31 January 2005

To Catch a Dream...



Catching Dreams
First workshop explores Native American craft

By Suzanne Weiss
Herald Times Reporter
Posted Jan. 30, 2005


MANITOWOC — It’s no coincidence that the Native American dream catcher resembles a spider’s web.

The Ojibwe people purposefully wove the sinew into a Web-like design, with eight points representing a spider’s legs and a large bead symbolizing the spider, said Mike Maher.

Maher, education program coordinator for the Manitowoc County Historical Society, will present the workshop, “Dream Catchers,” in which participants can make their own from a willow branch, waxed nylon thread, a bead and a feather.

The workshop, the first of the 2005 Show-Me Saturdays series, will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 5 in the Mirro Auditorium of Manitowoc County Heritage Center, 1701 Michigan Ave.

The native Wisconsin Ojibwe are credited for originating dream catchers, used to “catch dreams” in the same way that a spider’s web traps flies.

“They were hung over cradle boards,” Maher said. “They were meant to snare bad dreams to prevent them from visiting the young child.”

The circular shape of the dream catcher represents the journey of the sun across the sky.

An opening was left in the center of the weave to allow good dreams to pass through; a feather was incorporated as a way for good dreams to gently slide into the child’s subconscious, said Maher, who will share Ojibwe lore with those attending the workshop.

Making Native American dream catchers “is a really neat way to spark an interest in studying their culture,” he said.

“Mike Maher has done a fantastic job in using the series to get kids and families excited about their local history by getting their hands on history,” said Sarah Johnson, executive director of the Historical Society.

“After all, we believe it’s more fun to learn history if you’re having a good time and actually getting to do something.”

This is the first time the “Dream Catchers” workshop is being offered as a Show-Me Saturdays event, Johnson said.

“We try to offer a well-rounded variety of crafts from different cultural groups,” Maher said.

He will provide materials and instruction in making the dream catchers.

“I’ve made them with kids before,” he said. “They do take a little bit of patience, but anyone can make one look nice.”

Children in grades three and older should be able to make one with little help; younger children will probably need an adult’s assistance, he said.

The presentation is free to Manitowoc County Historical Society members. The cost to non-members is $5 for adults, $4 for children and $12 for families and can be paid at the door. Proceeds will benefit the society. No pre-registration is required.

For more information, call Maher at 684-4445.



Rolling Back Healthcare Coverage?



Yes, it appears that the NeoCons have found yet another rug to pull from under the feet of American working families...

--ryan



Healthcare Overhaul Is Quietly Underway

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush
administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a
new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-
provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for
the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers — instead
of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal
responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They
would buy high-deductible "catastrophic" insurance policies to cover
major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in
tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for
years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP
confidence that the political balance of power has changed.

With Democratic strength reduced, President Bush, Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Ways and Means Committee
Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) are pushing for action.

Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of
Bush's "ownership society," say workers and their families would
become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills.
Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would
make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.

"My view is that this is absolutely the next big thing," said former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose consulting firm focuses on
healthcare. "You are going to see a continued move to trying to get
people involved in the process by owning their own health accounts."

Critics say the Republican approach is really an attempt to shift the
risks, massive costs and knotty problems of healthcare from employers
to individuals. And they say the GOP is moving forward with far less
public attention or debate than have surrounded Bush's plans to
overhaul Social Security.

Indeed, Bush's health insurance agenda is far more developed than his
Social Security plans and is advancing at a rapid clip through a
combination of actions by government, insurers, employers and
individuals.

Health savings accounts, known as HSAs, have already been approved.
They were created as a little-noticed appendage to the 2003 Medicare
prescription drug bill.

HSAs have had a strong start in the marketplace. Although regulations
spelling out how they would work were not issued until mid-2004, as
of Sept. 30, about 440,000 people had signed up. And more than one-
quarter of employers say they are likely to offer them as an option.

The accounts are available only to people who buy high-deductible
health insurance, either through an employer or individually.
Consumers can set aside tax-free an amount equal to their deductible.
Employers can contribute to workers' HSAs but do not have to. Unused
balances can be rolled over from year to year, and employees take
their HSAs with them when they switch jobs.

The idea that losing one's job would not automatically mean losing
protection for medical costs has bipartisan appeal. "Portability" was
a key feature of President Clinton's ill-fated healthcare reform
plan. But the GOP approach is significantly different: Whereas
Clinton would have required all employers to chip in for universal
health insurance, Bush wants to leave responsibility primarily to
individuals.

"This is certainly getting a lot of attention from employers," said
Jack Rodgers, a healthcare analyst for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

One reason is potential cost savings to employers.

A typical catastrophic health insurance plan carries an annual
deductible of about $1,600 for an individual when purchased through a
large employer. That means the worker pays the first $1,600 of
healthcare expenses each year. By contrast, under the more
comprehensive, employer-provided health insurance programs common
today, the company begins to pay after about $300 in expenses have
been incurred. Deductibles for families are considerably higher under
both types of plans.

"There's an issue about whether these things will work," Rodgers
said. "[But] we could end up coming back 10 years from now and
everybody will have high-deductible plans and [health savings
accounts]."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who agrees with Bush that individuals should
take more responsibility for controlling health costs, is nonetheless
skeptical that HSAs, coupled with high-deductible insurance, will
prove workable as a substitute for the present system.

"I think the American people are going to want more of a safety net
than the administration has been willing to commit to this far,"
Wyden said.

Still, catastrophic health insurance is gaining credibility as a
policy option.

The California Medical Assn. supports a plan that would require all
residents of the most populous state to carry at least high-
deductible coverage — just as automobile liability insurance is often
mandatory. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Bush was not
contemplating such a requirement at the federal level.

But the existence of health savings accounts may make it easier to
enact state mandates such as the California proposal.

Despite the record federal budget deficit, Bush on Wednesday proposed
additional tax breaks and subsidies for HSAs, particularly for low-
income families. He also called for a tax credit to help small
businesses offer the plans to their employees. The low-income aid
would be worth a maximum of $3,000 per family.

"Health savings accounts all aim at empowering people to make
decisions for themselves, owning their own healthcare plan," the
president said. Consumer-driven decision-making is more likely to
control costs than having bills paid by a third party, such as an
employer, he added.

"If a third party makes that payment, [the consumer] never gets to
ask the question [about cost]," Bush said. "He just accepts the
decision. And all of a sudden, when you have consumers starting to
ask questions about cost, it is a governor on cost, at the very
minimum."

During his confirmation hearings, incoming Health and Human Services
Secretary Michael Leavitt called for renewing the national debate
over the future of the healthcare system and spoke of "the
transformational need of detaching healthcare and employment."

Critics say that Bush's vision represents wishful thinking at best,
and at worst, a perilous new direction in national health policy.

"One danger with this is that people will not get needed care because
they want to save a few thousand bucks," said Rep. Pete Stark (D-
Hayward), a leading lawmaker on healthcare.

"Healthcare isn't like buying a Chevrolet," Stark added, disputing
Bush's assertion that individual patients can be empowered to control
costs. "You can go to Consumer Reports and read about the new Malibu,
but if I asked you to describe a regimen of chemotherapy for someone
who has colon cancer, you'd be out of gas.

"We are talking about highly technical services that 99% of the
public doesn't even know how to spell the names of," he
said. "Secondly, there is no uniformity within the medical community
as to what services ought to be used. It's a 'by guess and by gosh'
sort of practice."

The combination of HSAs and catastrophic insurance is too new for any
definitive data on how consumers are faring.

A study released Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, a private
foundation that supports research on healthcare policy, found that
people with high-deductible policies were more likely to have trouble
paying medical bills than those in traditional insurance plans. They
were also more likely to skip care because of cost.

The study did not look at the combination of high-deductible plans
with HSAs, but the report cautioned that the savings accounts might
not solve all the problems.

Many experts believe HSAs could quickly become one of the main ways
to obtain health insurance for people working in small companies or
buying coverage on their own.

Workers at large companies with standard health plans may be less
likely to experiment with HSAs, although many large employers are
already requiring their workers to shoulder a bigger share of health
insurance costs. The existence of a government-sanctioned alternative
to the traditional system might accelerate that trend.

"We are not trying to do one big change for the whole country, all at
once — like what sunk Hillary-care," said Grace-Marie Turner,
president of the Galen Institute, a research organization that
promotes conservative, market-based health reform.

"We want to let people choose this if it meets their needs, and not
rip out the underpinnings of the current system."

But even the most ardent backers of HSAs concede that the country is
not fully ready for them. They say critics such as Stark are correct
to point out that there is little information available to consumers
for comparing the costs of various medical options.

In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Frist
called for what would amount to a healthcare information revolution.
Within the next decade, he said, patients should be able to gain
online access to performance rankings and prices for doctors and
hospitals.

"Increased access to more accurate information about care and pricing
will make possible … the transformation of the healthcare system,"
Frist wrote. "Whether selecting their physician, hospital or health
plan, consumers must be able to choose what best meets their needs."

A comprehensive system of healthcare information would be costly to
create, and perhaps challenging for patients to navigate. On
Thursday, Bush proposed some initial steps, such as computerized
medical records and standardized information technology for medical
offices.

His vision of an empowered patient calling the shots may stand little
chance without a new information infrastructure.

Gingrich acknowledged: "You can't have an informed marketplace in a
setting where you don't have any information."





