Subject: nanews03.013 From: gars@netcom.com (Gary Night Owl) To: Internet Recipients of Wotanging Ikche Message-ID: _ __ _____ __ _ __ ___ ____ _ __ ___ ' ) / / ') / / ) ' ) ) / ) / ' ) ) / ) / / / / / / /--/ / / / ___ / / / / ___ (_(_/ (__/ ( / (_ / (_ (___/ '__/_ / (_ (___/ ' O ____ _ , ___ _ , ___ O o O / ' ) / / ) ' ) / / ' O o O / /-< / /--/ /-- VOLUME 03, ISSUE 013 O o o o o O __/_ / ) (___/ / ( (___, 1 April 1995 O o O O o O K A N O H E D A A N I Y V W I Y A O ( N A T I V E A M E R I C A N N E W S ) This issue contains articles from TRIBALLAW, NATCHAT & NATIVE-L Mailing Lists, web.native, Genie (General Electric) & UUCP email Articles appearing have been previously posted for public dissemination and/or permission for inclusion has been secured. Letters of authorization are on file. A list of those granting permission to repost their words in this issue are listed at the end of part A. I thank each of you for allowing your words to be shared with the people. <----<<<< >>>>----> This newsletter is a way of keeping the brothers and sisters who share our Spirit informed about current events within the lives of those who walk the Red Road. It is archived at the Native American FTP site ftp.cit.cornell.edu in the directory /pub/special/NativeProfs/newsletters; and is being sent to the NATIVE-L mailing list, one of the NativeNet lists managed by Gary Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us) to include in the NATIVE-L lists(part A). It is echoed on AISESnet, IND-NET, and EIRP listservers and archived by AISESnet. Thanks to Marc Becker, mbecker@uclink2.berkeley.edu, issues of Wotanging Ikche/Kanoheda Aniyvwiya are now being archived at a World-Wide-Web site. The URL is http://ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu/~marc/journals/nanews/ This is a test site, and at some point in the future the location of these files will change. Thanks to Phil Duran, duranp@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu, issues are now being archived at the Washington State University gopher in the following directory: gopher.wsu.edu /WSU Campuses Info /Public Services /Native Peoples "I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth." __ Chief Joseph, Nez Perce +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ | Indian Pledge of Allegiance | The Indian Pledge of Alleg- | | iance was first presented | I pledge allegiance to my Tribe,| on 2 December '93 during the | to the democratic principles | opening address of the Nat- | of the Republic | ional Congress of American | and to the individual freedoms | Indian Tribal-States Relat- | borrowed from the Iroquois and | ions Panel in Reno, NV. NCAI | Choctaw Confederacies, | plans distribution of the | as incorporated in the United | Indian Pledge to all Indian | States Constitution, | Nations. | so that my forefathers | | shall not have died in vain | Walk in Beauty! Night Owl +- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -+ O'siyo Brothers and Sisters! The quote for this issue, by Chief Joseph, was chosen with care. As the lead articles for both part A and part B attest truth and prayer is a thing ALL People of all walks need. This has been a very sad week for many. Brothers have been shot and killed over political issues. The nuclear dump issue that polarizes the Mescalero has been brought to them through greed and politics. This is not the way people of the First Nations were given to resolve questions brought before them. I hear a lot of talk about returning to traditional ways. Council where all are heard and a concenus met is a tradition I pray many speak of returning to. It is time, and I do not mean the linear time of the dominant society. Michele Lord (mosa@netcom.com) forwarded this message from Chief Jake Swamp which speaks to the killings this week on the Cattaraugus rez: The Tree Of Peace Society, in conjunction with the Wittenberg Center are calling for all people to join together in prayer, for the healing of the people of Cattaraugus, The Seneca Nation. In a conversation with Chief Jake Swamp ( Mohawk ) the following statement was taken :" We are praying for "Reasoning" to return to the people. We need to look at the long term effects, and harm that will come from the confusion of all of this...We have offered support for mediation...but cannot interfere unless asked to do so." Distant Eagle (j.audlin@genie.geis.com) writes: "I am appalled and disgusted by murder at Cattaraugus and totalitarianism and corruption at Kahnesatake, not to mention the fracturing and infighting at Akwesasne and the Onondaga Reservation. I say this as a Mohawk, as an Iroquois: this is very wrong! I call on my brothers and sisters of the Hodenasaunee to put an end to all division, and to come together in peace and harmony. The time is coming when we must have made the Sacred Hoop one again or all is lost. Further fragmentation of the Sacred Hoop only endangers us all." --Distant Eagle I ask all my brothers and sisters to pray to Spirit and come together as the real human beings we are. Peace! Night Owl , , Gary Night Owl gars@genie.geis.com (*,*) P. O. Box 672168 gars@netcom.com (`-') Marietta, GA 30067, U.S.A. gars@igc.apc.org ===w=w=== NativeNet Node 90:133/2501 FidoNet 1:133/2501 ----------- News of the people featured in this issue ---------- Part A: Usenet and e-mail Part B: NATCHAT and NATIVE-L lists - Oka - Conferences and Powwows - online - Request for Info/Seneca Nation - Brothers Needing Help - Massachusetts Impact Assessment - 18 Medals of dis-Honor of Hydro-Quebec - Kemano, Angus Reid Poll - Letter from Political Prisoner - Chiapas: CCRI Communique 3/12/95 - Call for Sculptors - American Indian Earth Day Program - The Year of the Family - Navajo-Hopi Update - Film: Kemano, NO SURRENDER - Poem: Mixed Reflection - Verse: Hawai'ian Book of Days - Conferences and Powwows - offline --------- "RE: Oka" --------- Date: 95/03/27 18:17 From: Suzan Horovitch (a.horovitch@genie.geis.com) Subj: oka GE Electronic Mail For publication in Wotanging Ikche..... based on Gazette article and discussion with friends living in the community. A story in the Montreal Gazette of March 25th, 1995 outlines a frightening story of Kahnesatake which is only too reminiscent of Pine Ridge under the Goons. In the front page story titled " OKA: the Guns Point Inward written by William Marsden. The community's political leaders, the elected council, not only remain silent but encourage the situation through their policies and actions. Grand Chief Jerry Peltier often warns the police not to invade their territory saying that "force will be met w The result is that the average citizen pays the price in fear and terror while a small group of 20 people flout the law openly. $14 million dollars of federal money has been spent in the community since 1990 in buying up white properties, and some useless swamp land. The homes vacated have often been robbed, looted and/or vandalized by gang members in pointless violence. Some ha The Watch Team... a largely untrained group of 8 people are paid $425 a week to patrol the community. Quebec does not recognize it as a legal security force. Ottawa however, pays the salaries of the team members through an employment program run by Huma Car accidents in recent months have gone unreported... meaning difficulty with the insurance claims. There are also claims that marihuana is being grown on some of the newly taken properties. Education director Linda Simon said that the lack of law and order is part of a wider community breakdown that is evident in numerous social problems which had arisen or worsened since the 1990 crisis. The high school dropout rate is 90%. Drug use among Grand Chief Jerry Peltier ducks and disappears when things get tense. He is Ojibwa from the Wikwemikong Reserve in Manitoulin Island who moved to Oka in 1970 after marrying a Mohawk. He served as an administrator in the federal DIAND ( Dept. of Indian When last summer he staged an cutting of trees in the Pines for cemetery expansion and the SQ charged 4 of his supporters with mischief and property damage...few residents supported him. He has gotten some money to pay for lawyers, research and his negotiating team... but neither the community not the general public has ever seen an accounting for these funds. No accounting has been made of the $25 million the federal government granted Yesterday we heard of 3 Seneca men killed on the Cattaraugus Reservation near Buffalo . Tension had been building there over leadership. Must these drastic, tragic occurrences continue to occur before the nations can be mended and the people returned to balanced and responsible government without having order imposed from the outside. --------- "RE: Request for Info/Seneca Nation" --------- Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 08:57:48 -0800 From: "kim morris (wakinyan cikala)" Subj: Request for Info - Seneca Nation (fwd) Mailing List: TRIBALLAW (triballaw@thecity.sfsu.edu) This is a forwarded post that I thought perhaps someone here might be able to help Wendy with... kim ----Forwarded message---- Date: Sun, 26 Mar 95 17:55:02 -0800 From: Wendy Huff To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Request for Info - Seneca Nation I'd like some help in locating sources for counseling and/or human services to work with members of the Seneca Nation of Indians, Cattaraugus