Who are you?

My father’s father’s people emerged from Kiks, the place of the frog people, centuries ago. CENTURIES! My mother’s people walked out of blue lake in northern New Mexico in a time we can only dream of. A time shrouded in mystery and legend. This is where I come from. This North American Continent for which we people have our own names and legends. Find your legends. Find your story. The story of where you come from is who you are, and the most important gift you can give your children.

“Chief Joseph”

200 warriors ” fought with almost scientific skill, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications.” In over three months, the band of about 700, fewer than 200 of whom were warriors, fought 2,000 U.S. soldiers and Indian auxiliaries in four major battles and numerous skirmishes.” This was a time when every man in the tribe was expected to be a warrior for his people. Expected to train and embrace a warrior’s mindset.

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Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt
(1840-1904)
PBS.org

The man who became a national celebrity with the name "Chief Joseph"
was born in the Wallowa Valley
in what is now northeastern Oregon in 1840. He was given the name Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt,
or Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain, but was widely known as Joseph,
or Joseph the Younger, because his father had taken the Christian name
Joseph when he was baptized at the Lapwai
mission by Henry Spalding in 1838.

Joseph the Elder was one of the first Nez Percé converts to Christianity and an active supporter of the tribe’s longstanding peace with whites. In 1855 he even helped Washington’s territorial governor set up a Nez Percé reservation that stretched from Oregon into Idaho. But in 1863, following a gold rush into Nez Percé territory, the federal government took back almost six million acres of this land, restricting the Nez Percé to a reservation in Idaho that was only one tenth its prior size. Feeling himself betrayed, Joseph the Elder denounced the United States, destroyed his American flag and his Bible, and refused to move his band from the Wallowa Valley or sign the treaty that would make the new reservation boundaries official.

When his father died in 1871, Joseph was elected to succeed him. He inherited
not only a name but a situation made increasingly volatile as white settlers
continued to arrive in the Wallowa Valley. Joseph staunchly resisted all
efforts to force his band onto the small Idaho reservation, and in 1873
a federal order to remove white settlers and let his people remain in
the Wallowa Valley made it appear that he might be successful. But the
federal government soon reversed itself, and in 1877
General Oliver Otis Howard threatened
a cavalry attack to force Joseph’s band and other hold-outs onto the reservation.
Believing military resistance futile, Joseph reluctantly led his people
toward Idaho.

Unfortunately, they never got there. About twenty young Nez Percé warriors, enraged at the loss of their homeland, staged a raid on nearby settlements and killed several whites. Immediately, the army began to pursue Joseph’s band and the others who had not moved onto the reservation. Although he had opposed war, Joseph cast his lot with the war leaders.

What followed was one of the most brilliant military retreats
in American history. Even the unsympathetic General
William Tecumseh Sherman could not help but be impressed with the
1,400 mile march, stating that "the Indians throughout displayed
a courage and skill that elicited universal praise… [they] fought with
almost scientific skill, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines,
and field fortifications." In over three months, the band of about
700, fewer than 200 of whom were warriors, fought 2,000 U.S. soldiers
and Indian auxiliaries in four major battles and numerous skirmishes.

Read the Rest

One Shot 2 Kills

From Afro Native Pride

Remember, the struggle for the liberation of our people is not a fight that takes place in the native lands of other tribes on the other side of the world. It is right here in our own indigenous lands. Warriors, come home. We need you here. US Imperialism began with forts in Indian Country.

Russell Means: Welcome To The Reservation

Means explains how American Indians have been enslaved within de facto prisoner of war camps as a result of the federal government’s restriction of their food supply and the application of colonial tactics, a process that has now also been inflicted on the United States as a whole which has turned into, “one huge Indian reservation,” according to Means.

Means warns that Americans have lost the ability of critical though, and with each successive generation become more irresponsible and as a consequence less free, disregarding a near-perfect document, the Constitution, which was derived from Indian law. Means chronicles the loss of freedom from the 1840′s onwards, which marked the birth of the corporation, to Lincoln’s declaration of martial law, to the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th when Congress “started giving banks the right to rule,” and private banking interests began printing the money.

Hat tip to Occupy Secession

2011: A Year of Connections and Resistance for #NDNZ in Cyber-Space

Don’t Pay to Pray

If you look at the top 20 tweeted stories from 2011, a dark picture is painted for NDN country. Most news stories were dominated by reports of the result of 519 years of Colonization: hate crimes, police brutality, racist stereotypes, the horrors of the residential schools, reservation poverty, domestic abuse, struggles to save sacred sites, sexual oppression, struggles to save sacred sites, culturally insensitive and paternalistic media and the homicidal results of New Age frauds. But there’s another way of looking at it. 2011 was a year of resistance for NDN Country – a year of standing up to fight for the preservation of a way of life, world view and sacred spaced threated by greed and ignorance.

2011 was also a year of making connections in cyber space. Twitter was instrumental in getting the word out about what’s happening in Turtle Island and several new indigenous bloggers came on the scene to offer insight and analysis from their unique perspectives. Some of the most insightful bloggers this year were:

Censored News
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice http://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com

American Indian Alaskan Native: Attack the System
http://aianattackthesystem.wordpress.com

Google+

Just a quick reminder that I’m mirroring a lot of my posts here on Google+ I try to add fresh content daily to the #NDNZ and #Indigenous hash tags.

Language Nests

Starting your own language nest does not take money, just time and energy. Find a native speaker of your language and spend time with them. Get your young children together with them. This is how we learn language. Not sitting in a classroom (though that can be helpful.) It’s passed down from adult to infant, toddler and preschooler.