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--ryan



Kentucky, Liberia?




The Sun Shines Bright in Liberia, Too 
Old Kentucky home in Africa offers travelers rare connection
------------------------------------------------------------------------


LEXINGTON, Ky. — There were moments in Liberia, as Ernie Martin peered through the viewfinder of his video camera, when the Kentucky in Africa seemed as close to the Kentucky of his birth as a hug, a handshake or a song.

"When we met Mary Dixon and she broke into her version of `My Old Kentucky Home,' that was the moment of connection," said Martin, a Kentucky Educational Television producer and videographer. "They treated us like it was a family homecoming."

Martin had been hoping for such a moment for several years, as he combed over bits of history about a colony called Kentucky, Liberia, that was founded in the early 1830s by former slaves from our commonwealth.

The 40-square-mile area once known as Kentucky now is generally known by the name of its former capital and largest town, Clay-Ashland, which took its name from a founder of the American Colonization Society, statesman Henry Clay, and his Lexington estate, Ashland.

"WHAT IMPRESSED me most about it was the hills," Martin said. "Every place else was really flat, until I got to Kentucky. Coming up the St. Paul River from Monrovia on a boat, it looked like the kind of place you'd want to stop and stay if you were from Kentucky. It was a beautiful spot."

As Martin approached Clay-Ashland — 170 years after the first of more than 600 colonists arrived from the United States — he saw more churches than houses. Most of the outlying houses in the area of about 20,000 people were mud and bamboo huts and structures ravaged by more than 20 years of civil war. But to Martin's surprise, there were a number of once-grand dwellings reminiscent of Kentucky architecture in the main town.

And everywhere there were friendly people who greeted him and his trip coordinator, attorney Mark Paxton of Lexington.

"They had no idea we were coming," Martin said. "The first words I said were, `Greetings from Kentucky in America!' About 12 people gathered around, and they just kept coming."

Mary Dixon, a deaconess at the First Baptist Church of Clay-Ashland, knew the story of Kentucky, Liberia, and understood why Martin had come.

"We have been praying for this day, that one day we would be able to see somebody — someone would come from Kentucky," Dixon said on camera. "... We want them to know that we still live in the city of Kentucky. Our history is a great history that we can never forget, about Kentucky."

AS A CHILD, Dixon, who is in her 40s, could remember a community "induction program" in which she heard a woman singing, "Take me back to my old Kentucky home."

"She was dressed like she was coming from Kentucky," Dixon told Martin. "She had on this long dress, puffed sleeves, and she had her hair fixed in that style, and she told us that's how the immigrants came and they were dressed."

Baptist church pastor Jeremiah Walker, who is much older, said he could remember hearing local bands playing Stephen Foster's version of "My Old Kentucky Home."

At least two of Liberia's presidents were descendants of colonists from Kentucky. One of Martin's hosts was Benoni Urey, who said he has ancestral connections to colonists from Princeton, Ky.

In Monrovia, Liberia's capital, Martin found Kentucky-fried chicken on a menu. Not KFC, but the restaurant's own recipe. He found roads with familiar names and a river named "Farmington," and he heard of a town called "Lexington."

There once were keepsakes in the region that could be traced to the early settlers from Kentucky, Martin was told. But the only one that he found to have survived the looting of the civil war was a cast-iron farm implement that had been brought from the commonwealth by the family of former Liberian President William David Coleman, who came from Lexington. The unidentified tool, made in Seneca, N.Y., is now used for cracking palm nuts and is stored at a police station.

LOCAL RESIDENTS told Martin that a man named George Washington, who had grown up in Clay-Ashland, had immigrated to Kentucky a few years ago and had written to say, "I'm back in my old home, Kentucky in America." Martin said he hopes to locate Washington, if he still lives in Kentucky.

"I promised that I would send them pictures and documents that they may have never had or may have lost because of the war," Martin said.

"Oh, I would like to send (Kentuckians) greetings," Mary Dixon told Martin during an interview. "And tell them we are proud to see our brothers come back to find out about us. I will be happy if, as things get better, we will have an exchange relationship. I wish that, when I get there, I get to Kentucky and be able to meet with my people."

Martin expects his documentary on Kentucky, Liberia, to air in June on KET's weekly series, Kentucky Life.

Byron Crawford's column appears on the Metro page Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can reach him at (502) 582-4791 or e-mail him at bcrawford@courier-journal.com. You can also read his columns at www.courier-journal.com.


Quote of the Day



"Let us put our minds together to see what life we will make for our
children..."

~~Tatanka Iyotake "Sitting Bull" (Hunkpapa Lakota) 1831-1890




The American Holocaust...



First published in the Akwesasne Phoenix, Jan. 30, 2005 issue – info@akwesasnephoenix.com...


 
THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN HOLOCAUST
The “final solution” of the North American Indian problem was the model for the subsequent Jewish holocaust and South African apartheid
 

MNN.  Jan. 30, 2005.  Why is the biggest holocaust in all humanity being hidden from history?  Is it because it lasted so long that it has become a habit?  It’s been well documented that the killing of Indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere since the beginning of colonization has been estimated at 120 million.  Yet nobody wants to speak about it.
 
Today historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are revealing that information on this holocaust is being deliberately eliminated from the knowledge base and consciousness of North Americans and the world.  A completely false picture is being painted of our people as suffering from social ills of our own making. 
 
It could be argued that the loss of 120 million from 1500 to 1800 isn’t the same as the loss of 6 million people during World War II.  Can 6 million in 1945 be compared to 1 million in 1500?    
 
School children are still being taught that large areas of North America are uninhabited as if this land belongs to no one and never did.  The role of our ancestors as caretakers is constantly and habitually overlooked by colonial society. 
 
Before the arrival of Europeans, cities and towns here were flourishing.  Mexico City had a larger population than any city in Europe.  The people were healthy and well-fed.  The first Europeans were amazed.  The agricultural products developed by the Indigenous people transformed human nutrition internationally. 
 
The North American Indian holocaust was studied by South Africa for their apartheid program and by Hitler for his genocide of the Jews during World War II.  Hitler commented that he admired the great job Americans had done in taking care of the Indian problem.  The policies used to kill us off was so successful that people today generally assume that our population was low.  Hitler told a past US President when he remarked about their maltreatment of the Jewish people, he mind your own business. You’re the worst. 
 
Where are the monuments?  Where are the memorial ceremonies?  Why is it being concealed?  The survivors of the WWII holocaust have not yet died and already there is a movement afoot to forget what happened. 
 
Unlike post-war Germany, North Americans refuse to acknowledge this genocide.   Almost one and a quarter million Kanien’ke:haka (Mohawk) were killed off leaving us only a few thousand survivors.    
 
North Americans do not want to reveal that there was and still is a systematic plan to destroy most of the native people by outright murder by bounty hunters and land grabbers, disease through distributing small pox infested blankets, relocation, theft of children who were placed in concentration camps called “residential schools” and assimilation. 
 
As with the Jews, they could not have accomplished this without their collaborators who they trained to serve their genocidal system through their “re-education camps”.    
 
The policy changed from outright slaughter to killing the Indian inside.  Governments, army, police, church, corporations, doctors, judges and common people were complicit in this killing machine.  An elaborate campaign has covered up this genocide which was engineered at the highest levels of power in the United States and Canada.  This cover up continues to this day.  When they killed off all the Indians, they brought in Blacks to be their labourers.
 
In the residential schools many eye witnesses have recently come forward to describe the atrocities.  They called these places “death camps” where, according to government records, nearly half of all these innocent Indigenous children died or disappeared as if they never existed.  In the 1920’s when Dr. Bryce was alarmed by the high death rate of children in residential schools, his report was suppressed. 
 
 The term “Final Solution” was not coined by the Nazis.  It was Indian Affairs Superintendent, Duncan Campbell Scott, Canada’s Adolph Eichmann, who in April 1910 plotted out the planned murder to take care of the “Indian problem”.
 
            “It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages.  But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem”.  (DIA Archives, RG 10 series).
 
In the 1930’s he brought German doctors over here to do medical experiments on our children.  According to the study the majority of the lives of these children was extinguished.  School children are taught his poetry with no mention of his role as the butcher of the Indian people. 
 
Those who carried out this annihilation of our people were protected so they could declare full-scale war on us.  North Americans as heirs of the fruits of this murderous system have blood on their hands.  If people are sincere about preventing holocausts they must remember it.  History must be told as it really happened in all its tragic details. 
 
It’s not good enough to just remember the holocaust that took place during the lifetime of some of the survivors.  We have to remember the larger holocaust.  Isn’t it time to uncover the truth and make the perpetrators face up to this?
 
In the west there are a whole series of Eichmanns.  General Amherst ordered the distribution of small pox infested blankets to kill of our people.  But his name is shamelessly preserved in the names of towns and streets.  George Washington is called the “village burner” in Mohawk because of all the villages he ordered burnt.  Villages would be surrounded.  As the people came running out, they would be shot, stabbed, women, children and elders alike.  In one campaign alone “hundreds of thousand died, from New York across Pennsylvania, West Virgina and into Ohio”.  His name graces the capital of the United States.      
 
The smell of death in their own backyard does not seem to bother North Americans.  This is obscene.
 
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
orakwa@paulcomm.ca
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Habits of Racism...