Reservation. Also, anyone who has been through a similar situation, advice and guidance is appreciated. The Seneca Nation has been in turmoil since its last election last November. Without getting into details at this point, the situation has escalated over the months, with many court decisions - including our own Peacemakers Court and a New York State Supreme Court overturned by U.S. Federal District Court - and instances of physical violence. In the early morning of Saturday, March 25, three individuals were killed; this included two Seneca men and one (Mohawk, I think) from Six Nations Reserve in Canada. The investigation continues and, as far as I know, no arrests have been made. Erie County Sheriffs and NYS Troopers maintain a very visible presence. The community must rise above this, but as you can imagine, it is very divided, and I believe we need outside help from other Native people. Your suggestions, advice, guidance are appreciated - please send to: huff@jane.cs.fredonia.edu Nyah-weh. --------- "RE: Massachusetts Impact Assessment of Hydro-Quebec" --------- Date: 24 Mar 95 19:36:35 EST From: Ann Stewart <75361.1143@compuserve.com> Subj: Massachusetts Impact Assessment of Hydro-Quebec UUCP email Massachusetts Legislators Consider Massachusetts Impact Assessment of Hydro-Quebec Energy Imports: Crees testify in support of legislation; Hydro-Quebec accused by Mass. Representatives of "lying" to legislators Boston (March 24, 1995) -- In a dramatic exchange at a hearing of the Massachusetts Joint Energy Committee in Boston yesterday, Hydro-Quebec was accused of "lying" to Massachusetts legislators in an effort to prevent passage of a bill that would subject energy imports from Quebec to environmental assessment under strict Massachusetts law. The legislators were surprised to learn, after being led to believe that the utility's work was "state-of-the art," that Hydro-Quebec's 5,000-page impact statement had been severely criticized by the official Great Whale review bodies. They were also shocked to read in The [Montreal] Gazette of March 23, after being informed by Hydro-Quebec and Quebec government officials that the controversial project had been postponed indefinitely by Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau, that the Great Whale proposal was still maintained before the review bodies. "I am left with the feeling that we have been lied to by Hydro-Quebec," said Rep. James Marzilli, sponsor of two bills that would subject hydro- imports to scrutiny under Massachusetts law, in response to testimony by Hydro-Quebec's Massachusetts lobbyist Thomas Joyce. "In addition, information we have requested at these hearings and in writing last year, and the year before, has not been provided. Senior Hydro-Quebec officials are here in this room, but they won't speak for themselves, and hide behind Mr. Joyce who can't or won't answer our questions." "In the past we were the ones criticizing Hydro-Quebec, but yesterday it became clear that Hydro-Quebec's policies and approaches are trashing themselves," said Deputy Grand Chief Kenny Blacksmith. He told the legislators that the proposed Massachusetts bill was "more necessary than ever. The Great Whale review process has been gutted by governments, and the Quebec 'energy debate' they substituted is a sham and a smoke screen in which the Crees will not participate." Lawyers Andrew Orkin and James Dumont also testified in favor of the legislation on behalf of the Grand Council of the Crees. This information is supplied by Stewartship, which is registered as an agent of the Grand Council of the Crees with the US Department of Justice (#4632), where the required registration statement is available for public inspection. Registration does not indicate approval of the contents by the US Government. --------- "RE: Letter from Political Prisoner" --------- Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 15:14:38 -0800 From: National Commission for Democracy in Mexico Subj: Letter from Political Prisoner (Jorn 3/26) UUCP email Jornada March 26 Chiapas: political or police solution? Rise up, seize, push, shake, guarantee, yell, today is the future. The motherland today is the future. In cell 53 in the formal prison for the crimes of sedition, mutiny, and etceteras including terrorism, it is said to the letter: "with regard to the armed group referred to (the EZLN), to which the accused belong, they produced alarm, fear and terror in the population, disturbing the public peace, having acted in sufficient manner to be accused of the crime of TERRORISM..." Putting aside my particular case, and the rest of those accused, which are now in the hands of the lawyers (men and women) and the civic society, I mention the judicial statement only as an entrance to pose and answer a question: the solution to the current events, in Chiapas and the country, is it political or police action? We start with the local and national question, because it is the only way to generate clear discussions. From the moment in which the Zapatista National Liberation Army came to light, on the first day of 1994, it demonstrated that it had what was needed to enter a national struggle: a political program that took on the national problems and for which it proposed political solutions, which we could be in agreement with or not. Its second condition for being considered as a national force and not as a group with recoverable demands located in four municipalities as the government tries to paint them, is the abundance of recognition for it throughout the length and breadth of the country as a movement that represents the interests of broad sectors of the population. To say it another way, the causes that gave birth to, and the demands and proposals of, the EZLN, found a natural place in the social movement and popular hope that was living in, and is alive in, our country. There were no artificial graftings; there was mutual recognition and acceptance. For this reason it was and is possible that its armed movement, willing to die if necessary, as it demonstrated in its coming to public light, quieted its guns, subordinating them to the search for a political and peaceful solution directed by the civic society. Like this then, the national force of the EZLN does not come from its firepower or whether it is located physically beyond Chiapas or not; it comes from being an real alternative and a popular front to the spent system of the State party, which, in its collapse, wants to take the whole country with it. For this same reason, the solution for the problem located geographically by the government in Chiapas, is bound up in the same future of the country. As it also should be bound up with genuine liberty, democracy and justice for everyone. And this is achieved through political means, not police actions. And I have here the principal contradiction that the government demonstrates before the Zapatista movement, which is at the same time part of a social movement that is a great, great deal broader. WIth the permanent threat to treat the Zapatistas as outside of the law, the government is showing in its actions its lack of vision regarding the future, and the solutions that from this day forward have to be implemented in order to that a future be constructed. What are the soldiers of the Sedena doing in the poorest mountains of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz? How can the attack on cooperatives and campesino community organizations in Hildago, for instance, which were not asking for anything else other than respect for their own forms of organization and production, be explained? Where are they, or better yet, why aren't the ones responsible for more than 400 political crimes which have come to light just in the past few years and months, or the known and videotaped white guards, behind bars? How much do they earn--the ones who celebrate with jubilation a "victory" that they were given simply by controlling the majority, and that will sink millions of Mexicans into misery? To seek a police action solution to the Zapatista movement will also give a police action solution to the future of the country. A political solution, in addition to negotiation and dialogue without being two-faced, implies recognizing, and acting consequently; it implies that we Mexicans are adults who can discuss, and above all, decide the medicines that we should apply to cure ourselves from all of the injuries of injustice, misery, corruption, unjust distribution of wealth, cynicism, etc. It's that simple. And it's that difficult. It's like this: we all start looking for a political solution or..."but that is another story that will have to be told at another time". (translated by Cindy Arnold, volunteer, National Commission for Democracy in Mexico) --------- "RE: Call for Sculptors" --------- Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 15:06:44 -0600 From: berryj@Okway.okstate.edu (John Berry) Subj: Call for Sculptors UUCP email To all, --------------- THE NATIVE AMERICAN FOUNDATION - announces a call for sculptors to submit applications for a memorial to Native American Civil Rights, specifically honoring Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca Nation. The 1879 Standing Bear trial for the first time established Native Americans as persons within the meaning of the law. This