Celebrate Native American Heritage Month...if you can find it

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with a good read from Google Play here.  They have provided this selection featured on their Books page, though it is at the very bottom of the page, and it is titled, "Celebrate with Great Reads".  The fine print below that title is "Native American Heritage Month."

Google posted an Indigenous-related doodle on 18 November, which would've been Native author James Welch, Blackfeet/Gros Ventre, 76th birthday.   

There are two YouTube Spotlight channels, both of which are prominent if one knows to click on the Spotlight page.  Beats, Rhymes, and Indigenous Life features 17 music videos from Indigenous hip-hop artists of America.  Dancing, Drums, and Powwow Days features 10 videos of "Traditions from Native American and First Nations social gatherings".    

Google Cultural Institute has posted a website that "explores the lives and work of 6 Native American artists".  Additionally, Google has launched new Google Expeditions of Indian Country, covering topics ranging from Southwest tribes to powwows to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

But, is this really enough to honor and recognize the lives, beauty, and inherent value of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island?  In the midst of a raging blizzard on the Northern Plains, my relatives on Standing Rock and a multitude of supporters fight on the front line of ongoing desecration and broken treaties.  #StandingRock #NoDAPL #RezpectOurWater  Even though media coverage is good by overseas media and by numerous independent media outlets, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, and U.N. Observers, the U.S. media is not covering it at the level or truth it deserves.  

This feels like token recognition when Google and other large web providers and engines could do so very much more. Don't misunderstand me - I appreciate what little we get, but....

A clear example of why we can't forget and move on - it is NOT in the past.

UN Investigates Scandalous Treatment of Demonstrators 

Read the full story here.

I stand with my relatives at #StandingRock.   #NoDAPL!

The photo leading this story (shown above) is sickening. An elderly woman trying to hold onto her prayer stick is surrounded 5 militarized police. A prayer stick is a sacred item for us, something that we lovingly care for and use strictly for prayer. This is like someone trying to hold a Christian cross or a Bible or the Koran or Torah and having a police officer try to take it away from them while they are praying with it.

How could an elderly woman holding her prayer stick who is clearly much smaller in size than the officers pose a credible threat or one to even be taken half-seriously?   The look on all the officers' faces is one of anger and violence. One officer is clearly getting ready to punch her in the gut with his riot stick. Another one has hands wrapped around her sacred prayer stick trying to take it away from her. A third one has his hand grabbing her nearest shoulder and neck. The fourth one has grabbed her backpack and has his hand around her middle clearly pulling her away from her prayer stick.

This would be bad enough if it were an isolated event, but it is not.  Watch the video here, filmed by an independent activist news outlet, Unicorn Riot.  The Oceti Sakowin camp in on treaty grounds.  The Sioux Nation has declared eminent domain under the 1851 Treaty for the grounds on which the new Sacred Stone camp is placed.  Our sacred sites have been blatantly desecrated by Energy Transfer Partners. Reporting by the dominant news media only perpetrates the stories that the government  and wants told.  What is NOT being reported is that the pipeline is here ONLY because the residents in Bismark did not want it in their backyard. because of the potential environmental disaster it represents and the company's well-documented and repeated poor construction practices and environmental record.   Energy companies across Turtle Island continue to target Indigenous peoples and treaty lands as easy marks that keep bad projects out of the backyards of the citizens they value more greatly than us.

Mark Trahant noted in his article on 28 Oct. 2016: Last January when a gang of gun-toting, Constitution mis-quoting, anti-government militia occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge the reaction from federal law enforcement was patience. Days went by. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (sounding very North Dakota-like) urged the federal government to crack down on “the radicals” before more arrived.  The lands involved were Paiute lands. Months ago, Jarvis Kennedy, a Burns Paiute Tribal Council member, asked: “What if it was a bunch of Natives who went in there and took it?”  We now know. And back in Oregon a jury of peers found the Bundy gang not guilty.  Stories to tell. Injustice.

Our only crime here is to exercise our rights to protect ourselves, protect our families and children, protect our Earth, and use free speech and non-violent protest to do so.  Nation-to-nation treaties between us and the U.S. have been systematically broken in a flagrant manner time and time again when it is convenient for the government to do so. These crimes being perpetrated against us now in our fight against DAPL sound remarkably like where the U.S. likes to point its fingers at countries overseas. It is easier to do that than to look at what is being perpetrated right here at home. Horrible civil rights violations and senseless violence continue here in this country and both are an integrated part of this country's history and founding. The genocide of my people and all Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island is a fact rarely acknowledged. However, it inspired Hitler's policy of genocide against the Jewish people, another fact of history not spoken of in textbooks or "polite company".

We are told to forget the past and move on, that the crimes of the past generations are not those of the current generation. However, as the situation that my relatives are facing today on Standing Rock and across the country illustrate, it is not past. It is going on daily - now, today, in a country recognized to be the world leader.  How can one forget what one is constantly suffering?

We pray that the involvement of the United Nations will bring the full and true story to the world and that the good-hearted, justice-minded citizens of the U.S. and the world will listen.