A Glimpse of Inauguration and a Few Habits of Racism

Posted: January 27, 2005
by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today


For most residents of the District of Columbia, Inauguration Day is a good time to stay off the streets or get out of town, especially during the ramp up when security is being tested and Capitol Hill is overrun by high-rolling revelers.

The closest I got to the official events was on Inauguration eve at Union Station, site of a huge gala, where my train pulled in just as the party broke up. Republican bigwigs and wiglets who paid at least $250,000 to be part of the quadrennial celebration were clutching their baby blue Tiffany boxes as if the future depended on the etched mementos inside.

Those of us who weren't met by stretch limos shivered outside in a taxi line for nearly an hour. To pass the time, I tried to calculate the cleaning bill for the long silk and velvet gowns and sable and fox coats trailing in three-inch deep filthy slush. (But, as the Harvard president can tell you, we women don't have much of a head for math.)

The men in my sight line were dressed in leather, camel and cashmere coats, and footwear ranging from black patent tuxedo pumps to crocodile cowboy boots. The women wore strappy gold or black heels, all open-toed, and put on their game faces as frostbite set in.

Four blond Yalies behind me sent their beautifully turned-out dates back inside the station to get warm. Before I could compliment them on their courtesy, the young men began rating their dates. One wasn't serious about his, because she was only a seven. Another dismissed his as a six, saying she was just a family friend. Some friend.

During 45 minutes of snarky talk, the boyfriends only referred to the young women as girls and chicks. It's long been considered rude and ignorant to refer to women as girls, and girls stop being girls when they're mature enough to have babies.

And ''chicks,'' really? I hope that throwback term isn't making a comeback beyond New Haven.

The young men amused each other with little asides about local people taking cabs to Anacostia - a section of unofficial Washington that is predominantly African American and mostly poor - but sexism was their default position.

By the time I got a ride, I was looking forward to the day after Inauguration Day, when the rich and careless would be on their way home or sleeping off the parade and balls, and Washington would be a bit more civil and a little less smug.

Like all inside Washington outsiders and everyone beyond D.C., I watched the Inaugural address on television. The speech was well written and well delivered, invoking the rule of law and protection of minorities, and respect for institutions in unnamed locations with ''customs and traditions very different from our own.''

President Bush pronounced ''freedom'' and ''liberty'' dozens of times, as if repetition of the words would hypnotize tyrants and the tyrannized into states of liberation around the world. The speech also was designed for consumption at home, so that Americans would have a way of thinking about this country and its relation to the world community of nations: ''The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.''

He made it all sound so good that I wanted to rush right over to the White House and ask to borrow a cup of that liberty.

But the part of the speech that really caught my attention was a line written for the crowd at Union Station and the other Bush boosters freezing on the National Mall: ''And our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.''

I would love to read the various lists of racist and bigoted habits identified by the White House staff and federal agencies, and to know which ones they argued should be abandoned and which held sacrosanct. Judging from past practices of ignoring and excusing racism against American Indians, they may have missed ones dealing with federal Indian policy, or split on whether or not to put them aside.
Here are some habits of racism that the Bush Administration can schedule for abandonment right away.

Destruction of Native sacred places is a vile habit of racism that continues to feed the avariciousness of developers and to keep religious freedom beyond the reach of traditional American Indians. Over 15 years ago, the Supreme Court urged creation of a statutory cause of action to protect Native sacred places, but all presidents and congresses have failed to enact one.

President Bush can ask Congress to send him a sacred places protection law and then sign it. This will send a powerful signal around the world that America's commitment to freedom extends to Native nations whose customs and traditions differ from the mainstream.
President Bush can instruct those Smithsonian and Interior scientists who are undermining repatriation laws to cut it out, and to abandon the habits of racism that lead them to treat dead Indians as their property. He can commit resources to stop ''collectors'' from robbing Indian graves.

President Bush can instruct the National Park Service to show respect for the dead and the living by providing complete data to enable Native nations to identify those Native human remains which are held in federally-assisted repositories and classified as ''unidentifiable.''
President Bush can use the bully pulpit to tell all owners and administrators of American athletic programs that it's time to give up their toys of racism and stop using Native references to promote sports teams and sell their paraphernalia.

President Bush can tell Justice and Interior to break the racist habit of fighting Indian people who want government accountability for management of Indian property. He can instruct the White House to start working with tribal people on a fair and just settlement of the Indian trust funds lawsuit.

President Bush can urge the California and Minnesota governors to abandon the racist habit of threatening Native nations into turning over Native resources to the states.

President Bush can instruct his Justice Department to vigorously pursue cases against the white men who commit the overwhelming majority of violent crimes against Native women.

All these things the president can and should do, if only to convince the world that the U.S. message of freedom is real.


Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country Today.
 



The Biggest Holocaust...



These are true words indeed...

--ryan





 
THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN HOLOCAUST

The “final solution” of the North American Indian problem was the model for the subsequent Jewish holocaust and South African apartheid
 
MNN.  Jan. 30, 2005.  Why is the biggest holocaust in all humanity being hidden from history?  Is it because it lasted so long that it has become a habit?  It’s been well documented that the killing of Indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere since the beginning of colonization has been estimated at 120 million.  Yet nobody wants to speak about it.
 
Today historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are revealing that information on this holocaust is being deliberately eliminated from the knowledge base and consciousness of North Americans and the world.  A completely false picture is being painted of our people as suffering from social ills of our own making. 
 
It could be argued that the loss of 120 million from 1500 to 1800 isn’t the same as the loss of 6 million people during World War II.  Can 6 million in 1945 be compared to 1 million in 1500?    
 
School children are still being taught that large areas of North America are uninhabited as if this land belongs to no one and never did.  The role of our ancestors as caretakers is constantly and habitually overlooked by colonial society. 
 
Before the arrival of Europeans, cities and towns here were flourishing.  Mexico City had a larger population than any city in Europe.  The people were healthy and well-fed.  The first Europeans were amazed.  The agricultural products developed by the Indigenous people transformed human nutrition internationally. 
 
The North American Indian holocaust was studied by South Africa for their apartheid program and by Hitler for his genocide of the Jews during World War II.  Hitler commented that he admired the great job Americans had done in taking care of the Indian problem.  The policies used to kill us off was so successful that people today generally assume that our population was low.  Hitler told a past US President when he remarked about their maltreatment of the Jewish people, he mind your own business. You’re the worst. 
 
Where are the monuments?  Where are the memorial ceremonies?  Why is it being concealed?  The survivors of the WWII holocaust have not yet died and already there is a movement afoot to forget what happened. 
 
Unlike post-war Germany, North Americans refuse to acknowledge this genocide.   Almost one and a quarter million Kanien’ke:haka (Mohawk) were killed off leaving us only a few thousand survivors.    
 
North Americans do not want to reveal that there was and still is a systematic plan to destroy most of the native people by outright murder by bounty hunters and land grabbers, disease through distributing small pox infested blankets, relocation, theft of children who were placed in concentration camps called “residential schools” and assimilation. 
 
As with the Jews, they could not have accomplished this without their collaborators who they trained to serve their genocidal system through their “re-education camps”.    
 
The policy changed from outright slaughter to killing the Indian inside.  Governments, army, police, church, corporations, doctors, judges and common people were complicit in this killing machine.  An elaborate campaign has covered up this genocide which was engineered at the highest levels of power in the United States and Canada.  This cover up continues to this day.  When they killed off all the Indians, they brought in Blacks to be their labourers.
 
In the residential schools many eye witnesses have recently come forward to describe the atrocities.  They called these places “death camps” where, according to government records, nearly half of all these innocent Indigenous children died or disappeared as if they never existed.  In the 1920’s when Dr. Bryce was alarmed by the high death rate of children in residential schools, his report was suppressed. 
 
 The term “Final Solution” was not coined by the Nazis.  It was Indian Affairs Superintendent, Duncan Campbell Scott, Canada’s Adolph Eichmann, who in April 1910 plotted out the planned murder to take care of the “Indian problem”.
 
            “It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages.  But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem”.  (DIA Archives, RG 10 series).
 
In the 1930’s he brought German doctors over here to do medical experiments on our children.  According to the study the majority of the lives of these children was extinguished.  School children are taught his poetry with no mention of his role as the butcher of the Indian people. 
 
Those who carried out this annihilation of our people were protected so they could declare full-scale war on us.  North Americans as heirs of the fruits of this murderous system have blood on their hands.  If people are sincere about preventing holocausts they must remember it.  History must be told as it really happened in all its tragic details. 
 
It’s not good enough to just remember the holocaust that took place during the lifetime of some of the survivors.  We have to remember the larger holocaust.  Isn’t it time to uncover the truth and make the perpetrators face up to this?
 
In the west there are a whole series of Eichmanns.  General Amherst ordered the distribution of small pox infested blankets to kill of our people.  But his name is shamelessly preserved in the names of towns and streets.  George Washington is called the “village burner” in Mohawk because of all the villages he ordered burnt.  Villages would be surrounded.  As the people came running out, they would be shot, stabbed, women, children and elders alike.  In one campaign alone “hundreds of thousand died, from New York across Pennsylvania, West Virgina and into Ohio”.  His name graces the capital of the United States.      
 
The smell of death in their own backyard does not seem to bother North Americans.  This is obscene.
 
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
orakwa@paulcomm.ca
 

------------------------------------------------------------------------



28 January 2005

Quote of the Day



"There is no flag large enough to cover
the shame of killing innocent people..."