is not a memorial to the Ponca Nation alone, but to the civil rights of Native Americans. Its intent is to promote understanding and healing among all races, creeds, and nations. DEADLINE - for applications is April 1, 1995. For more information write: Artist Selection Committee, Ponca City Native American Foundation, Inc., C/O Betty Durkee, 103 Stoneridge, Ponca City, OK 74604-3420. --------------------------- John Berry --------- "RE: The Year of the Family" --------- Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 15:37:51 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas Michael Cadorette from Harmony Periman Subj: The Year of the Family UUCP email 1995, the Year of the Family Imagine not sitting down for dinner with friends for years. Imagine not attending the funerals of your father, or your best friend. Imagine serving 20 years for a crime you didn't commit, and organizations like Amnesty International and persons like Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela speaking out on your behalf. Imagine 26 million people banding together across five continents and asking for your freedom. Heal the sacred Circle. Free US Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier. more information: (913) 842-5774. White House Comment line: (202) 456-1111. Peltier Defense Committee (US) (913) 842-5774. --------- "RE: Film: Kemano, NO SURRENDER" --------- Date: 2:15 AM Mar 25, 1995 From: fyre@web.apc.org Subj: Kemano, NO SURRENDER, film web.native The following is posted by request. Please refer to postings in dams.general or web.native for recent information about Kemano 2. ================================================================= NO SURRENDER Please forward to all your contacts March 22, 1995 To All Protectors of Mother Earth, In 1952, the Aluminum Company of Canada (Alcan), needed water, lots of it, for their aluminum smelter at Kitimat, British Columbia. They took that water by damming a wild river and reversing the flow of an entire watershed. Very few people at the time knew that they also flooded out a tiny Aboriginal nation - the Cheslatta Whut'en. Very few people know their story to this day. When the Cheslatta people came to Ottawa to seek financial and moral support, filmmaker Sheila Jordan and her husband Ron George decided that they had to do something to help. The result of their commitment is an hour-long documentary on the story of the Cheslatta Whut'en, their tragic relocation and their continued fight to move home. The film "No Surrender", is also a plea to the Canadian population to stand up in the face of mega-projects which are literally destroying our rivers - the very lifeblood of the planet. On Friday April 21, 1995, at the Vogue Theatre on Granville Street in Vancouver, the film "No Surrender" will be shown for the very first time. Master of Ceremonies for the Premiere will be Len George, of the Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) First Nation along with performances by dancers from the same nation. Singer / songwriter Dana Lyons will perform the song "Drop of Water", which he donated to the film. A group of Cheslatta dancers will be dancing in public for the first time. Guest speakers will include Eutonnah Dunn, from the Cherokee Nation talking about the Trail of Tears, a member from the Tsay Keh Dene First Nation, and Roy Henry Vickers. Mr. Vickers has donated a limited edition print to help with the fundraising. Proceeds from the evening will be going to the Cheslatta Redevelopment Project "95". By setting up a protection corridor around the Murray and Cheslatta Lakes, the Cheslatta Whut'en hope that a portion of their traditional territory will begin to heal and with the healing of the land will come the healing of the people. On Saturday April 22, 1995, the Cheslatta Whut'en will be hosting a meeting of many different Indigenous communities in British Columbia who have been, in most cases, fraudulently evicted from their traditional territories. The meeting's central theme will be on how to deal with the tragic consequences of their relocations, as well as discussions with other environmental groups on how to go about healing the land and consequently healing themselves. For more information please contact Hilma Rusu at (604) 875-0087 or Ron George at (604) 684-0231. We hope you will join us! ========================= IDEAS UNLIMITED Television & Video Production 26 Walton Court, Ottawa, Ontario K1V 9T1 ph: (613) 523-4257 fax: (613) 523-0709 --------- "RE: Poem: Mixed Reflection" --------- Date: Mon, 27 Mar 95 00:30:06 MST From: gary@sparrow.ampr.ab.ca (Gary Armstrong) Subj: Poem: Mixed Reflection UUCP email Hello Gary, If you approve of this poem could you please include it in your next American Native News if there is room. Thanks Gary. MIXED REFECTION by Gary Armstrong When I notice reflection, | ,noitcelfer eciton I nehW All I see are hollow eyes. | .seye wolloh era ees I llA There is a mist in reflection, | ,noitcelfer ni tsim a si erehT A mix of who I am. | .ma I ohw fo xim A The world is so still, | ,llits os si dlrow ehT When gazing into mist. | .tsim otni gnizag nehW Life exist in reflection, | ,noitcelfer ni tsixe efiL Of so calm and tranquil. | .liuqnart dna mlac os fO There is coldness that blankets, | ,steknalb taht ssendloc si erehT For I cannot enter this reflection.|.noitcelfer siht retne tonnac I roF For out, this coldness prevails, | ,sliaverp ssendloc siht ,tuo roF I am of mixed reflection. | .noitcelfer dexim fo ma I For my soul cannot enter, | ,retne tonnac luos ym roF This peacefulness. | .ssenlufecaep sihT For who I see is a stranger, | ,regnarts a si ees I ohw roF Who is lost. | .tsol si ohW --------- "RE: Verse: Hawai'ian Book of Days" --------- Date: 95/03/25 15:45 From: Debra F. Sanders (dfsanders@genie.geis.com) Subj: Verse: Hawai'ian Book of Days GE Electronic Mail A HAWAI'IAN BOOK OF DAYS, week of April 2-8 APELILA (April) (Welo) 2 Never abandon your dreams. 3 Memories dwell within the soul. 4 Return to the places of childhood -- there is your cycle renewed. 5 Happiness and fulfillment are found only in our own hearts. 6 Age cannot hinder the joyful spirit. 7 Alone, we are restored; with others, we are fulfilled. 8 This land is the gathering place of the winds. (c) Copyright 1991 by D. F. Sanders Me ke aloha i ka nani, ... Moe'uhanekeanuenue (With love and beauty, ... Rainbow Dream) --------- "RE: Conferences and Powwows - offline" --------- Date: Thu, 30 March 95 08:00 -0500 From: Janet Smith (Evening Star) (jans@genie.geis.com) Subj: Upcoming conferences and powwows not previously posted to Mailing Lists NATCHAT or NATIVE-L GE Electronic Mail From GEnie's East Coast RT Sender: USA.GAYLE [Gayle] I've received the following information in E-mail about pow wows and other events going on in the EASTern states this spring: COUNCIL OF THE WOLF =================== June 2,3,4 1995 Workshops include herbal first aid dowsing for water firemaking dreaming stone reading Native philosophy and more. Sit in council with elders as they share their wisdom and humor. Wolf Clan teachers and elders available for private consults. Trading circle of crafts, supplies, books, and tapes. Fee: $160.00 includes workshops, food, tenting. $50.00 nonrefundable deposit by May 15, 1995. For more information write or call: Council of the Wolf Rt. 1 Box 357 Wingina, VA 24599 804-933-4399 Or email your MAILING ADDRESS to: hokyo@delphi.com DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 23rd ANNUAL POW WOW ===================================== Dartmouth College Hanover, NH When: May 13th,14th Host drums: Eagle Whistle, North Dakota Thundercloud Singers, Wisconsin Also more drums on their way Wunk Sheek (University of Wisconsin) Eastern Eagle, N.S. Redhorse Singers, Que. Occom Pond Singers, Dartmouth College Contests in =========== Men's Traditional Women's Traditional Men's Grass Women's Fancy Men's Fancy Women's Jingle Other things going on that weekend. Friday night....Red Thunder Native Dance Theater Other pow-wows you might be interested in. The Pequots Pow Wow ==================== At their Casino (got no address with my E-mail) April 20-23 Some of the drums that will be there are Painted Horse, Little Otter and Mystic River....many more as well. Harvard University ================== First pow-wow on April 29th... host drum is Mystic River. For additional information on Dartmouth pow-wow call the Native American Program Office at (603) 646-2110 Gayle ================================================================= From: br975@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (John S. Brack) Subject: 19th Annual Odawa Pow Wow R E S P E C T I N G T H E D R U M The Odawa Native Friendship Centre will be holding their 19th Annual Odawa Pow Wow at the Ottawa-Nepean Tent and Trailer Park from Friday, May 26 to Sunday, May 28, 1995. Everyone is welcome to attend this celebration and to witness Native singing, drumming, and dancing. There will be Native foods, arts, and crafts for sale. The gates open at 4:00 p.m. on Friday and at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Adult admission (17 yrs. & up) and youth/students will have a $3.00 admission fee on Friday. Elders/Senior citizens and children 12 and under are FREE everyday of the Pow Wow. Saturday and Sunday, adults' admission will be $9.00 and youth/students with I.D. will be $5.00. There will be $2.00 parking fee at the large parking lot which is just east of the campground's main entrance. The location of the campground is between Moodie Drive in Nepean and Eagleson Road in Kanata, and it located right next and above Hwy.417 (Queensway). For further information, please contact the Odawa Native Friendship Centre at (613)-238-8591 between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., from Monday to Friday. Their address is 396 MacLaren Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2P 0M8. Fax:(613)238-6106 May 26-28:(613)828-7428 N O A L C O H O L * N O D R U G S * N O P E T S ======================================================================= From: aisesnet@bioc02.uthscsa.edu (AISESnet General List) Original Sender: Karen Stone Subject: A REEL INDIGENOUS FILM/VIDEO FESTIVAL! ====================> *YOU ARE INVITED* <====================== A REEL INDIGENOUS FILM/VIDEO FESTIVAL! The American Indian Graduate Student Association presents A Reel Indigenous Film/Video Festival! for the Native American Culture Week, 1995 Arizona State University April 12, 13, 14, 1995 ASU Campus, Neeb Hall & Architecture North Bldg. Official Opening Celebration with the Native American Producer's Alliance and other Indigenous film/video makers on Wednesday, April 12, at 3:00 PM. We would like to take this opportunity to welcome Indigenous film/video directors, producers, writers, and others in attendance. * * * * "Imagining Indians," Victor Masayesva, Jr., "It Starts With A Whisper," Shelley Niro, "Te Rua," Barry Barclay, "Where The Rivers Flow North," Starring Tanto Cardinal, "Mauri," Merata Mita, "Dance Me Outside," Starring Adam Beach & Ryan Black, "Transitions: Destruction of a Mother Tongue," Darrell Kipp, "Song Journey," Arlene Bowman, "Tenacity," Chris Eyre, "The Fish, The Water," Pablo Bellon, "Cow Tipping: The Militant Indian Waiter," Randy Redroad, "Kewevkapaya Sovereignty," Karen Stone, "Everything Has A Spirit," Ava Hamilton, "Awakening," Norman Brown, "The Place of Falling Waters," Roy Big Crane, "Medicine Wheel: Beyond the Tradition," Don Warne, "The Honour of All," Phil Lucas, "Indigenous Voices," Allen Jamieson, "Navajo Talking Pictures," Arlene Bowman, "Warriors In A New Age," Dean Bear Claw, "He Wo Un Poh: Recovery In Native America," Beverly Singer, "Do:Ge Gagwego L'Jagwada't, We Stood Together," Allen Jamieson, "Grun Brum," Pablo Bellon, "Deron Twohatchet's Detour," Deron Twohatchet, "Haircuts Hurt," Randy Redroad, "Let's Go Back to Our Land," Chris Snowboy, "Remember When There is Light," Mary Goose, "To Live in Balance," Pablo Bellon, "Lighting the Seventh Fire," Sandy Johnson Osawa, "The Right To Be," Harriet Skye, "Itam Hakim Hopiit," Victor Masayesva, "Ernie Pepion And The Art Of Healing," Terry Macy,"Men & Women Are Good Dancers," Arlene Bowman, "You Can Be An Engineer," Ava Hamilton, "1994 Video Book," Beverly Singer, AND MANY MORE! Karen Stone ASU, American Indian Institute Work: (602) 965-8176, Home: (602) 921-8526 Internet: ICKAS@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: EIRP News Subject: Native American Month at Emory Univ. THIRD ANNUAL NATIVE AMERICAN MONTH AT EMORY UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GEORGIA (ALL EVENTS ARE FREE TO THE PUBLIC) EVENTS: Monday, March 27 8-9pm Cox Hall, Banquet Hall 3 TERMINATION AND RESTORATION:THE FUTURE OF NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES Tuesday, March 28 7-9pm, Geology 303 BAD EAGLE AND HIS DESCENDANTS David Yeagley (Comanche) Sunday, April 2 2-3pm Reception Hall of the Michael C. Carlos Museum PUEBLOS TO MOUNDBUILDERS: THE NATIVE AMERICAN COLLECTION OF THE MICHAEL C.CARLOS MUSEUM Monday, April 3 7-9pm, Winship Ballroom, Dobbs University Center NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURAL PROGRAM To include: Native American Dance Troupe, drumming, storytelling, art displays, flute playing, beadwork display and MORE! Tuesday, April 4 7-9pm Bishop Hall, Rm 311 Panel: DISTURBING THE PEACE OF THE DEAD: A LOOK AT THE DESECRATION AND PROTECTION OF NATIVE AMERICAN BURIAL SITES IN GEORGIA Friday, April 21 6-8pm, White Hall, Room 206 Film Screening, WARRIOR CHIEFS IN A NEW AGE and Reading by Patricia Hilden (Nez Perce) from her book _When Nickels were Indians_ Any questions may be E-mailed to Ari Berk, Program Coordinator for the Native American Center of Georgia, at Prospero77@aol.com ============================================================================ This information provided courtesy of the Extension Indian Reservation Telecommunication Project and EIRPnews: pablob@coopext.cahe.wsu.edu ============================================================================ From: fsswd@aurora.alaska.edu (Stephen W. Daugherty) "Indigenous Governance in America: Fact, Fantasy, and Prospects for the Future" A lecture by Ward Churchill Alaska Public Lecture Dates and Locations Fairbanks Sunday April 2, 1995 at 7:00 p.m. in the Wood Center Ballroom University of Alaska Fairbanks For more information contact Dr. Michael Jennings, Department of Education (907) 474-6454 Kenai Wednesday April 5, 1995 at 7:00 p.m. at the Kenai Central High School Lecture hall. For more information contact Ginger Steffy, Director Kenai Peninsula College. (907) 262-0315 Anchorage Friday, April 7, 1995 at 7:00 p.m. at the UAA Wendy Williamson Auditorium For more information contact Carole Lund, UAA Student Program Advisor (907) 345-1844 Some Information about Ward Churchill Ward Churchill is currently an Associate Professor of Communications and Coordinator of American Indian Studies with the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Additionally, Ward serves as Co-Director of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement (AIM), a National Spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, and Vice Chairperson for the American Indian Anti-Defamation Council. A noted scholar and author, he is a regular columnist for Z Magazine and editor of the journal New Studies on the Left. He has also authored a number of books including: Marxism and Native Americans (1983), Agents of Repression - The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (1988), and Critical Issues in Native North America (1989). His most recent works include Fantasies of the Master Race (1992), which critically analyzes contemporary literature and film as tools of genocide in the continuing colonization of Native America. In 1993, he authored Struggle for the Land which examines how current policies of genocide, ecocide and expropriation of Native land manifest themselves and the indigenous response to such actions. In his most recent book, Indians Are Us? (1994) he extends the analysis included in Fantasies of the Master Race to the current commercialization and devaluation of American Indian cultures by the larger society. As in Fantasies, he examines deeply embedded elements of American culture and ideology and how they continue to perpetuate genocidal treatment towards Native America. For More Information, Contact: Dr. Michael Jennings (907) 474-6454 Department of Education University of Alaska Fairbanks ======================================================================= -------------------------------------------------------------------------- --//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//-- Notice of Copyright Clearance by Contributors: The following have granted permission for their original articles to be reposted in order to help mend the Sacred Hoop: Debra F. Sanders(Kepola), Suzan Horovitch, Wendy Huff via Kim Morris, Janet Smith, Gary Armstrong, National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, John Berry, Harmony Periman, Jim Derringer, Jordon Dill, Susan O'Donnell, Janet Wright, Jon(navajonation), fyre@web.apc.org(posted by request) --//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//--//-- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ all items below this line have already been distributed by our brother, Jay Brummett, via the NATIVE-L or NATCHAT mailing lists. --------- "RE: Conferences and Powwows - online" --------- Date: Thu, 30 March 95 08:00 -0500 From: Janet Smith (Evening Star) (jans@genie.geis.com) Subj: Upcoming conferences and powwows already posted to Mailing Lists NATCHAT or NATIVE-L = Powwows and Gatherings From the Internet listserv groups = From: native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us Subject: UpDate: Dine _Navajo_ Rug Show NEEDS YOUR HELP Original Sender: amt@teleport.com Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Greetings! A updated schedule of the Resisting Relocation Speaking Tour and Weaving Project Rug show follows. If you live in San Francisco and would like to help this tour, WE NEED YOU. We need an individual or group contact to help find a hall and set up a show for April 11. We know this is short notice but our sponsor for this show just cancelled and we would like to still try for a San Francisco show. If you live in SF and own or know of a place which could house the Rug Show please contact us and we'll give you more info! If you live on the tour route, please come out and see the beautiful rugs of the Weaving Project and hear speaker Louise Benally on the Big Mountain Sovereign Dine Nation. The Weaving Project, Women in Resistance is a collective established in 1986 to directly support