The why of the “holiday”.

Christopher Columbus. Sebastiano del Piombo/Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikipedia.

Christopher Columbus. Sebastiano del Piombo/Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikipedia.

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” is the poem many elementary schoolchildren learn, but how did a man who stole, raped, enslaved, and never even landed on Turtle Island get his own holiday?

According to History.com and the Library of Congress, the first celebration of Columbus Day took place on the 300th anniversary of his first voyage on October 12 1792, when New York’s Columbian Order—also known as the Society of St. Tammany—held an event to commemorate the anniversary of Columbus’s landing. After that, various celebrations around the country started popping up to honor Columbus’s Italian and Catholic heritage. Then, on the 400th anniversary of his landing, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation encouraging people to “cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.”

The proclamation went on to call Columbus a “pioneer of progress and enlightenment,” and said, “Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”

[Read more…]

For Indigenous Peoples Day, Write to Columbus.

Tomahawk Greyeyes/YouTube Deezbaa Andrea O’hare reads a letter to Columbus written by Corrina Gould. Tell Columbus how you feel in your own letter.

Tomahawk Greyeyes/YouTube
Deezbaa Andrea O’hare reads a letter to Columbus written by Corrina Gould. Tell Columbus how you feel in your own letter.

Have something you want to tell Christopher Columbus and think there is no way to get it off your chest? Tomahawk Greyeyes, Navajo, has just the thing, an artivist project that calls for letters to Columbus on Indigenous Peoples Day.

The Letters to Columbus will be gathered and some will be shared with the world online and some will be read and performed on YouTube.

Greyeyes calls this a “socially engaged art project about expressing the rage that comes from colonization.” He launched the project on October 12, 2015, gathered letters and took them to read aloud at the Columbus statue that faces the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco.

“You [Columbus] are being charged with genocide, ethnocide, colonization, slavery, rape of people and lands, destruction of the Mother Earth, stealing, maiming, and continued perpetration of lies,” reads Corrina Gould’s (Karkin and Chochoenyo Ohlone) letter to Columbus. “When found guilty your name will be stricken from all histories as a hero.”

Here the full letter, performed by Deezbaa Andrea O’hare, Navajo, below:

One-page letters are due by October 10, and can be submitted to letterstocolumbus@gmail.com.

Via ICTMN.

Killer Cop Defense: Auditory Exclusion.

Tulsa Police officer Betty Shelby, right, being escorted into court for an early proceeding in her upcoming manslaughter trial in the killing of Terence Crutcher. CREDIT: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File.

Tulsa Police officer Betty Shelby, right, being escorted into court for an early proceeding in her upcoming manslaughter trial in the killing of Terence Crutcher. CREDIT: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File.

The visual evidence of Terence Crutcher’s murder by Officer Betty Shelby was so clear, and so overwhelming, there was no choice when it came to prosecuting her. The sheer obviousness of her guilt has led her lawyers to trying out something new. It’s a twinkie defense, that’s clear, but we should all remember that juries will buy a twinkie defense, especially if they want to, which will most likely happen in this case.

…It will probably be a long time before Shelby sees the inside of a courtroom. But her lawyers are already previewing her case in the media — and Shelby’s attorneys have a strange argument they’ll use in her defense.

Shelby had no idea her backup was right behind her, prepared to subdue Crutcher with a less-lethal taser, the lawyers are saying, because she was temporarily deaf due to the stress of the situation. The law enforcement community calls it “auditory exclusion.”

“She didn’t hear the gunshot, didn’t hear the sirens coming up behind her just prior to the shot,” defense lawyer Scott Wood told the Associated Press last week. Auditory exclusion is “the no. 1 perceptual distortion by people I have represented who have been involved in shootings,” he added.

