"Native Americans tend to die much earlier than white Americans. Their median age at death was 14 years younger, according to an analysis of 2018-21 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The disparity is even greater in Goodlow’s home state. Indigenous South Dakotans who died between 2017 and 2021 had a median age of 58 — 22 years younger than white South Dakotans, according to state data."
"Two tribal nations are accusing social media companies of contributing to the disproportionately high rates of suicide among Native American youth. Their lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles county court names Facebook and Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms; Snapchat's Snap Inc.; TikTok parent company ByteDance; and Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google, as defendants."
This is excellent news and I hope to see more announcements like this.
“The Yurok will be the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed Tuesday by the tribe, Redwood National and State Parks and the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.”
When I hear of the Yurok, I am reminded of Yurok Robert Sprott who was a close friend of Dr. Alfred Kroeber, founder of the anthropology dept at Cal Berkeley. Kroeber’s daughter #UrsulaKLeGuin writes about Sprott in her essay “Indian Uncles”.
Indian women have always been written out of history, but their bravery is being rediscovered in archives and Native oral traditions.
May 11, 2023
“#Cheyenne warrior #BuffaloCalfRoadWoman had fought a number of battles in leadership roles. At the Battle of the #LittleBigHorn, it is told she charged #Custer, grabbed his saber and stabbed him, knocking him off his horse, killing him. Afterward, Cheyenne and #Arapaho women stabbed their awls in Custer’s ears, chanting ‘you will listen to our people in the next world.’ They were avenged.'
"She wasn’t the only female warrior at the Little Big Horn. The Arapaho Chief, #PrettyNose, fought there, too. She lived to be 101 years old and her grandson served in the Korean War as a U.S. Marine and later an Arapaho chief, just like his grandmother.
"Lozen (c. 1840-June 17, 1889) was a female warrior and prophet of the Chihenne Chiricahua #Apache who fought beside #Geronimo. She was the sister of Victorio, a prominent chief. Born into the #Chihenne band during the 1840s, Lozen was, according to legends, able to use her powers in battle to learn the movements of the enemy. The Apache tribesman, scholar and author, James Kaywaykla, was a child during the fighting days of Geronimo, Lozen and Victorio. Kaywaykla wrote, as a child:
"'I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse—Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen the woman warrior! High above her head she held her rifle. 'She could ride, shoot, and fight like a man, and I think she had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio.'
"He added that Chief Victorio honored his sister as a great warrior: "Lozen is my right hand ... strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people."
Lozen fought beside Geronimo after his breakout from the San Carlos reservation in 1885, in the last campaign of the Apache wars. The band was pursued relentlessly by both the U.S. and Mexican cavalries. According to Alexander B. Adams in his book Geronimo, Lozen would try to ascertain where the enemy was by standing 'with her arms outstretched, chant a prayer to Ussen, the Apaches' supreme deity, and slowly turn around.' The band often relied on her strategic prowess.
"In 1885, Geronimo and about 140 of his followers, including Lozen, fled the reservation when they heard rumors that they were to be imprisoned on Alcatraz Island. Lozen and another female warrior, Dahteste, were designated to try to negotiate a peace treaty. Ultimately, after Geronimo's final surrender, Lozen traveled as a prisoner of war to the barracks in Mount Vernon, Alabama. There, along with many of her fellow warriors, Lozen died in confinement of tuberculosis in 1889.
"#Dahteste was a #Mescalero Apache warrior who rode with Lozen. Dahteste was fluent in English and often acted as a translator for the Apache people and was designated to lead in treaty negotiations with the American and Mexican armies. When Geronimo surrendered, she was arrested alongside Geronimo and Lozen, but was shipped to St. Augustine, Florida, rather than the barracks in Alabama. Nevertheless, like other prisoners in Florida, she contracted tuberculosis and pneumonia, but managed to survive both. Some scholars believe that #Lozen and Dahteste were #TwoSpirits and lovers."
