What can I say? Really what is there left to say at this point? If you’ve been following events at Standing Rock there’s nothing to share because you’ve seen and heard it all via social media and alternative press–with a few blips on mainstream media when it’s convenient or a ‘filler’ report is needed or they’ve been hounded into coverage by celebrities. It’s down to the wire as to what President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers will or will not do regarding the Dakota Access Pipelene that no one wants except Energy Transfer Partners. What can I say? What would Obama do if they wanted to run that pipe down the Mall in DC?
What can I say?
That racism still runs rampant in North Dakota just as it did when the region was part of the Dakota Territory before state-hood?
That Big Oil Companies continue to ravage the land and water without check in the United States of Corporate Owned America?
That the militarized state of the American police is on full view at Standing Rock–and mainstream media doesn’t want to touch it with a hundred yard pole and the President is steadfastly unwilling to address it?
What self-respecting journalist would NOT want to cover what’s going at Standing Rock where unarmed Water Protectors are going up against an Armed Police presence which serves only the interests of Big Oil while getting to give vent to its own home-grown racism? It’s the kind of story journalists have wet dreams about. Or they used to. Or maybe only the likes of Sinclair Lewis and Edward Morrow did. (I write that last with FULL respect for all the independent journalists doing their best on the ground at Standing Rock.)
If there were hundreds of pretty blue-eyed blondes facing off with police anywhere have no doubt the mainstream media would zero in on them like a heat seeking missile and never let go until it drank the story cup to its driest dredges. Journalists would be swarming all over those attacks with pepper spray, batons, strip searches, dog kennels, rubber bullets, grave descerations, arrests of independent journalists, violations of civil and human rights like flies on a slice of cheese on a hot summer day.
Maybe that’s what’s required–thousands of white people going toe to toe with Morton County Police aka ETP/DAPL’s security force–a police force which ironically is now at least $10 Million in debt for playing toady to the oil business (according to one local news report Morton county thinks the feds will ante up for their security efforts. Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out for them.)
Or maybe not. I think the problem runs even deeper than skin color and culture and language to core values.
That’s where the crux of the problem lies: The values of corporate mainstream media, Big Business, the President of the United (sort of) States, the Army Corps of Engineers and the dominant culture are in direct conflict, 180 opposition to the values of the Standing Rock Lakota, their Indigenous and Non-native allies and everyone else who loves the Earth –with or without humans running amok on it.
Rampant capitalism, greed, exploitation of the Earth’s resources without a care beyond the goddamned almighty profit margin VERSUS honoring the Earth and all other living beings it supports; a formerly perfect planet with a formerly perfect ecosystem for supporting an immense diversity of life.
It’s Death versus Life.
It’s Oil versus Water.
It’s the value system which claims Earth is a but a resource for non-stop consumption versus the value system which claims Earth is our Mother which allows us the ability to live and thrive as long as we Honor and Cherish it by living in harmony and balance with our environment and non-human relatives.
It’s the illusion of control and dominance of Nature versus graciously living in our place in the web of life.
But, hey, you probably already have thought all this out.
So–what’s next?
What will happen when ETP/DAPL lays pipe under the Missouri River? Does anyone really think an acting without a permit fine will stop them? In our more idealistic moments we like to think so in a fair game. But this is not a fair game played by nice players willing to obey a set of rules. The oil industry is not bluffing, it really is an absolutely ruthless business run by people perfectly willing to LIE endlessly about the reality of Climate Change and make no apologies for it. Exxon, Chevron, Shell–all you have to is check their histories in the Amazon, Niger Delta and in the Gulf of Mexico to get the point–if you don’t have it already. These people do NOT play fair. They do what they please–until it blows up–literally–in their faces. And even then they go right back to business as usual.
Oh wait, if the pipeline isn’t laid at Standing Rock and gets rerouted elsewhere is not the same problem still on the books for potential contamination of the soil and water?
Change is in order.
Climate Change is coming one way or another.
Ask Mother Nature what’s on her agenda. Perhaps her answer is on the winter wind so cold it hurts to breathe. Perhaps a touch of global warming would be welcome at Standing Rock, North Dakota where the cold freezes bones and ices the air it sucks from your lungs. Ask the buffalo what they prefer.
#NoDAPL
#WaterIsLife
#HonortheEarth
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Heads up, documentary film, Young Lakota to air on Independent Lens on November 25, 2013.