Wood’s scientific-sounding argument will make Betty Shelby’s ears a strange new battlefield in the struggle to reform American law enforcement. If her lawyers manage to present “auditory exclusion” as hard science, her trial will mark a step toward allowing the use of a cloud of medical-sounding jargon to obscure the implicit racial biases that cops carry to explain a killing that has all the hallmarks of the epidemic of biased policing of black people.

Is “Auditory Exclusion” Science or Subjectivity?

 

Professor Philip Stinson, a former cop and criminal lawyer who now teaches at Bowling Green State University, maintains the most comprehensive database anywhere on police officer prosecutions for killing civilians. Out of 77 officers charged with murder or manslaughter for killing a civilian since the start of 2005, he said, none appears to have argued in court that “auditory exclusion” excused their actions.

“From my standpoint, it’s completely nuts,” Stinson told ThinkProgress. “I don’t see this being admissible at all.”

But researchers diverge on whether people can go temporarily deaf under duress.

Those ThinkProgress reached who study the brain’s physiology said they know of no research supporting it. “Stress does all sorts of things to sensory systems,” wrote Stanford neurologist Dr. Robert Sapolsky, “but the idea of deafening is ludicrous.” Dr. Andrew Steptoe at University College London, who studies “peritraumatic dissociation” during episodes of intense fear or stress, said the idea is plausible “but I know of no solid evidence for this.”

But approached from a psychologist’s perspective, the theory is better grounded. Penn State Behrend associate professor Melanie Hetzel-Riggin said it helps to imagine the difference between hardware and software here.

“On the hardware side, they’re right, there’s probably no physiological problem in that your hearing itself is fine. What’s happening is the info isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “It is possible, although I’m unaware of any research supporting this one way or the other, that during that experience of threat your hearing could be focusing on that and not anything else going on around you.”

[…]

Police training materials are commonly designed to neutralize the panic psychology that Shelby’s lawyers hope will exonerate her. Simulations like the “force option simulator” at San Diego Regional Law Enforcement Training Center are in widespreaduse.

With public pressure for reform mounting over the past couple years, police departments have invited reporters to try their hand at the simulators as part of a PR offensive.

The reporter sessions illustrate how your average geek off the street would struggle with the stresses of the job, to be sure. But the point of the training is to ensure cops are better than us at this stuff. The people whom society entrusts with deadly force and unique authority are supposed to know how to avoid such dangerous responses to something that overloads our brain’s fight-flight instincts. Police academies traditionally give 13 times as much attention to training officers to handle violent situations professionally as to deescalation practices.

“The good thing about police officers and other people who are emergency responders is they have all this training to make it muscle memory, to make it automatic,” said Hetzel-Riggin.

“There are many situations that are going to be perceived as less threatening, because police officers have the training, the practice.”

With all that training, there’s only one thing left – implicit bias. And all too often, when it comes to cops, explicit bias. It’s a problem everyone is tip-toeing around, and it’s the one problem which desperately needs to be addressed. Way more than enough people have been murdered by cops.

Full story is at Think Progress.

Standing Rock (Inyan Woslata).

Standing Rock Joins the World’s Indigenous Fighting for Land and Life.

 

Frank Cooper and Kaya Littleturtle of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina greet Sami representatives from Norway, Inger Biret, Kvernmo Gaup, and Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska on Friday. Desiree Kane.

Frank Cooper and Kaya Littleturtle of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina greet Sami representatives from Norway, Inger Biret, Kvernmo Gaup, and Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska on Friday. Desiree Kane.

From Paris to Standing Rock It’s the Climate Choices Ahead.

 

President Barack Obama congratulates Senior Advisor Brian Deese on the first day of the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change, in the Oval Office, Oct. 5, 2016. Deese worked with Secretary of State John Kerry and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to make the agreement possible. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough watches at left. Pete Souza/White House.

President Barack Obama congratulates Senior Advisor Brian Deese on the first day of the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change, in the Oval Office, Oct. 5, 2016. Deese worked with Secretary of State John Kerry and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to make the agreement possible. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough watches at left. Pete Souza/White House.

