Trump’s Last Stand.

Photo courtesy of Rep. Kevin Cramer via Facebook.

Photo courtesy of Rep. Kevin Cramer via Facebook.

Ruth Hopkins at ICTMN has a scathing column about Trump’s recent visit to Bismarck, ND., and his happy little follower, the nightmare known as Kevin Cramer.

On Thursday, Donald Trump, flanked by enthusiastic brown noser Congressman Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who pushed for legislation that makes it more difficult for Natives to vote and threatened to “wring Tribal council’s necks” while making Native women cry at a state gathering on domestic violence a few years ago, appeared in Bismarck, North Dakota.

During a press conference, he couldn’t resist tearing into Senator Elizabeth Warren, once again referring to her as “Pocahontas.”

[…]

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump isn’t calling Senator Warren “Pocahontas” to honor her. He is using it in a derogatory manner, to belittle and insult her. This is what he thinks of Native people and women in general. Such statements are not only arrogant, they’re misogynistic and racially charged.

[…]

Trump shows us time and again that he has no respect for women, and by continuing to use the term “Pocahontas” as a racial slur, he is showing us his particular distain for Native people and women, especially. Because of stereotypes like the Pocahottie that fetishize and hypersexualize Native women, we continue to be preyed upon by non-Natives who see us as exotic objects meant purely for sexual gratification. There is a 1 in 3 likelihood that a Native woman will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Through Native provisions in the Violence Against Women Act, tribes are working to close loopholes that allow non-Native men to escape legal prosecution for beating and raping Native women on tribal lands. Canada’s First Nations are in the midst of an epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, a systemic problem that is finally getting the long overdue attention it deserves.

In spite of all of this, Donald Trump came to North Dakota, the homelands of Sitting Bull, where Native people are the largest minority in the state, and spat in our faces. He owes us all a sincere apology, but I’m not holding my breath. Trump has spent his campaign insulting everybody, including veterans and the disabled.

[…]

While in North Dakota, Trump secured 1,237 delegates, enough to garner the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Let that sink in. Donald Trump is so racist, that like flies to buffalo dung, white supremacists and the KKK flock to endorse him. This man, who doesn’t have enough self-control to hold his tongue for two seconds, could be in charge of nuclear weapons. Donald Trump, who never explains how or why on anything, has promised to use eminent domain to force pipelines like Keystone XL through tribal lands. He has said he would eliminate minimum wage. Native communities are already impoverished. You can bet that tribal funding will be cut under a Trump administration and trust responsibility will fall by the wayside as well. Not to mention, he talks out of both sides of his mouth and flips on a dime. The litany of disastrous policies he would put forth goes on and on. Do we really want the country to be another bullet on Donald’s list of failures? I’m Rez born and raised and I know a con when I see one. We’ve seen his kind before. Those who come to kill and destroy. Weaklings and cowards who fight with women. Trump is just another incarnation of George Armstrong Custer, and we got your Crazy Horse.

Full column here.

Denmark: Historic Step in Trans Rights

File photo: Iris/Scanpix DK.

File photo: Iris/Scanpix DK.

From January 1st, 2017, transgender will no longer appear on Denmark’s definition of mental illnesses, the Ministry of Health has confirmed.

The move would make Denmark a groundbreaker if the World Health Organisation (WHO) does not make a similar move before the autumn, news agency Ritzau reported.

“At the moment, transgender is listed as a mental illness or behavioural problem. That is incredibly stigmatising and in no way reflects how we see transgender people in Denmark. It should be a neutral diagnosis,” Social Democrat health spokesman Flemming Møller Mortensen told Ritzau.

“The WHO is currently working on a new system for registering diagnoses. It has been working on it for a very, very long time. Now we’ve run out of patience, and want to send out a signal saying that if the system is not changed by October, then we in Denmark will go it alone,” said Mortensen.

Full Story Here. A huge shout-out to Denmark, for realizing that every day of waiting increases the stigmatization of transgender people, and wanting no part of that any longer. Now, the rest of the world needs to catch up.

So Sweet.

I love Mourning Doves, they are beautiful, and their song is soothing. I’ve missed them. We used to have a large number of them on property, then the Eurasian Collared Doves moved in. This year, the Mourning Doves have finally come back. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed how calm and responsive Mourning Doves are to shutter clicks. They are very curious about them, and often responsive. I hope we have Mourning Doves nesting on property once again. Zenaida macroura. All photos are 1500 x 996, click for full size.

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© C. Ford. All rights reserved.

Trans Rights Will Provoke Last Judgment of God.

Youtube Screenshot. Carl Gallups at Trump Rally.

Youtube Screenshot. Carl Gallups at Trump Rally.

Carl Gallups, a far-right pastor who has been embraced by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, spoke with Charlottesville, Virginia, radio host Rob Schilling on Friday about the Obama administration’s recent directive on transgender rights in public schools, which he said was the sign of the impending End Times and a possible clue about something wrong in Obama’s “personal life.”

“For years I’ve been saying, ‘Look, look, we’re living in very prophetic times,’” Gallups said. “Israel is back in the land, Russia and China are in the Middle East, ISIS has exploded, Christianity is being exterminated, on and on down the list you can go … And so, now, we turn to what Jesus said in Luke 17. He said, ‘Look, in the very last days before my return, it’s going to be just like it was in the days of Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah, the spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah will sweep the planet.’ And we’re watching that happen before our eyes.”