I am wondering how in-depth this documentary will delve into the ongoing issues facing young Lakota –especially young Lakota women. From the trailer it appears to address at some level the sexual violence endured by many Indigenous women. I’ve provided links to two very important documents created by Amnesty International. Depending on your awareness of the issues they may or may not prove to be very disturbing reading. I think they’re required reading for anyone entering into a serious discussion of violence, abortion, and sexual issues concerning Indigenous women–and all others as well.
As I could not get the video on the link via TT to work properly I ventured to the tubes of you for an alternative which is posted here. I’ve included the links cited on Turtle Talk as well.
Three young people living in the Pine Ridge Reservation try to forge a better future. When the first female President of Oglala Lakota defies a South Dakota law criminalizing abortion by vowing to build a women’s clinic in their sovereign territory, the three young tribe members are faced with difficult choices
10 .m. EST, Monday, Nov. 25, on PBS’s Independent Lens. The film chronicles Tribal President Cecelia Fire Thunder’s challenge to a proposed abortion ban in South Dakota, and the political awakening she inspires in Sunny Clifford, a young Lakota woman living on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Young Lakota was an Official Selection at the Big Sky Film Festival, the New Orleans Film Festival, the American Indian Film Festival, and won Best Documentary at Cine Las Americas and the Smithsonian Showcase.
***
Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA. (Note: Depending on your PC the PDF file may load fast or slow, but it will load–or so we hope.) This is not reading for the faint of heart. Report by Amnesty International.
Stolen Sisters, Canada, A Human Rights Response to Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada (Also not reading for the faint of heart.)
Water is life! We as Lakota people, believe that we are only as clean as our water, and as healthy as our Mother… Grandmother Earth.” – Scatter Their Own.
Scatter Their Own’s video for ‘Taste The Time’ from the forthcoming album, Don’t Fear To Tread – available January 2014 / Scatter Their Own Music. Download the EP now on iTunes here:http://bit.ly/CatchAFireEP
Public service announcement for peace lovers everywhere. News from Peaceful Uprising out of Utah. Invitations to solidarity, Tar Sands action, volunteer and share joy. One of these days I’ll get the shortlink thing down. Not today. For now, joy and resolve all around. Imagining and building a better world is possible.
All following content from Peaceful Uprising news:
IDLE NO MORE
Monday, September 9 4 to 7 p.m. U of U Union Patio
Want to learn more about indigenous struggles that continue across North America and beyond? And show solidarity with all indigenous peoples fighting for their lives? Students at the U of U and others who have been active with the Idle No More movement are hosting this event, which will teach people about the struggles of the Lakota people of Pine Ridge who are fighting the Keystone XL pipeline and the liquid genocide of their people. If you’re an ally, this is a great chance to deepen your understanding of climate justice! https://www.facebook.com/events/175001062682627/
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TAR SANDS AND CLIMATE JUSTICE: PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION NIGHT
Chapman Library: Monday, September 16
577 S 900 W
Day-Riverside Library: Monday, September 30 1000 N 1575 W
Our campaign to block tar sands development is about climate justice. We’re fighting for the survival of people down the Colorado River, from ourselves to the delta communities. This presentation will deepen your understanding of how defeating tar sands, oil shale, and other forms of extreme extraction are integral to the cause of furthering climate justice.
This holds particular relevance to residents of the Wasatch Front. Tar sands refining has begun in North Salt Lake, and it could scale up dramatically in the coming years if the mining proceeds in Utah.
We’ll create a space for sharing fears, concerns, and ideas. You’ll learn what PeaceUp has been doing to protect our shared resources. You’ll also get connected with people who are working on projects you might want to get involved with!
Want to help us organize a presentation for your PTA, congregation, community group, or neighborhood? Email Melanie@PeacefulUprising.org to set one up!
^^^^^^^
CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS!
Volunteer opportunities abound! We need your help now more than ever, to defeat tar sands and forge a livable future. We’re calling on everyone in our beloved community to ask themselves if they have any time to give to further the cause of climate justice this month. Every hour helps, and there are boatloads of ways to get involved.
VOLUNTEER POSITIONS
We’re now recruiting for a robust list of volunteer positions! They’ll provide you with excellent organizing experience, a deeper understanding of climate justice, and the satisfaction of serving a vital role in a campaign that’s protecting our future. These are just a few of the positions we’re recruiting for!
Community Events CoordinatorPlan a fun monthly community event for the broader PeaceUp community each month, and spread the word!
Bold School PublicistPromote the PeaceUp Bold School by arranging radio spots, writing press releases, and making short presentations to various groups.
