Monday, July 27, 2009

REQUIEM FOR ALT.NATIVE 2

REQUIEM FOR ALT.NATIVE 2

The final invasion of whites is by Seashepherd wiccans. They are the final assault. They have partnered with FBI informant Richard Two Elk. They muddy the discussion of the case of Anna Mae Aquash.

A seashepherd wiccan announced on another list that his job was to close down places where Indians posted. It was so we would have no voice.

The racism of Seashepherd and Paul Watson could not silence our support of Makah Treaty whaling. Seashepherd wiccans will not stop the quest for justice for Anna Mae Aquash, real justice not FBI Just Us.

Again there is the usual assortment of scouts and sellouts that agree with the white invaders that alt.native was never an Indian discussion list but a hippie heaven made up of people of all colors. There is nothing wrong with that. Although it’s not true. This used to be an Indian discussion list.

The wiccans are putting the final nails in alt.native’s coffin. The place is filled with whites and wannabes and wiccans. Maybe the name should be changed to alt.www.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

THE FLUTE PLAYER

THE FLUTE PLAYER

There are those who live their lives in the spotlight. Their most mundane actions are reported and commented on.

There are those that live their lives in humble obscurity. They change lives and leave the world in a little better condition.

Such was the life of Johnson Charles, Uncle John, Uncle Johnson, my cousin Junior.

He lived the history of Indian People. He fought and overcame alcoholism and homelessness.

He came home with a beautiful wife and flutes…..those beautiful flutes. He played our old prayer songs on them. They helped soothe and heal our broken hearts.

He didn’t preach. He told stories. Sometimes those stories were on him. He told of waking from a blackout in a Midwestern cemetery. He didn’t know how or why he was there. He would smile and say “Don’t do that.”

He was the Shaker hired to work at Tsewhitzen. He loved helping the young people. He would counsel them and pray for them. Soon everyone was calling him Uncle Johnson.

His sister had been our Shaker minister. She had Multiple Sclerosis and could no longer walk. She knew she was dying. She told us that she didn’t want a flowery send off. She wanted her obituary to say, “She died.”

I assume he would say the same. I just wanted to express how much we loved him and will miss him and those flutes……..those beautiful flutes.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

REGAINING BALANCE IN A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE

REGAINING BALANCE IN A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE

The internet at times seems like never-never land where boys never grow up. There are discussion lists that have turned into face offs and word wars. There are blogs.

Blogs are the most interesting and have the most potential. Sometimes amateur writers give us more truthful reports of world, national and local events. They are not owned by establishment news syndicates nor do they owe allegiances to any controlling force.

Recently a blogger was attacked by the Portland and Oklahoma AIM chapters and a group calling itself the Oklahoma Red Brotherhood. The subject was child abuse. The groups did not side with or protect the alleged victim. They tried to bully people into silence.

I don’t know if the person in question is guilty or not. I believe children must be believed and protected. For too long we have turned our backs to the silent screams of our abused babies.

We tell ourselves that’s the way that person (abuser) is. Then we leave the child trapped in misery. That baby’s childhood and innocence has been stolen and destroyed. They will miss a big step in their evolution to adulthood. They may revert to their stolen childhood when they are much older and act out. Then we will wonder what is wrong with them. Why can’t they grow up and be responsible healthy human beings?

That child has been deprived of their right to a world filled with wonder and love. Their trust has been destroyed. They may be afraid to love for the rest of their lives. Child sexual abuse ruins a life until steps for healing are taken.

Child sexual abusers may delude themselves into thinking that the abused child enjoys or asks for it. Child rape is not sex. It’s not sex for the rapist either. It is rage and violence perpetrated on a child.

The rapist feeds off of the child’s terror, helplessness, agony and entrapment. It gives him a false sense of power.

A baby and child are dependent on adults for survival, food, clothing, warmth. They cannot run away from abuse and take care of themselves. They must have somewhere to turn. They must have a community of extended family.

We are the only hope our children have. If we don’t stand for them they are doomed. We will have lost them. How did we fall so low?

We all have the teaching that children are sacred. They come to us directly from Spirit. They are still speaking the language of where they had been. Toddlers may still remember the language and are able to communicate with the new human beings. They are our future. They are our legacy.

Our Old People are sacred. They too are closest to Spirit. They are getting ready to return home. They hold all of our teachings and knowledge.

Women are sacred. They represent Mother Earth. They are the life-givers.

Men are sacred. They were given physical strength to protect and feed The People.

These were our places in life when our world was still holy and we strove for symmetry.

Our world began going out of balance on October 12, 1492. Gold doesn’t make us crazy. It makes the white man crazy. He committed genocide for it. That genocide began with the landing of Christopher Columbus that lost Spanish/Italian sailor.

He rounded up the local Taino Indians into a pen. He tortured and killed them for information about gold. They wore jewelry made of gold so he knew there was some somewhere. He would hang Indians 13 at a time. One Indian killed for Jesus and each of the Apostles. He would build fires under them and slowly roast them to death.