Militarization and Mistaken Identity: Police Crack Down on DAPL Protectors.

 

An increasingly militarized police presence is cracking down via video and other technology to identify and arrest water protectors at Dakota Access pipeline construction sites—even when they're not present. Mary Annette Pember.

An increasingly militarized police presence is cracking down via video and other technology to identify and arrest water protectors at Dakota Access pipeline construction sites—even when they’re not present. Mary Annette Pember.

Dalrymple has managed to “borrow” up to 6 million dollars from a state owned bank, to feed police to protect people from the scary Indians and allies.  And Kirchmeier is planning to call on cops in Laramie, Wyoming, to come here and “help”.  I’m furious and disgusted.

Tribal Leaders Speak at DC #NoDAPL Rally.

 

All via ICTMN.

Standing Rock: Cops Continue to Lie.

Courtesy Sacred Stone Camp Police raise weapons and approach unarmed water protectors at a peaceful action on September 28, 2016

Courtesy Sacred Stone Camp
Police raise weapons and approach unarmed water protectors at a peaceful action on September 28, 2016

 

A police officer raises his weapon at unarmed water protector. Courtesy Leland Dick.

A police officer raises his weapon at unarmed water protector. Courtesy Leland Dick.

 

Women plant willow tree seedlings in the path of Dakota Access construction on September 25. Courtesy Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).

Women plant willow tree seedlings in the path of Dakota Access construction on September 25. Courtesy Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN).

As I wrote in this post, cops are getting increasingly worrisome here in Ndakota. Sarah Sunshine Manning has a column up at ICTMN, please go read, and more importantly, share! We need help getting the truth out, and countering the increasing amount of lies coming from cops and oil corps.

Last week, water protectors from the camps near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, engaged in peaceful non-violent direct action at three different Dakota Access Construction sites. And despite the peaceful and prayerful atmosphere at all three sites, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department quickly released a statement alleging that the demonstration turned violent, and that one unidentified Dakota Access security worker was assaulted by “protestors” as knives and guns were wielded.

Water protectors on the ground vehemently refute this claim, and they contend that the allegations of the Morton County Sheriff’s Department are completely fabricated.

Still, just days later on September 28, police confronted water protectors with armored police vehicles blocking the road, and with shotguns drawn, as water protectors gathered for another peaceful action.

The unarmed water protectors reported being terrified, and many made frantic and fearful pleas over social media calling for support and help.

“Please share and make everyone aware!” Linda Black Elk posted on Facebook. “COPS WITH GUNS DRAWN APPROACHING UNARMED PEACEFUL PROTECTORS.”

For many water protectors, social media has become a means of documenting actions in order to counter the continued false narratives of the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.

The tactics of the Morton County Sheriff’s Department and Dakota Access continue a tragically predictable pattern of villainizing peaceful protests in order to justify excessive police, security and military presence.

It is critical that the voices of water protectors on the ground be elevated.

Nick Tilsen, an organizer and executive director for Thunder Valley CDC, was among those present at the prayerful action Sunday as well as the action where the alleged violence occurred; the same alleged violence that prompted excessive police force later in the week.

In an interview with Sonali Kolhatkar of the show “Rising Up with Sonali,” Tilsen said of the accusations of violence and the attack on a security worker “is 100-percent wrong. This false accusation is totally made up.”

Tilsen said the allegations were nothing more than propaganda.

“By the time we got to the construction site, all of the workers had packed up and left, because they saw us walking for a quarter of a mile,” Tilsen said. “We actually didn’t have interaction with the security guards or interaction with the workers that day.”

According to water protectors and journalists on the ground, all actions that day were peaceful. Additionally, women, children and elders continue to be among those standing in prayer for water and life.

The first peaceful action on September 25 took place much earlier than the action where the alleged violence took place. This earlier action was at a Dakota Access construction site in South Dakota, where a handful of water protectors gathered before daylight and strung over a thousand small prayer ties across Dakota Access machinery.

