Category Archives: Native American

Protestors banned from oil exploration site

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First Nations protestors were banned from interfering with oil exploration on a land reserve.  They consider it sacred ground and they were not consulted by leadership before the leaders gave their approval.  It’s stunning that the tribe brought charges before the court against their own.

What I would like to know is….if it is a land reserve, what the hell are oil companies doing there in the first place…?  It’s a land reserve! 

Just keep tearing up the Earth and polluting it until there is nothing left….small minds.

Boehner lies and investments in Tar Sands companies

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(hat tip to fatster at FDL)

John Boehner, while constantly saying “The American people want, need, demand…” while ignoring what the American people want, need, and demand….has promoted the XL pipeline…while investing in the companies tied to it.

I’m just shocked, shocked, I tell you, that a politician who stands to benefit financially from legislation is…promoting that legislation. /snark

Where have all the good ones gone that did what was right for the country and not for their bank accounts…?

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Also from fatster~~

Related to this is a heartwarming story of a small group of folks protesting the Enbridge pipeline….unfortunately, they’re from Michigan…that will be the day when Hoosiers start protesting Enbridge…

I can’t believe they were charged with felonies.  Seriously?  Like a commenter said on the website, we should be concerned about the crackdown on public assemblies….you know, that First Amendment thingy?

From the comments:

Russell Frege

Enbridge is being disingenuous. No one has come to harm from these non-violent protests. On the other hand, from the Athabasca Chippewa cancer rates to the impacts of climate change, many will be harmed if the tar sands industry achieves its goal of tripling production by 2030. Just imagine Bangladesh flooded by rising sees. That’s millions of refugees in that region alone. We should be working to stop changing the climate. We should have global peak emissions by 2020 then steadily decline. Tripling tar sands production is inconsistent with that goal. These protesters are the modern equivalent of Rosa Parks, who incidentally was hated by conservatives also. As FDR said “I welcome their hatred.” It’s a sign you’re doing something right. Go M-CATS.

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I have to admit a chuckle at the enthusiastic guy commenting on how beautiful state Michigan is…which it is…but then the conservative joker does have a point about him never being in poor Detroit, the dumping ground of the Kochs and anyone else who feels like it.  But let’s say that MOST of Michigan is quite beautiful… NOT the parts that conservatives and DINO’s (Democrats in Name Only) have polluted.

It’s always interesting to me that these polluters will trash one area, and then move to a non-polluted area.  It should be a rule somewhere that if you pollute an area, you must live in that area for the rest of your life…

…not only that, but your children and grandchildren must live in that area, too.   Seems fair, eh?

Helping ourselves

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commondreams has this up.  Be sure to look at all the videos–well worth the time.

The idea is so simple it’s like “duh!”

I have a quibble, though, with Klein saying that it’s up to the Left to “seize the moment”.  There are those who are NOT in the Tea Party on the Right who also need and want to find a solution to the crashes around us.  I say this because the Left has not been of the same mind — I was shot down on a progressive website when I advocated buying American so we could put people back to work.  I knew that Washington wasn’t going to get off its collective duff and do anything about the job loss.  (NAFTA being a good example of monumental job loss.)

I just don’t think people have been given the skills or knowledge to feel confident enough to take over a business if the owners want to sell out.  I think it may be a case of learned helplessness?  Not believing in yourself can be such a huge obstacle that one stops before even getting started.

Perhaps the “teach-ins” of 2013 should be “Business 101:  how to own a business without going belly-up nor bankrupting the environment on your way to the bank…”

The Native Americans learned this a loooong time ago–nature was not a second thought.  They did not separate their actions from nature.

It’s still so incredibly stupid that business has ignored the laws of nature, as if we could exist without clean water, clean air and chemical free food…

Well…exist is probably a bad word choice…since we are existing right now…perhaps thriving  is the better word.  All one has to do is look at folks’ skin and see that we are not thriving, but existing.  The skin is such a barometer of what’s going on in the insides…not doing too well by that account.

Anyway, Washington isn’t going to help us…most likely profiting off of NAFTA…so, it’s up to us if we want to save ourselves.

 

 

 

 

The Powerful Seed

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The organic farmers group posted a link to this article.  The humble seed contains the beginnings of life.  You could even say that the seed rules the world….

Below this article was a link to Vandana Shiva’s “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in the Forest”.  Bless her for her dedication to sustainability.

