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.

Santa Fe: Native Treasures.

Beaded high heel sneakers by Teri Greeves.

Beaded high heel sneakers by Teri Greeves.

In the Hopi creation myth, and most Native American creation myths, we are allowed to be here on this earth but only provided we care for it and treat it with respect.”  – Dan Namingha.

Each year, the Native Treasures Indian Arts Festival brings over 200 Native American artists from 40 tribes and pueblos – each of whom is specially invited by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture – to Santa Fe, New Mexico to display their artistic pottery, jewelry, paintings, glass, stone, bronze, baskets and textiles.

This year the theme is “Mother Earth” and is oftentimes depicted as a turtle in Native American mythology and art which signifies water, good health, long life, patience, determination and peace.

This year’s featured artist at the 12th annual Native Treasures Indian Arts Festival is Dan Namingha. A prolific painter for over 40 years, Namingha, who has been producing earth-friendly, pro-environmental messages for decades, was also awarded the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Living Treasure award for his overall body of work as well as for recognition of artistic excellence and community service.

Full Story Here.

Offended by the Redskins?: An Indian Country Twitter Poll.

vincent_schilling1_0

As some of you know, The Washington Post recently ran a story on Thursday about a poll of 504 people which indicated that 90% of Native Americans are not offended by the Washington Redskins name.

Shortly after the article, I tweeted the hashtag #IAmNativeIWasNotAsked, which trended on Thursday night.

[…]

It’s true that some Native people say they are not offended by the Redskins name, but in my experience, they are rare. I have also been told on numerous occasions where I was asked to appear on television, online or on national radio to discuss the Redskins, the organizers and producers had an extremely difficult time finding a Native person who approved of the Redskins name.

The Washington Post says they spoke to a random selection of 504 Native American people. In a country with 566 federally recognized reservations (not including the Pamunkey up for Federal and the multitude of State or unrecognized tribes) this roughly equates to less than one person per federally recognized tribe.

According to the Post’s numbers, available here interestingly, the percentages reflected in 2016 are identical to the poll numbers from the National Annenberg Election Survey from 2004.

A Twitter Poll

I know this is not “scientific,” or acceptable standards for a national poll, but a simple Twitter poll I created Thursday evening at 11:59 pm est generated 200 responses in just a few hours. As of Friday afternoon, 83% of those people say they are offended by the Redskins name.

Full Article Here. Vincent Schilling talks about this specific issue in his ‘No I Won’t Just Move On’ Hashtag: Why I Made It, We Need It Column.

21.

Chester A. Arthur, 20th president of the United States, viewed cultural diversity as a threat to the country.

Chester A. Arthur, 20th president of the United States, viewed cultural diversity as a threat to the country.

Chester A. Arthur viewed cultural diversity as a threat to America.

The 20th president of the United States, Arthur took office in September 1881, after the assassination of James Garfield. He inherited a country still wrangling over civil rights for African Americans, and bristling with anti-immigration sentiment.

The animosity was particularly pronounced in the West, where large populations of immigrants and Native Americans lived, said Tom Sutton, a professor of political science at Baldwin Wallace University and author of a chapter about Arthur in the 2016 bookThe Presidents and the Constitution.

“The country was growing more diverse, more industrialized, and out West, we were starting to get to the end of the development of the frontier,” Sutton said. “Arthur wanted consistency in population. He had this idea that everyone needed to be assimilated into American society, and those who couldn’t assimilate were excluded.”

[…]

The federal government used similar anti-immigration language to exclude Native Americans, who were not considered citizens. Indians were required to go through a naturalization process similar to that of immigrants in order to qualify for the same rights and protections as other citizens.

“Arthur wanted what he thought was best for Native Americans—this idea that they needed to be assimilated into American society,” Sutton said. “In terms of citizenship, we continued to treat them as foreign nations, so they had to go through a naturalization process.”

This applied even to Indians born in the United States who voluntarily separated themselves from their tribes.