The full article, and more images is here. If you are able, please, please share, get this news out, get it everywhere, we need help with this.

Britain: Human Rights, Just Vexatious Claims.

British Prime Minister Theresa May. AFP.

British Prime Minister Theresa May. AFP.

London (dpa) – The British government on Tuesday announced measures to end “vexatious” claims against its troops, saying it planned to remove the application of European human rights law to future conflicts.

“Over the past decade a series of court judgments have extended the extra-territorial jurisdiction of the European Convention on Human Rights to the battlefield,” the government said in a statement.

Exempting British troops from the human rights convention will protect them “from the kind of persistent legal claims that have followed recent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on an industrial scale,” it said.

“It will help to protect our troops from vexatious claims, ensuring they can confidently take difficult decisions on the battlefield,” Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said.

Fallon said the change will allow Britain “to spend more of our growing defence budget on equipment for them rather than fees for lawyers.”

“Combined with the biggest defence budget in Europe, the action we are laying out today means we will continue to play our part on the world stage, protecting UK interests across the globe,” Prime Minister Theresa May said.

Opting out of human rights during war. Why is this an “opt out” situation? Soldiers, regardless of what side of anything they find themselves on, often commit despicable acts, that’s hardly any sort of secret. There has to be some way to stop full scale despicable acts, at the very least, acknowledging that everyone on a field is human, and has fundamental rights is one small way to keep people accountable, but now it’s opt out. I am appalled.

Via Raw Story.

Ride Against the Current of the Oil.

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Honorearth.org

Honorearth.org

Ride for Our Sacred Water – STOP Dakota Access!

From October 8-13, Honor the Earth is proud to join forces with the Wounded Knee Memorial Riders, the Dakota 38 and Big Foot riders, and many horse nation societies, in a spiritual horse ride to protect our sacred waters from the Dakota Access pipeline and all the black snakes that threaten our lands.

Thousands have come together in a historic gathering of tribes at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, where Dakota Access threatens a concentration sacred sites and the water source of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, as well as the 18 million people downstream.

This is our moment. Tribes and First Nations are standing up and standing together to demand an end to the desecration of our lands and the poisoning of our sacred waters…to demand a better future for our people. We are the river, and the river is us.

On October 8th we will gather at the Standing Rock encampment, and ride against the current of the oil.

Please stand with us. We need your support.  For more info, visit www.honorearth.org/mniwiconi

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about that Standing Rock to Tioga, it means Tioga, ND, which styles itself as ‘The Oil Capital of North Dakota’.

This reminds me of another embarrassing white person moment at the camps last week. The Dakota 38 were expected, and we were hoping to see them. A white woman laughed and shrugged, saying “I mean, I don’t even know what that is. What is the Dakota 38.” Yeah, okay, I know the ‘history’ taught in uStates is a whitewashed mess, but still…

Even if you’re just a solidarity tourist, try to not only be respectful, but try to learn. Aaaand, this is the internet age, how hard is it? The Dakota 38, the largest mass execution in the history of the United States. A criminal injustice, perpetrated in Mankato, Minnesota.

20101222_dakota-hanging1_33

Tipi-hdo-niche, Forbids His Dwelling

Wyata-tonwan, His People

Taju-xa, Red Otter

Hinhan-shoon-koyag-mani, Walks Clothed in an Owl’s Tail

Maza-bomidu, Iron Blower

Wapa-duta, Scarlet Leaf

Wahena, translation unknown

Sna-mani, Tinkling Walker

Radapinyanke, Rattling Runner

Dowan niye, The Singer

Xunka ska, White Dog

Hepan, family name for a second son

Tunkan icha ta mani, Walks With His Grandfather

Ite duta, Scarlet Face

Amdacha, Broken to Pieces

Hepidan, family name for a third son

Marpiya te najin, Stands on a Cloud (Cut Nose)

Henry Milord (French mixed-blood)

Dan Little, Chaska dan, family name for a first son (this may be We-chank-wash-ta-don-pee, who had been pardoned and was mistakenly executed when he answered to a call for “Chaska,” reference to a first son; fabric artist Gwen Westerman did a quilt called “Caske’s Pardon” based on him.