the Dineh women's resistance to forced relocation and genocide. The Dine Nation was self-sufficient before the US federal government intruded upon its sovereignty. For the Navajo (Dine in the Navajo language), land is at the center of life and religion. The Big Mountain rugs are not commercially woven rugs. They are traditional forms of spiritual art, still woven with song and prayer. Each rug pattern is created by the individual, and has its own meaning to the weaver. It may tell a story or symbolize a revered part of Mother Earth. The designs of this area reflect the colors and patterns of the naturally dyed wool, taking from one to three months to complete. Weaving techniques and traditions are handed down through the women from generation to generation. This tour will directly support Women in Resistance and Big Mountain. Bellingham, WA Thursday March 30 YWCA Port Townsend FRiday March 31 Community Centre Olympia, WA Saturday April 1 Portland, OR Sunday April 2 Friends Meeting Hall, 6pm Eugene, OR Wednesday April 5 Native Am.Longhouse, U of Oregon Ashland, OR Thursday April 6 Looking Glass Beads, 4-8pm Arcata, CA Friday April 7 Garberville,CA Saturday April 8 Mateel Community Ctr. Mendicino, CA Sunday April 9 ?San Francisco? Tues April 11 HELP! Berkley, CA Wednesday April 12 La Pena, 7:30pm Please contact Project PEACE, 503.246.5445 or amt@teleport.com if you can help out in San Francisco. Information and donations for Big Mountain Sovereign Dine Nation and environmental work projects (Spring Gathering at Camp Anna Mae) can be made to: Big Mountain, Louise Benally, P.O.Box 1042, Hotevilla, AR 86030 Donations to the Women in Resistance Weaving Collective can be made directly to Weaving Resource Center, P.O. Box 865, Kykotsmovi, Arizona 86039, 602.527.2757 Help Support Us! For All Our Relations, Project PEACE ========================================================================== From: native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us Subject: IIM Pow Wow Original Sender: sflynn@ucs.indiana.edu (Stands Like a Rock) Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Tipsaw Lake Traditional PowWow Sponsored by: Indiana Indian Movement Where: Tipsaw Lake, Hoosier National Forest on S.R. 37 just S. of I64, N. of Tell City Indiana When: July 15 & 16, 1995 Head Man Dancer: White Elk, Hartford City, Indiana Head Lady Dancer: Woman with Soft Heart, Little Rock, Arkansas Head Veteran Dancer: Roy Bauer, Cincinnati, Ohio Host Drum: The Southern Drum Head Singer: Mel Hoefling Master of Ceremonies: Standing Buffalo Arena Director: Tom Stephenson, Thorntown, Indiana Trader Chairmen: Songs & Buffalo Heart, 6610 N. S.R. 39, Monticello, Indiana 47960 (219-278-7021) Dance Times: Saturday: 1:00 to 4:00 and 7:00 to ??? pm Sunday: 1:30 to 5:00 pm Southern Protocol Gourd Dancing by request Raffles BENEFIT for Native People Living in Indiana Donations of good winter blankets, non-perishable food, and over-the-counter medicines will be accepted. Limited primitive camping available. For more information, contact Sondra Flynn (sflynn@indiana.edu) --------- "RE: Brothers Needing Help" --------- Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:17:39 EST From: jcdem@sage.cc.purdue.edu (James Derringer) Subj: Brothers Needing Help Mailing List: NATCHAT (natchat@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Boz'o Fellow NatChatters, Let me begin this message by symbolically offering tobacco to all my brothers and sisters on the Net, blood or not. By now I assume you have heard the terrible news that 3 of our brothers were shot on the reservation in N.Y. near Buffalo. According to the news, I heard it had to do with rather or not gambling should come to the reservation. One side says yes we need the money for so many things, the other side says no, it is the way of the white greed and will cause the beginning of our losing our traditional ways, our children, and all those things our elders have taught us, and thus be sucked into the whitemans' world. Both are right. What can we do to help. Does anyone on the Net have any ideas. If I thought I could do any good I would leave my job, I would go to N. Y. and try and be the "middle man" that is needed, but I know there is no reason they should want me, or any outsider butting in, but they are our brothers. We are no longer the Iroquois vs. the Anishnabe, or the Anishnabe vs. the Sioux. If we do not help then who will...who will! The Iroquois Confederacy must not forget their Peace Tree, they must not forget their past. Someone can help, please, who are you. We must all keep the faith. Grandfather Hear My Prayer Jim Derringer --------- "RE: 18 Medals of dis-Honor" --------- Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 19:48:14 -0500 From: jsd@infi.net (Dick Shovel, Ltd.) Subj: 18 Medals of dis-Honor Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) O'siyo...some thoughts on the proposal by Wasichu to attempt to make amends for Wounded Knee via a proposed Wounded Knee National Tribal Park. On 3.9.95 Joe Quickie (R2JSQ@VM1.CC.UAKRON.EDU) reposted the text of a Wasichu proposal (congressional) to the newsgroups soc.culture.native and alt.native. The proposed memorial would commemorate the "armed struggle between the Plains Indians and the U.S. Army that culminated in the death of over 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, SD, on December 29, 1890." Of course, the land "would be owned by the National Park Service and "held in trust" for the Oglala and Cheyenne River nations." 1890. Not so very long ago. Areas considered for inclusion in the park are "such sites relating to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and Ghost Dance Religion, including the campsite of Chief Big Foot [Si Inskokeca] at Deep Creek, a cultural center and museum complex, the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre site...and such other sites relating to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre..." Over these, interestingly, Wasichu dictates that the "Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe shall have no jurisdiction or authority..." I have spent much time ashore in Israel. Germany, as part of it's amends program, provides Mercedes Benzs to Israel at manufacturers cost. What should Wasichu provide the First Nations/First Peoples? Land, memorials, words or, perhaps, reparation for the desecration on Mount Rushmore? Much has been written about the Wounded Knee Massacre. But, perhaps, for those not familiar with this "military action," this final, formal extinguishment, we should turn to the words of one, American Horse, who survived the massacre: "They turned their guns, Hotchkiss guns [breech-loading cannons that fired an explosive shell], etc., upon the women who were in the lodges standing there under a flag of truce, and of course as soon as they were fired upon they fled...There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce [which flew over the Lakota camp], and the woman and children of course were strewn all along the circular village until they were dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing, and that especially was a very sad sight. The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed...After most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there...Of course it would have been all right if only the men had been killed; we would feel almost grateful for it. But the fact of the killing of the women, and more especially the killing of the young boys and girls who are to go to make up the future strength of the Indian people, is the saddest part of the whole affair and we feel it very sorely." [James Mooney, "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890," in Fourteenth Annual Report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1896) Part Two, p. 877] "No one knows how many Indians were killed on this miserable field, because by the time anyone could count the bodies, some had already been removed. But the number was very close to three hundred, about two thirds of them women and children...Women and children attempted to escape by running up a dry ravine, but were pursued and slaughtered - there is no other word - by hundreds of maddened soldiers, while shells from the Hotchkiss guns, which had been moved to permit them to sweep the ravine, continued to burst among them. The line of bodies was afterward found to extend for more than two miles from the camp - and they were all women and children. A few survivors actually found shelter in brushy gullies here and there, and their pursuers had scouts call out that women and children could come out of their hiding places because they had nothing to fear...some small boys crept out and were surrounded by soldiers who butchered them." [Agents of Repression, The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, South End Press, ISBN 0-89608-294-6] 18 Medals of dis-Honor were awarded to soldiers of the 7th Calvary for their valiant efforts in defense of the great American way. Can one apologize for such activity? Can one ever really say, "I am sorry," "I was wrong," "Forgive me," "Please, please forgive us." Can the pain, the blood, the shrieks, the rips, tears, sadistic barbarity, the weeping, the inhumanity and blood shed ever be compensated for? In any way shape or form? While I am not Lakota, I respectfully suggest that