In 1880, a Winnebago Indian born on a reservation in Nebraska tried to register to vote. In a case that reached the Supreme Court in 1885, John Elk claimed he surrendered his tribal allegiance and was therefore a U.S. citizen. His claims were denied, and the high court ruled that Indians were not considered citizens until after they had been “naturalized, or taxed, or recognized as a citizen either by the United States or by the state.”

Arthur, who had natural empathy for the plight of American Indians, did little to protect them from oppression. Instead, he viewed assimilation as the answer to what he called the “great permanent problem.”

Full Article Here.

Six Indigenous Films Funded.

Vision Maker Media website.

Vision Maker Media website.

Vision Maker Media (VMM) has announced financial support for six new projects for production by and about Native Americans.

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media’s Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement. […] “The goal of the Public Media Content Fund is to increase the diversity of voices available to PBS viewers,” said Shirley K. Sneve (Rosebud Sioux), executive director of Vision Maker Media.

The final slate of documentaries funded this year represents Native voices and stories from across the United States, including Alaska, California, Illinois, Montana, Oklahoma and Washington, some documentaries will cover stories coast-to-coast. In this funding cycle, 66 percent of the filmmakers are women, 33 percent are male; 66 percent are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe.

Funding was awarded as 75 percent production, 19 percent post-production and completion and 6 percent new media.

The projects are:

ATTLA

Catharine Axley

Production | 100,000

ATTLA tells the gripping story of George Attla, an Alaska Native dogsled racer who, with just one good leg – childhood tuberculosis left him with a lame leg – and a determined mindset, became a legendary sports hero among both western and Native communities across the country.

Kendra (Working Title)

Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet/Salish)

Production | 100,000

What does blood have to do with identity? Kendra Mylnechuk, an adult Native adoptee born in 1980 at the cusp of the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act, is on a journey to reconnect with her birth family and discover her Lummi heritage.

The Blackfeet Flood

Ben Shors, Lailani Upham (Blackfeet/Sisseton Wahpeton/Gros Ventre)

Production | $73,484

More than a half-century after the worst disaster in Montana history, two Blackfeet families struggle to come to terms with the 1964 flood. While one family held on to their rural lifestyle, the flood scattered the other family across the U.S.

Words From A Bear: The Enigmatic Life of Author N. Scott Momaday

Jeffrey Palmer (Kiowa)

Production | 115,000

Words From A Bear examines the enigmatic life and mind of Pulitzer-Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday. The biography delves into the psyche, ancestry and writings of one of Native America’s most celebrated authors of poetry and prose.

Keep Talking

Karen Weinberg, Kartemquin Films

Post-Production | 100,000

Kodiak Alutiiq Elders of Alaska’s Gulf Coast are victims of systematic assimilation and abuse, first by Russian occupation, then by the United States government. Now with less than 50 fluent Native speakers of Kodiak Alutiiq remaining, three young Alutiiq women battle the resulting historical trauma and discover that saving their language is truly a matter of life and death.

In the Beginning was Water and Sky

Mackenzie Gruer (Tyendinaga Mohawk), Ryan Ward (Métis)

New Media | $30,000

In the Beginning was Water and Sky is a short-form New Media project that tells two parallel stories about a Chippewa boy who runs away from Indian Boarding School in the 1950s and a Chippewa girl who runs away from her village in the 1700s.

ICTMN has the full story.

WaPo’s new Redsk*ns survey: Faulty data and missing the point.

AP_207887703562-1024x693

CREDIT: Carolyn Kaster, AP

This morning I woke up to phone notifications. Blinking awake, I clicked over to twitter on my phone, and was greeted with the news: “New poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans aren’t offended by Redskins name.” I sat up, let the phone fall in my lap, and said some choice words that I won’t print here.

The Washington Post has apparently devoted a lot of time and resources to conducting a “nationally representative” poll of “Native Americans” to find out whether or not they find the Redsk*ns name offensive. In their survey of 504 “Native Americans,” they found that 90% did not find the name offensive. They published a follow up  that gives the details on the survey and answers some FAQ.