Lately the Canadian media has been rehashing the incident last year in Parliament when Zelensky was here, but I see absolutely no mention of this...
Three Conservative MPs who met with far-right German politician will stay in caucus
Anderson , a member of European Parliament ..... which has been under surveillance as a suspected extremist group in Germany and is accused of downplaying Nazi crimes, opposing immigration and pushing anti-Muslim ideology.
They have known for over a century, at least since the 1950's.
The #FirstNations and #NativeAmericans are right: the earth 🌎 doesn't belong to anyone. Therefore, its proceeds belong to all inhabitants.
#Norway is a prosperous, democratic country today, despite its #viking past.
Its #FossilFuel proceeds feed an investment fund for all natives and not some #billionaires whose ancestors got lucky.
'State School Superintendent Kirsten Baesler said Wednesday that [Indians Into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics]... is being expanded to make all North Dakota Native students in grades six through 12 eligible to apply. ... It is held in June during four different time periods, which are segmented for students in specific grades. INSTEM is free to students.'
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non‑Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century.
Tribes in #Maine Spent Decades Fighting to Rebury Ancestral Remains. Harvard Resisted Them at Nearly Every Turn.
by Mary Hudetz and Ash Ngu
Dec. 4, 5 a.m. EST
"Donna Augustine was in tears as she read the letter from Harvard University that winter morning in 2013. Looking around the room inside an elementary school on Indian Island, Maine, she saw other elders and leaders from the four Wabanaki tribes were also devastated as they read that the university was denying their request to repatriate ancestral remains to their tribes.
"The Wabanaki tribal nations — an alliance of the #Penobscot, #Passamaquoddy, #Maliseet and #Mikmaq — wanted to rebury the ancestral remains. But Harvard’s #PeabodyMuseum of Archaeology and Ethnology said, as it had in past years, that the tribes didn’t have enough evidence to show that they could be tied, through culture or lineage, to the ancestors whose remains the museum held.
"The denial felt like a rejection of Wabanaki identity for Augustine, a Mi’kmaq grandmother, who had spent years urging Harvard to release Native American remains.
"'Every one of us in that room was crying,' she recalled. 'We jumped through every hoop.'
"The group representing the only four tribal nations in present-day Maine had furnished a deeply researched report documenting their histories in the region, even sharing closely held stories passed down within their tribes from one generation to the next that told of their ancient ties to Maine’s lakes, islands and forests.
"Now they could see it hadn’t been enough for Harvard, which especially prized the remains of 43 ancestors buried for thousands of years near Maine’s Blue Hill Bay.
"Complicating matters for the tribes, another museum, the similarly named but smaller Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, housed on the campus of the #PhillipsAcademy, a Massachusetts preparatory school, held items from the same ancient burial site.
"Instead of sending a letter as Harvard did, the Phillips Academy museum director, Ryan Wheeler, had asked to meet with the tribes. Seated at the table that morning, he was initially uncertain what he would do. He would later say that it became evident during the meeting that the tribes exhibited a strong connection to the ancestors they sought to claim, both from the report they had provided and their reaction to Harvard’s decision.
"He recalled leaving the meeting certain he would repatriate. 'There was really no question about it,' he later said.
"What the Wabanaki committee and Wheeler didn’t know, however, was just how hard Harvard would push back. In the two years that followed, the director of the Harvard museum went to surprising lengths to pressure Wheeler to reverse his decision.
"A #ProPublica investigation this year into repatriation has shown how some of the nation’s #elite museums have used their power and vast resources to delay returning ancestral remains and sacred objects under the #NativeAmericanGraves Protection and Repatriation Act. By exploiting loopholes in the 1990 law, anthropologists overruled tribes’ evidence showing their ties to the oldest ancestral remains in museums’ collections. We’ve also shown that museums and universities have delayed repatriations while allowing destructive analyses — like DNA extractions — on ancestral remains over the objections of tribes.