the Lakota need no Wasichu memorial. Need no underlining from this country's colonizers. Need no involvement now from those who continue to persecute the First Nations/First Peoples on every imaginable level. Justice fled from Wounded Knee more than 105 years ago. Wasichu can not run from his past and he has no right to attempt this memorial. If he wishes to make a point, then he should start by voiding those Medals of dis-Honor and begging for a forgiveness that should never be given. Nvwhtohiyada...Jordan --------- "RE: Kemano, Angus Reid Poll" --------- Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 23:14:44 -0500 From: fyre@web.apc.org Subj: Kemano, Angus Reid poll Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) The following release is posted by request. ================================================================= Cheslatta Carrier Nation P.O. Box 909 Burns Lake, B.C. V0J 1E0 Phone: (604) 694-3334 Fax: (604) 694-3632 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE B.C. BACKS DECISION TO KILL KEMANO: ANGUS REID SURVEY 40 PER CENT SAY "NO COMPENSATION" Cheslatta Nation, B.C. (21 March 1995) - A solid block of B.C. residents, 40 per cent, are totally opposed to paying Alcan any compensation for cancellation of Kemano 2, according to a recent Angus Reid survey. The B.C. government's decision to kill the project is backed by 54 per cent of British Columbians, according to the survey commissioned by the Cheslatta. Cheslatta Chief Marvin Charlie said the results show Premier Harcourt's government made the right decision. "I have said all along Alcan doesn't deserve compensation since taxpayers weren't involved in the decision to approve the project." Support for the Jan. 23, 1995 decision to cancel Kemano 2 was strongest in the Vancouver / Burnaby area with 63 per cent in favour. The B.C. Interior, which was most divided over the cancellation decision, was surprisingly the area most against any compensation for Alcan at 46 per cent. The survey indicates B.C. residents are upset with Ottawa's attempts to duck responsibility for project cancellation. There is little support for compensation by just one level of government: 8 per cent feel B.C. is solely responsible while only 3 per cent feel Ottawa is solely responsible. If compensation is to be paid, the provincial and federal governments should share the cost, said 41 per cent. As expected, support for the decision to cancel was strongest among provincial NDP supporters at 77 per cent. However, provincial Liberal and Reformers also strongly supported the decision, at 56 per cent and 37 per cent respectively. Federal Reformers were 44 per cent in favour. As for compensation, 43 per cent of provincial Reformers said no compensation should be paid to Alcan. The Angus Reid poll is based on a province-wide random sample of 600 British Columbians between March 1 and 9. It's considered accurate within four per cent, 19 times out of 20. Last summer's B.C. Reid Report, by Angus Reid Group, found British Columbians were very familiar with Kemano 2 and warned that the B.C.U.C. might face "a strong public backlash" if the project was allowed to go ahead. That survey found "opposition to Kemano is quite broadly based across the province." For further information, please contact: Dana Wagg Writer-Researcher --------- "RE: Chiapas: CCRI Communique 3/12/95" --------- Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 09:47:33 -0800 From: moonlight@igc.apc.org (Nat'l Commis. for Democracy in Mexico) Subj: Chiapas: CCRI communique 3/12/95 Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Dear Friend: By all means use it and anything else we post. Perhaps you could include a brief note along with the article. We are an all volunteer organization, and because our coordinator, Cecilia Rodriguez, was appointed by Subcomandante Marcos to represent the EZLN in the US, traditional funders will not support us. Therefore we survive on contributions from individuals and organizations. Our mailing address is 601 N. Cotton St. #A103, El Paso, texas 79902 Phone-fax 915-532-8382. Thank you for your interest. We will add you to our regular e mail list. National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, USA Dear friends - Normally I would try for a more graceful and natural English, but this time I was trying to keep the structure and rhythm of the original, as far as possible, as it reflects, in Spanish, the way Mayan people would express their thoughts in their own languages. If I knew any of the Mayan tongues I could have done a better job, but since I haven't seen any Maya linguists volunteering, I went ahead. !Que vivan el corazon y la voz de nuestros hermanos indigenas! - Que viva un man~ana de paz entre el EZLN y todos los hermanos. Desde las montan~as del Sureste de Estados Unidos -- Bonnie. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Zapatista National Liberation Army Mexico, March 12 1995 To the people of Mexico: To the peoples of the world: Brothers: With old pain and new death, our heart speaks to you so that your hearts listen. Our pain was in being, hurting it was. Becoming silent, our voice was passing away. Our voice had been of peace, but not of yesterday, not of old peace that was death. Of peace was our voice, of tomorrow's peace. The fire had stayed behind, kept in the days gone by, the fire that spoke for our race when all were deaf to death. Another way our tears asked for, still lost in the arroyos of the mountains. So spoke our dead. The oldest ones then counseled us to look where the sun walks, to ask other brothers of the race, of blood and hope, where our hurt pain should walk, our tired step. This we did, brothers. The silence arrived to put out the fire and there was no arrogance in the word of the true men and women for those who, in other lands and other races, shared the pain and wishes for a tomorrow. We opened our heart, brothers. We learned to see and to listen to other, different brothers. We listened to their word and saw in their heart. And we saw in their step the same longing that put the fire in our hands, that broke up our face until it was nothing but a gaze, that hid our name and erased our past: the struggle to command, obeying; to leave free, the free word and heart; to give and receive what is deserved. The struggle for democracy, freedom and justice. No more, never less. The word of these brothers, your word, asked us to try another path, to leave pending and waiting the fire that armed the breast. To talk, and that through the words, would come the destination. It was they, you, the others. Like us, the always forgotten. The always humiliated, like us. The brothers. This we did. Our voice spoke with the powerful lord. Obeying, we sent our word to the great house of money. We spoke and we listened. We were following that path when the treason, again, put arms above words. Our voice was silenced all at once by the noise of the cars of war. Terror was unleashed again in the Mexican lands. He who from arrogance and power looks at us with contempt, denied our name and gave death as a response to our thought. It wasn't enough for him to deny us a face and life, he wanted to humble our step of dignity, trample our just demands, take truth from our song, sink our flag in oblivion. With the complicity of the big monies and the foreign vocation, he wanted to impose humiliating conditions on us, just to speak. Turning backward the wheel of history, he wanted to force us, by the power of his bayonets, to deny our history. Our women suffered the harassment and the humiliation of the machines of war. Our children grew with bitterness and impotence between their hands. Some, the ones who didn't die. In the men hate sharpened the breast. The greatest grandparents looked again to the earth and asked counsel of the first dead. They spoke. The dead of forever. We. They said this: "Our hand did not rise armed to listen, kneeling, to insults and humiliations. Our step did not rise so that he who is double in his face and in his word could humiliate us, filling hope with lies. "For justice our hand was armed and our step raised. And justice is only a false promise that the powerful dresses himself with. "For freedom our hand was armed and our step raised. And freedom is sold for a fistful of coins to the foreign skin. "For democracy our hand was armed and our step raised. And democracy is still absent by the work of he who cynicism, crime and lies carried into government. "Everything, brothers, but dignity trampled again. "Everything, brothers, but lies again on our table. "Everything, brothers, but to forget once again tomorrow. Thus they spoke. This our dead said. The war came. Then again we saw the brother come in other clothing. He came to kill. To die. Our hand did not want to again confront he who was sent to kill and to die among the same. For that reason, our past ones went to the mountains; to the caves of those before, we went. Death cornered us and pursued lives that always passed away obscurely, shades of death and of the shadow of a forgetful country. Death came to wield again its knife-edge of oblivion. To kill memory it came. Now our hand filled again with fire to avenge the pain of our own, animals again eating earth, dying persecuted and forgotten. Now the drums called to war again. Now the bat men and women prepared