He said that “it’s not just Christians” who are upset about policies allowing transgender people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity because even “ultra-liberal people … don’t want their little six-year-old girl molested in the bathroom because some hairy guy decides he feels like a girl that day and follows their little pretty little girl into the bathroom under federal decree.”

[…]

Earlier in the interview, Gallups speculated that there is “something” in Obama’s “personal life that would cause him to be absolutely fixated upon this sexual deviancy and this danger to our children and this perversion and insanity and this whole fixation upon this radical transgender movement.”

He hinted that this “something” might have to do with pornography, noting that the president’s official Twitter account, which is run by staffers at the Organizing for Action organization, has been found to follow some porn stars among the more than 636,000 accounts it follows.

“So, it’s demonic,” Gallups said, “and there obviously is a fixation upon this with the man in the White House now.

Rainbow Flag Joins Grand Entry.

Courtesy SKINS, SFSU From L to R: Betty Parent; Ari Antone-Ramirez; Aidan Dunn Flagbearer. The Rainbow Flag is carried by Morningstar Vancil and the Eagle Staff by Edwin Gill.

Courtesy SKINS, SFSU
From L to R: Betty Parent; Ari Antone-Ramirez; Aidan Dunn Flagbearer. The Rainbow Flag is carried by Morningstar Vancil and the Eagle Staff by Edwin Gill.

The San Francisco State University Pow Wow, held annually in the spring, set a bit of history on May 15th as the first non Two Spirit pow wow to include the Rainbow Gay Pride Flag.

According to this year’s Head Dancer, Aidan Dunn (Osage), “the SFSU Pow wow committee has decided to de-gender their dance categories. For instance, the category formerly known as “Women’s Fancy Shawl” will now be simply ‘Fancy Shawl’. Most people probably won’t notice this difference, because it won’t cause any big changes in the way the dance categories work–but inclusive language matters a lot, because it can be used to include or exclude,” said Dunn.

Dunn said that changing a few words would enable pow wow organizers to open the circle a little wider to embrace more community members.

“This allows pow wow dancers to dance in whatever category they are called to dance, even if it isn’t what we might expect for their gender. SFSU is taking a bold step toward making Two-Spirit, LGBTQ, and gender-nonconforming pow wow dancers feel welcome in the arena. The Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) Pow wow took this step last year but, to my knowledge, there are no ‘straight’ powwows anywhere in the US or Canada that currently do this.”

[…]

The inclusion of the Rainbow Flag in Grand Entry proceedings represents the inclusion of Two Spirits in the proceedings and that the circle welcomes all respectful gender expressions.

[…]

Additionally, the BAAITS pow wow, the first public LGBTIQA+ pow wow on Turtle Island, has been generating more and more success as early 3,500 dancers attended the festivities held at Fort Mason this past March.

Some family arbors at pow wows on the West Coast have displayed the flag as a sign of solidarity to the community or to identify LGBTIQA+ safe spaces. The University of Saskatchewan was the first to include the flag at a pow wow in Canada.

Full Story Here.

Two-Spirit Flag.

22.

When Grover Cleveland, an assimilation supporter, started his first term, an estimated 260,000 American Indians lived on 171 reservations comprising 134 million acres of land in 21 states. Whitehouse.gov

When Grover Cleveland, an assimilation supporter, started his first term, an estimated 260,000 American Indians lived on 171 reservations comprising 134 million acres of land in 21 states. Whitehouse.gov

The day before Grover Cleveland took office as the 22nd president of the United States, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act of 1885, providing for federal jurisdiction over seven major crimes committed by Indians on their own land.

The act came in response to Ex Parte Crow Dog, an 1883 Supreme Court decision that upheld tribal sovereignty over criminal matters. The case, which marked the first time in history an Indian was tried for the murder of another Indian, began in 1881 when Crow Dog, a member of the Brule band of the Lakota Sioux, shot and killed Spotted Tail, a chief on the Rosebud Sioux reservation.

In a unanimous and condescending decision, the Supreme Court found that federal courts lacked jurisdiction over Indian-on-Indian crimes on reservation land and that Brule law—not federal—governed the reservation. Subjecting Indians to federal law, the court ruled, would “impose upon them the restraints of an external and unknown code” that Indians lacked the ability to understand.

“It tries them not by their peers, nor by the customs of their people, nor the law of their land, but by superiors of a different race,” the justices wrote in their opinion. Doing so would amount to “measur(ing) the red man’s revenge by the maxims of the white man’s morality.”

Congress reacted to the ruling with the Major Crimes Act, claiming the high court undercut federal efforts to assimilate Indians into mainstream America. The act placed under federal jurisdiction the crimes of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, maiming, rape, incest and assault with intent to commit murder.

The act was one of three devastating measures enacted during Cleveland’s first term in office that undermined tribal sovereignty and robbed Indians of land. Cleveland in 1887 signed the Dawes Act, which authorized the President to divide Indian land into individual allotments. Two years later, he signed the Indian Appropriations Act, officially opening “unassigned lands” to white settlers.

The Full Article is Here.

Photographing the Real Barack Obama.

Hat tip to Opus. Amazing, wonderful photos of our president, taken by Pete Souza.

Feb 2016 – Obama touches the face of three-year-old Clark Reynolds, in one of Souza’s most moving photographs.

Feb 2016 – Obama touches the face of three-year-old Clark Reynolds, in one of Souza’s most moving photographs.

 

Oct 2009 – The president jostles with congressmen during a basketball game at the White House.

Oct 2009 – The president jostles with congressmen during a basketball game at the White House.

More photos and full article here.