. Nonetheless, a surprise Zapatista womens' theater piece did imply a critique: in the skit, a planeload of first-world feminists with funny hair (played by the companeras) lands in the jungle to deliver the poor Indian women from oppression.
Among international delegations in attendance were women representatives from agrarian movements as far removed from Chiapas as Brazil and Senegal, organized by Via Campesina, an alliance that represents millions of poor farmers in the third world, and a group of militant women from Venice, Italy who have been battling expansion of a U.S. military base in that historic city. Political prisoners were represented by Trinidad Ramirez, partner of imprisoned Ignacio del Valle (67 year sentence), leader of the farmers of Atenco. A message from "Colonel Aurora" (Gloria Arenas), a jailed leader of the Popular Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), who now supports the EZLN, was read. Although he reputedly lives only a few villages away, Subcomandante Marcos (or his penis) did not put in an appearance at the womens' gathering.
Ladling out chicken soup at her makeshift food stand, Dona Laura told La Jornada chronicler Hermann Bellinghausen that once the womens' "Encuentro" had concluded, everything would return to normal - "only normal would be different now."
Although the Encounter amply demonstrated the increasing empowerment of the Zapatista companeras, how much of what was said actually rubbed off on those who came from the outside is open to question. "I didn't really get a lot of it," confided one young non-Spanish-speaking activist on her way home to northern California to report back on the womens' gathering to her Zapatista solidarity group.
Be that as it may, the EZLN is going to need all the women - and men - it can muster in the months to come. 2008 looms as a difficult year for the rebels with the "mal gobierno" threatening to distribute lands the Zapatistas recovered in 1994 to rival Indian farmer organizations and paramilitary activity on the uptick.
As has always been the case since this unique rebellion germinated, the Zapatistas turn the corner into another year in struggle.
EDITOR'S NOTE - After 11 years and 600 editions, MexBarb/BMB is now self-distributed by the author. If you already have a one-year subscription, you now have a lifetime subscription. If you did not have a subscription, you too have a lifetime subscription. If you think a lifetime subscription is a good thing send a donation to me at 3258 23rd Street/Apt. 3/San Francisco 94110 Ca. WARNING! There is no way to get off this list! You will receive 40 to 50 BMBs a year until either you or I gasp our last. In solidarity John Ross. Contact: johnross@igc.org
Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves
By JOHN ROSS
La Garrucha, Chiapas.
http://www.counterpunch.com/ross01082008.html
Dozens of Zapatista companeras, many of them Tzeltal Maya from the Chiapas lowlands decked out in rainbow-hued ribbons and ruffles, their dark eyes framed by "pasamontanas" and "paliacates" that masked their personas, emerged from the rustic auditorium to the applause of hundreds of international feminists gathered outside at the conclusion of the opening session of an all-women's "Encuentro" hosted by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) here at year's end.
The Tzeltaleras' line of march which resembled a colorful if bizarre fashion parade, seemed an auspicious start to the rebels' third "encounter" this year between "the peoples of the world" and the Zapatista communities and comandantes - an anti-globalization conclave last December and an "Encuentro" in defense of indigenous land this summer preceded the womens' gathering.
Although the call for the event was issued under the pen of the EZLN's quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, the author of a recently published erotic coffee table book in which his penis plays the role of a masked guerrillero, the impetus for the women's "Encuentro" sprung from the loins of the Zapatista companeras.
Last July, at the conclusion of a meeting with farmers from a dozen counties in the hamlet with the haunting name of La Realidad ("The Reality"), a young rebel from that community, "Evarilda", apparently without clearing the invitation with the EZLN's General Command, called for the all-womens' encounter, explaining that men were invited to help with the logistics but would be asked to stay home and mind the children and the farm animals while the women plotted against capitalism.
True to Evarilda's word, at the December 29th-31st gathering which drew 300-500 non-Mexican mostly women activists to this village, officially the autonomous municipality of Francisco Gomez, and which honored the memory of the late Comandanta Ramona (d. January 2006), men took a decidedly secondary role. Signs posted around the "Caracol" called "Resistance Until the New Dawn", a sort of Zapatista cultural/political center, advised the companeros that they could not act as "spokespersons, translators, or representatives in the plenary sessions." Instead, their activities should be confined "to preparing and serving food, washing dishes, sweeping, cleaning out the latrines, fetching firewood, and minding the children."
Indeed, some young Zapatista men donned aprons imprinted with legends like "tomato" and "EZLN" to work in the kitchens. Meanwhile, older men sat quietly on wooden benches outside of the auditorium, sometimes signaling amongst themselves when a companera made a strong point or smiling in pride after a daughter or wife or sister or mother spoke their histories to the assembly.
The role of women within the Zapatista structure has been crucial since the rebellion's gestation. When the founders of the EZLN, radicals from northern Mexican cities, first arrived in the Tzeltal-Tojolabal lowlands or "Canadas" of southeastern Chiapas, women were still being sold by their families as chattel in marriage. Often, they were kept monolingual by the husbands as a means of control, turned into baby factories, and had little standing in the community. Those from the outside offered independence and invited the young women to the training camps in the mountain where they would learn to wield a weapon and a smattering of Spanish and become a part of the EZLN's fighting force. 14 years ago, on January 1st 1994, when the Zapatistas seized the cities of San Cristobal and Ocosingo and five other county seats, women comprised a third of the rebel army - women fighters were martyred in the bloody battle for Ocosingo.
Key to bringing the companeras to the rebel cause was "The Revolutionary Law of Women", officially promulgated that first January 1st from the balcony of the San Cristobal city hall which decreed that women should have control over their own lives and their bodies. The law, which had been carried into the Indian communities by Comandantas Susana and Ramona, often meeting with hostility from the companeros, was "our toughest battle" Sub Marcos would later note.
Integrating women into the military structure, which was not tied to local community, proved easier than cultivating participation in the civil structure, which was rooted in the life of the villages. Although women occupied five seats on the 19-member Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI), the EZLN's General Command, their numbers fell far shorter in 29 autonomous municipal councils and the five "Juntas de Buen Gobierno" ("Good Government Committees") which administrate Zapatista regional autonomy.
But as the Zapatista social infrastructure grew, women became health and education promoters and leaders in the commissions that planned these campaigns and their profile has improved in the JBGs and autonomias.
Women's Lib a la Zapatista has been boosted by the rebels' prohibitions against the consumption of alcohol in their communities. Whereas many inland Maya towns like San Juan Chamula are saturated in alcohol with soaring rates of spousal and child abuse, the Zapatista zone has the lowest abuse indicators in the state, according to numbers offered by the womens' commission of the Chiapas state congress. As a state, Chiapas has one of the highest numbers of feminicides in the Mexican union - 1456 women were murdered here between 1993 and 2004, more than doubling Chihuahua (604) in which the notorious "Muertas" of Ciudad Juarez are recorded. The low incidence of violence against women in the zone of Zapatista influence is more remarkable because much of the lowland rebel territory straddles the Guatemalan border, a country where 500 women are murdered each year.
With the men tending the kids and cleaning latrines, the women told their stories in the plenaries. Many of the younger companeras like Evarilda had grown up in the rebellion - which is now in its 24th year (14 on public display) - and spoke of learning to read and write in rebel schools and their work as social promoters or as teachers or as farmers and mothers. Zapatista grandmothers told of the first years of the rebellion and veteran comandantas like Susana, who spoke movingly of her longtime companera Ramona, "the smallest of the small", recalled how in the war, the men and the women learned to share housekeeping tasks like cooking and washing clothes.
"Many of the companeros still do not want to understand our demands," Comandanta Sandra admonished, "but we cannot struggle against the mal gobierno without them."
The Zapatista companeras' struggle for inclusion and parity with their male counterparts grates against separatist politics that some militant first-world feminists who journeyed to the jungle espouse. Lesbian couples and collectives seemed a substantial faction in the first-world feminist delegations. Although no Zapatista women has publicly come out, the EZLN has been zealous in its inclusion of Lesbians and Gays and incorporate their struggles in the rainbow of marginated constitutioncies with whose cause they align themselves.
Sadly, the Encuentro of the Women of the World with the Zapatista Women did not provoke much formal interchange between the rebel companeras and first-world feminists - who were limited to five-minute presentations on the final day of the event. Nonetheless, a surprise Zapatista womens' theater piece did imply a critique: in the skit, a planeload of first-world feminists with funny hair (played by the companeras) lands in the jungle to deliver the poor Indian women from oppression.