again their flight of mortal death. Now the night of pain came again to cover the vengeance of the true men and women. But there came, from where the sun walks, another voice that was not of death. It came great, with the wind it came. Our hurting heart waited and heard what that voice spoke. That the war not go on, it said. That death wait. That the heart of the true men and women not be, yet, a mirror of pain. This we did. The bitterness was put away in the caves and our pain waited for that voice to shout. The voice spoke strongly. How could we not hear it! Many steps was that voice. Great, the song of its drums. Only the arrogant closed his heart. Without fire, with a name and face, that voice raised again the banner of human dignity. For that voice, we were not animals. Men and women again, we were. From other lands came walking that voice. From far away. From the heart of other lands, from other mountains, from other hopes, sisters to ours. It became strong and great. It is a voice. Relief came to our pain, and the waiting harvested hope. A seed, was that voice, in the collective heart that walks in our step. Brothers: A name, that voice gives us. No more are we the unmentionables. A name have we, the forgotten. Now our flag can cover, not hiding itself, our dead and our history. We have now a place in the heart of our brothers, - you - and a small corner in the history that really counts: that of the struggle. Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks, and ends up small on us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones. We have now a collective name and our pain has shelter. Now we are larger than death. We have also the hope that just as we received a name, these brothers, - you - will give us tomorrow a face; finish by putting out the fire that lives in our hands; and, instead of the past, give us a future. They smile, these lives of tomorrow and dead of forever. They dream, the bones of the men of wood in the mountains. They dance, the men and women of corn. Joyful is our heart, although the body hurts. A light lights up these shadows that always dance with death, the true men and women, those of forever. We are named. Now we will not die. Come, brothers, we cannot go. Great is the the strength of you all if you make yourselves one. Come, there will be no fire to receive your step, nor will our heart be closed to your word. Come. A name we have. Now we will not die. Let us dance. Now we shall not die. Named are we. Health, brothers! Death to Death! Long live the EZLN! Democracy! Freedom! Justice! >From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee - General Command of the EZLN. --------- "RE: American Indian Earth Day Program" --------- Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 20:11:11 -0500 From: jwright@nalusda.gov (Janet Wright) Subj: American Indian Earth Day Program Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) The Nation's first ecologists will be gathering in Washington, DC to voice traditional views and practices for preserving the Earth as part of the 25th anniversary of Earth Day. The American Indian Earth Day Program, "A Gathering for the Earth," is planned for three days -- April 21-22-23 -- on the National Ellipse in Washington, DC. The Gathering will host Native leaders, speakers, educational exhibitors, artists and storytellers. A Woodlands Peoples' "living history" group will offer demonstrations of life skills and arts. Educational exhibitors confirmed at this time include the Menominee Sustainable Forest Project, Waianae Coast Community Alternative Development Corporation, the Akwe:sasne Freedom School; other exhibits will be a Native plants garden, renewable energy projects, and mining clean-up, land use, and water monitoring projects in Montana. Native artists will display works on the theme of "global change." A special sunrise ceremony and ground blessing will be held on Friday morning at sunrise. Beginning at 1:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) a three hour videoconference will be broadcast to schools, colleges, and communities. Native Elders, scientists and scholars will hold a roundtable discussion about traditional views and values and how they may or may not apply in today's world of science, technology and business. Panel participants will include Oren Lyons, Henrietta Mann, Lee Piper, Crosslin Smith, Vine Deloria, Jr., Al Qoyawayma, Robert Yawakie, Dwight Gourneau and George Godfrey. The panel will be moderated by Dan Wildcat, Chair of the Department of Sciences and Social Sciences, Haskell Indian Nations University. Other special guests will include Grace Thorpe, Simon Ortiz, Puanani Burgess, Will Hill, and LaVonna Weller. On Saturday, April 22, representatives from all across the country will deliver Earth Day messages from their Nations. The Thunderbird Theater Dance Group from Haskell University will perform modern dance interpretations of Native stories. And singer/song-writer Joanne Shenandoah will deliver a special musical message. On Sunday, April 23, participants will give thanks to the Earth and all her creations in celebration of our growing awareness and commitment to safeguard the environment. The day will be open to singers and dancers from the four directions. Host drum will be the Little River Singers. The Gathering for the Earth is being sponsored by Project Earthlink, a partnership of thirteen federal agencies under the auspices of the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, of the National Science and Technology Council. The mission of Project Earthlink is to raise public awareness and knowledge of global change issues. The Gathering has been designed and planned and will be managed by the American Indian Earth Day Planning Committee, a group of Native Americans currently living in the Washington DC area. The videoconference was designed in partnership with Haskell Indian Nations University and Project Earthlink. The satellite video conference will air free of charge from 1-4 p.m. ET, Friday, April 21. The conference may be accessed and/or videotaped on VHS for any or all of the 3 hours. Satellite downlinking can be accessed on either KU- or C- Band. The satellite coordinates are: KU-Band SB6 TRANSPONDER 13 HORIZONTAL 95 Degrees West RADIO 6.2-6.8 C-Band TELSTAR 302 TRANSPONDER 1 VERTICAL 85 Degrees West RADIO 6.2-6.8 Contact Linda Greczy: (202) 401-3806; fax (202) 401-3812. American Indian artists wishing to lend a piece of art or print for display should telephone Erma Brewer or Juanita Clifford at (703) 235-5866 between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. weekdays for instructions on how to ship their artwork. Work should be on the theme of "global change," should be no larger than 24"x 30", and cannot be sold during the event. Those wishing to present an educational exhibit should call Michelle Dauphinais (202) 622-0984. For other information, call Janet Lee Wright, Chair, American Indian Earth Day Planning Committee, (202) 720-3434; fax (202) 720-3200; email jwright@nalusda.gov --------- "RE: Navajo-Hopi Update" --------- Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 08:50:56 -0800 From: Navajo Nation Subj: NAVAJO-HOPI UPDATE:3/15/95 Mailing List: NATIVE-L (native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us) From: Navajo Nation NAVAJO-HOPI "LAND DISPUTE" UPDATE: MARCH 12, 1995 A Little Catching Up After the Rocky Ridge meeting of March 2, The Hopi negotiators said they would respond to the requests and initiatives proposed by the Dine' families at the next meeting, which was to be held on March 9. I took a week of computer training in California, was away, missed the meeting and haven't heard but the sketchiest reports from it. I will write something up soon as I get a few first-hand reports. The Relocation Program The relocation program is once more asking for funds from Congress. Before the republican takeover, the relocation appropriations hearings were always a great show. Every year, venal dunces like Relocation Commissioners Hawley Atkinson and Ralph Watkins would be grilled by Chairman Sid Yates. After exposing them for what they were and making a few sarcastic remarks Yates would give them their funding. Usually he would add appropriations language which forbade using the appropriated funds for forcible relocation, or sometimes funds would be earmarked for specific purposes. That was all Sid Yates could do, because Congress always defers to state delegations on matters of state interest. Many of us think that relocation is a matter of national interest, as well as a(nother) stain on the name of the United States. Congress, being the way it is, calls relocation an Arizona issue to give it an excuse for deferring to the Arizona delegation on any action. Like it used to defer to the southern delegations on civil rights. That is why someone like former Senator Alan Cranston might introduce a bill to repeal P.L. 93-531 - it doesn't cost him a thing - but he will not push the bill at all. He knows it's useless, he's got better use for his political capital, but at least he can tell his constituents back home he's "doing something about it." Arizona is a republican state, the Hopis are republicans, even if they don't vote very heavily. The Hopis don't really make political contributions, but they spend millions a year on lobbying and