Research SpecialistEnhance our existing knowledge of tar sands and oil shale, and related governmental processes, by conducting research on these issues.
Meet at the Salt Lake Center for Science Education in Rose Park, at 1400 Goodwin Ave.
Come canvassing in the Rose Park community to let them know about an upcoming presentation on tar sands and climate justice at the local library! Invite them to get involved with the campaign or just attend, learn, and share.
These TWO canvassing opportunities will give us a chance to meet lots of community members living near refineries, who could be affected most directly by the impacts of tar sands on air quality. Afterward, we’ll meet up for a potluck!
MOCCASINS ON THE GROUND, AND DIRECT ACTION AT WHITE CLAY
Folks from Peaceful Uprising and allies recently traveled to the Moccasins on the Ground nonviolent direct action training camp in eastern Montana. Here, they shared skills and built alliances with an indigenous community working to halt coal extraction on their land. Numerous Moccasins on the Ground training camps have been happening since last winter, and by serving as an important resource for these camps, PeaceUp is building strong alliances with indigenous groups throughout the region. Together, we’re standing strong against all forms of extreme extraction and living our belief in climate justice.
The group also traveled to the Pine Ridge Reservation in the territory known as South Dakota to help Lakota allies blockade liquor stores and deliveries in the “town” of White Clay, which exists just outside of the reservation, has 14 residents, and exists solely to profit from the continued liquid genocide of the Lakota people. These continued actions have been having a significant impact on beer deliveries to White Clay.
News from Peaceful Uprising:
Note: the following content is entirely from Peaceful Uprising’s newsletter and site. All written content ought to be in blocked quotes-but “add new post” is not co-operating and insists on doing its own thing. Well, we work with what we’ve got. Solidarity.
MOCCASINS on the GROUND:
What Solidarity Looks Like!
Peaceful Uprising, among dozens of other grassroots groups, has been invited to the first Moccasins on the Ground to be held in Butte, Montana: another frontline non-violent direct action training camp. From there, we will be travelling back to South Dakota, to support our allies from the Oglala Lakota Nation for a Women’s Day of Peace action in White KKKLay – a march to “save (their) nation from the mental diseases of Alcoholism.”
Do not confuse this with a plea for charity. Landless peasants from all over the world benefited from the genocide of indigenous people across these occupied territories called the United States and Canada. When American Indian tribes sometimes signed treaties with the US government which sometimes allowed new white settlers to stay on tribal lands-that was charitable. So working today to mend damage and stop the genocide of indigenous people is not charity; it’s justice and solidarity.
What would you do if you were totally dependent upon a single monthly check of $250 to cover all your living expenses from rent, heat, electricity to food and then your check suddenly ceased arriving in your mail box without any explanation? What if you live on a reservation where there is 80-85% unemployment and your tribe is $60 million in debt? Add to the context the highest rates per population of child suicide in the world. Now imagine what goes through your mind when your single source of income becomes “invisible” and you already know you don’t have the gas to drive off the reservation to search for employment, you have no funds to find housing off the reservation, and you are the sole adult caretaker for your grandchildren. What is now going through your mind at this point?
The following information is directly from Anne Fields who has been in direct contact with people on Pine Ridge Reservation who are currently in precisely the situation presented above.
Anne Fields:
There is a new situation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota (and presumably on other reservations) that is very dire and perhaps life threatening.
I am a white grandmother who has spent a total of 18 months on the reservation, including four months teaching in the Early Head Start program. I have friends who are directly affected by the problem and who are growing more desperate each day. So far my efforts to find information or help for them have been unsuccessful.
Each month the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been providing General Assistance grants (see below) to many residents who are desperately needy. On Pine Ridge approximately 940 people receive monthly checks of up to $250. These checks are often their only source of income and their lifeline.
In December 2012 no checks came. I spent several hours on the phone with officials at the local, regional, and national levels trying to find out what had happened. Eventually I ended up at the BIA Division of Human Services in Washington where I spoke with Bevette Hern at 202-513-7608. She told me that there had been new software which had a glitch that was holding things up. She said it was now fixed and that the Treasury would get a file transfer shortly and that the Agencies should have the money by the end of that week. This did indeed happen.
But then in March 2013 again no checks ever came and there were no notifications to the recipients. The Post Offices were besieged by people looking for their money. No checks have arrived for April 2013 and folks are seriously cold and hungry. They do not know if the money will ever come again. They have had no information from the BIA.