Among international delegations in attendance were women representatives from agrarian movements as far removed from Chiapas as Brazil and Senegal, organized by Via Campesina, an alliance that represents millions of poor farmers in the third world, and a group of militant women from Venice, Italy who have been battling expansion of a U.S. military base in that historic city. Political prisoners were represented by Trinidad Ramirez, partner of imprisoned Ignacio del Valle (67 year sentence), leader of the farmers of Atenco. A message from "Colonel Aurora" (Gloria Arenas), a jailed leader of the Popular Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), who now supports the EZLN, was read. Although he reputedly lives only a few villages away, Subcomandante Marcos (or his penis) did not put in an appearance at the womens' gathering.
Ladling out chicken soup at her makeshift food stand, Dona Laura told La Jornada chronicler Hermann Bellinghausen that once the womens' "Encuentro" had concluded, everything would return to normal - "only normal would be different now."
Although the Encounter amply demonstrated the increasing empowerment of the Zapatista companeras, how much of what was said actually rubbed off on those who came from the outside is open to question. "I didn't really get a lot of it," confided one young non-Spanish-speaking activist on her way home to northern California to report back on the womens' gathering to her Zapatista solidarity group.
Be that as it may, the EZLN is going to need all the women - and men - it can muster in the months to come. 2008 looms as a difficult year for the rebels with the "mal gobierno" threatening to distribute lands the Zapatistas recovered in 1994 to rival Indian farmer organizations and paramilitary activity on the uptick.
As has always been the case since this unique rebellion germinated, the Zapatistas turn the corner into another year in struggle.
EDITOR'S NOTE - After 11 years and 600 editions, MexBarb/BMB is now self-distributed by the author. If you already have a one-year subscription, you now have a lifetime subscription. If you did not have a subscription, you too have a lifetime subscription. If you think a lifetime subscription is a good thing send a donation to me at 3258 23rd Street/Apt. 3/San Francisco 94110 Ca. WARNING! There is no way to get off this list! You will receive 40 to 50 BMBs a year until either you or I gasp our last. In solidarity John Ross. Contact: johnross@igc.org
Hip Hop Politics
Hip Hop Politics
I Am an Emcee
By SHAMAKO NOBEL
http://www.counterpunch.com/nobel01082008.html
I am an emcee. I am not an activist. I don't know when or how I got tagged an activist other than my work with R.E.F.U.G.E. (Real Education For Urban Growth), the Riekes Center's Academy of Hip Hop or Hip Hop Congress. However, you can trace my roots to all of those activities back to my emceeing. I've been organizing since I was young, so I guess saying that I was an organizer would be too far fetched. However, I'm a cultural organizer, and I'm primarily interested in organizing those involved with the elements and the production of culture directly and indirectly.
I've spoken with many folks about the question on whether or not Hip Hop is a movement. They cite the Civil Rights Movement, The Labor Movement, the Media Reform/Media justice movement and they say it does not compare. They say there aren't enough numbers, or there isn't enough political power or awareness, and while all of this is happening they refuse to allow those who would represent this movement speak for themselves.
My favorite example is the Mural Arts Movement of the late 1960's and early 70's. This movement most closely resembles that which has taken place in Hip Hop because it marked a return of art to the people. The people had something to say and through this art, they would be heard. No critic or museum would deny them. Very few who were or are aware of this movement dispute its classification as a movement. Yet, very few who discuss whether or not Hip Hop is a movement mention this critical American transition period as an example and a forbearer of Hip Hop of this way.
The models and methods that came out of the Mural Art's movement very much parallel the models we see in Hip Hop today. The use of workshops, the development of collectives, and the desire to implement co-ops are all present in the landscape of American Hip Hop. In fact the most difficult obstacle of the Mural Arts movement was that they didn't have the ability to nationalize, which is not at all the case today. Technology has considerably lessened that burden and that has directly contributed to the growth and development of HHC as an organization and the globalization of Hip Hop. A good man and friend of all of Hip Hop-Rushay-comes to mind as technology has made Rushay a household name for many American Hip Hop heads, even though he's located in South Africa. He even has a 310 area code.
The two questions I ask myself first when thinking about whether or not Hip Hop is a movement are 1)Is it a natural form of dissent and 2)What is the focus of Hip Hop's energy. When we look at the American mainstream and what many consider to be the failure of Hip Hop's foray into American politics, we could very easily say that perhaps, after all this time it is not, and that it's energy has been lost to corporate media and a watered down mainstream.
I don't believe that for a second though.
In my travels around the country, I have had the opportunity to witness a healthy and robust Hip Hop that is highly unaware of it's own existance. I've ciphered all over America will some of the illest emcees on the streets. I've seen brilliant graph scattered on the walls of cities and suburbs alike. Not only do I still see break crews in great numbers, but they are interacting with new forms of dance like crump and hyphy and this occurs without resistance or beef. From what I can tell, despite the fact that cats aren't famous, Hip Hop is huge.
Now a lot of people will say that this is bogus and that a bunch of writers and rappers don't mean anything. But where you find the graph is also where you find poverty. Where you find the emcees is also where you find the prison industrial complex. Where you find the DJ's is also where you find police accountability problems. This is probably why many people mistook me for an activist or mistook HHC for a political organization.
I've always been an emcee, and Hip Hop Congress has always been an organization that's about the culture of Hip Hop and all of those who participate with authenticity and connection finding common ground to work towards collective interests. It just so happens that sometimes that collective interest is getting played on a station owned by corporate media, or riding on the police for snatching up your boy with no just cause, or fighting for the right to your housing.
I have a confession to make. I organized an Urban Arts based phone banking for a political candidate. In retrospect, it felt kind of dirty but it was sort of justifiable twofold experiment. The first was to see if you could organize the Urban Arts Community in a manner similar to labor unions for the purposes of such an activity. The second was to see how the Urban Arts community would respond to such a request.
We managed to get 30 people out which was actually a pretty impressive number at the time. Of the 30, 11were functional callers. At least 4 people told me never to do such a thing again unless it was about police accountability work or something to that affect. Pretty much everyone agreed on that. Ironically, the institution that I worked for, The South Bay Labor Council, pretty much took an approach on youth that stated that rather than delve into their issues, they'd rather groom them for the labor movement. Further, any candidate that was focused on the youth vote was desperate because youth don't vote. Thus, the catch 22 of Hip Hop and Politics.
Hip Hop, like all art of the streets and of the people, is first and foremost about being heard. Politics, doesn't want to hear the young people because they're not into expressing their voices through a system that believes they're only worthwhile as a desperate tactic.
This is why they can't see the movement. They don't see the millions of emcees, graff writers, DJ's, promoters, break crews, organizations large and small, independent labels and the new artist/fan as a movement because it doesn't want to legislate all the time-all this despite the fact that there's increasing evidence to point to the impractically of seeking justice through legislation.
But what candidate is talking about police accountability.
Hip Hop was blamed for riots in France. It kept Snoop Dogg out in Brazil. It's hard to find in the Filipines unless you go to where the poor people are. There are Zulu chapters in Japan and Hip Hop is all over Asia, has been for years. Journalist Davey D reported on many occasions that International Hip Hop is organizing and trying to connect to the US.And the mainstream, which we have already determined is not the ally of Hip Hop in it's most raw forms, refuses to tell you any of this in any comprehensive manner. But Hip Hop has always expected that. That's why it's Hip Hop.
So, as we enter this election I would just like to talk to you emcee to emcee; artist to artist; cultural producer to cultural producer. They are going to try and use you. They are going to throw issues around, and organizations around, and money around and if it succeeds you will hardly benefit. If it fails, they will say you are nothing. But know this first and foremost, as an emcee they still don't understand what makes you tick. They still don't understand ciphers, and crews and why you HAVE to be down for the block. They'll throw people in your face that pretend like they understand, but they don't. And they won't care about your art because ultimately although they'd never admit it, they really don't care about you.
Cyphers aren't gonna change the world. But surely the people in them have the ability to. Maybe not through electoral politics or their album, but there are millions of us with collective interests. Not just in America, but all over the globe.
We created a global culture. Let's give ourselves the credit of being able to figure out what to do with it, whether or not they agree.
Shamako Nobel (aka The Sword of the West) is President and Executive Director of the Hip Hop Congress and CEO of Rondavoux Records. He can be reached at:
shamako@hiphopcongress.com
I Am an Emcee
By SHAMAKO NOBEL
http://www.counterpunch.com/nobel01082008.html
I am an emcee. I am not an activist. I don't know when or how I got tagged an activist other than my work with R.E.F.U.G.E. (Real Education For Urban Growth), the Riekes Center's Academy of Hip Hop or Hip Hop Congress. However, you can trace my roots to all of those activities back to my emceeing. I've been organizing since I was young, so I guess saying that I was an organizer would be too far fetched. However, I'm a cultural organizer, and I'm primarily interested in organizing those involved with the elements and the production of culture directly and indirectly.