Gold was never of great importance to us. Those Ancestors never did know why they died. One story says he opened the corral and the Indians ran for the hills. They climbed over each other and dropped their babies. They left them there with that mass murderer. How terrified would you have to be to abandon your baby to a killer of that magnitude?

We died as surely and slowly as those 13 Indians hanging with a fire built under them. Sometimes we abandoned our children like those parents who dropped their babies and kept running.

The first whites to come here were few and needy. They were not born of our Mother. They had to be taught how to survive with her.

Whites came here for religious and economic freedom. Their numbers grew. Their friendship turned to greed. They wanted our land and resources. They went to war with us.

There were times that our men fought armed mounted soldiers with their fists and courage. They bought with their lives a few precious minutes for women, children, and old ones to escape. Again and again and again they placed themselves between the unstoppable invading force and The People.

The inevitable happened. Our hearts broke as we were placed on reservations. All of our Treaties were broken and our lands stolen. It wasn’t only our Sacredness that was destroyed by the invaders.

We watched as those who gave their lives that we might live were slaughtered to near extinction like us. Buffalo were killed for their tongues. The interlopers wanted to keep salmon strictly for themselves. They invaded sacred hills to dig into our Mother’s body for gold. Forests that were centuries old were laid waste.

We were supposed to die on our reservations, out of sight and out of mind. Weapons were denied to us. We couldn’t hunt. Reservations were the most barren lands. We starved. The new marauders government wanted us dependent on them for our food.

Our men watched us starve and could do nothing. They couldn’t carry out their mandate from the Creator to protect and feed us. Alcohol was deliberately introduced to kill us. We had no immunity.

Some of our great chiefs and our warrior societies climbed into that bottle to hide. Today we see many from our Chief’s families carrying this burden. They still carry the biggest load for us. When they overcome our crucial maladies, alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence, child abuse, they will lead us out of this darkness. Then we will once again be free.

In those first insidious days of the occupation of our country we found ways to survive. Some embraced Christianity, the new religion when ours was outlawed by the occupational government. Others took our original faith and ceremonies underground.

Our children, our future was stolen from us and placed in boarding schools. It was here that rage and violence was introduced into our communities. Our babies bodies, minds, and souls were violated. Their sacredness was destroyed. They were beaten and raped.

Old Indian men testifying about sexual abuse in Canada’s residential schools told their stories. They would place the younger boys behind them and form a line. They fought the adult rapist priests to defend the smaller boys who couldn’t fight. They would be overcome. These young boys answered that ancient promise for Indian men to protect The People.

Our baby girls were raped. Some bore children to those priests that had taken vows of celibacy. One youtube account tells of a priest delivering his own baby by a young Indian girl and throwing his minutes old child into a furnace to die.

Once our future was desecrated and crippled they were sent home to plant those seeds of self destruction. Those seeds grew like weeds. They established themselves in our communities where they still flourish.

Domestic violence and rape, and child sexual abuse and beatings still destroy the sacredness of each generation. We have forgotten our accord with the Creator.

It is time for our men to form a line of defense. It is time for our men to say that domestic violence and rape and all forms of child abuse will no longer be allowed within our communities.

It is time for us to once again call forth that sacredness inherent in each one of us. It is time for us to live in a world that is holy and beautiful.

It is a perfect time to do this on Summer Solstice.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

The FBI is rewriting our history

The FBI is altering their version of what happened in the 1970’s with Native Americans. It is a better fit for the image they want to project. They lost credibility with the uncovering of their Cointelpro or Counter Intelligence program by 1960’s radicals, the Weathermen.

The FBI and other cops infiltrated civil rights groups of the 1960’s and 1970’s. They exacerbated feuds between rival Black groups by sending out false letters and statements to anger each other. They provided floor plans to offices and apartments so the police could assassinate key people.

They accused people of being communists or informants to create suspicion. Communism was their boogey man. Accusations of being a communist could ruin an innocent person’s life and career.

They “leaked” rumors that Martin Luther King had communist affiliations. They put wire taps on his phones hoping to find dirt on the minister.

Dr. King began including other ethnic groups in his peaceful demonstrations. His idea of peace also included stopping the war in Vietnam. That was when the FBI decided that he was the most dangerous American in the country. They stalked and harassed him until he was murdered.

The FBI did all of that to the American Indian Movement. They sent FBI operative Doug Durham, a white man, to infiltrate at the top. He dyed his hair black and dressed and strutted like the Aim warriors. He was a pilot, a photographer, a writer. He made himself indispensable to Dennis Banks, AIM’s top leader. He became Dennis’ personal body guard, then head of National Security for the American Indian Movement.
Anna Mae Pictou was a young Micmac from Canada. She had gotten involved with the American Indian Movement in Boston. She and her boyfriend Nogeeshik Aquash went to the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.

