Oren Lyons is a faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Council of Chiefs, Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) and a longtime international indigenous rights and sovereignty activist.
Accompanying article at ICTMN.
Work means everything to us Americans. For centuries – since, say, 1650 – we’ve believed that it builds character (punctuality, initiative, honesty, self-discipline, and so forth). We’ve also believed that the market in labour, where we go to find work, has been relatively efficient in allocating opportunities and incomes. And we’ve believed that, even if it sucks, a job gives meaning, purpose and structure to our everyday lives – at any rate, we’re pretty sure that it gets us out of bed, pays the bills, makes us feel responsible, and keeps us away from daytime TV.
These beliefs are no longer plausible. In fact, they’ve become ridiculous, because there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall Street banker, becoming a gangster either way.
These days, everybody from Left to Right – from the economist Dean Baker to the social scientist Arthur C Brooks, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump – addresses this breakdown of the labour market by advocating ‘full employment’, as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous, demanding or demeaning it is. But ‘full employment’ is not the way to restore our faith in hard work, or in playing by the rules, or in whatever else sounds good. The official unemployment rate in the United States is already below 6 per cent, which is pretty close to what economists used to call ‘full employment’, but income inequality hasn’t changed a bit. Shitty jobs for everyone won’t solve any social problems we now face.
Don’t take my word for it, look at the numbers. Already a fourth of the adults actually employed in the US are paid wages lower than would lift them above the official poverty line – and so a fifth of American children live in poverty (edit Charly 17.06.2023 – new link). Almost half of employed adults in this country are eligible for food stamps (most of those who are eligible don’t apply). The market in labour has broken down, along with most others.
[…]
But, wait, isn’t our present dilemma just a passing phase of the business cycle? What about the job market of the future? Haven’t the doomsayers, those damn Malthusians, always been proved wrong by rising productivity, new fields of enterprise, new economic opportunities? Well, yeah – until now, these times. The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum. They look like the data on climate change – you can deny them if you like, but you’ll sound like a moron when you do.
For example, the Oxford economists who study employment trends tell us that almost half of existing jobs, including those involving ‘non-routine cognitive tasks’ – you know, like thinking – are at risk of death by computerisation within 20 years. They’re elaborating on conclusions reached by two MIT economists in the bookRace Against the Machine (2011). Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley types who give TED talks have started speaking of ‘surplus humans’ as a result of the same process – cybernated production. Rise of the Robots, a new book that cites these very sources, is social science, not science fiction.
So this Great Recession of ours – don’t kid yourself, it ain’t over – is a moral crisis as well as an economic catastrophe. You might even say it’s a spiritual impasse, because it makes us ask what social scaffolding other than work will permit the construction of character – or whether character itself is something we must aspire to. But that is why it’s also an intellectual opportunity: it forces us to imagine a world in which the job no longer builds our character, determines our incomes or dominates our daily lives.
This splendid article is at Aeon, and the whole thing is well worth reading. There are hundreds of comments, too, if you feel like reading more. The questions posed by the loss of “what do you do” don’t puzzle me, or pose any problems. Well, they wouldn’t pose problems if we hadn’t been so busy getting much too big for our collective britches. The answer is what Indigenous people keep pointing to, and being ignored by the populations at large: community. When there is a community, all the people in it are invested, and everyone works, they all work to to sustain one another, to make their community a good one. Chores are shared, as are burdens, which makes them lighter. In our current societal pattern, when a person is unduly burdened, the general response of those around is to mutter some half-assed proverbial solace, then flee. There’s always a constant fear too, that if we extend ourselves by helping, we may not keep enough for ourselves, and soon find ourselves in a similar unduly burdened state, with nowhere to turn.
We came up with cities to accommodate industry, and their need for workers. Once the workers showed up, those with capital at their disposal began instilling a lust for goods, and propagating the ‘great story’ – if you just work hard enough, you can climb that social ladder! Too many people spend their lives in a state of unthinking misery, constantly on a treadmill of never being quite satisfied with what they have, it’s important to have more. To have better. What will the neighbours think? There’s gentrification, which does not embrace the richness of an area and find a way to make it work for everyone, no, it’s a way to drive all those people away, so it can be properly upscale, for the right sort of people.
A lot of people have enough – they have shelter, clothing, they can put food on the table, they can get around, they have books, internet access, television, all that. And yet, we are taught to not be content. Everything around us screams “if you can’t afford this, you suck!” If we are content with what we have, but don’t have x amount of income, and all the toys to show it off, we’re dumped into the “lower class” box and dismissed. We need community. We need to learn to share, we need to learn to care about the things which matter, not stuff which advertisers and manufacturers insist we must care about. It’s past time we figure out how to care for one another again, on more than one level.