I've spoken with many folks about the question on whether or not Hip Hop is a movement. They cite the Civil Rights Movement, The Labor Movement, the Media Reform/Media justice movement and they say it does not compare. They say there aren't enough numbers, or there isn't enough political power or awareness, and while all of this is happening they refuse to allow those who would represent this movement speak for themselves.
My favorite example is the Mural Arts Movement of the late 1960's and early 70's. This movement most closely resembles that which has taken place in Hip Hop because it marked a return of art to the people. The people had something to say and through this art, they would be heard. No critic or museum would deny them. Very few who were or are aware of this movement dispute its classification as a movement. Yet, very few who discuss whether or not Hip Hop is a movement mention this critical American transition period as an example and a forbearer of Hip Hop of this way.
The models and methods that came out of the Mural Art's movement very much parallel the models we see in Hip Hop today. The use of workshops, the development of collectives, and the desire to implement co-ops are all present in the landscape of American Hip Hop. In fact the most difficult obstacle of the Mural Arts movement was that they didn't have the ability to nationalize, which is not at all the case today. Technology has considerably lessened that burden and that has directly contributed to the growth and development of HHC as an organization and the globalization of Hip Hop. A good man and friend of all of Hip Hop-Rushay-comes to mind as technology has made Rushay a household name for many American Hip Hop heads, even though he's located in South Africa. He even has a 310 area code.
The two questions I ask myself first when thinking about whether or not Hip Hop is a movement are 1)Is it a natural form of dissent and 2)What is the focus of Hip Hop's energy. When we look at the American mainstream and what many consider to be the failure of Hip Hop's foray into American politics, we could very easily say that perhaps, after all this time it is not, and that it's energy has been lost to corporate media and a watered down mainstream.
I don't believe that for a second though.
In my travels around the country, I have had the opportunity to witness a healthy and robust Hip Hop that is highly unaware of it's own existance. I've ciphered all over America will some of the illest emcees on the streets. I've seen brilliant graph scattered on the walls of cities and suburbs alike. Not only do I still see break crews in great numbers, but they are interacting with new forms of dance like crump and hyphy and this occurs without resistance or beef. From what I can tell, despite the fact that cats aren't famous, Hip Hop is huge.
Now a lot of people will say that this is bogus and that a bunch of writers and rappers don't mean anything. But where you find the graph is also where you find poverty. Where you find the emcees is also where you find the prison industrial complex. Where you find the DJ's is also where you find police accountability problems. This is probably why many people mistook me for an activist or mistook HHC for a political organization.
I've always been an emcee, and Hip Hop Congress has always been an organization that's about the culture of Hip Hop and all of those who participate with authenticity and connection finding common ground to work towards collective interests. It just so happens that sometimes that collective interest is getting played on a station owned by corporate media, or riding on the police for snatching up your boy with no just cause, or fighting for the right to your housing.
I have a confession to make. I organized an Urban Arts based phone banking for a political candidate. In retrospect, it felt kind of dirty but it was sort of justifiable twofold experiment. The first was to see if you could organize the Urban Arts Community in a manner similar to labor unions for the purposes of such an activity. The second was to see how the Urban Arts community would respond to such a request.
We managed to get 30 people out which was actually a pretty impressive number at the time. Of the 30, 11were functional callers. At least 4 people told me never to do such a thing again unless it was about police accountability work or something to that affect. Pretty much everyone agreed on that. Ironically, the institution that I worked for, The South Bay Labor Council, pretty much took an approach on youth that stated that rather than delve into their issues, they'd rather groom them for the labor movement. Further, any candidate that was focused on the youth vote was desperate because youth don't vote. Thus, the catch 22 of Hip Hop and Politics.
Hip Hop, like all art of the streets and of the people, is first and foremost about being heard. Politics, doesn't want to hear the young people because they're not into expressing their voices through a system that believes they're only worthwhile as a desperate tactic.
This is why they can't see the movement. They don't see the millions of emcees, graff writers, DJ's, promoters, break crews, organizations large and small, independent labels and the new artist/fan as a movement because it doesn't want to legislate all the time-all this despite the fact that there's increasing evidence to point to the impractically of seeking justice through legislation.
But what candidate is talking about police accountability.
Hip Hop was blamed for riots in France. It kept Snoop Dogg out in Brazil. It's hard to find in the Filipines unless you go to where the poor people are. There are Zulu chapters in Japan and Hip Hop is all over Asia, has been for years. Journalist Davey D reported on many occasions that International Hip Hop is organizing and trying to connect to the US.And the mainstream, which we have already determined is not the ally of Hip Hop in it's most raw forms, refuses to tell you any of this in any comprehensive manner. But Hip Hop has always expected that. That's why it's Hip Hop.
So, as we enter this election I would just like to talk to you emcee to emcee; artist to artist; cultural producer to cultural producer. They are going to try and use you. They are going to throw issues around, and organizations around, and money around and if it succeeds you will hardly benefit. If it fails, they will say you are nothing. But know this first and foremost, as an emcee they still don't understand what makes you tick. They still don't understand ciphers, and crews and why you HAVE to be down for the block. They'll throw people in your face that pretend like they understand, but they don't. And they won't care about your art because ultimately although they'd never admit it, they really don't care about you.
Cyphers aren't gonna change the world. But surely the people in them have the ability to. Maybe not through electoral politics or their album, but there are millions of us with collective interests. Not just in America, but all over the globe.
We created a global culture. Let's give ourselves the credit of being able to figure out what to do with it, whether or not they agree.
Shamako Nobel (aka The Sword of the West) is President and Executive Director of the Hip Hop Congress and CEO of Rondavoux Records. He can be reached at:
shamako@hiphopcongress.com
Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security
Land Seizures and Militarization in the Border Zone
Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security
By BRENDA NORRELL
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
RIO GRANDE, Texas.
Apache land owners on the Rio Grande told Homeland Security to halt the seizure of their lands for the US/Mexico border wall on January 7, 2008. It was the same day that a 30-day notice from Homeland Security expired with the threat of land seizures by eminent domain to build the US/Mexico border wall.
"There are two kinds of people in this world, those who build walls and those who build bridges," said Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, land owner in Redford and archaeological steward for the Texas Historical Commission.
"The wall in South Texas is militarization," Madrid said of the planned escalation of militarization with Border Patrol and soldiers. "They will be armed and shoot to kill."
It was in Redford that a U.S. Marine shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez, herding his sheep near his home in 1997.
"We had hoped he would be the last United States citizen and the last Native American to be killed by troops," Madrid said during a media conference call on January 7 with Apaches from Texas and Arizona.
Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez, Lipan Apache professor living in the Lower Rio Grande, described how US officials attempted to pressure her into allowing them onto her private land to survey for the US/Mexico borderwall. When Tamez refused, she was told that she would be taken to court and her lands seized by eminent domain.
"I have told them that it is not for sale and they cannot come onto my land." Tamez is among the land owners where the Department of Homeland Security plans to erect 70 miles of intermittent, double-layered fencing in the Rio Grande Valley.
Tamez said the United States government wants access to all of her land, which is on both sides of a levee. "Then they will decide where to build the wall. It could be over my house." Tamez said that she may only have three acres, but it is all she has.
Tamez' daughter Margo Tamez, poet and scholar, said, "We are not a people of walls. It is against our culture to have walls. The Earth and the River go together. We must be with the river. We must be with this land. We were born for this land."
Margo Tamez said the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples now guarantees the right of Indigenous Peoples to their traditional territories.
Rosie Molano Blount, Chiricahua Apache from Del Río said the Chiricahua Apache have proudly served in the United States military."We are proud to be Americans," Blount said, adding that the Chiricahua have always supported the United States government.
Now, with the increasing harassment of people in the borderzone, Blount said the people have had enough.
"Ya Basta! Enough is enough!" Blount said, repeating the phrase that became the battle cry of the Zapatistas in Mexico struggling for Indigenous Peoples' rights.
Blount said there needs to be dialogue concerning the issues at the border, but not forced militarization or a border wall. She also directed a comment at Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "Don't come here and divide our families Chertoff. You believe this is the only way to do things."
Michael Paul Hill, San Carlos Apache from Arizona, described how US border agents violated and molested his sacred items, including a sacred stone, Eagle feather and drum used in ceremonies while crossing the border.
"They called me a foreigner." Hill described how Border Agents told him that he might "get away" with crossing the border in Nogales, Arizona, with ceremonial items that were not manhandled, but not in Texas.
