Monday, October 29, 2012

1989 - American Indian Activist Russell Means testifies at Senate Hearing



Hurricane “Russell” ?
“I’ll be coming back as lightning, so if you hear that lightning has struck the White House…you’ll know who did it.”
Russell Means left for the spirit world at 4:44 am on  Monday, October 22. 2012. This Hurricane began near Haiti on Monday morning, October 22, 2012. It is currently headed for the Atlantic Coast of the United States, just above Washington, D.C.  Coincidence? You decide.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Russell Means -- Lakota Revolutionary Patriot, Travels On


RUSSELL MEANS
Oyate Wacinyapi (He Defends the People) 
November 10, 1939 - October 22, 2012
Our brother, father, grandfather, elder, leader


Thursday, October 11, 2012

Indigenous Peoples Occupy Belo Monte Dam Site in Brazil, Stop Destruction of their Territory



SAO PAULO — About 100 Indians, fishermen and other activists opposed to a huge hydroelectric dam being built on the Xingu river in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are occupying one of its construction sites.
The Norte Energia consortium that is building the Belo Monte dam says the protesters occupied the site Tuesday night.
The activist group known as Xingu Alive Forever says the work site was occupied to protest “plans to definitively dam the Xingu River” jeopardizing the livelihoods of some 40,000 people who live in the area where the dam is being built.
Norte Energia says that for security reasons it halted work at the site and transferred nearly 1,000 men to other work sites.

War on Columbus Day

by Carol Berry
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/08/war-on-columbus-138499

Though the war on Christopher Columbus and his invasion has been fought for two decades or more in the Western hemisphere, Denver, Colorado has been a key headquarters of resistance since 1989, when the American Indian Movement of Colorado (AIM) embarked on a program to reveal the true Columbus and his legacy of suffering, both accounts largely absent from history books, and where a handful of dissenters swelled to thousands at the protests’ height.
But the Columbus Day parade in Denver this year was “small—it was no big deal,” said one police officer in a downtown office. Some potential parade-goers were unable to find the small gathering, observers said of the event that has been a focal point for anti-Columbus activists in the past.
In 1907, Colorado became the birthplace of the holiday but some of its citizens are not alone in objecting to the celebration today. In the last three years, and sometimes earlier, others have abandoned, renamed, revised or replaced Columbus Day. The entities include the National Congress of American IndiansNative American Rights FundNavajo Nation (which has replaced Columbus Day with an April 4 Navajo Nation Sovereignty Day), Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Tohono O’odham Nation, Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan, Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and Gila River Indian Community.
Cities that have changed their celebrations include Berkeley, California, which now celebrates Indigenous Peoples Day, Portland, Oregon and Duluth, Minnesota. A number of states have come on board as well including AlaskaSouth Dakota, which celebrates Native American Day, Hawaii, which celebrates Discoverers’ Day, Nevada, and Alabama. There are also several colleges and universities throughout the country that hold anti-Columbus Day events. Although Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) nations’ tribal offices remain open on the holiday, the Osage Nation and United Keetoowah Band’s tribal offices close and the tribes refer to the day as Osage Day and Native American Day, respectively.
“For Native Americans, Columbus Day should not be a day of celebration,” said a Mississippi Choctaw Band Chief. “His arrival on our shores marked the beginning of centuries of exploitation of our people and our land. Much better that we should celebrate our rich culture and our traditions.”
“To me, I am really excited Gov. [George] Mickelson made the effort to change the holiday,” said Dani Daugherty, an attorney who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Aberdeen, South Dakota. “The main reason is that I don’t think we should be honoring Columbus” since the records are “filled with atrocities,” she told the Aberdeen News.
The 350-member Gathering of Indigenous People in the Americas has, since 1992, referred to the day as the International Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People. Columbus has even had a major role in television’s “The Sopranos,” when Italians and American Indians traded jabs over his honoring. In public schools across the U.S., some parents’ complaints about the sugar-coated invasion go unheard, despite alternative curricula available.
Several anti-Columbus groups assembled today in the southern Colorado community of Pueblo, where the first parade honoring Columbus was held in 1905. From 100 to 150 people from Denver and other communities attended the peaceful gathering, which drew AIM and such other groups as Deep Green Resistance, Occupy Denver and people from the White Clay, Nebraska protest.
In key ways, the Columbus opposition is not conducting a war of aggression but a defensive action, says Glenn Morris, Shawnee, a professor of political science at the University of Colorado-Denver and a long-time AIM leader. “We’ve been under attack for 500 years but they’re making it sound like we’re attacking Italians and Italian culture. The legacy of Columbus is represented in the Doctrine of Discovery. What they’re celebrating on Columbus Day is not Columbus—what they’re celebrating is the Doctrine of Discovery, which benefitted them and dispossessed Indian people of 2 billion acres of territory.”
Robert Chanate, Kiowa, former tactician for AIM, said, “What we were really successful at was marginalizing the parade in Denver. Very few people attend the parade and it’s not a featured event like other city parades. Another fortunate outcome of our opposition to the holiday was the alliances we developed with other Indigenous Peoples and organizations. We were able to use the publicity of that day to call attention to various indigenous struggles that are happening in the present, not in 1492.”


Wednesday, October 03, 2012



DEFEAT RACISM • PROTEST COLUMBUS DAY 
DEFEND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ RIGHTS

This year in Pueblo, the birthplace of C‐Day

Columbus Day Celebration Protest
Monday, October 8, 2012 (Official C-Day)

When: 9am, Monday, October 8th, 2012 • Rally at 10am, Columbus Statue, across from Rawlings Public Library, 100 Abriendo Avenue, Pueblo, CO, 81004. Bring banners, signs and your anti‐racism messages.

Where: Meet at Henkle Park, Pueblo, CO, on Abriendo Avenue, between Ramona and Penn Streets at 9am. March to Columbus statue for rally at 10 am, in front of Rawlings Library, 100 Abriendo Avenue, Pueblo.

Directions from Denver: south on I‐25, through Pueblo to Exit 87B (Abriendo Ave.)
follow the curve to the right, and stay on Abriendo approximately four blocks.
The celebration of Columbus Day in the U.S. began in Colorado. In Colorado, the celebration
began in Pueblo in 1905. Annually, there is an honoring of Columbus at the Columbus statue
in downtown Pueblo, across from the new public library (100 Abriendo Ave.). We believe
that libraries should be a source for education, for cultural competency, and for historical
accuracy. Colorado AIM will join our relatives in Pueblo this year, to stand against the
racism of Columbus Day, to set the historical record straight about the so‐called Doctrine of
Discovery and the racist legacy of Columbus & Columbus Day, and to be living proof that
indigenous peoples are not “discovered,” “conquered,” or disappearing from our homeland.