Before I dive in, a note: This is not something I should have to do. For the last 7 years I’ve been writing this blog we’ve made huge gains in the way the public thinks about Native peoples and Native mascots. It’s been the hard, hard work of a huge community of activists and community members for decades, and I just don’t understand why WaPo felt the need to do this poll. More on this in a minute, but we’ve got psychological studies, tribal council votes, thousands of Native voices, and common decency and respect on our side, yet that was not enough. The Washington Post needed their OWN survey. The perspectives of Native peoples, who this effects directly, apparently aren’t enough.

So the poll. WaPo has generously provided (that’s not sarcasm) the actual questions, the breakdown by demographics for each, so feel free to explore. Look here.

This is where I want to focus my attention: 56 percent of this “nationally representative sample of Native Americans” was non-Native. I need you to understand this. 56% of the sample has no tribal affiliation.

Dr. Adrienne Keene’s Full Article Here.

20.

Courtesy Whitehouse.gov Thirteen years before he took office as president of the United States, James Abram Garfield predicted the extinction of the American Indian.

Courtesy Whitehouse.gov
Thirteen years before he took office as president of the United States, James Abram Garfield predicted the extinction of the American Indian.

Thirteen years before he took office as president of the United States, James Abram Garfield predicted the extinction of the American Indian.

“The race of the red men will… before many generations be remembered only as a strange, weird, dreamlike specter, which once passed before the eyes of men, but had departed forever,” he said in 1868 when, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he proposed a bill that would transfer Indian Affairs from the Interior Department to the War Department.

The Indians had unpronounceable names, crude clothing and habits of “roaming,” Garfield said. He called it a “mockery… for the representatives of the great Government of the United States to sit down in a wigwam and make treaties with a lot of painted and half naked savages.”

[…]

Garfield spoke despairingly about the future of the Indians, believing nothing could be done to stop “the passage of that sad race down to the oblivion to which a larger part of them seem to be so certainly tending.” Perhaps, he concluded, it was best to let the Indians slip into extinction “as quietly and humanely as possible.”

Full Story Here.

Art Exhibition Reeks of Cultural Appropriation.

Courtesy Douglas Flanders and Associates An art exhibition in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is causing a stir over the artist's use of Native American imagery.

Courtesy Douglas Flanders and Associates
An art exhibition in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is causing a stir over the artist’s use of Native American imagery.

For over 200 years, non-Natives have appropriated Native American culture for their own intents and purposes. The sphere is wide when it comes to the misuse of Native American culture; appropriation can be seen in sports mascots, fashion and design, product logos; the list goes on and on. The problem with this current mainstream model is that it denies Indigenous people the right to represent their own lifeways and worldview.

The show “Scott Seekins, the New Eden” at the Douglas Flanders and Associates Art Gallery, is being touted as Seekins response to the “Great Sioux Uprising of 1862.” Seekins’s “body of work as an alternative to Minnesota’s tepid 2012 150-year remembrance,” as the gallery touts on its website, is problematic in its interpretation, as it reeks of Native appropriation, and lacks a Native voice.

Scott Seekins, a mainstay of the Minneapolis art scene, is best known for his eccentric dress and demeanor as opposed to the quality of his work. This particular collection of Seekins’s work imitates historic Plains style of drawing (erroneously referred to as ledger art), where he replicates scenes, moves the images around, and inserts himself in a sort of Forrest Gump manner. To be clear, Plains style drawings were a warrior’s record of bravery against the enemy, hunting scenes, courtship, and ceremonial life, these accounts were drawn in accountant ledgers and sketchbooks.

Seekins’s work is the quintessential example of cultural appropriation.

In Seekins’s painting, a clear replica of John Casper Wild’s “Watercolor Painting of Fort Snelling,” (1884), Seekins portrays himself guiding a non-Native woman holding a baby, in the background there are tipis and the fort on the bluff. In another drawing created in the historic Plains graphic style, a Native man has defeated an enemy Calvary, while Seekins, wearing his iconic suit, stands with his arms raised. By placing himself in these historical scenes he positions himself as a mediator and witness. By doing this he disregards the Native American narrative. Considering that this is one of the worst tragedies between the United States Government and American Indians, the U.S. Dakota War of 1862 and its aftermath has had a long lasting impact on the descendants of the Dakota that died. Many Dakota died at Fort Snelling and on the gallows in Mankato, their descendants carry the spirit of their Ancestors with them, they live among us, they are part of us, they are an important part of the Minnesota narrative.

