Interview with Ancestral Pride: Indigenous Land Defenders

 

Radio-BED sits down with Crow and Sacheen of Ancestral Pride for a necessary conversation on land defence, Idle No More, settler solidarity, nationhood and going home.

 

In this special report, Ancestral Pride schools listeners of all nations on the reality of the struggle for safety and self-determination and the importance of asserting and re-asserting Indigenous jurisdiction and authority over lands that have never been surrendered.

 

ancestralpride.ca
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10 examples of Indian mascots “honoring” Native peoples

Indian mascots, they’re totes honoring to Native peoples, right? That’s what fans always tell us, at least. Inspired by this image above posted on twitter, from a Sonic in Benton, MO, I…

See on nativeappropriations.com

Mystic massacre

 

The Mystic massacre (May 26th 1637) was the worst massacre in the genocide known as the Pequot War. White Americans killed 400 to 900 Pequots, mostly women, children and old men. They burned down their main town, Mystic (in present-day Connecticut), killing those who tried to escape. Most were burned alive.

 


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No Thanks to Thanksgiving

 

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet

 

“One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

 

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.”

 

 
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a complex and savage tale

IMAGE YOU WERE RELATED to one of the most notorious Indian killers in American history. Now, imagine you were also related to some of those Indians. You can now begin to understand the traumatic ba…

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Happy Thanks-Taking.

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Thanksgiving Conundrum

 

“Justin Petrone, like me, is a mixed race person with Native American ancestry, although unlike me, initially, he never thought of himself in those terms.  I’ve always known and since I was a child, self-identified myself in that way.  Like me, Justin has spent years searching for his elusive ancestors, more often than not, hidden in the mists of time with only suggestions of who their ancestors are by words on tax lists and census records like “free person of color.”

 

Most of the time, Native people were transparent, until they became at least “civilized” enough to be counted on the census, or taxed or they did something else to bring them into the white man’s realm.  More recently, Justin and others like us have been able to confirm, or deny, that heritage via DNA testing.  So even if we don’t know exactly who our ancestor is, we are positive THAT our Native heritage is real.  In some cases, through DNA testing we can learn which of our ancestral lines is Native.”

 

 
See on nativeheritageproject.com

Cooking the History Books: The Thanksgiving Massacre

 

By Laura Elliff, Vice President, Native American Student Association,
Republished from Republic of Lakotah

 

“Was Thanksgiving really a massacre of 700 “Indians”? The present Thanksgiving may be a mixture of the 1621 three-day feast and the “Thanksgiving” proclaimed after the 1637 Pequot massacre. So next time you see the annual “Pilgrim and Indian display” in a shopping window or history about other massacres of Native Americans, think of the hurt and disrespect Native Americans feel. Thanksgiving is observed as a day of sorrow rather than a celebration. This year at Thanksgiving dinner, ponder why you are giving thanks.

 

William Bradford, in his famous History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the Pequot massacre:

 

“Those that scraped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.”

 

The Pequot massacre came after the colonists, angry at the murder of an English trader suspected by the Pequots of kidnapping children, sought revenge. rather than fighting the dangerous Pequot warriors, John Mason and John Underhill led a group of colonists and Native allies to the Indian fort in Mystic, and killed the old men, women, and children who were there. Those who escaped were later hunted down. The Pequot tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot “War” killed all but a handful of remaining members of the tribe.

 

An illustration from John Underhill’s News from America, depicting how the village was surrounded.

Proud of their accomplishments, Underhill wrote a book depicted the burning of the village, and even made an illustration showing how they surrounded the village to kill all within it.

 

Laura Elliff is Vice President of Native American Student Association.

 

Originally published November 22nd, 2009″
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Mount Rushmore

 

Mount Rushmore (1745m) is a mountain sacred to the Sioux called Six Grandfathers. Whites desecrated it with the faces of four white men carved into its side in the early 1900s.”

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Another kickazz post by Abagond.

See on abagond.wordpress.com

AMERICAN INDIAN GROUP RELEASES GRAPHIC TO SHOW RACISM IN SPORTS LOGOS

The National Congress of American Indians has produced a graphic putting the racially-charged stereotypes of sports organizations into a pretty simple context.

See on gamedayr.com

Confronting Violence Against Indian Americans

 

Building Brides is our response to the persistence of violence in our society and against members of our ethnic communities, the most recent instance being that of the killings at the Sikh Gurdwara (temple) in Wisconsin.

 

The primary objective of this event is to create, promote and render a thought-provoking civil discourse among members of our communities.”

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

This talk was given at San Jose State University, CA

 

Follow them online at IndiaCurrents.com

See on www.youtube.com