Baptiste Campbell, (French mixed-blood)

Tate kage, Wind Maker

Hapinkpa, Tip of the Horn

Hypolite Auge (French mixed-blood)

Nape shuha, Does Not Flee

Wakan tanka, Great Spirit

Tunkan koyag I najin, Stands Clothed with His Grandfather

Maka te najin, Stands Upon Earth

Pazi kuta mani, Walks Prepared to Shoot

Tate hdo dan, Wind Comes Back

Waxicun na, Little Whiteman (this young white man, adopted by the Dakota at an early age and who was acquitted, was hanged, according to the Minnesota Historical Society U.S.-Dakota War website).

Aichaga, To Grow Upon

Ho tan inku, Voice Heard in Returning

Cetan hunka, The Parent Hawk

Had hin hda, To Make a Rattling Noise

Chanka hdo, Near the Woods

Oyate tonwan, The Coming People

Mehu we mea, He Comes for Me

Wakinyan na, Little Thunder

Wakanozanzan and Shakopee: These two chiefs who fled north after the war, were kidnapped from Canada in January 1864 and were tried and convicted in November that year and their executions were approved by President Andrew Johnson (after Lincoln’s assassination) and they were hanged November 11, 1865.

You can read more about the Dakota 38 + 2 here and here. Also, here.

Amnesty International Smacks Kirchmeier.

Via Facebook.

Via Facebook.

Amnesty International has turned their attention to Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, an incompetent bigot who has repeatedly run to media with reports of pipe bombs, guns, knives, and violence in the camps at Standing Rock, and has been proven wrong every time, but he continues to do this. With the last peaceful direct action being met with armored vehicles, cops in armored riot gear and wielding assault rifles at people who were planting corn and willow, he once again shows his plain desire to rain down violence and destruction on peaceful people. He managed to restrain himself to arresting 21 people. I have mentioned our surprise at seeing a monstrous, shiny, new mobile command center hulking behind silos, last week on our way into camp. Kirchmeier has all the shiny, militarized goodies, and it’s apparent that he’s just aching to use them. Not once has he or his force bothered to protect the Standing Rock Protectors, he refused to stop the attack and assault by private goons, but instead chose to run to the media with stories of those poor, beset upon goons and their vicious animals. Indians? Oh, who cares about them?

Kirchmeier has been trying, every day, to amp things up, and it’s getting very worrying now, because all it will take is one moment, one loss of control, one bullet fired. Ndakota doesn’t offer much opportunity for “action”, the kind of action a strutting chicken like Kirchmeier would like to see. I get the feeling he sees this as one chance for some of that glorious cop action, a story to end his days on. This man is dangerous because he is weak, and too in love with those shiny, militarized toys.

Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier
Morton County Sheriff’s Department

28 September 2016

Dear Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier:

Following the protests that took place at a Dakota Access Pipeline construction site on 3 September, we are writing to ask you to investigate the use of force by private contractors, remove blockades and discontinue the use of riot gear by Morton County Sheriff’s deputies when policing protests in order to facilitate the right to peaceful protests in accordance with international law and standards.

[Read more…]

Stand with Standing Rock.

43

Winona LaDuke has an excellent column up at ICTMN, and an excellent article in Yes! too, What Would Sitting Bull Do? 

Excerpts here, please, click and read the full stories.