Way back in early April, I posted about Standing on Sacred Ground. Some words:
There’s more at Films for Action. * Standing On Sacred Ground.
© Marty Two Bulls.
And it continues. If you don’t know about the latest atrocities, learn. All that because fucking white people want their cake and to eat it, too. Yeah, yeah, I know, lotsa good white people out there. I know. Lots of them on the front lines, I know. And it really is appreciated, know that. It’s just that it’s not helping right now, because even all the white people who signed on, who woke up, who joined the fight, you’re in the minority with us, against all the racist, greedy white people who simply do not give a fuck. They’ll be busy with their holiday, and pretending to be thankful for fuck knows what, perhaps the fact that oppressing minorities just got a whole lot easier. I can see them thanking their idiotic, bloodthirsty god for that one.
Every year, the irony of November being named “National American Indian Heritage Month” kills me a bit more (First instituted in 1990, by Bush). This year more than most, with the criminal atrocities being committed at Standing Rock. There was a demented, malign genius to choosing November, what with most people being occupied with that grand holiday, “thanksgiving”, and preoccupied with Xmas. The majority of Americans don’t have the slightest idea of there even being an NDN heritage month, and if they do, there’s a bit of lip service perhaps, but not much more. As for learning, dive into the Standing Rock Syllabus.
High Cost of Human Rights Corrodes DAPL Financing:
Government scientists have just identified the largest deposit of oil in the United States. Newsflash: It is nowhere near the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). On November 15, the U.S. Geological Survey released the largest estimate of continuous (unconventional) oil that USGS has ever assessed in the United States. The site is the Wolfcamp Shale formation in the Permian Basin of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. USGS estimates the Wolfcamp play at 20 billion barrels.
There are two bits of significance for the fight against DAPL, the Black Snake, rooted in two theories of what the DAPL might be able to move if and when it is finished. The investment banks funding the Black Snake bought into the project based the state of the oil market at the time and expert projections for production over the life of the pipeline.
The oil market has shifted in many ways since the first round of DAPL financing was anticipating rising demand and more expensive supplies.
Hey America, I’m Taking Back Thanksgiving.
If today you're celebrating the @redskins win instead of condemning Sunday's police brutality against Native Americans, you are a hypocrite.
— Simon Moya-Smith (@SimonMoyaSmith) November 21, 2016
Thanksgiving is a national celebration of aggressive Christian domination, invasion, and imperialism.
Any other description is P.C.
— Simon Moya-Smith (@SimonMoyaSmith) November 19, 2016
They weren't settlers.
They weren't pilgrims.
They were invaders.
They were illegal immigrants.
They were racist bigots.#Thanksgiving
— Simon Moya-Smith (@SimonMoyaSmith) November 19, 2016
I wish schools would teach the truth about thanksgiving. Colonists repaid Native generosity with genocide.
— Ruth Hopkins (@RuthHHopkins) November 19, 2016
Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Target is offering a gray and white “Southwestern Teepee” (as described on the Target website) for the low price of $89.99. Daniel Boyko.
November is supposedly Native American Heritage Month. As usual, the majority of Americans don’t have the slightest idea, nor do they care. This is shopping and turkey month! Indians? Are they still alive? Let’s have a look at what Target is doing for NDN Heritage month, shall we? Oh look, a “Southwestern Teepee”. Gosh, that’s so right on the money accurate, you betcha. (If you are sarcasm impaired, that was fair dripping with sarcastic venom.)
Just in time for Native appropriation for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Target is offering a gray and white “Southwestern Teepee” [sic] (as described on the Target website,) for the low price of $89.99.
Target’s website describes the pillowfort teepee [sic] as “perfect for little imaginations during pretend play. The southwestern pattern has a realistic look and the poles are sturdy enough to last through endless rounds of make-believe.”
It’s are part of the Sabrina Soto Explorer Kids Bedding collection at Target. Though not available online, there is also a decorative teepee [sic] pillow for $12.48 on clearance. Soto is a HGTV designer and refers to herself as Cubana and is the popular host of The High/Low Project.
I guess exploiting that Cubana heritage was out of the question. Thanks ever for being yet another thoughtless dipshit, Ms. Soto, and ensuring that more Americans will have incredibly fucked up ideas about Indians, because there just isn’t enough of that going around, no, not at all. As bad as this isht is, it pales in comparison to the never ending racism of NDSU. We move on to Indians suck, as in Indians suck dick:
WDAY.com News – Screen Capture.