After participating in a an Apache ceremony in Mexico, when Hill andother Apaches reentered the United States, a SWAT team in full riot gear was waiting for them and interrogated them.
"It was incredibly frightening," said Margo Tamez who was also there. She pointed out how the escalating militarization at the border is terrorizing people as they go about their lives, working, with their families and in their ceremonies.
Isabel Garcia, cochair of Derechos Humanos in Tucson, Arizona, said,"Arizona has been a laboratory for the criminalizing of the border."
Pointing out that the Arizona border is the ancestral homeland of the Tohono O'odham, she said, "These borders are where people have lived since time immemorial." Garcia described the climate of militarization and abuse by Border Patrol agents.
Garcia pointed out that "cowboy" Border Agents ran over and killed18-year-old Tohono O'odham Bennett Patricio, Jr., while he was walking home in 2002. His mother, Angie Ramon, is still seeking justice for the death of her son.
Garcia also described the deaths from dehydration and heat in the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona, where failed border policies have pushed migrants walking to a better life into treacherous desert lands.
"Two hundred and thirty-seven bodies were recovered in one year and most were on the tribal lands of the Tohono O'odham."
Further, Homeland Security recently waived 22 federal laws to build the border wall in the San Pedro wilderness area in Arizona, she said. Attorney Peter Schey, director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles, said America does not need a"Berlin Wall."
Schey, renowned immigrant rights attorney, said Section 564 of the Homeland Security section of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill supersedes earlier legislation. Homeland Security is now required to have consultation with the communities. Schey said this means real consultation and real consideration of the community's input and data. Schey took his first action on behalf of Texas property owner Dr. Tamez on Monday, the same day that a 30-day notice to Texas land owners expired with the threat of eminent domain land seizures looming. Schey informed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to halt the impending seizures of private lands.
Schey said Section 564 strikes provisions of the earlier Secure Fence Act and requires Homeland Security to consult with property owners like Dr. Tamez in order "to minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life" in areas considered for construction of the border fence.
"Furthermore, we believe that the new statutory provisions invalidate the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for fence construction published on the Department's behalf on November 16, 2007, pending completion of the required local consultations and other requirements as outlined in the Omnibus Bill," Schey told Chertoff in the letter.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security declared that it will use the principle of eminent domain to take possession of land currently held by private ownership. DHS has also presented waivers requesting that the landowners grant DHS personnel access to their property for a twelve-month period in order to conduct surveys for the intended construction project. The property owners were informed that if they do not voluntarily allow the federal agents on their property, the U.S. government will file a law suit so that Homeland Security authorities can have unimpeded access to private land, despite the owners' opposition. Homeland Security has stated that it will seize property even without the consent of landowners if necessary to complete the construction of the border fence. Many landowners, as well as civic leaders and human rights activists, oppose the U.S. government's plans to allow federal law enforcement agents access to private property. The government's demands and aggressive tactics are in conflict with settled rights of private property ownership and are particularly disconcerting to the Indigenous peoples' communities impacted by this undertaking.
The Texas communities along the international boundary zone are largely made up of Native Americans and of land grant heirs who have resided on inherited properties for hundreds of years. Homeland Security plans to complete the Texas portions of the fence before the end of the 2008 calendar year.
Homeland Security has already built walls along much of the California and Arizona international boundary zone with Mexico despite opposition from the government of Mexico.
Brenda Norrell is human rights editor for U.N. OBSERVER & International Report. She also runs the Censored website. She can be reached at: brendanorrell@gmail.com
Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security
By BRENDA NORRELL
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
RIO GRANDE, Texas.
Apache land owners on the Rio Grande told Homeland Security to halt the seizure of their lands for the US/Mexico border wall on January 7, 2008. It was the same day that a 30-day notice from Homeland Security expired with the threat of land seizures by eminent domain to build the US/Mexico border wall.
"There are two kinds of people in this world, those who build walls and those who build bridges," said Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, land owner in Redford and archaeological steward for the Texas Historical Commission.
"The wall in South Texas is militarization," Madrid said of the planned escalation of militarization with Border Patrol and soldiers. "They will be armed and shoot to kill."
It was in Redford that a U.S. Marine shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez, herding his sheep near his home in 1997.
"We had hoped he would be the last United States citizen and the last Native American to be killed by troops," Madrid said during a media conference call on January 7 with Apaches from Texas and Arizona.
Dr. Eloisa Garcia Tamez, Lipan Apache professor living in the Lower Rio Grande, described how US officials attempted to pressure her into allowing them onto her private land to survey for the US/Mexico borderwall. When Tamez refused, she was told that she would be taken to court and her lands seized by eminent domain.
"I have told them that it is not for sale and they cannot come onto my land." Tamez is among the land owners where the Department of Homeland Security plans to erect 70 miles of intermittent, double-layered fencing in the Rio Grande Valley.
Tamez said the United States government wants access to all of her land, which is on both sides of a levee. "Then they will decide where to build the wall. It could be over my house." Tamez said that she may only have three acres, but it is all she has.
Tamez' daughter Margo Tamez, poet and scholar, said, "We are not a people of walls. It is against our culture to have walls. The Earth and the River go together. We must be with the river. We must be with this land. We were born for this land."
Margo Tamez said the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples now guarantees the right of Indigenous Peoples to their traditional territories.
Rosie Molano Blount, Chiricahua Apache from Del Río said the Chiricahua Apache have proudly served in the United States military."We are proud to be Americans," Blount said, adding that the Chiricahua have always supported the United States government.
Now, with the increasing harassment of people in the borderzone, Blount said the people have had enough.
"Ya Basta! Enough is enough!" Blount said, repeating the phrase that became the battle cry of the Zapatistas in Mexico struggling for Indigenous Peoples' rights.
Blount said there needs to be dialogue concerning the issues at the border, but not forced militarization or a border wall. She also directed a comment at Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "Don't come here and divide our families Chertoff. You believe this is the only way to do things."
Michael Paul Hill, San Carlos Apache from Arizona, described how US border agents violated and molested his sacred items, including a sacred stone, Eagle feather and drum used in ceremonies while crossing the border.
"They called me a foreigner." Hill described how Border Agents told him that he might "get away" with crossing the border in Nogales, Arizona, with ceremonial items that were not manhandled, but not in Texas.
After participating in a an Apache ceremony in Mexico, when Hill andother Apaches reentered the United States, a SWAT team in full riot gear was waiting for them and interrogated them.
"It was incredibly frightening," said Margo Tamez who was also there. She pointed out how the escalating militarization at the border is terrorizing people as they go about their lives, working, with their families and in their ceremonies.
Isabel Garcia, cochair of Derechos Humanos in Tucson, Arizona, said,"Arizona has been a laboratory for the criminalizing of the border."
Pointing out that the Arizona border is the ancestral homeland of the Tohono O'odham, she said, "These borders are where people have lived since time immemorial." Garcia described the climate of militarization and abuse by Border Patrol agents.
Garcia pointed out that "cowboy" Border Agents ran over and killed18-year-old Tohono O'odham Bennett Patricio, Jr., while he was walking home in 2002. His mother, Angie Ramon, is still seeking justice for the death of her son.
Garcia also described the deaths from dehydration and heat in the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona, where failed border policies have pushed migrants walking to a better life into treacherous desert lands.
"Two hundred and thirty-seven bodies were recovered in one year and most were on the tribal lands of the Tohono O'odham."
Further, Homeland Security recently waived 22 federal laws to build the border wall in the San Pedro wilderness area in Arizona, she said. Attorney Peter Schey, director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles, said America does not need a"Berlin Wall."
Schey, renowned immigrant rights attorney, said Section 564 of the Homeland Security section of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill supersedes earlier legislation. Homeland Security is now required to have consultation with the communities. Schey said this means real consultation and real consideration of the community's input and data. Schey took his first action on behalf of Texas property owner Dr. Tamez on Monday, the same day that a 30-day notice to Texas land owners expired with the threat of eminent domain land seizures looming. Schey informed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to halt the impending seizures of private lands.
Schey said Section 564 strikes provisions of the earlier Secure Fence Act and requires Homeland Security to consult with property owners like Dr. Tamez in order "to minimize the impact on the environment, culture, commerce, and quality of life" in areas considered for construction of the border fence.