In an effort to try to get some information regarding these crucial funds, I tried to call Bevette to see if this is a permanent situation, only to find that she is no longer working there (even though her answering machine still uses her name). I spoke with someone who would only give her name as “Roberta” and who said that she knew nothing about the details, only that the money available for “Welfare” has been cut back. She told me that I needed to talk to the BIA Great Plains Social Services in Aberdeen, SD. I called them at 605-226-7351 and spoke with “Patti.” She told me that Central Office has not received any funds so they have nothing to give out. She recommended that I talk to the folks in Washington–the same people who directed me to call her office.
I have written to South Dakota Congresswoman Noem and Senators Johnson and Thune for clarification, but as of now I have heard nothing back from any of them.
BIA Human Services handles 6 components of Financial Assistance, which consist of:
1. General Assistance
a) An applicant must meet the criteria contained in 25 CFR 20.300 (Who qualifies for Direct Assistance)
b) Apply concurrently for financial assistance from other state, tribal, county, local, or other federal agency programs for which he/she is eligible;
c) Not receive any comparable public assistance, and
d) Develop and sign an employment strategy in the ISP with the assistance of the social service
worker to meet the goal of employment through specific action steps including job readiness and job search activities.
So, what should Anne Fields and these 940 people on Pine Ridge Reservation DO to get some information from the BIA and/or the Federal Government? Any suggestions? Even if you have no notions about how to deal with this continuing situation, please take a moment to send this information via your favorite internet social network sharing options.
Young Indigenous women are some of the most invisible and unrepresented people on Earth. That is one reason to read Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog, nowBrave Bird, with Richard Erdoes even though it was published in 1990. Another reason is that it won the American Book Award in 1991. Yet another reason is for the insight it provides into some of the tough issues young women on reservations continue to confront: violence, rape, alcoholism, drug abuse, racism, exploitation, poor education, grinding poverty. This is not a calm, quiet memoir of a certain time and place written by a woman looking back in nostalgia with some polite veneer of wisdom gained by mature hindsight. Lakota Woman offers the perspective of a very candid, blunt spoken, tough, and passionate young woman who makes no apologies for anything. This is a woman who now knows who she is, where she came from, and why. Part of her story includes giving birth to her first child during the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973 after refusing to leave in spite of the increasing danger. While Lakota Woman does not offer any in-depth analysis of the American Indian Movement, the Trail of Broken Treaties or the Native American Church, it does offer a no punches pulled, first person female perspective based on direct experiences with all of them– a young Lakota female perspective seldom encountered in the mainstream American culture.
I am a iyeska, a breed, that’s what the white kids used to call me. When I grew bigger they stopped calling me that, because it would get them a bloody nose. I am a small woman, not much over five feet tall, but I can hold my own in a fight, and in a free-for-all with honkies I can become rather ornery and do real damage. I have white blood in me. Often I have wished to be able to purge it out of me. As a young girl I used to look at myself in the mirror, trying to find a clue as to who and what I was. My face is very Indian, and so are my eyes and my hair, but my skin is very light. Always I waited for the summer, for the prairie sun, the Badlands sun, to tan me and make me into a real skin. (p.9)
Such are the words of Mary Brave Bird of the Brule Tribe from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Consider the memoirs current teenaged women of Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River Reservations might share–if anyone dared put them into print. Lakota Woman might offend some, might make some very uncomfortable, and distress others. It certainly won’t bore anyone. It definitely offers a great deal to think about regarding women, culture, family, history, spirituality, politics, and values.
Maze of Injustice, the failure to protect Indigenous Women from sexual violence in the USA, PDF file of Amnesty International http://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/MazeOfInjustice.pdf Perhaps this report offers one explanation for the legistative difficulties faced by the VAWA. Why would non-Native men want to start allowing arrest and prosecution of the non-Native men who rape Indigenous women on reservations? No rocket science required.
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Breakfast Special(s)
For the very first post enter "Breakfast Special, #1" and/or scroll through older entries; second helping = Railroad Crossing; third helping, Close Shave; fourth helping, People? Really Now; fifth helping, Pussy No More; sixth helping, 'book ends'; seventh helping, Odds? What Odds?; eighth helping, Do You Dig Pink Flamingoes Dancing in the Snow and Blue Lights?; ninth helping, Old Reliable Jack; tenth helping, Snowing Deep Sleep; eleventh helping, Connecting; twelth helping, Equations; #13, The Most Important Meal of the Day; from then on enter into search box Breakfast Special and a number such as: #14, #15, #16 and so on.
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