A North Dakota State University supporter was spotted at a football game Nov. 5 with an obscene T-shirt, modified with the University of North Dakota’s new Fighting Hawks logo altered with a single-feathered Native figure on its knees before a phallus extending from the Bison logo.
A North Dakota State University supporter was spotted at a football game Nov. 5 with an obscene T-shirt, modified with the University of North Dakota’s new Fighting Hawks logo altered with a single-feathered Native figure on its knees before a phallus extending from the Bison logo. It was meant to represent the “Sioux suck” chant NDSU students developed when arch rival UND’s name was “Fighting Sioux,” a moniker it was forced to abandon by the NCAA. The Fighting Hawk logo debuted this year.
The confounding aspect of the recently spotted T-shirt that caused the minor uproar is that NDSU was not even playing against UND. The opposing team was Ohio’s Youngstown State Penguins.
[…]
The obnoxious shirt, reported on by the Grand Forks Herald, is an unfortunate way to kick of Native American Heritage Month at NDSU, but it did not surprise two of the 188 Native students attending the university, which has a total enrollment of more than 14,400.
James Henry, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and Tyrel Iron Eyes, Standing Rock Lakota Sioux, knew of the overt slurs. Iron Eyes is a member of NDSU’s Native American Student Association, and Henry is its former president.
Henry, a mechanical engineering student, encountered the chant four years ago during his first year at the university when he joined his non-Native roommates at a football game. The people beside him started doing the “Sioux suck” chant.
“They kind of looked at me, and they wondered why I wasn’t chanting with them,” he said. Henry bluntly told them why. They were taken aback that he found it racist; to them, “Sioux” was just another sports team and the chant has a long campus history. After he confronted them he says, “They felt ashamed, in a sense.”
An offensive t-shirt labeled ‘Buck the Bison Under’ – Screen capture.
Henry stopped attending NDSU sporting events. Iron Eyes, who plans to study anthropology, also declines to attend.
It was during his freshman year while walking on campus that he first overheard a conversation with one NDSU fan explaining that his favorite part of the games was the “Sioux suck” chant.
“I get that it’s their mascot, but at the same time, it upset me. I used to call people out on it,” Iron Eyes said. Often his fellow non-Native students would stammer through an explanation of why they liked the chant.
“They don’t understand. A lot of people don’t realize that Native Americans still exist today. All they know is the Battle of Little Big Horn. They think we all died on the reservations, or that we never leave the reservations now.”
Both Henry and Iron Eyes agree that leaving their reservations to attend the university in Fargo, a city of about 114,000, has been a stressful transition.
“I am very much in the minority,” Iron Eyes said. “For the first, probably two or three months … I was unaware of other Natives on campus.”
In addition, he says, he went from a high school with a graduating class of 25 and classrooms of 35 students maximum to university classes with 300-plus attending.
“There’s a lot of helpful people on campus, but it’s still very much predominately white. It’s very nerve-wracking,” Henry agreed. “It’s one of the things I struggle with. … I’ve been asked multiple times if I live in a tipi.”
A ‘Blow Us’ T-Shirt from the fan site Bisonville.com – Screen Capture.
A student, Erik Jonasson II, penned an Oct. 6 opinion piece, “The Herd’s Chant: Racism Inside the Dome” for the NDSU Spectrum, the semi-weekly student newspaper, writing “As we sit in the stands cheering on our truly dominant football team, it is hard to not be sickened by this chant.”
The above is pointed to as a hopeful sign, and perhaps it is a bit of one. If you really want to see just how hopeful though, click over and read the comments. “Sioux Sucks Shit” retains its popularity.
Full story here.
Oh yes, lest I forget, the mighty Google did a doodle, and it speaks volumes, just how grateful so many Natives are for such a tiny notice. ASK N NDN: Was a Native Google Doodle Enough? Indian Country Responds.
Credit: C. Ford.
