Category Archives: Native American

Michigan

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(A side note~ A funny thing about the migraines is that a song will usually pop into my head. This time it was “We all live in a yellow submarine…a yellow submarine…a yellow submarine…”  (Yellow Submarine, The Beatles)  Haha.  It’s funny now but not so much when I’m lying their like a slug in pain…)

I’m still feeling rather puny and foggy-brained, so I’m not posting any more than this post–
One of the residents of the building has left copies of Muskoka magazine out for the rest of us to enjoy.  This particular month’s magazine just has me drooling…

They talk about a couple who lived on Lake Muskoka (that has got to be a Native American name.  They inhabited the area before the Europeans took over.)  Anyway, this couple had made plans all their life to build their own dream home on the lake and it looks and sounds wonderful.

Michigan itself is a beautiful state.  They actually treasured their trees, unlike Indiana, which couldn’t plow them down fast enough…and *still* has not learned the lesson of what has been lost.  If you take a look at a real time map, you’re able to spot Indiana without anyone even drawing lines–compared to Ohio and Michigan, we are devoid of trees.  There’s a little scrap of land here that must resemble what Indiana once looked like before paved roads and skyscrapers took over–it’s like walking back in time…

…and it’s being threatened with closure (probably some greedy developer wants the land to build more condos…)

Speaking of which, the Muskoka magazine featured an article on a 70-acre (?) spread that once was home to a sanitorium, long since closed.  Can you imagine?  They once actually cared about mentally ill folks (and the ones with tuberculosis) in a setting that was peaceful and serene…

And now they’ve hired a new head honcho who wants to…wait for it…demolish the buildings and…well, we don’t know what they want to do with the property, because the article just dances around what they’re planning, but where have you ever heard of a $$$ dollars man seeing the value in nature and leaving it undeveloped??

I mean, the properties listed in the back of the magazine are prime real estate–they actually have an island for sale for $13,000,000.  Of course, if this is too salty for you, they also have some for the *cough* poor folks in the $3-9 million dollar range…

…so…you can see what is going through this head honcho’s mind without the article even stating the obvious…the property has been left alone since 1994, and they just hired this guy and he immediately wants to tear the buildings down (not really a problem, unless they’re in the way of building something…but since they will cost millions to tear down, there will be money coming in to cover it, n’est pas? (gah, I hope I spelled that right–long time since high school French class )

So…a serene untouched area will be once again devalued for the very natural state that gives it value.  Makes complete sense to me. /snark

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And speaking of serenity for the mentally ill–the state hospital I used to work out was like that, also.  Of course, we didn’t have a lake or as many trees on the property, but it was still maintained in a way to give a sense of peace and serenity.  It also was self-sufficient back in the day.  They had their own bakery, their own farm to grow their food, and I think they may have even had their own butchering, but I’m just guessing at that.  That all went away with the reforms of the mental institutions.  They threw the baby out with the bathwater.  I think it would be so much more gratifying for a patient to help in farming than to sit around all day watching mindless TV.

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And speaking of things popping into my head–I thought of something that I wrote on a blog many years ago–

It’s the same blog that I had my answer deleted after I said that Hillary Clinton was no “Shirley Chisholm”…

There was a guy that the blog owner liked, so he frequently guest blogged.  He was obsessed with the behavioral psychologists, and one in particular really irked him.  He was always writing blogs against this guy’s research.

One day, he wrote a blog on how this guy was studying the human will.  He asked the question “Why would anyone try to determine if there is a human will?

To which I replied:  “Job security??”

🙂

Dow sponsoring Olympics

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Helen Clark at commondreams has this up on Dow being a sponsor of the Olympics.   I think the time is long past of the Olympics being held in high regard…

Here’s a pretty good page on Agent Orange’s effects.

…and yet the lessons still haven’t been learned…

…and the unsuspecting folks who were unaware they were being poisoned…  Be sure to click on the link at the top of the page.  Unfortunately, I don’t have time to click on all the links on the page.  The one at the top is absolutely stunning.

Along these lines–

I looked up a couple of pages on the chlorinated hydrocarbons–insecticides– here and here. 

Michigan’s state website has this:  http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-27249–,00.html

It’s just mindboggling that so much is known about the dangers of these chemicals, but still they are used.

Repatriation of Shoshone Remains

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Well, after the last post, this is certainly brighter…

I cannot imagine how it would feel to have my family members’ remains on display for…entertainment?  …macabre curiosity?

Glad to see they are going home.

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From this article is a link to NCLB actually diminishing Native American children’s education.

It would be a freaking miracle for  a child to have truly been educated under the No Child Left a Mind Act…a miserable law that destroyed a well-rounded public education.  The law orders measurement of what can’t be measured.  It does not value art and music in education, even though it’s been shown that math skills are improved with music comprehension and art sparks creativity.

A link here.

Without creativity, one cannot think outside the box and innovate—the capacity to come up with creative solutions to problems is diminished.  Lastly, the school day is so controlled and so rigid that the teachers are constricted in their own personal teaching styles.