[…] There is more than just a $3.9 billion pipeline at stake here. This is about constitutional rights, and human rights. This time, instead of the Seventh Cavalry, or Indian police dispatched to assassinate Sitting Bull, Governor Dalrymple seeks to spend over $7.8 million militarizing the state to put down the Lakota and their allies. This is not going to happen. We are a strong and principled people. As of today, 69 people have been arrested, including Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II and Councilmember Dana Yellowfat. The people have physically stopped construction for weeks. And the battle is just beginning. I am watching history repeat itself, and wondering how badly Dalrymple really wants that pipeline.

[…]

This is our plan: Three of Honor the Earth’s primary staff have essentially moved to Standing Rock to support the frontlines and ensure a multi-dimensional campaign. We continue to provide legal strategies and counsel, and campaign coordination. And we continue to work on the future. This tribe does not need a new pipeline, they need energy infrastructure that actually serves its people. After all, three years ago Debbie Dogskin, a Standing Rock resident, froze to death because she could not pay her propane bill. That is the reality here.

With an 85% drop in active oil rigs in the Bakken oil fields, there is no need for this pipeline. It is a pipeline from nowhere. Here’s what true energy independence would look like: With $3.9 billion equally divided, we could install 65,000 typical 5kw residential rooftop PV systems, each supplying about half of the home’s electricity needs; install 325 2MW utility scale wind towers that would generate over 3.5 billion kwh per year; and provide 160,000 homes with $8000 efficiency retrofit packages, saving $300/yr/home. That would produce jobs, most of them local.

We are supporting Standing Rock as they fight this pipeline, but we are also helping to create a new future. We plan to install 20 solar thermal panels on tribal houses at Standing Rock, beginning to address fuel poverty on the reservation.

Via ICTMN.

A Look at the U.S. Claim to Oceti Sakowin.

inyanwoslata

© Marty Two Bulls.

Steven Newcomb has an excellent column up at ICTMN, examining the claim to Očeti Sakowiŋ.

We are able to think back to a time when our ancestors were living entirely free from and independent of ideas developed across the Atlantic Ocean in a place called Christendom. We know that our Native ancestors were in no way subject to Christian ideas before the Christians sailed across that ocean to our part of the world, which many of us know as Turtle Island. Because the Christian Europeans were not physically here on Turtle Island, their concepts, ideas, and arguments were not here either. This leaves us with a mystery. On what basis did the invading colonizers first assume that our free nations and our ancestors were subject to the ideas and arguments of the Christian world? To what extent are those ideas still being used today centuries later by the United States?

In his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, published in 1833, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story asked a related question. He asked how the British Colonies got title to the soil of the North American continent. His question not only assumed that the British colonies had title to the soil of the continent, it also assumed, as Story said, that the colonizing powers obtained a “title” by their own “assertion” that they had a “complete title” to and “absolute dominion” over the soil of what from our ancestors’ perspective was the soil of our national territories. Story traced those ideas back to a papal bull of the fifteenth century and to royal charters of England and Great Britain.

Most people fail to realize that men such as Joseph Story and John Marshall spent a great deal of their time thinking about such matters. They did so because they had to develop a rationale for asserting that the Christian colonizers from Europe had a right to the soil of the continent that was superior to whatever right our original nations and our ancestors thought they had. Men of ideas such as Story and Marshall, whose job it was to persuade, undoubtedly knew there was a slight chance that someday in the distant future, we, the descendants of our Native ancestors, might try to go back through the record of the ideas of the colonizers and trace their mental “steps.”

A few of us have been working for decades on that retrospective with the goal in mind of not only understanding but of also now at long last directly challenging the ideas and arguments that were “laid down” by the ancestors of the colonizing society who sailed to Turtle Island from Western Christendom.

Based on decades of intensive and diligent research, we now know that the Christian European thinkers dreamed up out of their heads the idea that the representatives of Christendom could enter someone else’s country and mentally, verbally, and ceremonially make the assertion that the monarch they represented had an “absolute dominion” over the country they had located by ship. They further assumed that their mental, verbal, and ceremonial assertion would become “true” because the Christian thinkers dreamed it up in their minds and treated it as “true” thereby sustaining it over time.