~~Howard Zinn






27 January 2005

A Horrific Lesson...



This is a lesson the World can not afford to forget...

--ryan




World Marks Auschwitz Liberation


World leaders and Holocaust survivors are gathering in Poland to mark 60 years since the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp.

The heads of state of both Israel and Germany will join those of Russia and other countries to remember the arrival of Soviet troops in 1945.

More than a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were murdered in the Auschwitz "death factory".

Former inmates and Red Army veterans will lead a candle-lighting ceremony.

Events to mark the anniversary began in the German capital, Berlin, where parliament held a special ceremony including an address by a German-Jewish camp survivor, Arno Lustiger.

German poet and singer Wolf Biermann also took part, reading out poems by a man murdered in Auschwitz.

At a forum in Krakow attended by members of the Soviet unit which captured the camp, Israeli President Moshe Katsav said the history of the Holocaust should never be distorted.

He warned against "negationists who play down the Holocaust" and called on the European Union to prevent a rebirth of Nazism in young Europeans.

The BBC's William Horsley notes that since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a unique symbol of the evil that men are capable of, and a warning from history.

Remembering the dead

The start of the ceremony will be signalled by a train whistle at the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, where a railway track brought hundreds of thousands to their deaths.

Ecumenical prayers will be said as well as the Jewish prayer for the dead - the Kaddish - and the playing of a Jewish horn - the shofar - will bring the ceremonies to an end.

Six former inmates and three Soviet old soldiers will light the first candles at the main memorial there.

Following them will be Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski.

Other world figures will include French President Jacques Chirac, US Vice-President Dick Cheney and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

German President Horst Koehler is due to attend in Auschwitz, but will not speak at the main ceremony, in recognition of Germany's role as perpetrator of the Holocaust.

'Blood everywhere'

One of the Red Army officers due to attend the ceremony, Anatoly Shapiro, remembers leading his men into the first barracks as they entered the death camp.

Mr Shapiro, now 92, told the BBC of the horror that the camp inspired in his men before they set about washing and feeding the survivors:

"Just behind the door, we saw naked women's bodies piled up. There was blood everywhere. The smell was so bad you couldn't stay in there for more than five minutes. My men said, 'Comrade major, get us out of here.'"

Eva Kor, who was a 10-year-old prisoner at the camp when it was liberated, was subjected to medical experiments by the notorious Dr Josef Mengele.

She recalled for the BBC the moment when the Russians arrived:

"I ran up to them. They hugged us and they gave us chocolate and cookies. And this was the first kind, human gesture that I have in Auschwitz from the time we arrived.

"I was in Auschwitz nine months. I had been supposed to be dead, because Mengele injected me with a deadly germ.

"He stood by my bed and said, 'Too bad. She's so young.' I knew no matter how sick I was, no matter how hungry I was, I was never ever going to let them win."

You can watch a BBC News special programme "Auschwitz Remembered" from 1325 on BBC Two, BBC News 24 and BBC World on Thursday.




HISTORY OF AUSCHWITZ
Construction began in 1940 on site which grew to 40 sq km (15 sq mile)
At least 1.1 million deaths, 1 million Jewish
Other victims included Polish political prisoners, Roma (Gypsies), Soviet POWs, homosexuals, disabled people and dissidents
Of 7,000 Nazi guards, 750 were prosecuted and punished after the war






Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/4210841.stm

Published: 2005/01/27 10:50:39 GMT

© BBC MMV


26 January 2005

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | US hostage pleads for Arab help



It's quite apparent that Mr. Hallums knows the real truth about the Bush Administration...

--ryan




US Hostage Pleads for Arab Help

A US citizen held hostage in Iraq has asked Arab leaders to help save him from being killed in an undated video released on Tuesday.

"I ask that Arab leaders help me in this situation so I can be released as quickly as possible from this definite death," said Roy Hallums.

Mr Hallums was seized in Baghdad on 1 November last year.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to intervene to help free an engineer also kidnapped in Iraq.

Plea for help

In the video, Mr Hallums looked gaunt and spoke slowly and said his health was poor.

"I'm not asking for any help from President [George W] Bush because I know of his selfishness and unconcern for those that have been pushed into this hellhole," Mr Hallums said.

"I am asking for help of President Muammar Gaddafi, because he's known for helping those who are suffering."

Mr Hallums has been missing since he and a Philippine citizen, Roberto Tarongoy, were taken from the Mansour district of Baghdad, where he was working as a contractor for a Saudi food contracting company.

Mr Hallums was seen against a dark interior with a gun pointed to his head. He was wearing civilian clothing.

A video released on Monday showed an Egyptian hostage, Ibrahim Mohammed Ismail, being shot dead by his captors on an Iraqi street.

Brazil hostage

President Lula's announcement that he would try to help the release engineer Joao Jose Vasconcelos Jr, 55, comes after the Brazilian disappeared on 19 January following an ambush in northern Iraq.

Relatives and colleagues criticised the government for not doing enough to help.

A newspaper report quoting government advisers says Mr Lula believes Brazil should speak out more firmly against the kidnapping, particularly as the government did not back the war in Iraq.

Brazil has already sent an envoy to the Middle East to help in the negotiations.

Al-Jazeera television showed a videotape on 22 January from a militant group claiming to be holding Mr Vasconcelos.

The tape did not show the hostage, but displayed his ID card.

The militants said the ambush was carried out as a joint attack between the Mujahideen Brigades and the Ansar al-Sunnah Army.

The video included no threats or demands.

Mr Vasconcelos worked for the Sao Paulo-based Constructora Norberto Odebrecht SA and was employed at a power station near Beiji.




Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/4205569.stm

Published: 2005/01/25 20:01:03 GMT

© BBC MMV


Richey Death Sentence Quashed



Great news and a long time coming!

--ryan




Briton's Death Sentence Quashed

A federal appeals court in Ohio has rejected the conviction and death sentence on Briton Kenny Richey.

Mr Richey has been on Death Row since 1987 after he was convicted of killing a two-year-old girl in a fire.

The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that he must be retried within 90 days or set free.

British politicians have campaigned on behalf of Mr Richey, 40, originally from Edinburgh. His partner said she was "delighted" by the news.

Karen Torley, who lives in Cambuslang, on the outskirts of Glasgow, told BBC Scotland: "It was a bit overwhelming to be told the decision after all this time, it was a bolt out of the blue.

"Every single one of the issues that were presented to the court have all been questioned and his conviction has been found unsafe.

"It's just been a total nightmare for him over the years, it's been hard trying to campaign to get people to see what I could see, but today's result shows it's been worth it all."

Mr Richey's US lawyer Ken Parsigian said he was overjoyed with the news.

Mr Parsigian said: "He said 'thank you, thank you, thank you' and then the word that kept coming up was 'finally'.



"He said 'I can't believe it's finally happened, finally'.

"The first thing he wants to do is get out, hug his mum, hug Karen, breathe the free air - I think all those things are going to consume his time for a while."

Alistair Carmichael, the Member of Parliament who led the campaign for Mr Richey and visited him last year, described the decision as "excellent".

He said it highlighted the flaws in the conduct of the initial trial.

"Where so much doubt exists about the safety of a conviction, it would be an offence against humanity to carry out a death sentence," Mr Carmichael declared.

"It now remains to be seen exactly what attitude the district attorney's office will take but in reaching their decision I hope that they will bear in mind that Kenny has already spent 18 years on Death Row, when the prosecutor at the time of Kenny's trial was prepared to offer a plea bargain which would have involved Kenny spending 11 years in custody."

In March last year, 150 MPs signed a Commons motion backing Mr Richey's claim of innocence and Tony Blair promised to look into the case.

The case has seen appeals on his behalf from Pope John Paul II and the former Archbishop of Canterbury.

In a resolution passed in June 1992 the European Parliament expressed its doubt concerning the validity of the sentence.

'Bitter-sweet feeling'

Margo MacDonald, a Member of the Scottish Parliament who has campaigned for Mr Richey's freedom, said: "It's a very bitter-sweet feeling, it's wonderful that he has managed to hold on and stay as focused as he has done.

"Imagine spending that amount of time losing your youth and knowing that you're innocent and yet he's still managed to hold onto his sanity and his focus."

Mr Richey, who has dual UK-US citizenship, left Scotland in 1981 to live with his American father in Ohio state.



He was convicted of killing Cynthia Collins, who died in a fire in 1986 at her mother's apartment in the town of Columbus Grove.

Prosecutors said he intended to kill his ex-girlfriend but ended up killing the child.

Three appeal court judges in Cincinnati issued a 26-page judgment on Tuesday.

In it, they said: "Because constitutional errors have undermined our confidence in the reliability of Richey's conviction and sentence, we reverse the decision."

State considers appeal

Kim Norris, spokeswoman for Attorney General Jim Petro, said lawyers were reviewing the ruling to determine whether or not to appeal. State attorneys could ask the full circuit court or the US Supreme Court to consider the case.

But Mr Richey's lawyer in Ohio and Amnesty International Scotland said they believed this was unlikely.

Amnesty's Rosemary Burnett said: "The state has 14 days to appeal but we imagine they won't appeal because the trial was flawed.



"They have 90 days to set a date for a retrial or to release Kenny.

"Nobody should be sent to the living hell of death row but Kenny Richey's 18-year ordeal has come after a flawed trial and serious concerns about the Ohio justice system.