Most tribes integrate some form of cultural education into the lives of their children. In my tribe, the Tlingit, we have summer culture camps across our nation. I am also half Taos Pueblo Indian. Taos has its own, rigorous cultural education that entails children taking time off from school to learn who they are, and where they come from. These are important lessons for our children to learn. It grounds us and gives our people cohesion. It gives our lives meaning and richness that can’t be found elsewhere.

Below are some examples of language nests that represent informal get-togethers to formal classes.

Tiwahe (Family) Nesting

We are working toward a time when Dakota families and communities again have intergenerational fluency – can sing, talk and laugh together in Dakota. A time when they are healthy and sustainable, grounded in Dakota culture and history, and connected to each other through tiospaye (kinship).

One of the components of language learning is to integrate language and life ways revitalization into the family. This method is about healing families – language being a vehicle for renewing of kinship and life ways. Families committed to language and life-long learning are supported through language and family gatherings, a nurturing and safe environment for language learning, and a neutral circle, not defined by tribal or political boundaries but one defined by kinship. Our ancestors tell us that to be a good Dakota is to be a good relative. Dakota Wicohan believes that the renewing of family is key to healing our communities. Mitakuye Owasin – We are all related.

Looking For a Nanny: Working on the Tlingit Language

“There’s not a lot of Native speakers out there to talk with. So I’m saying to the Native speakers right now: you need to be willing to take people into your life. This Master-Apprentice program sets aside a little bit of time, but really the most successful way to do it is to live together. I know that sounds weird. But sometimes you need to adopt someone into your family, and wake up with them and talk with them and argue about politics with them. Just do everything together, all the time. It’s hard. I know you. I know so many of you, you’re kinda elderly, you’re feeling tired. But, if you care, if you really want to, then take somebody young that’s really eager, and live with them. Live with them. And live in the language with them. That’s the best way to learn.”

It’s a No Knock Raid

Government death squads in training. Remember, it was a government death squad that executed Fred Hampton in his bed. Fred Hampton was a black nationalist and rebel leader. Remember that it was the FBI that attacked and dismantled AIM. Remember that these are the thugs holding together the empire.

The East Coast Flash Mobs: Rascals or Recruits?

by Miles Joyner
The Daily Attack

A convenience store in the town I grew up in getting robbed by over 50 teenagers marks one of several flash mob incidents that have taken place in East Coast cities ranging from Philadelphia to Washington, DC. The incidents have sparked several legal measures taken against gatherings of large groups youth in these cities, both from the local government and private merchants.

Very few people have spoken in support of the flash mobs, and it’s hard to argue against the reasons if you’re sympathetic with the employees or business owners dealing with mischevious teens. Not to mention that they probably cause a nuisance for bystanders. The targeted areas of the flash mobs range from simple convenience stores like I mentioned earlier to more gentrified areas like Dupont Circle in the DC area. Several people on the libertarian right are predictably writing off the kids as dead-end losers:

It goes without saying that there are just bad kids out there too. The kinds of kids that grow up to be criminals or asking if you’d like to upsize your Wendy’s value meal. Basic evolution tells you that some people just aren’t going to reach that next rung on life’s ladder. Of course this is not to suggest that we should just stand back and watch these kids ruin their lives but we should stop trying to have “conversations” and find “solutions” when these acts are really the fault of a few things: lack of personal responsibility, terrible parenting and basic Darwinism.

How Not to Celebrate an Anniversary

Some great commentary on this article:

In 1887 Congress mounted a multi-pronged attack on Indigenous life through Senator Henry Dawes’s General Allotment Act. First, the law mandated the largest American property transfer in history. In less than half a century Indigenous Americans lost two thirds of what they still owned — 90,000,000 acres of land. Almost a hundred million people became landless peasants in the home of their ancestors. Though some plots passed to eager white homesteaders the largest gainers were railroad builders and unscrupulous speculators.

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How Not to Celebrate an Anniversary
From the Declaration of Independence to the NDAA
by WILLIAM LOREN KATZ at Counter Punch

As 2011 ended the U.S. Senate voted 92 to 6 for the McCain-Levin amendments [S 1867] to the National Defense Authorization Act, and President Obama signed it. In the name of fighting terrorism, an astounding majority of Democratic and Republican leaders granted unlimited authority to the President [and future Presidents] and the Army to arrest anyone, citizen or foreigner, here or abroad, and imprison them in Poland, Pennsylvania, or Guantanamo or anywhere else — indefinitely. 92 of our Senators agreed the detained could be denied access to attorneys and loved ones, and “enhanced interrogation” rather than legal procedures would determine if they are guilty of terrorist plots. True, some rigid Constitutionalists and Libertarians from Senator Rand Paul on the right to the ACLU on the left have condemned S 1867 as a threat to our core beliefs and democratic system. But S 1867 swept through with the President’s signature on the 135th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.

Actually celebrating our founding document while undermining of its principles also marked the Declaration’s Centennial year of 1876. That year what might be called a federal-state task force that included a majority of members of Congress and the Supreme Court, and the President chose to override the Declaration’s bold assertion of liberty, the Constitution’s “more perfect Union” and Abraham Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom.” They did so to serve an unholy alliance of northern railroad builders and land speculators, unrepentant former slaveholders and assorted white supremacists — and their obedient lobbyists and media. What followed was a severe and simultaneous assault on the basic rights of Native Americans and African Americans that sent the country careening in a new direction.