The idea that they as colonizers had a complete title to and absolute dominion over the soil of the territories of our Original Nations, a point that Story, Marshall, and other white men claimed on behalf of the United States, became “true” and a “reality” for the colonizers and for the United States simply because those ideas were collectively treated as “true” and as a “reality.” Since this was all happening in the colonizers’ own language at the time, when such assertions were initially made, our ancestors had no understanding of the specific nature of the colonizers’ bizarre views. Some of our ancestors such as Tecumseh did try to challenge the colonizers’ thinking based on the original free existence of our nations.

The recent controversy over the Dakota Access Pipeline traces back to that process of reality-construction and the ability of the United States government to simply declare a given reality into existence. But there is something rather surprising in the historical record that most people know nothing about. It is surprising because it is language that still ought to be benefiting Native nations. …

The full column is here, and it’s excellent reading.

Black Lives Matter.

A Black Lives Matter demonstrator (Shuttershock)

A Black Lives Matter demonstrator (Shuttershock)

Have a wander over to http://blacklivesmatter1.com/ – you can keep up with the latest news, and help out a bit by becoming a member, donating, or just spreading the word. And don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter. Everyone who reads here should know the importance of signal boosting, can’t stop the signal!

White Saviors Need Not Apply.

Stop Mass Incarcerations Network sponsored a children's march on the anniversary of Tamir Rice's death at the hands of the Cleveland police (a katz / Shutterstock.com)

Stop Mass Incarcerations Network sponsored a children’s march on the anniversary of Tamir Rice’s death at the hands of the Cleveland police (a katz / Shutterstock.com)

In this post, I wrote about problematic white people at the Očeti Sakowiŋ camp. Certainly this does not apply to all white people, there are plenty of thoughtful, mindful white people who get it. As with most people who manage to do the right thing, they get to be unsung heroes, because it’s more important to talk about people who are serious problems, big ol’ roadblocks when it comes to any sort of social progress. I have no doubt there are plenty of times when white people feel as though they are constantly picked on, but it’s desperately important to understand that there are many good reasons for that.

Here in uStates, and in way too many other places in the world, people have been brought up and raised in a drowning pool of colonial kool-aid. Colonial thinking is extremely bad, it’s bad for everyone and everything. It’s destructive, dismissive, disrespectful, condescending, and unthinkingly arrogant. It’s short-term thinking, which is the very worst kind. There’s no looking to the past, through the present, into the future. Colonial thinking does not allow for a time bridge, or the importance of all generations, past, present, and yet to come. Look at the photo up there ^. Look at that child’s face. Every child’s face should reflect trust and happiness. That so many children, all over the world, know fear, distrust, and suspicion at such young ages is wrong on every possible level. That so many children, if they are not white, are viewed as sufficiently mature to be a threat, therefor, it’s okay for them to be gunned down by cops and citizens. Wrong. So wrong. That’s racism run amok, when you target children and think it’s okay to do that, for those children.

I know I’m not alone in being very tired of the fact that in spite of everywhere, in every way, every. single. thing. is made better, easier, softer, kinder for white people, yet they still manage to complain if the sugar-coating on a bitter pill isn’t thick enough.

I have mentioned, so many times, that I’m half white, and it’s that half which shows on the outside. When I’ve been at the camps, frinst., and someone is speaking about wašiču, and not in a nice way, I don’t take offense, I don’t get upset in any way. I listen, because generally speaking, I know I’m going to hear something valuable. Sure, I often hear things which hurt, but that happens when you’re trying to always learn throughout your journey on this earth. When you do hear things that hurt, it’s important that your hearing isn’t overwhelmed to the point that you miss bitterness, generational trauma, and/or the pain of deep wounds from the speaker. When you miss things like that, you miss the opportunity to understand. When you miss the opportunity to understand, you lose the opportunity of forgiveness and healing. When you lose the opportunity of forgiveness and healing, you lose the ability to be an ally. When you lose the ability to be an ally, you lose the possibility of peace.