"Harvard, where the remains of an estimated 5,500 Native Americans are stored at the Peabody Museum, used these loopholes over the span of three decades to prolong the Wabanaki tribes’ repatriation process while remaining in technical compliance with the 1990 law, our review found.
"For Augustine and her colleagues, few things were more frustrating than knowing that NAGPRA had empowered museums to decide whether Indigenous people had a valid connection to their ancestors. These were the same institutions that had collected the human remains and objects from ancestral burial sites. Despite NAGPRA’s intent to give Indigenous people say over ancestral remains, institutions still made the final decisions on whether to repatriate.
"'The wolves are in charge of how to deal with the sheep,' said #DarrellNewell, a former vice chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe who helped create the Wabanaki Intertribal Repatriation Committee to accelerate negotiations with the institutions. 'It’s just not a good way.'
"Harvard in recent years has apologized and promised to speed repatriation, saying it aims to repatriate all #NativeAmerican remains and the items once buried with them within the next three years and recently doubled staffing in the Peabody Museum’s repatriation office. However, the school has yet to return more than half of the human remains it reported holding under NAGPRA, according to federal data from November. Only two institutions, of the hundreds that must comply with NAGPRA, hold more human remains than Harvard."
this is the page of the All Arts TV show: "Next at the Kennedy Center | Embracing Duality: Modern Indigenous Culture"
BTW: someone needs to tell all PBS stations to sto the fuckery of blocking people using VPNs. you will have to turn it off to be able to see the page. this is unacceptable for Public Television.
"The Halluci Nation Perform in the Skylight Pavilion | Next at the Kennedy Center | ALL ARTS
and here's #twoSpirit dancer & performer, Ty Defoe.
PBS hasn't released the full episode of this show, so am offering you alternate samples of the artists' works.
"Ty Defoe (Giizhig) is from the Oneida and Ojibwe Tribes and resides in New York City. He is a two-spirit/trans* activist, cultural pioneer, writer, musician, and is known for his cultural education, hoop, and eagle dancing.
Group outraged as controversial mining project breaks ground on site of massacre: ‘[We] were not consulted’
Rick Kazmer
Sun, November 19, 2023
"A lithium mine is being constructed on #Nevada land that’s culturally important to #NativeAmericans. The project by #LithiumAmericas is at #ThackerPass, where on Sept. 12, 1865, United States soldiers massacred Native Americans, killing up to 50 people, according to the Guardian.
"Now, 158 years later, the Thacker Pass area has been identified as having the country’s largest #lithium lode. But members of tribal communities who consider the land sacred told the Guardian that they have been left out of the discussion as the operation moves forward, a point contested by the company on its website.
“'All the people here on the reservation were not consulted when this mine was approved,' Dorece Sam, a descendant of one of three survivors of the massacre, told the newspaper.
Why is lithium important?
"Lithium is a key part of #batteries that power electric vehicles #EVs and other tech. Much of it is refined on the other side of the world, with Australia and China among the leaders. The U.S., however, is among the global leaders in underground lithium reserves, with more than 13 million tons, according to Visual Capitalist, an online data collector.
"Proponents of mining the untapped U.S. reserve cite the need to gain independence from China for lithium and other metals, a goal marked at the highest level of our government.
"LithiumMining, however, can be invasive. Native Americans interviewed by the Guardian said that since it’s happening on sacred land, it’s an invasion of the highest order.
"'You can’t blow up a mountain and call it green,' Max Wilbert of Protect Thacker Pass said in a press release quoted on the Sacred Land Film Project website.
What’s the impact?
"Mining at Thacker Pass is projected to use about 1.7 billion gallons of #water, producing more than 66,000 tons of lithium a year, per the Guardian.
"Company officials claim on their website that the project has been planned for a decade with input from tribal leaders. They plan to permanently employ 500 people for at least 40 years, generating $8 billion in tax payments during the mine’s lifetime.