The New York City Stands with Standing Rock Collective then met again and we talked at length about the syllabus and how to curate emergent sections. We want our readers and future teachers to understand that we take Sioux notions of history seriously but came to impasses with certain materials that we wanted to include, but felt inadequate to interpret. So we direct educators and students to the crucial archives of Lakota Winter Counts. One of the founders of the resistance camps at Standing Rock, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, has devoted her life to the interpretation of these counts and any responsible curriculum will point to them and invite students to think about and with them. Recognizing then, our limitations, we volunteered to work with our strengths and to curate specific sections of the syllabus, to take charge of, so to speak, the content and the form. Matthew Chrisler managed the group and ordered the text with Jaskiran Dhillon, New School Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Anthropology who stepped in at certain points to read over entries. Along with Matthew Chrisler, Sheehan Moore, a doctoral student in anthropology at CUNY, organized all of the PDFs to attach to our website for syllabus readers to view and download. In this way, there were multiple eyes on each section as it took shape. We also asked curators to narrow their selections to book chapters and specific articles to further focus the syllabus and keep it accessible for people who would read and download it in short amounts of time. We wanted people to read the syllabus and teach the material, but also to have access to the readings for themselves and their students and/or community members.
Although a “work in progress,” the current #StandingRockSyllabus places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries. The syllabus foregrounds the work of Indigenous and allied activists and scholars: anthropologists, historians, environmental scientists, and legal scholars, all of whom contribute important insights into the conflicts between Indigenous sovereignty and resource extraction. It can be taught in its entirety, or in sections depending on the pedagogic needs. We hope that it will be used in K-12 school settings, community centers, social justice agencies training organizers, university classrooms, legal defense campaigns, social movement and political education workshops, and in the resistance camps at Standing Rock and other similar standoffs across the globe. As we move forward, we anticipate posting lesson plans on our website that will be derived from individuals and communities using the syllabus in their respective locales.
While our primary goal is to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, we recognize that Standing Rock is one frontline of many around the world. This syllabus can be a tool to access research usually kept behind paywalls, or a resource package for those unfamiliar with Indigenous histories and politics. Please share, add, and discuss using the hashtag #StandingRockSyllabus on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. Like those on the frontlines, we are here for as long as it takes.
The #StandingRockSyllabus and accompanying PDFs can be found here.
The full story on the syllabus is here. #StandingRockSyllabus. As Peter D’Errico says:
True to the purpose of digging to the roots of events, “#StandingRockSyllabus places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the frontlines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries.”
Importantly, #StandingRockSyllabus aims for audiences beyond the standard academic world: The authors built it for use “in K-12 school settings, community centers, social justice agencies training organizers, university classrooms, legal defense campaigns, social movement and political education workshops, and in the resistance camps at Standing Rock and other similar standoffs across the globe.”
This is an invaluable opportunity for teachers, please take advantage of it. This is also an invaluable resource and opportunity for those who wish to understand. As this is supposedly Native American Heritage Month (more on that later), spreading this everywhere would be be a great gesture. Lila wopila to all who do. (Many Thanks).
Resist.
There are journalists who are determined to report facts and make a constant effort to disclose the truth. That’s very important right now. Think Progress has started a fund, and if you are able to drop a few pennies, this is a good place to do so.
Video captures an immigrant cab driver reporting an assault by a drunk Michigan man (Screengrab).
A Michigan man shouting “Trump” attacked an immigrant cab driver Saturday, mlive.com reports.
Yemaj Adem, an Ethiopian immigrant, described the rage he encountered last weekend after a man, later identified as Jacob David Holtzlander, jumped into his cab along with five women. Adem said he assumed Hotzlander was with the women, but later discovered otherwise.
According to Adem, Holtzlander—whom Adem said appeared drunk—became agitated when the cab driver informed him his offer of $10 would not be enough to complete the trip.
“The first punch, I was surprised,” Adem told mlive.com. “I’ve never experienced this from a fare. Five years now and I’ve never had an issue.”
“When I heard that Trump word, I knew this was something different,” he added.
Via Raw Story.
[…] Inclusivity and representation aren’t just the responsibility of English and history teachers, said Rifkin, the private school physics teacher. In his class, he’s had students look at the demographics of physicists — a field dominated by white and Asian men —in order to open up conversations about implicit bias, racial privilege, and stereotypes. Both white students and students of color have responded well, he said.
“There was a big spike in the number of white students who say, ‘This makes me more comfortable talking about race, and this makes me recognize that I have advantages in America, and that I can do something with these advantages,’” Rifkin said.
“I saw a big spike in students of color in terms of how comfortable they felt in physics class, and how they identified as a physics students. And that is a slam dunk for me.”
[…]
“There was one white teacher who said, ‘You guys aren’t here to learn. You guys can’t learn. I don’t know why I’m giving you the tests, because you’re not going to do it anyway,” Felder said. “The majority of the students in the middle school were African American, so for a white teacher to say that, that destroys them.”