When you’re white, at least here in uStates, it’s so very easy to be dismissive of the deep wounds of generational trauma; to handwave horrible acts because that was X amount of years ago. Ask yourself, if you have been hurt, does it help if someone tells you to get over it already? It’s not possible to “get over something” when that something has never been addressed in any meaningful way. It’s not possible to “get over something” when a majority of people refuse to even consider said harmful acts, and the repercussions echoing down the generations. Would white people consider it helpful if I simply posted: “White people, get over yourselves!”?

Then there’s the problem of white people trying to help when they have no understanding and little respect. Then you get people who are determined to be white saviors. No one is looking for white saviors. People of colour have already had long histories with white people who considered themselves saviors to the “lesser” races. Being an ally, that’s good. A wannabe savior? Bad. Lorraine Berry has a very good article up about the selective doubt of white people, and the savior problem. It’s in-depth, so just a bit here, click on over for the full read, and it’s a good one.

White people spend a lot of time telling black folks what their stories mean. If it’s not white writers insisting that they can tell a person of color’s story better than a black writer can, or Trump running mate Mike Pence telling black people that they talk about systemic racism too much, or Iowa Congressman Steve King telling Colin Kaepernick what his protest against police brutality “really means,” or folks who insist that “slavery wasn’t that bad,” there’s no shortage of white folks who insist that they know better than black folks when it comes to interpreting what happens to black bodies. It would be tempting to dismiss it all as the ravings of a minority of kooks if it weren’t for the ubiquity of the phenomenon. Everywhere, it seems, white people just can’t help themselves.

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Solidarity from the South.

Left to Right: Eriberto Gualinga (Sarayaku), Franco Viteri (Sarayaku), Kandi Mossett (IEN), David Archambault II (Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman), Nina Gualinga (Sarayaku), and Leo Cerda (Kichwa, on Amazon Watch staff). Courtesy Josue Rivas/Indigenous Rising.

Left to Right: Eriberto Gualinga (Sarayaku), Franco Viteri (Sarayaku), Kandi Mossett (IEN), David Archambault II (Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman), Nina Gualinga (Sarayaku), and Leo Cerda (Kichwa, on Amazon Watch staff). Courtesy Josue Rivas/Indigenous Rising.

Indigenous leaders from Ecuador joined the protectors at Standing Rock recently to show solidarity and share information, as their community has had some victories against oil companies and politicians in the past few years.

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In an interview on September 14, Viteri explained the reasons for the visit and outlined the connections between indigenous communities in the north and south. News of the struggle at Standing Rock had reached them, and Viteri and his group had been selected by the Sarayaku communities to “stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters,” the veteran activist and leader said.

“We came from the Amazon jungle with a message of strength and solidarity for the Sioux,” Viteri said. “My people are very conscious, because of our history and our tradition, just like the tribes here, of our connection with nature, with Mother Earth; we know that this is what gives balance to life here on Earth. The transnational corporations, like those trying to build this oil pipeline, are blind because they don’t understand the language of nature.”

Viteri noted that his Kichwa community had been in contact with other tribes in the U.S. before, but not with the Standing Rock Sioux. He also pointed out that he had seen other indigenous people from Latin America at the camp, and recalled that he had spoken with a few from Honduras, Peru and El Salvador. Another Amazonian indigenous community from Ecuador will be coming, Viteri said. He closed the interview with a message for the protectors at Standing Rock and others throughout North America.

“In the name of all the children, elders, women, the birds, the large and small animals that depend on water to survive, the Kichwa people extend a greeting,” he said, “a sacred greeting of respect for nature and for the life of all the peoples of the North, because we know that if water is destroyed, life on Earth will end.”

Rick Kearns at ICTMN has the full story.