"Indeed, Kenny's case was always one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners had ever come across."

Mr Richey has lived through 13 dates for his execution and at one point was an hour away from dying.

Last year, he told a BBC correspondent: "I'm innocent and I'll stand by that 'til the day they kill me.

"I used to be afraid of death when I was a kid, but I'm not anymore. Death doesn't bother me."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/scotland/4207185.stm

Published: 2005/01/25 19:16:25 GMT

© BBC MMV



24 January 2005

Defenders of the Black Hills



Please repost and distribute widely...

--ryan



  P-R-E-S-S      R-E-L-E-A-S-E

RAPID CITY --  On Monday, Jan. 24, 2005, the Senate of the South Dakota legislature will vote on Senate Bill 61 to allow the SD Science and Technology Authority to use eminent domain on the underground portion of Homestake Mine in Lead, SD.  But not everybody in South Dakota is in favor of an underground laboratory at the now abandoned mine site.

At their Regular Meeting held Saturday, Jan. 22, 2005, the Defenders of the Black Hills issued a position statement against the continued development of Homestake Mine as a National Underground Laboratory.

One of the main concerns in the position statement is that “all residents of South Dakota will be held financially responsible for the environmental liability caused by the above ground and underground mining that was done for the private benefit of the owners of Homestake Mine.”  

The group also stated: “...the environmental liability of all activities at
Homestake Mine, including the contamination of underground water, is the sole responsibility of the corporate owners of Homestake Mine and the state of South Dakota does not have the right to transfer this responsibility to the taxpayers of South Dakota.”

Defenders of the Black Hills is a volunteer organization with more than 500 members which works on preserving and restoring the environment of the Black Hills and surrounding grasslands. They work on achieving their purposes through educating the public about current environmental situations and problems. 

      “We are concerned that the people and taxpayers of South Dakota have not been given enough information about all the environmental impacts of assuming responsibility for Homestake Mine by using eminent domain,” said Charmaine White Face, Coordinator for the organization. 

    “We think there needs to be more environmental studies on the long-term consequences of the Mine, particularly to underground water resources.  Studies need to be completed by independent experts not in the employ of the state or Barrick Mining Company, and the results made public.”

Petitions supporting the Defenders statement are being circulated and will be sent to the state legislature as well as the National Science Foundation.

   “We think the state is rushing into this project too quickly because of the economy at the price of environmental contamination to underground water,” said White Face.  “When the water is underground, how are you going to purify it?”

    Some local ranchers in the area are also looking at the bills, and seeing red flags.  They are concerned about the water and the open-endedness in the bill language which gives carte-blanche approval to the SD Technology and Science Authority to use eminent domain. 
-------------------------
 For further information contact: Defenders of the Black Hills at (605)
399-1868, or 343-5387; or e-mail:  bhdefenders@AOL.com, or cwhiteface@aol.com



2005 Brass Monkey Century Rescheduled!



From Ralph Mitchell:

"I regret to inform you that due to a death in my immediate family this afternoon, I'm forced to postpone the Brass Monkey Century until February 5th.  The funeral is not until Thursday in upstate New York and there is no way I can drive 12 hours back to Kentucky on Friday and co-ordinate the ride on Saturday. My sincere apologies for the inconvenience and disappointment this may cause everyone.
 
The ride is officially rescheduled for Saturday, February 5th with the new rain, ice snow date of Saturday, February 19th.
 
Please let me know by E-mail whether or not you will be able to make the new dates. Please include your name and hometown in the E-mail because there will be a prize for the cyclist traveling the furthest to attend the Brass Monkey Century. There will also be a prize for the first to register for the Brass Monkey Century.
 
Once again my sincere apologies, but look at the bright side, the weather this week should be nice so you'll get an extra week of training before the big event."
 
I'm Sorry Gang,
Ralph Mitchell
"Keeper of the Monkey"

2005 Brass Monkey Century


23 January 2005

Leonardo's Wheels



Leonardo's Car Brought to Life


Open top three-wheeler. 2004 reg. Italian design and craftsmanship. Zero mpg. No emissions. Easy parking. Programmable steering

John Hooper in Rome
Saturday April 24, 2004
The Guardian


 
It has taken more than 500 years to get from the drawing board to the showroom, but today the first working model of the "car" conceived by Leonardo da Vinci is to go on display at an exhibition in Florence.

Eight months' work by computer designers, engineers and joiners has proved something that had been doubted for centuries: the machine sketched by history's most versatile genius in or around 1478 actually moves.

"It was - or is - the world's first self-propelled vehicle," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, who oversaw the project.

Perhaps sensibly, humanity waited for the invention of steam power and then the internal combustion engine. Leonardo's car, 1.68m long and 1.49m wide (5ft 6ins by 4ft 11ins), runs on clockwork. The springs are wound up by rotating the wheels in the opposite direction to the one in which it is meant to go.

"It is a very powerful machine," Professor Galluzzi said. So powerful that although they have made a full-scale "production model", they have not dared test it. "It could run into something and do serious damage," he said.

The vehicle demonstrated in Florence yesterday was a one-third scale replica.

Several attempts were made in the last century to construct the vehicle. None worked.

They were vitiated by a misunderstanding: that Leonardo powered his vehicle with the two big leaf springs, shaped like the arms of a crossbow, shown in his sketch on folio 812r of the Atlantic Codex, one of the great collections of his studies and sketches.

In 1975 Carlo Pedretti, director of the Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo Studies in Los Angeles, published a paper showing early 15th century copies in the Uffizi archives of some early Da Vinci sketches. "Two of the drawings represent a view from above of the spring mechanism of the well-known self-propelled vehicle in the Atlantic Codex," he wrote.

Studying the copies, Prof Pedretti realised that the springs were not meant to drive the car but to regulate a drive mechanism located elsewhere. In 1996 his intuition was reported in a book by an American robotics expert, Mark Rosheim.

"He believes that motive power is provided by coiled springs inside the tambours", Mr Rosheim wrote.

The theory that the car's "engines" were sited in a couple of drum-like casings on the underside resolved many of the enigmas in Leonardo's design. But until Prof Galluzzi and his team got to work, it was still just a theory.

Their first step was to create a digital model by computer aided design.

"That took four months," Prof Galluzzi told the Guardian. "But at the end we had a machine which we knew ought to work."

To test Leonardo's genius to the limit it was decided to try to realise his vision with materials available to the craftsmen of his time. That meant mainly wood.

Florentine furniture restorers were asked which types their predecessors would have chosen for which parts of the vehicle.


"The biggest problem was to find a wood for the cogs, because that had to be hard and resistant.

The finished vehicle contains five sorts of wood and "mechanisms of extraordinary refinement".

Leonardo scholars have long believed the car was intended to provide special effects in some kind of performance.

It has a brake that can be released at distance by an operator with a hidden rope, so it would have appeared to start by itself.

A programmable steering mechanism allows it go straight, or turn at pre-set angles. But only to the right. Good in towns like today's Florence, with a one-way system. As ever, Leonardo was centuries ahead of his time.


Johnny Carson Dies



US TV Legend Johnny Carson Dies

American TV star Johnny Carson has died at the age of 79, after losing a battle with the respiratory disease emphysema.

The legendary former host of NBC's Tonight Show was first diagnosed with the disease three years ago.

Carson retired from the top-rated late-night entertainment show in 1992 after 30 years as one of the most popular TV personalities in the US.

For many years, Carson smoked while the programme was on air. Emphysema is often associated with smoking.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/4200385.stm

Published: 2005/01/23 19:05:54 GMT

© BBC MMV


Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Seminole-Muskogee/Dine)



ICT [2005/01/19]??Photographer focuses on 'what's been and what still can be'

Posted: January 19, 2005 
by: Jean Johnson / Indian Country Today 

  PORTLAND, Ore. - Amnesia. While the word practically rolls off the tongue, its meaning is dark: ''Partial or total loss of memory caused by brain injury, or by shock, repression, etc.'' Clearly it's not the brain injury part that piques Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie's interest. ''I really hope that my photography brings out how we need to think about each other and issues that are political,'' Tsinhnahjinnie said. ''If we forget who we are, then who are we?''

Tsinhnahjinnie - born into the Bear and Raccoon clans on her mother's side in the Seminole and Muskogee nations, and born for the Tsinajinnie clan on her father's side in the Dine (Navajo) Nation - titled only one of her photographic series done under an Eiteljorg fellowship in 2003 as ''Portraits Against Amnesia.'' But the artist and photographer has dedicated her life to not forgetting. To what in her words is, ''Not a picture of what isn't any more, but of what's been and can still be.'' Said Tsinhnahjinnie of ''Hotaday'', one of the pieces in ''Portraits Against Amnesia.''

Tsinhnahjinnie's father, Andrew, is one of the artists who emerged out of the Dorothy Dunn studio in Santa Fe during the 1930s. From him Tsinhnahjinnie gets her interest in art. From her mother, she got the stories. ''What my mother and aunt did was they would tell stories about their relatives,'' Tsinhnahjinnie said. ''In my mind they would almost turn into television. I would see these handsome brown women and strong brown men with smiles that could carry the day.''

This optimistic, yet unflinching, stance has propelled Tsinhnahjinnie into national and international circles and more recently, since she earned an MFA from the University of California at Irvine in 2002, into the plum position of director at the C.N. Gorman Museum at UC Davis. C.N. Gorman was the noted Navajo artist and father of R.C. Gorman known for his paintings of Southwest Indian women.