"Furthermore, we believe that the new statutory provisions invalidate the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for fence construction published on the Department's behalf on November 16, 2007, pending completion of the required local consultations and other requirements as outlined in the Omnibus Bill," Schey told Chertoff in the letter.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security declared that it will use the principle of eminent domain to take possession of land currently held by private ownership. DHS has also presented waivers requesting that the landowners grant DHS personnel access to their property for a twelve-month period in order to conduct surveys for the intended construction project. The property owners were informed that if they do not voluntarily allow the federal agents on their property, the U.S. government will file a law suit so that Homeland Security authorities can have unimpeded access to private land, despite the owners' opposition. Homeland Security has stated that it will seize property even without the consent of landowners if necessary to complete the construction of the border fence. Many landowners, as well as civic leaders and human rights activists, oppose the U.S. government's plans to allow federal law enforcement agents access to private property. The government's demands and aggressive tactics are in conflict with settled rights of private property ownership and are particularly disconcerting to the Indigenous peoples' communities impacted by this undertaking.
The Texas communities along the international boundary zone are largely made up of Native Americans and of land grant heirs who have resided on inherited properties for hundreds of years. Homeland Security plans to complete the Texas portions of the fence before the end of the 2008 calendar year.
Homeland Security has already built walls along much of the California and Arizona international boundary zone with Mexico despite opposition from the government of Mexico.
Brenda Norrell is human rights editor for U.N. OBSERVER & International Report. She also runs the Censored website. She can be reached at: brendanorrell@gmail.com
1/8/08
Press Release: Lower Rio Grande Lipan Apache & Basque-Ibero Land Grant Defense
For Immediate Release
January 6, 2008
Contact:
* Peter Schey, (323) 251-3223, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, scheypeter@aol.com, pschey@centerforhumanrights.org
* Margo Tamez, (509) 595-4445, Hleh Pai Dne (Lipan Apache) and Jumano Apache, hleh.pai.nde.defense@gmail.com
* Arnoldo García (510) 928-0685; National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; agarcia@nnirr.org
Indigenous Communities Call on Homeland Security to Stop Border Land Grab,
Respect Property and Human Rights
"Our lands are not for sale. The U.S. government must stop its illegal attempts to intimidate us. The Department of Homeland Security cannot take away our homes and neighborhoods for border militarization," declared Eloisa Tamez, a member of the Lipan Apache people and Basque descendent living in the Lower Rio Grande region. Mrs. Tamez is part of a coalition of Indigenous peoples and border community groups that are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to stop confiscating their private property and lands along the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS plans to use this property to build a border wall on it.
On Monday, January 7, 2008 at 10:00 am PST a coalition of individual property owners, their legal representatives along with Native American and border community leaders will hold a national telephonic media conference and briefing (see call-in number information below) to announce their intent to fight the Department of Homeland Security's threatened seizure of their property along the United States-Mexico border. DHS is attempting to use its powers of eminent domain in order to illegally seize private lands and build the controversial border security wall.
The Indigenous peoples and border communities telephonic media conference is taking place on the same day that the DHS 30-day notices expire, leaving Texas landowners along the international boundary terrorized by the possibility of losing ancestral land.
Mrs. Tamez and other owners who property abuts the border are threatened by federal agents' unwelcomed entry at any time into their properties and homes and the increased militarization of their neighborhoods. They are calling on DHS to stop its intimidation tactics and respect their property and human rights.
In this unprecedented telephonic media conference, representatives of Indigenous peoples, whose lands have been bisected by the U.S.-Mexico border, will share historical and current stories of their experiences along the hyper-militarized international border region. Also, renowned immigrant rights and human rights attorney Peter Schey, of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, will take his first action on behalf of Texas property owners.
Last month, DHS Secretary Chertoff stated DHS's intent to seize privately-held property in south Texas if property owners fail to cooperate with government efforts to erect the border wall, approved by Congress last year as part of a strategy to eliminate unauthorized migration and drug trafficking. DHS declared that it will use the principle of eminent domain to take possession of land currently held by private ownership.
DHS has also presented waivers requesting that the landowners grant DHS personnel access to their property for a twelve-month period in order to conduct surveys for the intended construction project. The property owners were informed that if they do not voluntarily allow the federal agents on their property, the U.S. government will file a law suit so that DHS authorities can have unimpeded access to private land, despite the owners' opposition. DHS has stated that it will seize property even without the consent of landowners if necessary to complete the construction of the border fence.
Many landowners, as well as civic leaders and human rights activists, oppose the U.S. government?s plans to allow federal law enforcement agents access to private property. The government's demands and aggressive tactics are in conflict with settled rights of private property ownership and are particularly disconcerting to the Indigenous peoples' communities impacted by this undertaking.
The Texas communities along the international boundary zone are largely made up of Native Americans and of Spanish land grant heirs of Mestizo (Native American-European "mixed blood") origin who have resided on inherited properties for hundreds of years. DHS plans to complete the Texas portions of the fence before the end of the 2008 calendar year. DHS has already build walls along much of the California and Arizona international boundary zone with Mexico despite opposition from the government of Mexico.
In Arizona, the wall cuts through Native American ceremonial crossing areas as well as through a national wildlife park. Indigenous communities are calling on the U.S. government to stop this land grab and respect the rights of migrants, Americans and indigenous peoples at the U.S.-Mexico border.
National Telephonic Media Conference
Monday, January 7, 2007, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time
(1:00 PM Eastern, 12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain)
Call In Information and Number for Media: (913) 312-0730
Confirmation Code: 7423323
Media Conference Title: Border Communities Defend Land Rights
INDIGENOUS SPOKESPERSONS on the call:
* Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, Texas Historical Commission, Redford, TX
* Gabriel Carrasco, Chief of the Jumano Apache, Redford/El Paso, TX
* José Matus, Yaqui, director of Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, Tucson, AZ
* Rosie Molano Blount, Chiricahua Apache, Del Río, TX
* Michael Paul Hill, San Carlos Apache, AZ
* Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, AZ, founder of O'odham Voice Against the Wall
* Eloisa Tamez, Hleh Pai Nde, TX (Lipan Apache-Basque-Ibero)
* Margo Tamez, Hleh Pai Nde, TX; (Lipan Apache-Jumano Apache) Moderator
January 6, 2008
Contact:
* Peter Schey, (323) 251-3223, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, scheypeter@aol.com, pschey@centerforhumanrights.org
* Margo Tamez, (509) 595-4445, Hleh Pai Dne (Lipan Apache) and Jumano Apache, hleh.pai.nde.defense@gmail.com
* Arnoldo García (510) 928-0685; National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; agarcia@nnirr.org
Indigenous Communities Call on Homeland Security to Stop Border Land Grab,
Respect Property and Human Rights
"Our lands are not for sale. The U.S. government must stop its illegal attempts to intimidate us. The Department of Homeland Security cannot take away our homes and neighborhoods for border militarization," declared Eloisa Tamez, a member of the Lipan Apache people and Basque descendent living in the Lower Rio Grande region. Mrs. Tamez is part of a coalition of Indigenous peoples and border community groups that are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to stop confiscating their private property and lands along the U.S.-Mexico border. DHS plans to use this property to build a border wall on it.
On Monday, January 7, 2008 at 10:00 am PST a coalition of individual property owners, their legal representatives along with Native American and border community leaders will hold a national telephonic media conference and briefing (see call-in number information below) to announce their intent to fight the Department of Homeland Security's threatened seizure of their property along the United States-Mexico border. DHS is attempting to use its powers of eminent domain in order to illegally seize private lands and build the controversial border security wall.
The Indigenous peoples and border communities telephonic media conference is taking place on the same day that the DHS 30-day notices expire, leaving Texas landowners along the international boundary terrorized by the possibility of losing ancestral land.
Mrs. Tamez and other owners who property abuts the border are threatened by federal agents' unwelcomed entry at any time into their properties and homes and the increased militarization of their neighborhoods. They are calling on DHS to stop its intimidation tactics and respect their property and human rights.
In this unprecedented telephonic media conference, representatives of Indigenous peoples, whose lands have been bisected by the U.S.-Mexico border, will share historical and current stories of their experiences along the hyper-militarized international border region. Also, renowned immigrant rights and human rights attorney Peter Schey, of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, will take his first action on behalf of Texas property owners.
Last month, DHS Secretary Chertoff stated DHS's intent to seize privately-held property in south Texas if property owners fail to cooperate with government efforts to erect the border wall, approved by Congress last year as part of a strategy to eliminate unauthorized migration and drug trafficking. DHS declared that it will use the principle of eminent domain to take possession of land currently held by private ownership.
DHS has also presented waivers requesting that the landowners grant DHS personnel access to their property for a twelve-month period in order to conduct surveys for the intended construction project. The property owners were informed that if they do not voluntarily allow the federal agents on their property, the U.S. government will file a law suit so that DHS authorities can have unimpeded access to private land, despite the owners' opposition. DHS has stated that it will seize property even without the consent of landowners if necessary to complete the construction of the border fence.