You can read the rest of Joe D. Horse Capture’s article at ICTMN.

19.

Courtesy whitehouse.gov “Hayes started out his term believing in the reservation system, then he realized that Natives weren’t going to stay on reservations and white settlers wouldn’t stay off their land.”

Courtesy whitehouse.gov
“Hayes started out his term believing in the reservation system, then he realized that Natives weren’t going to stay on reservations and white settlers wouldn’t stay off their land.”

Rutherford B. Hayes’ four years in the White House, from 1877 to 1881, marked a distinct change in federal Indian policy, as the government moved away from forced removal of Indians to reservations and toward a system that allotted land to individuals.

Billed as a solution to the government’s insatiable hunger for land, Hayes’ policies reduced the size of reservations and called for acculturation of Indians into Western society. His strategies, which came amid ongoing conflicts with Indian nations, also included approval of the first Indian boarding school.

[…]

In his second message to Congress, in December 1878, Hayes pledged to “purify” the Indian Bureau and establish “just and humane” Indian policies that would preserve peace. His “ultimate solution to what is called the Indian problem,” however, was to “curb the unruly spirit of the savage Indian” and train them to be agriculturists or herdsmen.

“It may be impossible to raise them fully up to the level of the white population of the United States; but we should not forget that they are the aborigines of the country, and called the soil their own on which our people have grown rich, powerful, and happy,” Hayes told Congress. “We owe it to them as a moral duty to help them in attaining at least that degree of civilization which they may be able to reach.”

[…]

During his four years in office, Hayes issued several executive orders creating new reservations and reducing the size of existing reservations. The most drastic was the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, which was cut from 7.8 million acres to 1.2 million.

Hayes’ actions came as Indian nations, fed up with forced removal and encroachment of white settlers, fought back. These battles included the Nez Perce War in 1877, the Bannock War in 1878 and the Ute and White River wars, both in 1879.

[…]

Hayes also called for the education of Indian youth. In 1878, he supported establishment of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in eastern Pennsylvania. The flagship Indian boarding school, Carlisle was the brainchild of Capt. Richard Henry Pratt, who notoriously plotted to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Carlisle opened in October 1879.

The full article is here.

The Carlisle Indian School is still in the news, and an ongoing issue.

Boarding School Healing Coalition Captain Richard Pratt designed boarding schools to transform the Indian into the white man’s image. His first was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Boarding School Healing Coalition
Captain Richard Pratt designed boarding schools to transform the Indian into the white man’s image. His first was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

In a clearing closer and less honored, on the grounds of what is now the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, lie nearly 200 children; gone, but never forgotten; casualties of a federal policy to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” A leading architect of that policy, former cavalry officer Richard Henry Pratt, founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School on these grounds in 1879 on a model of military training.

Full Story: US Army Pledges to Bear Full Cost of Returning Carlisle Remains.

Fake a film, win an award.

Last year, Canadian filmmaker Dominic Gagnon released a 74-minute film entitled “Of The North.” The film is a collage of the life of Inuit people using film clips the director says he took from public video sites such as Youtube.

Last year, Canadian filmmaker Dominic Gagnon released a 74-minute film entitled “Of The North.” The film is a collage of the life of Inuit people using film clips the director says he took from public video sites such as Youtube.

Last year, Canadian filmmaker Dominic Gagnon released a 74-minute film entitled Of The North. The film is a collage of the life of Inuit people using film clips the director says he took from public video sites such as Youtube.

[…]

Of the North has been screened at the Montreal International Documentary Festival, the Prizren festival of Kosovo, Leeds in Great Britain, the Film Festival of Rotterdam, the Distrital festival of Mexico City and it won an award at the prestigious Visions du Réel festival in Nyon, Switzerland.