In her lead role at the university museum, Tsinhnahjinnie will continue doing what she's always done: ''Address issues related to family, sovereignty and land.'' The difference will be, though, that as director, she'll be able to bring attention to a range of Native artists.

Dressed in black with bobbed hair shot through with silver, Tsinhnahjinnie looks through wire-rimmed glasses. ''To be able to showcase strong artists is a privilege,'' she said. ''The main thing is to make Native art available and have people come and see it. The venues where you can see Native art are really few and far between.''
Tsinhnahjinnie should know, she's been showcasing her own art for more than 30 years. As she puts it ''photography is my primary language.'' In October, her ''Portraits of Amnesia'' 2003 series hung with work of other Native artists in Portland's Lewis and Clark College's bicentennial exhibition titled, ''Encounters.'' Compelling and often disturbing works made from superimposing enlarged vintage photographs from postcards over various backgrounds, connected with viewers at a visceral level.

And over the past year Tsinhnahjinnie also showed her work at the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand, in Canada, and in New York City. In 1998 Tsinhnahjinnie photos were included in a major photographic exhibition of Native images at the Barbicon Art Gallery in England: ''Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography.''

''This was the first major Native exhibition to the extent that they did it. They put a lot of money into it, and the catalog was basically a book,'' Tsinhnahjinnie said. ''They had vintage work on the top level of the gallery and contemporary on the lower.'' Tsinhnahjinnie's work was included in the contemporary offerings and helped infuse this comprehensive showing with a dimension that speaks to the depth of indigenous experience in America.

''It's about due process,'' said Tsinhnahjinnie said of another one of her more recent pieces, ''Damn I Keep Dreaming of Three Cherries'', which is aimed at 19th century horrors. Atrocities that continue to plague Indian-white relations more than many recognize.

''In Minnesota when they gathered everyone all up into concentrations camps, the young men got pissed off and went and killed a bunch of settlers. President Lincoln had to decide what to do. If they killed too many Indians, all hell would break loose. If they killed none, same thing,'' Tsinhnahjinnie said. ''So Lincoln chose a number indiscriminately - 36 - and hung that many. That included Little Six and Little Crow who people from outside said were leaders in the attack. So they were hung, too. Without due process.''

Now over a century later, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux tribe's casino goes by the name of Little Six in honor of the martyred chief. While that could be a development in history that could give some solace to Minnesota's first Americans, Tsinhnahjinnie explained that was not the case. ''What happened was the state went after them on taxes. They want a piece, still,'' said Tsinhnahjinnie. ''That's where the word sovereignty comes in. Again it's all about how it continues to be the lack of due process.''

Not only does Tsinhnahjinnie train her lens on wounds of the past and how they remain in the present, she also focuses on joy. The First People's Fund, that recognizes artists throughout Indian country, tapped Tsinhnahjinnie in 1999 - 2000 as one of its first honorees for ''being a creative powerhouse in her community,'' according to Susan Lobo who nominated her. Since then, Tsinhnahjinnie has added staff photographer to her resume. She makes annual trips around the nation to photograph individual artists as they are added to the ranks of those First People's Fund commend for giving back to their communities.

''When I go visit these people, the journey is incredible. When I went to go find Murial in Rosebud, it was hard looking for her little house. You can get depressed going through the town there because it doesn't seem like there's much hope - junk cars and everything,'' Tsinhnahjinnie said. ''So they said she lived down the road. And I finally found it. A house with big old flowers painted all over it. Lavender, red, magenta. Not only on the outside of her house, but in her life. Her students made masks, and they changed themselves.''
Tsinhnahjinnie continued with her observations on art and community and Indians. ''When one is an artist and decides to be political, it is truly caring about what you believe in. It's not about making money or being in the limelight,'' she said. ''And if any of my images inspire people to go to the end of the universe, I'll be glad,'' she said. ''Because sometimes you have to go where you've been told not to.''

©2005 Indian Country Today


Denver Columbus Day Protesters Aquitted!



Columbus Day Parade Activists Acquitted

Verdict may bode well for 200 others arrested at protest

By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
January 21, 2005

Eight activists charged with failure to obey a police order during a protest of last year's Columbus Day parade in Denver were found not guilty Thursday.

The clean sweep for the defendants, who were represented by lawyers who took their cases for free, may bode well for more than 200 other people arrested at the same event.

"This was a case about justice and about historic truth and honesty," said one defendant, Glenn Morris, a member of the American Indian Movement. "Hate speech in Denver should be relegated to the past."

The eight defendants were acquitted in Denver County Court by a six-member jury, which deliberated for three hours. They were among those charged with failure to leave the intersection of 19th and Blake streets Oct. 9, where they gathered to block the annual Columbus Day parade, whose participants had a city permit for the event.

The protesters, members of the Transform Columbus Day Alliance, which includes a number of leaders from the American Indian Movement, see the Columbus Day parade as ethnic intimidation, a celebration of the mass genocide and oppression of American Indians and the birth of the slave trade between Africa and North America.

David Lane, who led the defense team, hopes the verdict persuades the Denver City Attorney's Office to drop all remaining cases.

"Hopefully, the city will see the light," said Lane. "If they have any sense at all, they'll pack it in."

Assistant City Attorney Robert Reynolds said, "I'm obviously disappointed with the verdict, although I would not quarrel with the quality of the jurors' service.

"I do honestly not know what effect this verdict is going to have on the other cases," he added.

In their closing arguments, both Lane and defense lawyer James Castle framed their clients' actions on Oct. 9 as being in the tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience exemplified by the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lane said the parade represented an act of illegal ethnic intimidation and that the demonstrators felt they had a duty to do what they could to stop it.

"History is moving," Lane said. "History has shown that this kind of conduct (the protest) is to be applauded, not convicted."

Castle drew an analogy to those who stood trial for aiding the movement of slaves from servitude in the South to freedom in the North in the 1850s, in violation of existing fugitive slave laws.

"The civil rights movement of today is embodied by the individuals at that table," Castle said, gesturing at the defendants. "They're being called criminals. I call them heroes."

But Reynolds invoked King's name for his own purpose, saying the civil rights leader didn't attempt to avoid jail in making his stand against segregation.

He urged the defendants, "Take responsibility for your actions. Be willing to take the punishment, whatever it may be."

The eight who stood trial this week included the protest's organizers. They had been granted the right to have their cases consolidated and tried together.

Those acquitted were Morris, Ward Churchill, Nita Gonzales, Reginald Holmes, Leroy Lemos, Natsu Saito, Glenn Spagnuolo and Troylynn Yellow Wood.

All but Lemos took the stand to testify in their defense.

The seven who testified said they never heard any of the repeated warnings to disperse or face possible arrest, announced over a bullhorn that day by Denver Police Cmdr. Rudy Sandoval.

They made that claim even though jurors repeatedly watched a police videotape of the event that showed protesters appearing to grow more demonstrative each time the warning was issued.

"If the defendants did not hear the order to disperse, Reynolds said, "it is because they did not want to hear the order to disperse. They wanted very badly not to hear the order to disperse."

Several more Columbus Day protesters are scheduled for trial starting Monday.




brennanc@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2742


22 January 2005

The Truth About Bluetooth...



"Caveat emptor" definitely applies to tech...

--ryan

Wireless Carriers Must Stop Crippling Bluetooth

A Brighthand Editorial
By Ed Hardy | Editor-in-Chief
Jan 21, 2005

I'm a huge fan of Bluetooth. I use it whenever possible, and not having to tote a bunch of wires around with me has changed the way I use my handheld.

Because I'm such a fan, I'm very unhappy with a recent trend among wireless carriers to put out devices that have Bluetooth, but only in an extremely limited form.

Take the Treo 650 as an example. Although it has Bluetooth, it is lacking many of the functions one would expect in a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone.

Unlike most other phones with Bluetooth, the Treo 650 can't be used as a wireless modem for other devices, like a laptop. This is because Sprint disabled Dial-Up Networking.

It did so because it doesn't want people to use their cell phones as modems for their laptops. Smartphone users generally don't use much bandwidth surfing the web because they rarely do it for long periods of time. But laptop users can take up much more bandwidth, because they tend to use the web longer. Some laptop users have even gone to exclusively accessing the Internet through their wireless carrier.

The good news is Sprint received so much negative press for this decision it has promised to release a system patch that will put DUN back in. Hopefully, it has now learned its lesson, and other wireless carriers won't make the same mistake. But I wouldn't count on it.

And it doesn't end there. You can't use another Bluetooth device to access the files stored on the Treo 650. This is something I do all the time with my fairly inexpensive Sony Ericsson phone, but the Treo 650 doesn't offer this feature, either.

I don't know if Sprint disabled this or if palmOne left it out of the device entirely. If it's palmOne's fault, it probably came as the result of pressure from wireless carriers.

If you can pull the pictures off the Treo 650 with your desktop or laptop, then you don't have to send them directly from the smartphone, a service that many wireless carriers charge for.

I don't mean to single out the Treo 650. There are other phones that could also have served as an example. Some Motorola v710 users are so angry at the way Verizon Wireless crippled the Bluetooth functions of this phone that they have started a class-action lawsuit.