Many landowners, as well as civic leaders and human rights activists, oppose the U.S. government?s plans to allow federal law enforcement agents access to private property. The government's demands and aggressive tactics are in conflict with settled rights of private property ownership and are particularly disconcerting to the Indigenous peoples' communities impacted by this undertaking.
The Texas communities along the international boundary zone are largely made up of Native Americans and of Spanish land grant heirs of Mestizo (Native American-European "mixed blood") origin who have resided on inherited properties for hundreds of years. DHS plans to complete the Texas portions of the fence before the end of the 2008 calendar year. DHS has already build walls along much of the California and Arizona international boundary zone with Mexico despite opposition from the government of Mexico.
In Arizona, the wall cuts through Native American ceremonial crossing areas as well as through a national wildlife park. Indigenous communities are calling on the U.S. government to stop this land grab and respect the rights of migrants, Americans and indigenous peoples at the U.S.-Mexico border.
National Telephonic Media Conference
Monday, January 7, 2007, 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time
(1:00 PM Eastern, 12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain)
Call In Information and Number for Media: (913) 312-0730
Confirmation Code: 7423323
Media Conference Title: Border Communities Defend Land Rights
INDIGENOUS SPOKESPERSONS on the call:
* Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, Texas Historical Commission, Redford, TX
* Gabriel Carrasco, Chief of the Jumano Apache, Redford/El Paso, TX
* José Matus, Yaqui, director of Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, Tucson, AZ
* Rosie Molano Blount, Chiricahua Apache, Del Río, TX
* Michael Paul Hill, San Carlos Apache, AZ
* Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, AZ, founder of O'odham Voice Against the Wall
* Eloisa Tamez, Hleh Pai Nde, TX (Lipan Apache-Basque-Ibero)
* Margo Tamez, Hleh Pai Nde, TX; (Lipan Apache-Jumano Apache) Moderator
12/31/07
The Voices of Indigenous Peoples in 2007
The Voices of Indigenous Peoples in 2007
Resistance and Censorship
http://www.counterpunch.com/norrell12312007.html
By BRENDA NORRELL
The widespread censorship of crucial issues for American Indians increased in 2007, according to Censored Blog readers. The most censored issue was the "Silencing of traditional and grassroots' voices by those in power."
The elected councils in the United States and band councils in Canada attempted to silence Indian spiritual leaders and traditional people by way of silencing and distorting the news in 2007. Elected tribal leaders also threatened and oppressed Indians speaking out in their own communities. Tailgating by tribal police, threats of harm and threats of membership removal increased for Indian activists, according to reports from across North America.
The next most censored issue was the "Nuclear, uranium and coal genocide on Indigenous lands." Throughout the Americas, Indigenous lands and people are targeted by mining and dumping that will poison their air, water and land.
Navajos are fighting the new proposed power plant, Desert Rock, in New Mexico. The Algonquin, Pueblos, Navajo, Lakota and others are battling new uranium mining, while Goshute and Western Shoshone fight nuclear dumping on their lands which will be detrimental to future generations.
Yaqui in Sonora are opposing the use of pesticides in agricultural fields which are banned in the United States, but are still produced in the US and exported to other countries. These pesticides are causing deaths and "jelly babies," Yaqui babies born without bones. O'odham are fighting a proposed waste dump in Sonora in their ceremonial community of Quitovac. Indigenous Peoples from Guatemala and Peru, now fighting copper, gold and coal mining in their communities, met with Navajos, Acoma Pueblo, Western Shoshone and others to create solidarity in action in 2007. As efforts intensified in the Americas, nuclear and mining corporations began targeting more communities in Africa.
"Where are the warriors?" asked Janice Gardipe, Paiute-Shoshone, during the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November, urging a new wave of resistance to Yucca Mountain nuclear dumping and the gold mining that is now coring out the mountains and poisoning the water on Western Shoshone lands.
As the pollution from power plants increases and the black carbons are carried by the winds to the north, the Arctic ice melts and destroys the homeland and lives of polar bears, walrus and seals. Ultimately, it will kill the birds and fishes. Even there, the Bush administration rushed to capitalize on the misfortune and the deaths of endangered species. The Bush administration rushed to claim the regions of melting ice in the Northwest Passage for oil and gas drilling.
"Border deaths, abuse of Indigenous Peoples at the border and racism in border news," was the next most censored issue. As television news increased the racism and xenophobia toward migrants, the Bush administration and Congress layered on millions of dollars for private prisons to incarcerate migrants, with millions of fresh dollars for Texas and private border prisons. These included the T. Don Hutto prison for migrant and refugee infants and children in Taylor, Texas.
In Arizona, Mohawks joined Tohono O'odham at the US/Mexico border on Tohono O'odham land in November. Mohawks rushed to intervene in the arrests of Mayans on O'odham land as the US Border Patrol sped quickly away.
"These are your people," Kahentinetha Horn said, igniting a new wave of thought at the southern border. "As the Great Law says, you don't ask for permission to save someone's life," Kahentinetha said of the large number of people, including Indigenous Peoples, dying each year on O'odham land.
Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham, continued to put out water for migrants, and search for bodies, including those of Mayan women who died walking to a better life with their children.
"No one should die for want of a drink of water," Wilson said.
The most censored news articles at the border included the digging up of the O'odham ancestors' graves for the border wall on Tohono O'odham land, the spy federal spy towers in border communities and the corporate profiteering by US corporations and foreign corporations.
The foreign corporations benefiting from the new border hysteria include the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems subcontracted by Boeing under the Secure Border Fence contract. Another is Wackenhut, whose buses wait at the border to be filled with migrants. The Wackenhut buses are owned by G4S in England and Denmark. (Earlier, Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root received a $385 million contract from Homeland Security for migrant prisons in 2006.)
In 2007, the majority of the media censored the fact that all environmental laws, and federal laws protecting American Indian remains, were waived by Homeland Security to build the US/Mexico border wall. Dozens of endangered species are at risk as Homeland Security voids court orders, citing national security.
Already, the building of the wall at the Arizona border has been detrimental to the endangered jaguar which migrates between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The Sonoran pronghorn, which does not jump fences or anything else, will also be affected. Only a few dozen Sonoran pronghorns remain in the US, while several hundred are found to the south in Sonora, Mexico. A new barbed wire fence was recently added alongside the border wall on O'odham land which will harm the jaguars, pronghorns and other endangered species. Destruction of the habitat, particularly in the San Pedro area of Arizona where Homeland Security voided all laws, will destroy fish and migrating birds.
"Leonard Peltier," was the next most censored issue. As Peltier's legal challenges continued and censorship increased, there was a theater production of his life in Boulder, Colorado. Another censored issue was the efforts made on behalf of all American Indians inmates' religious and ceremonial rights.
Further, the censorship of the injustice by police and courts was widespread. The arrests and racism of police in border towns around Indian communities continued. With the oppression of Indian youths by police and prosecutors, pushing them into rage, prisons continued to be filled with America Indians. The US military recruiters continued to target American Indian youths, considering them as "expendables," to fight and die in Iraq.
The "American Indian delegations in Venezuela," was the next most censored issue according to Censored Blog readers, regarding the Indian delegations from North America who met with Indigenous leaders in Venezuela to form solidarity in action. The effort by Vernon Bellecourt, attending in a wheelchair and in frail health, was his last. He died after returning to the United States.
The next most censored issue was the "Zapatistas meetings at the US/Mexico border." Subcomandante Marcos and the Mayan Comandantes held meetings near the US border as part of the Other Campaign, beginning in April of 2007. Just two hours' drive south of the Arizona border, Marcos and the Comandantes met several times with O'odham, upheld the fishing rights of the Cucapa in Baja, Mexico, and met with Yaqui, Mayo, Seri and other Indigenous communities in northern Mexico, culminating in the International Intercontinental Encuentro in the Yaqui Pueblo of Vicam in the state of Sonora, Mexico.
While the media in the United States increased its censorship of these issues in 2007, the alternative national media and international online media continued to provide coverage.
It was the international online media that covered the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas 2007. While upholding the right of Indigenous Peoples to freely pass in their ancestral territories, they opposed the US/Mexico border wall, militarization of border lands and new passport requirements. They opposed the corporate profiteering at the border for the border wall, private prisons and private security firms such as Blackwater now planning a border training camp in Kumeyaay territory at the California border.
Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham organizer of the summit, told the gathering, "The United States is going to continue to build walls and close us all in, or close us all out, and privatize our lives."