[…]

The film has drawn tremendous criticism, because Gagnon has never been to the Northern territories and his film shows only selected segments of Inuit life, such as extreme weather, Ski-doos and hunting, and also shows drunk people, crashing vehicles and some sexually explicit scenes.

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, an Inuk and a documentary filmmaker, told the CBC Gagnon’s film left her shaking.

“Violent, wandering drunks that neglect their children and don’t care for the lives of animals: that’s the image I took away from the film. I think it’s kind of a cheap move to totally play up a negative stereotype of a marginalized people for your own artistic gain,” she said.

Gagnon used the music of Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq in his film; she  told the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) she was “disgusted” by the festival’s decision to screen Of the North, a film she says is racist and used her music without permission.

[…]

Thirty-four of the videos are not made by Inuit, and not from the North, like the men fighting on the floor: this sequence was shot in Austin Texas, and they are not Inuit. The videos of the industrial off-shore drilling are in the Baltic sea. It is misleading, as the trailer suggests that Inuit are working on the oil drill, which is not true. Then he is mocking Inuit identity in a music clip, “don’t call me Eskimo.” The term “Eskimo” is derogative. It is a Cree word, they used it as an insult to the Inuit.

Adding what I said in a comment:

You need to read the full story, where it’s made clear that assholes like Gagnon could get away with this because the Inuit have next to no resources when it comes to communicating with the wider world. Efforts have started, and small headway has been made, but this is a poor community, with pretty much no one giving a damn about them. It’s even worse when you realize this piece of fakery won a fucking award – people else where in the world don’t know, and unless they make a serious effort to find out the truth, this bullshit will be taken for truth, screaming the old standard of Indians everywhere being drunken, savage brutes, and in the case of women, drunken whores not interested in any children they may have. This was a bone deep shock to Inuit people, who know the truth of their lives, and what is in this piece of fakery is not it. When the average American and the average Canadian doesn’t know jack shit about Indigenous peoples, what can be expected of those who live in Britain, Switzerland, and so on? It’s bad enough that people often romanticize the idea of Indians, in a completely unrealistic way, and here comes along someone who decided to make a profit through exploitation and theft.

ICTMN has the full story.

Remember Those Buried at Hiawatha Asylum

Courtesy South Dakota Historical Society Though many attempts have been made to lock up Indians, none are as notorious and depraved as what happened at the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians.

Courtesy South Dakota Historical Society
Though many attempts have been made to lock up Indians, none are as notorious and depraved as what happened at the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians.

Construction of the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians by the Bureau of Indian Affairs began in Canton, South Dakota in 1901.

“When Western doctors first entered Indian country, they brought with them a Christian-informed, European Enlightenment belief in madness as illness in the body—that is, the belief that loss of one’s reasoning ability came about through defects in the body, specifically, the brain,” says David Edward Walker in a past ICTMN piece. “Very soon, the now-abandoned psychiatric label, lunatic, was being applied to resistant, overwhelmed or merely displaced Native people who were the victims of colonization and oppression.”

But Native Americans didn’t have to be insane to be committed, as Walker points out. “To be destitute was the only universal criteria for admission. Whether he or she was drunk, angry or strange, or merely very poor, there was little distinction made when confining this newly-minted Crazy Indian.”

[…]

On Sunday, June 5 at noon an Honoring and Remembering Ceremony will be held for the 53 tribes across 17 states with ancestors buried at the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians Cemetery.

The ceremony will include traditional prayers with Joe Shields, Yankton Sioux Elder, and David Grignon, director of the Menominee Tribe’s Tribal Historic Preservation Office in Wisconsin, as well as traditional drums and songs with Haystack Butte, Yankton Sioux Tribe.

Lavanah Smith-Judah, Yankton Sioux Tribe, will do a Who Will Sing My Name Prayer Ribbon Ceremony, and Yankton Sioux Veteran’s Honor Guard will offer a tribute. There will also be a 21 Bow and Arrow Salute.

Full Story Here. You can read more about the Hiawatha Asylum here.