The Bluetooth SIG Should Put Its Foot Down

I'm not saying that every Bluetooth phone should support every possible Bluetooth function. But I think there should be some basic features that every phone ought to offer if its going to bear the Bluetooth label.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has weighed in on this issue, but it isn't willing to go quite as far as I'd like.

Rather than requiring phones that bear the Bluetooth label to support some minimal functions, it has released a set of voluntary guidelines.

It suggests that basic mobile phones should support hands-free, headset, device ID, file transfer, object exchange, service discovery, dial-up networking, and serial port.

It also says that a high-end device like a smartphone should support advanced and generic audio distribution, audio/video remote control, SIM access, human interface device, cordless telephony, PAN, and printing.

What Can We Do?

Hopefully companies will listen to the Bluetooth SIG's suggestions, but I'm not really hopeful.

Fortunately, there are a few things we users can do about this.

First off, when you go to buy a new phone, don't make the mistake of believing that the Bluetooth logo on the box means it can do everything you want it to. You'll be wise to do a bit of research to find out exactly what Bluetooth functions the device supports before you put your money down.

And don't necessarily believe what the carrier tells you. The reason those v710 users started a lawsuit is Verizon Wireless advertised that the device could do several things with Bluetooth that it actually can't

In addition, help put pressure on wireless carriers to not cripple Bluetooth in the phones they offer. If there's a smartphone your carrier offers that doesn't support the Bluetooth features you want, complain to the carrier. Sprint's decision to put DUN back into the Treo 650 shows that carriers can be swayed by pressure.

Bluetooth is revolutionizing the way we use handhelds and smartphones. This is too important to let the wireless carriers stand in the way.


©1999-2003 Brighthand Consulting, Inc.
All rights reserved.
 

21 January 2005

Bush Stoned by Pilgrims



Many Pilgrims Stone 'Devil' Bush in Haj Ritual


Jan 21, 9:58 AM (ET)

By Andrew Hammond

MENA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Haj pilgrims pelted stones at symbols of the devil on Friday, with many saying they were targeting President Bush and other world leaders seen as oppressing Muslims.

Last year, 250 people were crushed to death at Mena's Jamarat Bridge, but so far new measures by the Saudi authorities have averted any stampedes. This year, more than 2.5 million Muslims streamed into the area for the stoning, meant as an act of purification and rejection of temptation.

Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, in a joint speech, urged Muslims to shun terrorism which they said meant "warring against God and his Prophet," to follow Islam's teachings of moderation and forgiveness and to unite.

Many pilgrims said they were thinking of Bush and his allies while they were hurling pebbles at the site where the devil is said to have appeared to the biblical patriarch Abraham.

"Yes, the devil is Bush and that other one from Israel -- (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon. And there's (British Prime Minister) Blair too," said Egyptian Tia'amah Mohammed.

"We throw the stones so we can vent our anger at them."

Many Muslims revile Bush for his perceived bias toward Israel and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Anger at Sharon also runs deep over Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and Jerusalem, the site of one of Islam's holiest shrines.

British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who converted to Islam following her capture by the Taliban in 2001 in the buildup to the Afghan war, said: "During the stoning I couldn't help thinking of Bush, Blair and Sharon."

Syrian Ibrahim Hussein added: "I was throwing stones at the devil because through that we cleanse ourselves of sin. When throwing the stones you shouldn't be thinking of political issues, or Bush and Sharon -- that's for our prayers (against them)."

SAFE STONING

Saudi Arabia, facing a storm of criticism, revamped the Jamarat area, expanding the stoning targets and deploying thousands of security forces to control the crowd.

They also replaced the three pillars the pilgrims stone with thick walls providing a larger target to prevent the crush that normally occurs at the site.

Graffiti denouncing Bush had daubed the pillars. The new walls have so far remained clean.

Other pilgrims said politics did not cross their minds. "This is all about God, and that's all I was thinking about when I threw the stones," Yemeni Ali al-Suweiny said.

Pilgrims, in white robes meant to eradicate differences in race and class between Muslims, have poured into the Jamarat area since Thursday, the first day of the stoning ritual and the start of the Eid al-Adha feast.

Most pilgrims will finish by Friday -- the penultimate day of the haj -- and then go to Mecca to circle the Kaaba, which symbolises the house of God, for the final time.

"Thank God, we have not witnessed anything unusual or any accidents or deaths so far during the stoning," Brigadier Mansour al-Turki told reporters. "We hope the improvements will continue to keep the pilgrims safe."

This year's pilgrimage, a once-in-a-lifetime duty for every able-bodied Muslim, has been overshadowed by the Asian tsunami disaster and the threat of al Qaeda-linked violence in the kingdom, which has been battling the group for nearly two years.

"Terrorism is a result of a sick mentality and of a deviant methodology," King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah said in the speech carried on the state news agency SPA.

"Terrorism is corruption on earth and aims toward destruction and fighting God, his Prophet and Muslims ... and God promised the harshest punishment for corruptors," they said.

The haj was first performed by Islam's Prophet Mohammad 1,400 years ago.



'Indian Country: Native Americans in the 20th Century'



Hokahey! I'll be looking forward to seeing this film...
Chris Eyre is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated filmmakers currently working today.

--ryan

Chris Eyre to Direct 'Indian Country: Native Americans in the 20th Century'


 
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Chris Eyre will direct "Indian
Country:  Native Americans in the 20th Century," a four-part series to air on PBS television stations nationwide.  The "Indian Country" series is the follow-up to the acclaimed 1995 miniseries "500 Nations."  The new series will chronicle the history of Native American nations over the past 114 years, from the 1890 massacre of 300 Lakota at Wounded Knee to the present.

     Celebrated Native American director Chris Eyre is an enrolled member of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.  Eyre's film "Smoke Signals" was the first feature film directed by a Native American to receive a national theatrical release and it won the Audience Award and the Filmmaker's Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival.  His other films include 2002's "Skins,"
starring Graham Greene and Eric Schweig; the TV movies "Skinwalkers" (2002), "Edge of America" (2003) and "A Thief of Time" (2004); and 2005's "A Thousand Roads," a forty-minute widescreen film shown exclusively at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.

     Now in the research and development stage, "Indian Country" is a Katahdin Foundation production that will make extensive use of oral histories, research archives, and outreach to Native American scholars and community leaders.  The series will tell the story of how this land's original nations have survived and maintained their identities as sovereign peoples against all odds, and in the face of generations of loss and injustice.  While the common perception holds that Native peoples and their cultures were crushed in the bloody Indian
Wars culminating in Wounded Knee in 1890, "Indian Country" will tell another story.  The series will show how Native American populations have grown eight-fold since Wounded Knee, how they are in the process of reviving their cultural traditions, preserving their languages, prospering in new enterprises and even occasionally forcing the U.S. government to uphold its treaties.

     The series, a tribute to the strength and persistence of the Native
American nations, is aimed for national broadcast on public television, and for subsequent DVD and video distribution.  A companion book and soundtrack CD are also planned, as are extensive educational materials and teaching guides to support and accompany non-theatrical distribution.
 
 
SOURCE Katahdin Foundation
Web Site: http://www.janeayerpr.com



Scare Tactics...



Follow the link to get more information on your Social Security benefit status.

--ryan

Social Security Scare Tactics

Download fact sheets on why women and workers of color should care about Social Security and get the facts on why every working family should care about Social Security.

President Bush's plan to replace Social Security's guaranteed benefits with risky private accounts would hurt working families. It would force drastic cuts in benefits and saddle our children with $2 trillion in debt, most of which we would owe to foreign countries such as China and Japan.

Find out more about Social Security—America's best run and most effective family insurance program—and how to protect it.

*
Social Security Basics
Information and resources to explain Social Security, the privatization threat and the benefit cuts some are proposing.
*
Myths & Realities
Use these myths and realities to equip yourself with the information you need to respond when you hear somebody say something about Social Security.


19 January 2005

Arizona's Official Language?



This is the same tactic the apartheid- government of South Afrika used against the Zulu speakers: Cultural Genocide 2.0.

English is not Turtle Island's Original Tongue...

--ryan


Tribal Leaders Decry Official-English Effort

Judy Nichols
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 19, 2005 12:00 AM


Native American leaders visited the state Capitol on Tuesday for the 10th-annual Indian Nations and Tribes Legislative Day and expressed their displeasure with a proposal to make English the official language of Arizona.

More than 500 representatives of Arizona's 22 Indian tribes filled the gallery or sat among state legislators from their districts for introductions and prepared speeches.

Sen. Bill Brotherton, D-Phoenix, urged them to express their opinion on House Concurrent Resolution 2030, which would allow voters to declare English the official state language. The bill will be considered during this year's legislative session.

"In plain English, sir, we don't like it, and we don't want it," said Kathy Kitcheyan, chairwoman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. "As the first Americans, we never asked anyone to speak a specific language."
Vivian Juan-Saunders, chairwoman of the Tohono O'odham Nation and president of the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, called the measure "divisive, objectionable and unnecessary."

She said it was reminiscent of government boarding schools where Indian children suffered verbal and physical abuse for using their Native languages.

Juan-Saunders said Navajo Code Talkers and other Indian soldiers used their native languages to pass coded messages, helping win World War II.

Both women received standing ovations.

Speaking at lunch on the Senate lawn, Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr., said he was beginning to feel like tribes are an endangered species.
"One hundred years from now, 500 years from now, we want to be Navajo people, talking in our Navajo language, telling our stories in our Navajo language," Shirley said.