The international media, from China to Taiwan, Russia to Belgium, extensively covered the Lakota Freedom Delegation's announcement of withdrawing from the treaties and declaring sovereignty on Dakota lands.
While the media in the United States continued its pathetic and manipulated news coverage, the international media covered the fact that four countries voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The countries are the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand followed by arresting Maoris in the sovereignty movement. The United Nations declaration upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their aboriginal lands.
Both New Zealand and Australia's mainstream media continued biased and racist coverage.
More recently, a new censored topic has emerged: the seizure of private lands of Apaches and other residents in Texas for the US/Mexico border wall, using the law of eminent domain. Since Homeland Security has issued a 30-day notice, Texas mayors and residents are now mobilizing to stop the border wall, militarization and occupation of the Texas border.
Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council, spoke of the fire of resistance and resilience at the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November.
"We consider it relighting the fire of Indian survival, Indian resistance here in this hemisphere. To remind people that first of all, John Wayne didn't kill us all. That we're still alive, distinct cultures that are thriving here in America."
Brenda Norrell is human rights editor for U.N. OBSERVER & International Report. She also runs the Censored website (http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/). She can be reached at: brendanorrell@gmail.com
Resistance and Censorship
http://www.counterpunch.com/norrell12312007.html
By BRENDA NORRELL
The widespread censorship of crucial issues for American Indians increased in 2007, according to Censored Blog readers. The most censored issue was the "Silencing of traditional and grassroots' voices by those in power."
The elected councils in the United States and band councils in Canada attempted to silence Indian spiritual leaders and traditional people by way of silencing and distorting the news in 2007. Elected tribal leaders also threatened and oppressed Indians speaking out in their own communities. Tailgating by tribal police, threats of harm and threats of membership removal increased for Indian activists, according to reports from across North America.
The next most censored issue was the "Nuclear, uranium and coal genocide on Indigenous lands." Throughout the Americas, Indigenous lands and people are targeted by mining and dumping that will poison their air, water and land.
Navajos are fighting the new proposed power plant, Desert Rock, in New Mexico. The Algonquin, Pueblos, Navajo, Lakota and others are battling new uranium mining, while Goshute and Western Shoshone fight nuclear dumping on their lands which will be detrimental to future generations.
Yaqui in Sonora are opposing the use of pesticides in agricultural fields which are banned in the United States, but are still produced in the US and exported to other countries. These pesticides are causing deaths and "jelly babies," Yaqui babies born without bones. O'odham are fighting a proposed waste dump in Sonora in their ceremonial community of Quitovac. Indigenous Peoples from Guatemala and Peru, now fighting copper, gold and coal mining in their communities, met with Navajos, Acoma Pueblo, Western Shoshone and others to create solidarity in action in 2007. As efforts intensified in the Americas, nuclear and mining corporations began targeting more communities in Africa.
"Where are the warriors?" asked Janice Gardipe, Paiute-Shoshone, during the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November, urging a new wave of resistance to Yucca Mountain nuclear dumping and the gold mining that is now coring out the mountains and poisoning the water on Western Shoshone lands.
As the pollution from power plants increases and the black carbons are carried by the winds to the north, the Arctic ice melts and destroys the homeland and lives of polar bears, walrus and seals. Ultimately, it will kill the birds and fishes. Even there, the Bush administration rushed to capitalize on the misfortune and the deaths of endangered species. The Bush administration rushed to claim the regions of melting ice in the Northwest Passage for oil and gas drilling.
"Border deaths, abuse of Indigenous Peoples at the border and racism in border news," was the next most censored issue. As television news increased the racism and xenophobia toward migrants, the Bush administration and Congress layered on millions of dollars for private prisons to incarcerate migrants, with millions of fresh dollars for Texas and private border prisons. These included the T. Don Hutto prison for migrant and refugee infants and children in Taylor, Texas.
In Arizona, Mohawks joined Tohono O'odham at the US/Mexico border on Tohono O'odham land in November. Mohawks rushed to intervene in the arrests of Mayans on O'odham land as the US Border Patrol sped quickly away.
"These are your people," Kahentinetha Horn said, igniting a new wave of thought at the southern border. "As the Great Law says, you don't ask for permission to save someone's life," Kahentinetha said of the large number of people, including Indigenous Peoples, dying each year on O'odham land.
Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham, continued to put out water for migrants, and search for bodies, including those of Mayan women who died walking to a better life with their children.
"No one should die for want of a drink of water," Wilson said.
The most censored news articles at the border included the digging up of the O'odham ancestors' graves for the border wall on Tohono O'odham land, the spy federal spy towers in border communities and the corporate profiteering by US corporations and foreign corporations.
The foreign corporations benefiting from the new border hysteria include the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems subcontracted by Boeing under the Secure Border Fence contract. Another is Wackenhut, whose buses wait at the border to be filled with migrants. The Wackenhut buses are owned by G4S in England and Denmark. (Earlier, Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root received a $385 million contract from Homeland Security for migrant prisons in 2006.)
In 2007, the majority of the media censored the fact that all environmental laws, and federal laws protecting American Indian remains, were waived by Homeland Security to build the US/Mexico border wall. Dozens of endangered species are at risk as Homeland Security voids court orders, citing national security.
Already, the building of the wall at the Arizona border has been detrimental to the endangered jaguar which migrates between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The Sonoran pronghorn, which does not jump fences or anything else, will also be affected. Only a few dozen Sonoran pronghorns remain in the US, while several hundred are found to the south in Sonora, Mexico. A new barbed wire fence was recently added alongside the border wall on O'odham land which will harm the jaguars, pronghorns and other endangered species. Destruction of the habitat, particularly in the San Pedro area of Arizona where Homeland Security voided all laws, will destroy fish and migrating birds.
"Leonard Peltier," was the next most censored issue. As Peltier's legal challenges continued and censorship increased, there was a theater production of his life in Boulder, Colorado. Another censored issue was the efforts made on behalf of all American Indians inmates' religious and ceremonial rights.
Further, the censorship of the injustice by police and courts was widespread. The arrests and racism of police in border towns around Indian communities continued. With the oppression of Indian youths by police and prosecutors, pushing them into rage, prisons continued to be filled with America Indians. The US military recruiters continued to target American Indian youths, considering them as "expendables," to fight and die in Iraq.
The "American Indian delegations in Venezuela," was the next most censored issue according to Censored Blog readers, regarding the Indian delegations from North America who met with Indigenous leaders in Venezuela to form solidarity in action. The effort by Vernon Bellecourt, attending in a wheelchair and in frail health, was his last. He died after returning to the United States.
The next most censored issue was the "Zapatistas meetings at the US/Mexico border." Subcomandante Marcos and the Mayan Comandantes held meetings near the US border as part of the Other Campaign, beginning in April of 2007. Just two hours' drive south of the Arizona border, Marcos and the Comandantes met several times with O'odham, upheld the fishing rights of the Cucapa in Baja, Mexico, and met with Yaqui, Mayo, Seri and other Indigenous communities in northern Mexico, culminating in the International Intercontinental Encuentro in the Yaqui Pueblo of Vicam in the state of Sonora, Mexico.
While the media in the United States increased its censorship of these issues in 2007, the alternative national media and international online media continued to provide coverage.
It was the international online media that covered the Indigenous Peoples' Border Summit of the Americas 2007. While upholding the right of Indigenous Peoples to freely pass in their ancestral territories, they opposed the US/Mexico border wall, militarization of border lands and new passport requirements. They opposed the corporate profiteering at the border for the border wall, private prisons and private security firms such as Blackwater now planning a border training camp in Kumeyaay territory at the California border.
Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham organizer of the summit, told the gathering, "The United States is going to continue to build walls and close us all in, or close us all out, and privatize our lives."
The international media, from China to Taiwan, Russia to Belgium, extensively covered the Lakota Freedom Delegation's announcement of withdrawing from the treaties and declaring sovereignty on Dakota lands.
While the media in the United States continued its pathetic and manipulated news coverage, the international media covered the fact that four countries voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The countries are the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand followed by arresting Maoris in the sovereignty movement. The United Nations declaration upholds the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their aboriginal lands.
Both New Zealand and Australia's mainstream media continued biased and racist coverage.
More recently, a new censored topic has emerged: the seizure of private lands of Apaches and other residents in Texas for the US/Mexico border wall, using the law of eminent domain. Since Homeland Security has issued a 30-day notice, Texas mayors and residents are now mobilizing to stop the border wall, militarization and occupation of the Texas border.
Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council, spoke of the fire of resistance and resilience at the Alcatraz Sunrise Gathering in November.