attorneys, who CAN line up funds and political support for Arizona republicans. There are also real close ties between the Hopis and the Arizona Mormons, and the academic and museum establishments. That's the way it is. You ought to look up who is on the board of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, or who goes to its closed-to-the-public events. Many of these people are politically well-connected. They're what -passes for Society in Arizona. A lot of them used to dress up as Hopis and dance each year in Prescott with snakes in their mouths, calling themselves "the Smoki Tribe". I am NOT making this up! Relocation Office Promises Details on Forced Relocation Anyway, this year there was no Relocation Commissioner (the position is vacant) and Sid Yates is no longer chairing that subcommittee. Relocation Office Executive Director Chris Bavasi presented written testimony and also turned in the Office's "Exit Plan". The Exit Plan, which outlines how and when the relocation program can be wound down, was prepared without consulting the Navajo Nation. We asked, they just said it was confidential and we would get a copy once it was presented to Congress. We got our copy last week. In his written testimony, Mr. Bavasi states that the mediation is going nowhere and will probably end without a settlement, and that the remaining Navajos would probably have to be removed. "Finally, while this office realizes this is an extremely volatile subject, the plan discusses involuntary relocation. It currently appears that the most recent attempt at a mediated settlement to this problem is encountering many difficulties. In the absence of either a mediated settlement , or an involuntary component to the relocation Act, completion of the relocation effort within the time frames proposed in the Office's plan are probably infeasible." Bavasi is wrong. Public Law 93-531 does provide for "involuntary relocation". The Relocation Office has been thinking about it for a long time; I have correspondence from 1982 in which the Commission assures the Hopi Tribe that it has plans for dealing with those Dine' who will not move voluntarily. The "Exit Plan" proposes "program changes" which the Relocation Office believes will remove impediments to completing its mission. The first of these suggested changes is that Congress set a deadline beyond which involuntary relocation - forced removal, in other words - will begin. The plan suggests that after the deadline, homes be built for the resisters and that the U.S. Government, through the Justice Department, "take the necessary actions which would return full control of the HPL to the Hopi Tribe." The Relocation Office has never openly admitted it has plans for carrying out evictions. Over the years I have made a number of tries through the Freedom of Information Act to get the documents from them and they always say the docs don't exist, even though I have correspondence indicating there is a mass of such information. The paper trail is there, or at least its ghosts. I don't have the resources to bring suit, the Nation is stretched too thin, and the U.S. has a very strong interest in covering up its plans. I am assuming that Mr. Bavasi brought this up because he doesn't want to be left holding the bag in the event of a violent eviction. That's what happened to the FBI and BATF field supervisors who killed all those Christians at Waco Texas, even though it was Janet Reno who gave them the go-ahead. The Navajo Nation's Response Even before we heard about Mr. Bavasi's testimony, we wrote a letter of our own to Chairman Regula and Former Chairman Yates. We stated that we had not been consulted over the exit plan, we outlined the massive problems relocation was causing the Navajo Nation, and said we were not in any kind of financial shape to repair all the damage done by relocation. We asked for a moratorium on funding for the Relocation Program and said we would present our own plan soon. Essentially we asked Congress to shut it down. Roman Bitsuie, Claudeen Bates Arthur Betty Tso, Lee Phillips and Elmer Clark are in Washington with President Hale, trying to present the Nation's position on this matter. It looks like we will ask that a Relocation Commissioner be appointed who can rein in the space cadets at the Relocation Office. I thought that we had put forced relocation to rest by defeating Manuel Lujan's eviction initiative in 1989-90. Here it comes again. Your tax dollars at work! So, How are the Relocatees Doing? Mostly I have been writing about the Dine' resisters living on the HPL. They are our first priority, but we spend as much or more time working with relocatees, people living in the impacted areas of the Navajo Nation, and residents of the former "Bennett Freeze" area. The showcase of the Relocation Program is the so-called "New Lands", now Nahat'a' Dziil Chapter. It is sort of a big, planned, whiteman's idea of how Navajo people should live. Although it is a chapter of the Navajo Nation it is almost completely under the control of the Relocation Office. The relocatees there have to ask permission from a white man to hold their ceremonies, for instance. If you know anything about, say the N'daa ceremony, you can see how ridiculous and problematic this is! The Relocation Office had a student intern do a household survey of the "New Lands" area, and released the survey in 1992 as an official document. (Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation, Community Planning. "The New Lands Communities Nahat'a' Dziil Chapter: 1992 Community Survey" Flagstaff AZ 1992) The survey found that 267 families were living in 174 relocation homes. That gives you a homeless rate of 38.6 percent. We figure there are at least 177 homeless families right now, in addition to the 300 families (December 1994) who have relocation homes in the "New Lands". The survey also found 91 dependent children aged 11 to 17 in the survey group. Based on this, we estimate there are 176 minors who have reached adulthood or will do so in the next five years. That means more homeless families. The families are homeless because the Relocation Office refuses to allow anyone but a certified relocatee to have a homesite lease. They say that's what Congress has directed them to do, but it's really based on their own peculiar reading of the Relocation Act. So Nahat'a Dziil is the only one of the 110 Chapters of the Navajo Nation where a family cannot get new homesite leases where their children cam build homes when they form their own families. Your tax dollars at work. The survey found that only 73 percent of the relocatees were living in their own homes, the rest being vacant, occupied by relatives, or rented out. No one knows where these relocatees are living now. Ram Herder came in to the office yesterday. He is a very strong medicine man, formerly from Howell Mesa (Coal Mine Mesa area). He was one of the first group of relocatees to the "new Lands" and I have known him for about 8 years I guess. One time I was driving to Tuba City and I saw him along the road gathering plants on Howell Mesa. "Must be getting ready for a ceremony" I thought, knowing he HAD to go back where his prayers were to get the things he needed. He is one of the people holding that community together, through all the pain of relocation. He is concerned because a white man has somehow gotten permission to graze his cattle in Mr. Herder's "New Lands" range unit. There is a legal way to do this, and there is a white man running the Relocation Office's range management program who helps other white men cut deals to run their cattle on the "New Lands". Most of the Navajos are bothered by this, but, according to Mr. Herder, if they speak up the relocation office threatens to cut back their grazing permits or impound their livestock. The livestock operators are organized by range units, and in each range unit there are more families cowed by the Relocation Office than are willing to speak up. We cannot help unless we are asked by all of the livestock operators in a range unit, or by the Chapter. Meanwhile, the white men are, as always, covered. They have the law on their side, and the ones running relocation all have their little CYA books they can pull out to discredit an accuser (I didn't say that, you didn't file the right form, you insulted me, you're a liar, I have it all clearly written down here on paper and paper doesn't lie!). And when they have won, then they go on and punish the Navajos who tried to call them on what they were doing. That's the way it is. Well, I was in Flagstaff working on typing up the Dine' families' position paper Wednesday, week before last. It rained all day, cold and crappy just like Flagstaff, and I had to work until after 8. I had wanted to make the prayer service that night at Arnold Paddock's in Teesto, but did not. Instead I had to nurse my car back to Window Rock, adding water to its boiling radiator every 20 miles, the whole 175 miles. By the time I got near Teesto it was too late. I didn't go in. Just kept driving. Last week I took some computer training in California. Thursday, I was riding back to my motel on my bicycle when I fell off, landed on my face and broke my arm. It hurt. It still hurts. I ran out of pain pills today an I'm feeling mean as a snake. If I'd gone into the tipi I'd probably be OK. jn