In 1988, Arizona voters approved an English-only law but the state Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional because it violated free speech and equal-protection rights.

Former Sen. Jack Jackson Sr., honored as the father of the Indian Nations and Tribes Legislative Day, said he organized the event to try to deal with problems the tribes have, some dating back to drawing the state's borders without input or consideration of tribal lands.
"Down by Tucson, they put half the Tohono O'odham community in Mexico," Jackson said. "The Navajo Nation is in three different states."
Other tribes are split across county and city borders, causing jurisdictional nightmares.

Leaders also addressed other concerns: growth, water, education, transportation and health care.

Hopi President Wayne Taylor Jr. said his tribe faces an economic crisis with the threatened closure of the Mohave Generating Station.
Water pumped from the Navajo aquifer is used to slurry coal from the Black Mesa Coal Mine 273 miles to the generating station in Laughlin, Nev. But the Navajo and Hopi tribes say the operation is depleting the aquifer and won't allow it to continue after 2005.

"Some of our wells and springs are drying up already," Taylor said.
Without an alternate water source, possibly a pipeline from the Coconino aquifer, the mine and generating station will be closed.
The Hopis receive $7.7 million, one-third its operating budget, from coal royalties.

Juan-Saunders said her tribe is concerned about high school seniors passing the AIMS test, encroaching development of homes and shopping centers on reservation borders and a lack of funding for homeland security expenses.

"We have 75 miles of national border and we've spent $7 million of our own resources," she said.



Save Casa Grande!



We must protect and safeguard our sacred heritage...

--ryan


From Ground and Air, Prehistoric American Indian Site Under Attack
- ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN, Associated Press Writer
Monday, January 17, 2005


(01-17) 23:48 PST COOLIDGE, Ariz. (AP) --

The four-story Casa Grande Ruins, the hand-built centerpiece of a prehistoric American Indian village, have withstood Arizona's desert sun and its rains for perhaps seven centuries.

But now those walls of concrete-like clay face an unlikely threat from the air and ground: birds and squirrels.

Cooing pigeons roost in round holes that once held a stout wooden ceiling and floor beams. The birds peck at the hardened clay and foul the ruins with droppings.

Burrows dug by the native ground squirrels hold water that undermines some of the low-lying perimeter walls in the compound surrounding the centerpiece Casa Grande, or Great House.

Officials at the ruins 60 miles south of Phoenix are pondering ways to cope with the threats and minimize further degradation of the nation's first archaeological preserve.

"It's serious if we don't deal with it right now," said Paige Baker, the monument's superintendent. If not addressed, Baker added, "Then we'll see this building start to deteriorate."

Mankind is partly to blame. The pigeons -- also finches, starlings and other migratory birds -- have been attracted to the area by ample feed available at nearby cattle feedlots, dairy and other farms.

"So the community's feeding them and then we have this absolutely fabulous place for them to sleep and nest," said Carol West, the monument's chief ranger.

At least a few dozen pigeons have adopted the Great House for their nest, and in migratory periods, starlings can number in the hundreds -- despite the presence of a great horned owl in the canopy's rafters.

"Their droppings are pretty bad, but worse than that, they enlarge the cracks and the already existing holes in the walls in order to roost and nest," West said of the pigeons.

The Casa Grande Ruins are the fifth oldest unit in the National Park Service. Some of the sites at the monument date to A.D. 550-700, while most were built between 1200-1450 by the Hohokam tribe.

A giant metal canopy has kept rainwater from pooling under the walls of the roofless Casa Grande since 1932. But while the canopy helped with long-term preservation "it provided just the perfect harbor for birds, and now they just love it and they're causing all kinds of trouble," West said.

Volunteers collect two or three gallons of debris weekly from inside the structure, looking for droppings and loosened clay to quantify how much material is being lost from the walls, West said.

"It's not difficult to imagine how, at that rate, it's accelerating deterioration of the building," he said.

The squirrels have dug scores of tunnels in the open compound surrounding the main structure and countless passages beneath much of the 472-acre complex, which is walled or fenced off from Coolidge on three sides.

The problem, West said, is that in many places, rainwater has collected in the critters' burrows beneath berm-like perimeter walls, softening them up and making them more pliable.

Also, large predators that once dined on squirrels are gone, Baker said. Only an occasional coyote still wanders through the park. Badgers are gone, as are foxes and mountain lions.

The vegetation also has changed; mesquite has given way to creosote, a desert plant that the squirrels love.

Even hawks and other predatory birds come looking for squirrels less frequently; development has "affected those migration patterns or impacted their interest in looking for prey around here," Baker said.

Increasingly, the site has become an island surrounded by urban development. A Wal-Mart and a Safeway strip mall sit on the east, across Arizona 87, and about 1,700 homes are planned to the west, said Sue Laybourn, senior planner for the city of Coolidge.

Finding a solution to the site's critter problem won't be easy, but Baker believes it can be addressed. Trapping them would be overwhelming, while poisoning has problems on several levels.

"The reason why we're here also is to protect animals, not destroy them, so that's part of the challenge. How do we do this in some manner that protects the Great House and at the same time protects the ecosystem?" Baker asked.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Net:

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument: www.nps.gov/cagr




Crazy Horse State Park?



This would be a very good thing...

--ryan






United Native America Seeks State Park Name Change



By Heidi Bell Gease, Journal Staff Writer


If a national group accomplishes its goal, you could be spending weekends watching the buffalo and fishing the lakes in Crazy Horse State Park.



First, though, United Native America needs to find South Dakota legislators willing to sponsor a bill that would rename Custer State Park to Crazy Horse State Park.



"A lot of our members up here are not happy with the fact that there is Custer State Park right there at the monument to Crazy Horse," Mike Graham, founder of Oklahoma-based United Native America, said in a telephone interview. "It's an idea whose time has come, and our members are behind it."



The proposal hasn't made a big splash yet. Custer State Park Superintendent Richard Miller said Tuesday that he had not heard about the proposal. Neither had others in the tourism business.



Graham founded United Native America in 1993 in hopes of establishing a national holiday to honor American Indians. The group has since become involved in other issues, Graham said, including the renaming of a Longmont, Colo., street previously named for a militiaman involved in the Sand Creek Massacre.



United Native America claims a membership of 30,000, including 3,000 in South Dakota. Graham said the idea of renaming Custer State Park originated with South Dakotans, but did he not provide names of those members.



Graham drafted the proposed bill last month and distributed it to South Dakota government leaders. He said Gov. Mike Rounds has promised to give the issue "serious consideration" if it comes before him.



Graham is working with several legislators to make that happen, but so far he has had limited success. Two of them "wouldn't agree to sponsor the bill, but they said if the bill did get sponsored they would be in favor of it," he said.



Graham expected the name change would be an easy sell, especially given the fact that the state park lies near a private attraction, Crazy Horse Memorial, that attracts large numbers of tourists each year.



Graham said he had not yet contacted the Ziolkowski family, who own and operate Crazy Horse Memorial, about the proposal to rename Custer State Park.



"There still seems to be this 1800s attitude in the representatives up there that they tend to want to hang onto the U.S. side version of history, as opposed to honoring the Native American side of it," Graham said.



The way he sees it, changing the park's name would cost little and reap much in terms of tourism.



Others might disagree.



"It seems to me it would be quite an undertaking" to change the park's name, Superintendent Miller said.



Gerard Baker, superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, was superintendent at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana when its name was changed from Custer Battlefield in 1991.



"It's a paperwork exercise," Baker said Tuesday. "From my experience, you need to cross all your T's and dot all your I's on this kind of stuff."



That is not to say he disagrees with the idea. Baker, who is a Hidatsa Indian, believes many people would like to see places such as Custer State Park renamed.



"Sometimes we put names up there that are heroes that are not necessarily heroes to everybody, to all cultures," he said. "And I think … we need to take those things into consideration."



Graham's proposed bill may not have legislative backing yet, but the idea does have some grassroots support.



"I think it would be most appropriate," Mark St. Pierre, a writer and former director of the Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce, said. "There's no question that any conscionable or thinking person would realize that in fact Custer was probably a war criminal."



St. Pierre cites Custer's history of attacking Indian villages at dawn. "He was not concerned at all about the welfare of non-combatants. He was strictly out for himself and his own place in history," he said. "I think, in the spirit of reconciliation, it would be a wonderful move (to rename the park)."



Leonard Little Finger, cultural-resource specialist at Loneman School and a descendant of Chief Big Foot, also sees renaming the park as a great idea — for everyone, not only for Indian people.



Courts have ruled that the Black Hills belong to Indian people, but Little Finger said the issue isn't so much about holding title to the property as it is being caretakers of the land.



"There's a sacredness, a sacred interrelationship with the land itself," he said. "I think giving recognition and honor to Crazy Horse certainly is justified, because Crazy Horse really represents a certain mysticism of any people, of any human beings, that were just a notch greater than we as ordinary people.



"Nobody knows where he's buried, no pictures were ever taken of him, and he fought as much as he could to try to protect the land," Little Finger said. The park's current name conjures images of manifest destiny and broken promises, yet Little Finger said it is still a place of peace, harmony and connectedness.



"Crazy Horse — the name itself, and what he stands for — personifies that," he said. "That's much more appealing than the quest for gold."



Contact Heidi Bell Gease at 394-8419 or heidi.bell@rapidcityjournal.com