"We consider it relighting the fire of Indian survival, Indian resistance here in this hemisphere. To remind people that first of all, John Wayne didn't kill us all. That we're still alive, distinct cultures that are thriving here in America."
Brenda Norrell is human rights editor for U.N. OBSERVER & International Report. She also runs the Censored website (http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/). She can be reached at: brendanorrell@gmail.com
Sovereignty & Stolen Gold
Of Sovereignty and Stolen Gold
Russell Means Goes to Washington
http://www.counterpunch.org/melendez12242007.html
By STEVE MELENDEZ
In 1980 the United States government printed 500 hardcover books called, The Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission. It is on our Museum's wish list. In it on page 4 under the heading "Historical Survey," it makes the grand revelation on how this government is dealing with First Nations America. Giving a history of its very own formation, it candidly reveals, " to create a United States Court of Indian Claims." This court was to consist of three judges, have a 5-year filing period for all claims founded upon the Constitution, laws of Congress, treaties and contracts, and render a final decision within a 10 year life span. Thus, by 1930, the resolution of Indian claims was proposed under two forms of tribunal.
In 1934 and early 1935, the proponents of an Indian court submitted two more bills to establish an Indian claims court. Both bills were ignored, largely because they were not, by this time, considered practical answers to the claims situation. In a report to the Senate committee on Indian Affairs, Secretary of Indian Affairs Harold Ickes argued against them and directed the Senators' attention to a bill recently introduced in the House to create an Indian claims commission instead of a court which he considered preferable.
With the introduction, in March 1935, of H.R. 6655, an act to create an Indian claims commission, the legislative movement to expedite Indian claims shifted irreversibly from the consideration of a judicial to a commission format. Both Congress and the Secretary of the Interior now felt that a commission rather than an adversary proceeding could better "cut through" the red tape of Government agencies charged with the preparation of Indian cases. An investigatory commission appeared to be a better vehicle for "claims involving history and anthropology as much as law". This bill, and three similar ones, aroused a good deal of debate throughout the 1930's but no legislation resulted."
In other words, this was and is the government's boldface attempt to nullify all treaties made with First Nations America by circumventing the courts and the rule of law. The movement shifted from a "judicial to a commission format"? What hogwash!
Sure the Indian Claims Commission went out of business in 1980 but its rulings are still hanging over the heads of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone Nation and Dr. Russell Means and the Lakota Nation to the tune of $34 million and $800 million, respectively.
Everyone who knows the story of Carrie Dann knows the story of how the indigenous people have been criminalized for standing up for Native civil rights. And yes, treaty rights are guaranteed and protected by the U.S . Constitution under article 6--supposedly.
And laws supposedly should be enforced but they are not. This is just the latest example of the racial discrimination that our people have had to endure for the last 500 years.
When Columbus waded ashore and said that he, "was taking possession of this island for the King and Queen," why is it not right for Dr. Russell Means to go to Washington and do the same thing.
Black's Law Dictionary tells me on Pg.1502 that a treaty is "An agreement, league, or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns."
Did the United States honor their end of the international agreement called the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868? In the summer of 1874 Gen. Philip Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills to verify the rumor that gold had been found. Miners had been showing up with gold. He had an entourage of about 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons, two or three gatling guns, a cannon, a sixteen piece brass band mounted on white horses and two miners who were the experts on gold. He was there in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land, the treaty of 1868. When he found gold, he sent a dispatch back to Ft. Laramie: "Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have on my table 40 or 50 small particles of pure gold. In size, averaging in size that of a small pinhead, and most of it taken today from one panful of earth."
The following year, President Ulysses S. Grant stood before Congress and said,
"The Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his discretion."
Volume 9 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Page 4306 President Ulysses S. Grant's 7th Annual Message To the Senate and House of Representatives, December 7, 1875
"Sustenance" is food and withholding food from people is a government policy of starvation. Previously, the U.S. Army supported the extermination of the buffalo in order to control the native people. Why wait for the hammer to drop again? Why not support Dr. Means before the hammer drops on this economy and $800 won't buy bread let alone buffalo. Ask not what the U.S. Government can do for one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, ask what is the price for reparations for genocide. If ever you find that you are a part of a deceptive system called Mystery Babylon you are instructed to, "Come out or her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes".
Sometimes to be right is worth than all the gold they took out of in the Homestake mine.
(http://www.aigenom.com/homestakegoldmine.html)
Steve Melendez is a Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston.
(http://www.aigenom.com/)
Russell Means Goes to Washington
http://www.counterpunch.org/melendez12242007.html
By STEVE MELENDEZ
In 1980 the United States government printed 500 hardcover books called, The Final Report of the Indian Claims Commission. It is on our Museum's wish list. In it on page 4 under the heading "Historical Survey," it makes the grand revelation on how this government is dealing with First Nations America. Giving a history of its very own formation, it candidly reveals, " to create a United States Court of Indian Claims." This court was to consist of three judges, have a 5-year filing period for all claims founded upon the Constitution, laws of Congress, treaties and contracts, and render a final decision within a 10 year life span. Thus, by 1930, the resolution of Indian claims was proposed under two forms of tribunal.
In 1934 and early 1935, the proponents of an Indian court submitted two more bills to establish an Indian claims court. Both bills were ignored, largely because they were not, by this time, considered practical answers to the claims situation. In a report to the Senate committee on Indian Affairs, Secretary of Indian Affairs Harold Ickes argued against them and directed the Senators' attention to a bill recently introduced in the House to create an Indian claims commission instead of a court which he considered preferable.
With the introduction, in March 1935, of H.R. 6655, an act to create an Indian claims commission, the legislative movement to expedite Indian claims shifted irreversibly from the consideration of a judicial to a commission format. Both Congress and the Secretary of the Interior now felt that a commission rather than an adversary proceeding could better "cut through" the red tape of Government agencies charged with the preparation of Indian cases. An investigatory commission appeared to be a better vehicle for "claims involving history and anthropology as much as law". This bill, and three similar ones, aroused a good deal of debate throughout the 1930's but no legislation resulted."
In other words, this was and is the government's boldface attempt to nullify all treaties made with First Nations America by circumventing the courts and the rule of law. The movement shifted from a "judicial to a commission format"? What hogwash!
Sure the Indian Claims Commission went out of business in 1980 but its rulings are still hanging over the heads of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone Nation and Dr. Russell Means and the Lakota Nation to the tune of $34 million and $800 million, respectively.
Everyone who knows the story of Carrie Dann knows the story of how the indigenous people have been criminalized for standing up for Native civil rights. And yes, treaty rights are guaranteed and protected by the U.S . Constitution under article 6--supposedly.
And laws supposedly should be enforced but they are not. This is just the latest example of the racial discrimination that our people have had to endure for the last 500 years.
When Columbus waded ashore and said that he, "was taking possession of this island for the King and Queen," why is it not right for Dr. Russell Means to go to Washington and do the same thing.
Black's Law Dictionary tells me on Pg.1502 that a treaty is "An agreement, league, or contract between two or more nations or sovereigns."
Did the United States honor their end of the international agreement called the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868? In the summer of 1874 Gen. Philip Sheridan sent George Armstrong Custer into the Black Hills to verify the rumor that gold had been found. Miners had been showing up with gold. He had an entourage of about 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons, two or three gatling guns, a cannon, a sixteen piece brass band mounted on white horses and two miners who were the experts on gold. He was there in violation of the Supreme Law of the Land, the treaty of 1868. When he found gold, he sent a dispatch back to Ft. Laramie: "Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have on my table 40 or 50 small particles of pure gold. In size, averaging in size that of a small pinhead, and most of it taken today from one panful of earth."
The following year, President Ulysses S. Grant stood before Congress and said,
"The Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his discretion."
Volume 9 Messages and Papers of the Presidents Page 4306 President Ulysses S. Grant's 7th Annual Message To the Senate and House of Representatives, December 7, 1875
"Sustenance" is food and withholding food from people is a government policy of starvation. Previously, the U.S. Army supported the extermination of the buffalo in order to control the native people. Why wait for the hammer to drop again? Why not support Dr. Means before the hammer drops on this economy and $800 won't buy bread let alone buffalo. Ask not what the U.S. Government can do for one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, ask what is the price for reparations for genocide. If ever you find that you are a part of a deceptive system called Mystery Babylon you are instructed to, "Come out or her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes".
Sometimes to be right is worth than all the gold they took out of in the Homestake mine.
(http://www.aigenom.com/homestakegoldmine.html)
Steve Melendez is a Pyramid Lake Paiute and president of the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston.
(http://www.aigenom.com/)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Armas