"At least two tribes have lawsuits filed against the project. However, tribal historic preservation officer Michon Eben told the Guardian that activity on the land is already disturbing.
"'So, if any tribes or anybody wanted to mitigate that destruction, what are we going to mitigate?' Eben said to the newspaper, noting frustration with the court system.
What’s being done to help?
"#Noninvasive lithium mining, or alternatives to the metal for use in batteries, is in the works in labs worldwide. The right solution could eliminate the need for #mining, or lithium, altogether.
"To help Native Americans protect Thacker Pass, you can research their story. The #SacredLandFilmProject has several ways to help, including #fundraising, calling #media and #officials, and sharing the story on #SocialMedia to highlight the cause."
"[H]ow much do we know about the #Osage, their history, and their life experiences? And how typical was this particularly gruesome set of murders on tribes in the US and in particular in #Oklahoma. On Today’s show, we will explore the history of the Osage. We will get to know their story in greater detail and ask, what did the film get right and what did it miss?"
In the new book Voting in Indian Country, Jean Reith Schroedel weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts as the election nears
by Nina Lakhani in New York
Fri 16 Oct 2020
"#VoterSuppression has taken centre stage in the race to elect potentially the 46th president of the United States. But we’ve heard little about the 5.2 million #Native Americans whose ancestors have called this land home before there was a US president.
"The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to #CleaAir and #water, #health, #education, economic opportunities, #housing and #sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.
"In a new book, Voting in Indian County: The View from the Trenches, Jean Reith Schroedel, professor emerita of political science at Claremont Graduate University, weaves together historical and contemporary voting rights conflicts.
"Is the right to vote struggle for Native Americans distinct from the wider struggle faced by marginalized groups in the US?
"One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and #NativeAlaskans were the last group in the #UnitedStates to get #citizenship and to get the #vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said #IndigenousPeople could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.
"The motivation for the VRA was the egregious treatment of #black people in the south, and for the first 10 years there was a question over whether it even applied to #AmericanIndian and Native Alaskan populations. It wasn’t really discussed until a #CivilRights commission report in 1975 which included cases from #SouthDakota and #Arizona that showed equally egregious #discrimination and absolute denial of right to vote towards Native Americans – and also #Latinos.
"When voter suppression is discussed by politicians, advocates and journalists, it’s mostly about African American voters, and to a lesser degree Latinos. Why are Native Americans still excluded from the conversation?
"Firstly they are a small population and secondly most of the most egregious abuses routinely occur in rural isolated parts of #IndianCountry where there is little media focus. But it’s happening – take Jackson county in South Dakota, a state where the governor has done little to protect people from #Covid. The county council has just decided to close the legally mandated early voting centre on the #PineRidgeReservation, citing concerns about Covid, but not in the voting site in #Kadoka, where the white people go. Regardless of the intent, this will absolutely have a detrimental effect on Native people’s ability to vote. And South Dakota, like many other states, is also a very hard place for Native people to vote by mail. In the primary, the number of people who registered to #VoteByMail increased by 1,000% overall but there was no increase among reservation communities. In #Oglala county, which includes the eastern part of Pine Ridge, turnout was about 10%.
"The right to vote by mail is a hot political and civil rights issue in the 2020 election – could it help increase turnout in Indian Country?
"No, voting by mail is very challenging for Native Americans for multiple reasons. First and foremost, most reservations do not have home mail delivery. Instead, people need to travel to post offices or postal provide sites – little places that offer minimal mail services and are located in places like gas stations and mini-marts. Take the Navajo Nation that encompasses 27,425 square miles – it’s larger than West Virginia, yet there are only 40 places where people can send and receive mail. In West Virginia, there are 725. Not a single PO box on the Navajo Nation has 24-hour access."
November marks the beginning of Native American Heritage Month, a time to honor the incredible heritage, traditions, and resilience of Native and Indigenous communities. #VoteBlue#NativeAmericans#IndigenousAmericans