When you tell students you have high expectations for them, it can influence their academic success, Lauren Mims, the assistant director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, said […]
Think Progress has a good look at educators who are fighting back: These educators aren’t tolerating racism in the classroom.
There aren’t many comments on the article, but they certainly demonstrate how Trumpoids think.
Brittany Daughenbaugh. Facebook.
Brittany Daughenbaugh couldn’t sleep, so the Capital University student decided to go on a Pokemon Go hunt in the early hours of Thursday morning. She had seen the men across Francis Street but paid them no mind. She was on the trail of a good catch.
“Suddenly, they’re behind me,” Daughenbaugh, 20, said Monday. One man wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and the other a “Trump-Pence” sweatshirt.
She said the sweatshirted man grabbed her arm and told her, “Don’t you worry, honey. President Trump says this is OK.” He then punched her in the face and the arm. She fell, hit her head on the pavement and blacked out.
[…]
She wrote a lengthy Facebook post Friday about the attack, in part as a warning to other Capital students to be careful, but also to encourage only nonviolent opposition to the bigotry and aggression.
“Protest and fight, but do it peacefully. Do not burn the flag. Do not vandalize. Do not fight hate with hate,” she wrote. “The only way to fix this is with willpower, passion and love.”
Her post drew scores of comments of support, but one man wrote that the facial bruise in her Facebook photo was a “terrible makeup job.”
“Take your agenda and lies someplace else and quit trying to get attention and smear someone’s name,” he wrote.
Full story at The Columbus Dispatch.
Some bright spots, and boy do we ever need them. I hate sitting down at my desk every morning, because the tide of hatred and bigotry just gets bigger. I’ll be trying to track the resistance as well as all the fascism. I’m sure to miss things, so feel free to let me know about what’s going on.
(Juan, CC BY-NC).
The Southern Poverty Law Center has a very in-depth look, following a survey, on the impact the presidential campaign has had on the nation’s schools, particularly the impact on students, and the impact on teaching. Normally, teachers take advantage of a presidential campaign to teach on a variety of subjects. That’s not the case this time. Many teachers are afraid to bring it up, because of the incitement it causes, which ends in harassment and bullying of some students, and other teachers are at a loss to explain to their students why this campaign was so utterly filthy, with none of the ideals and high standards they are taught about. Many teachers are heartbroken, seeing the profound fear many of their students have, even in kindergarten. The article is a long one, and there’s a .pdf available, and a link to full comments at the main page.
Every four years, teachers in the United States use the presidential election to impart valuable lessons to students about the electoral process, democracy, government and the responsibilities of citizenship.
But, for students and teachers alike, this year’s primary season is starkly different from any in recent memory. The results of an online survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance suggest that the campaign is having a profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms.
It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported.
Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.
Educators are perplexed and conflicted about what to do. They report being stymied by the need to remain nonpartisan but disturbed by the anxiety in their classrooms and the lessons that children may be absorbing from this campaign.
Two responses from teachers illustrate their dilemma. A teacher in Arlington, Virginia, says, “I try to not bring it up since it is so stressful for my students.” Another, in Indianapolis, Indiana, says, “I am at a point where I’m going to take a stand even if it costs me my position.”
Pro-Trump graffiti found at Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Silver Spring, Maryland.
WJLA reported that the vandals struck Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Silver Spring on Saturday night. A sign reaching out to the Hispanic community was defaced to read: “Trump Nation whites only.”
The message was also scrawled on one of the church’s exterior walls.
Church Rector Robert Harvey told WJLA that the church membership consisted of about 80 percent immigrants, including people from more than 50 countries.
“They’re afraid,” Harvey explained, noting that church members were aware of the countless incidents of racism across the country following Trump’s election.
Harvey said that two white men were seen yelling racial slurs at Latina women across the street from the church last week.
Via Raw Story.
New School dorm doors – screen capture.
Students at New York City’s New School — which bills itself as “A Progressive University” — woke Sunday morning to find Nazi symbols scrawled on their doors, reports NY1.
According to the father of one Jewish student whose door was defaced, his daughter has three roommates including one who is also Jewish and another who is Hispanic.
Although security scrubbed the offensive symbols off of four door, students at the school are not taking it lightly.
“It just shows that this can happen anywhere,” said student Nina Houghton. “Hatred is rampant. Anyone can be a victim of it.”
“I think more than anything it felt very violating and personal because it happened in a space where we live, where we hang out, where we sleep,” another student, Ashley Luna added. “It’s the place where we’re supposed to feel the most safe in the city while we’re away from our families.”
Via Raw Story.