Anna Mae was pretty and intelligent. She caught the eye of Dennis Banks. She too became vital as an organizer, fundraiser and representative of the American Indian Movement. She was friend to the leadership and the rank and file. She moved with ease between the cities and reservations.

There is a document referenced on Steve Hendrick’s site for his book “The Unquiet Grave. It states that the FBI is concerned about Anna Mae’s meteoric rise up the ranks of the American Indian Movement. There is a document on Peltiers site that states that the FBI was monitoring girls that looked like Anna Mae.

After the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee she was associated with the leadership circle of AIM. She was friends with Dennis Banks’ wife Kamook. It was rumored that Anna Mae was having an affair with Banks.

Anna Mae suspected Doug Durham of being an informant or FBI plant. She tried to warn the leadership but was ignored. Durham was imbedded as part of AIM’s good old boys network.

The FBI engineered suspicion that Anna Mae herself was working with the FBI. They arrested her along with her friends and released her before everyone else. They made it look like she was collaborating.

While at an AIM convention someone informed Kamook that her husband Dennis Banks and Anna Mae were having an affair. The next day Anna Mae was allegedly questioned about being an informant by Banks’ bodyguard Leonard Peltier.
Anna Mae convinced her questioners that she was loyal to AIM not an FBI traitor.

She was arrested later at a Sundance on the Rosebud Reservation. She told friends that after being interrogated by FBI agent David Price he told her that if she didn’t cooperate with the FBI that she would be dead within the year. The FBI says that she was killed a few months later on December 12 1975.

It is here that the FBI story of Anna Mae begins to fall apart. According to the FBI she was kidnapped from a friends’ apartment in Denver. She purportedly was taken to South Dakota to again be questioned about being an informant.

Anna Mae was allegedly taken from Rapid City South Dakota to the Pine Ridge home of Dick Marshall. According to the FBI he provided the murder weapon to the two men accused of her murder. Charges of being an accessory to murder have been brought against Marshall.

Marshall’s attorney filed for dismissal because Richard Two Elk testified and stated in his interview with the Native American Journalists Association that Arlo handed the weapon to John Graham. There are two story lines at this point.

Although the FBI maintains that Graham, Looking Cloud and Nelson killed Anna Mae, Marshall’s wife testified that they tried to leave Anna Mae with them. Why would they do that if their intent was murder? Why would Marshall provide a murder weapon before the order for that murder came down?

Anna Mae is then taken to a house on the Rosebud reservation where they allegedly receive orders from American Indian Movement leaders to kill her. They return to Pine Ridge.

Anna Mae is taken to the top of a ravine and shot. She is then pushed over the bank. The FBI story also says that she was shot in the head and left at the edge of that ravine. Desperate and mortally wounded she crawls for help and falls off the ravine. She lays wounded for days before she freezes to death. Both stories can’t be true but they have been told and retold by the FBI and their supporters.

Richard Two Elk promotes a story that says that as Leonard Peltier was interrogating Anna Mae about being an informant he put a gun in her mouth. During Two Elks interview with the Native American Journalists Association Paul Demain asks him about a story about Anna Mae. It is rumored that she threatened to go to the FBI and tell them who shot Agents Coler and Williams if they don’t help Leonard. Now why would she endanger her life by making that threat? Would she place her life on the line for a man who put a gun in her mouth?

On May 12, 2009 John Graham and Richard Marshall go to court to face the American Just Us system. They are being charged with Aiding and Abetting in the murder of Anna Mae Aquash. Arlo Looking Cloud was convicted of Aiding and Abetting in the murder of Anna Mae Aquash.

There is no one who has been either charged or convicted of the murder of Anna Mae Aquash.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

REQUIEM FOR ALT.NATIVE

REQUIEM FOR ALT.NATIVE

There is a place on google groups. It is called alt.native (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.native/topics?hl=en). It used to be an Indian newsgroup as the title suggests. It has been taken over by a group of white women. It has become a place of white rights and white power.

Alt.native has been in its death throes for a while. This latest invasion of whites is the death blow. Any posting of Native topics gets buried by racist hate.

The whites say that it is an open forum. It is. They say that the description “People indigenous to an area before colonization” includes them. They don’t seem to get that they are the colonizers.

There was a time when alt.native was a good place to get out and get information. Now it is filled with the inane chatter of white women and chest thumping of racist white men.

Some of them are angry with us because we don’t fit their idea of what Indians should be. We have missionaries. They are pagan this time around.

Communists want to educate us about the untrustworthiness of the US government and the lack of truth of their history. We wrote the book on that subject.

It’s too bad that the whites couldn’t have found or founded their own place to talk of their issues. As more whites move in we will be pushed out completely. There was the usual assortment of sellouts, scouts and collaborators ready to hand everything over to the white invaders.

Soon the only thing Native about alt.native will be the name. That will be a shame.