From the dark side…

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…I try not to give Limbaugh more attention, as they say whatever you give attention to gives it power…but today, as I moved the dial past Limbaugh’s show, I couldn’t help myself…

He is heavily trying to divert attention from the Bain/Romney deal by arguing that corporations are not people…so, therefore, there is no way that Romney could have had anything to do with Bain sending jobs overseas.  Romney makes patronizing speeches about bringing jobs back to the U.S.–saying he “knows what it takes” to bring jobs back–yeah, it takes workers willing to work for $3.00 an hour…(While Limbaugh continues the slams on those on welfare–you lazy good-for-nothings, getting off your ass and get a freaking job….)

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Next we have a racist and sexist statement all rolled into one:  “Elizabeth Warren, Indian squaw…”

First, he and his ilk were all over her for claiming to be a Native American…even after it had been in the news that she was, in fact, Native American.  Now he degrades her and her heritage by that racist statement.  Squaw is a derogatory term the French gave the women–it means vagina. I believe they also named the Grand Tetons…I’ll leave your imaginations to what female body parts that name refers to…

 

Dept of the Interior Not Releasing Data

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Indian Country has this up on the Dept of the Interior refusing to release data on a survey of employment and poverty of the Native Americans.

Okay, if there’s a problem with the methodology, why not release the information and point out those problems to the reader?

Or is this a case of they didn’t like the answers they got and want to rephrase the questions? A red flag is the statement in the story that they want to revise survey questions.

I took a statistics class (political science class, no less) and the point that was stressed was that you could phrase questions to get the answers you were looking for–if your goal was to skew something to your viewpoint. When the data was entered into the computer program that tallies the answers, it will show a skewed view.   Never trust a “survey” or “poll” that is more than 2 percentage points + or –  because it means the questions have been phrased to obtain a desired result.

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More from Indian Country.  This makes no sense to me…the wolf population has recovered, so let’s shoot them??  They say the reason that the deer population has swelled so much is because the wolf was nearly hunted into extinction.

I’ve been back and forth with the hunting thing–I’ve never really liked it, but when I became vegetarian, I despised hunters–mainly because the ones that I knew seem to get off on killing living things.

But then I read of the American Indian’s view of reverence for animals and how they took only what they needed and thanked the animal for its sacrifice.  That made a huge difference to me.  It especially helped me when I was told that I needed to start eating meat again because of severe anemia.   I could live with it as long as I gave thanks to the animal for its sacrifice.

What’s needed here is balance–and humans to stop messing with the populations and their habitats for their own gain.

The History

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…of this land has been horribly twisted to put white European settlers as some sort of heroes, when the truth is far from that.

From Indian Country, exploring the Native American side of that history. Contrary to belief, this land was not a “wilderness”, but a carefully cultivated eco-system that worked, amazingly, for 10,000+ years…and it took the Europeans only a few hundred years to trash the place…

There are several links at the bottom of the story.  I don’t have time to click on all of them, but did this one.  When I told my son about the smallpox infested blankets, he didn’t believe me.  He couldn’t imagine someone being so evil.   Bio-warfare, like drones, is a coward’s way to win at war–“if we can’t win by our physical and mental stamina, we’ll cheat and introduce a disease that will knock them out…” Sickening.

…and so it goes on…

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Also on the Indian Country website is this depressing article.

Overcrowding, lack of indoor plumbing or potable water, mould-infested homes and crumbling infrastructure all play a part in what constitutes “inadequate housing.” It is also a factor that is rarely something the families in question can directly control. Attawapiskat recently provided stark evidence of this.

Aboriginal children and their families are being punished for being faced with unacceptable living conditions that no one living in Canada should have to contend with.

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So…they’re being punished for….being poor.   And let’s not overlook the underlying reason–their spirituality and their refusal to stop…being Indian.

Elizabeth Warren

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…has stirred up controversy with her claims of Native American ancestry.  The rightwingers are all over this—trying to find that one thing that will allow them to tarnish her.

I went over to Indian Country to see their take on this.

So…it is true that Warren does have Cherokee ancestry.  Perhaps she didn’t *know* in the traditional sense, but perhaps intuitively, she knew of her heritage.

The way that the rightwingers are playing this out was that she is dishonest and by somehow claiming Native American ancestry, she was chosen over *white* candidates….while not providing any proof that this occurred.   These are the same people who have claimed “reverse discrimination” whenever a woman or minority has gotten a good position–it *must* be because she/he was a minority and not because they were more qualified (or even over-qualified).

 

Feeding which wolf?

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This is a story originating from the Native Americans with loads of wisdom.  It’s much easier to “feed” the dark wolf, because it takes effort to resist that temptation. “Feeding” the white wolf takes more effort, but the rewards are so much more.

I think one has to acknowledge that they have a dark side in order to recognize when one is in trouble and in danger of “feeding” that dark side…it keeps one humble….making it more difficult to be self-righteous (which I see a lot of with the “holier-than-thou” crowd now deep in politics.)