From that article, I was intrigued about the link for Ecuador recognizing the rights of nature in its Constitution…Wow……somebody who “gets it”.  See, we humans want to think that we are so superior that we are more valuable than all other life forms.  Worse than that, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we are independent…that we could actually survive without them.  We pollute the air, water, and soil without regard that it will harm nature.  We survive in a circle…truly, what goes around comes around…and the balance of life–when we take something, we must give something of equal value in return…this simple rule is ignored.

 

Sea Otter

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My nature calendar has the Sea Otter for this month’s animal.  They are just too, too cute. 

The article mentions that they are threatened by pollution.  Here’s the National Geographic page on them–explaining in a little more detail.

~~A side note~ they had the link to the manatee/sea lion deaths on the National Geographic page, so I thought I’d post it, too.  The poor manatees have been endangered for awhile–I used to vacation in the Sarasota, Florida, area, many years ago, and it was a problem for the manatees to get hit by boats, killing them or injuring them severely.

What this article doesn’t explain is how the cat feces is making its way to the oceans…is it the flushable kitty litter that enters the waterways?  Is it trash that contains kitty litter being dumped in the oceans?  It would be easier to address the problem if we knew the cause and made people aware of it.

I also think it is much, much more than the kitty litter.  The mercury/heavy metal poisoning is a problem, too.  And one has to consider that if they are finding prescription drugs in our water supply, it is likely to have made it to the oceans, as well.  According to this, they have made it into the other bodies of water. More here.

Here’s a more up to date article on marine pollution.  Would one say that selfish shellfishers are troublemakers? (sorry couldn’t resist).

As the article states, the sea otters help the kelp forests by controlling the feeding populations.  Without kelp, we humans would be in serious trouble as kelp is a natural source of iodine and other minerals.  The Native Americans would make trips to the oceans (if they were not along the coastline) to gather the seaweed because they knew of its value.  Our thyroids don’t function without iodine.

(And that picture is just gorgeous, too)

 

 

Evil Environmental laws and the UN

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Really, now, the conservative toadies for the oil companies reeeeeally need to come up with some new words besides: “Freedom”

“Liberty” , “way of life”, and this is a good one “our heritage”….to manipulate the public into doing things that are the opposite of what is in their best interests…

…since when is polluting water, land, and air part of our heritage??

If I recall correctly, the Native Americans lived here for over 10,000 years and one could drink from any stream, swim in any river, and eat fish from any body of water and not get poisoned from fertilizers, mercury, plastic, pesticides, nor herbicides….THAT, my friend, IS our heritage!

 

A Man’s View

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Continuing along the thoughts on Friday’s blog~~~

I don’t mind telling you that this blog brought tears to my eyes. Really stunning to read such honesty and depth.  And he’s not gay! (meaning that, as Patrick states, most gay guys “get” women and their perspective, but straight guys, especially straight white guys don’t.)

From the interview:

Growing up in my house, feminism was actually a positive word. My mother, who is a strong woman, has always identified as a feminist. Despite this fact, she found herself being mistreated by my father. This just goes to show that even strong women — even feminist-identified women — can find themselves involved with men who treat them badly.

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This was so powerful…because in the finger-pointing department, when blame is being handed out, it’s always the woman’s fault if she is mistreated.

This, too, was powerful:

Seeing the way she was treated, and experiencing mistreatment myself, showed me that boys who grow up in violent households do not have to follow the path of the abuser. Instead, we can follow another path — the path of empathy for our mother, and that we can become allies in the struggle for women’s equality, rather than just another violent enforcer of male supremacy.

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This is the thing that is so hard to understand:  why do some men recognize what was done to them and their mothers, but then go on to abuse others?  Why do some choose that path and others fight against it?

And this reinforces my thoughts on a previous blog on how some folks are abused but do not go on to continue the abuse.  I’m thinking there are more out there than is being acknowledged, because they aren’t the ones being arrested for committing acts of cruelty…they are the ones quietly living their lives without repeating the abuse…

…but that also doesn’t mean that all of those committing acts of cruelty are being dealt with by society…such as men who beat their mates, but the mates refuse to press charges (or never call police to report it.)

Further down the post, Patrick goes into what defines feminism–and how women themselves cannot agree on the definition. I know that I don’t.  As I’ve posted before, I believe in equality, but I don’t think abortions should be performed after six weeks’ gestation.  But feminists don’t see it that way–they feel a woman should be able to have an abortion any time she wants it–right up until birth.  I can’t in good conscience agree with that thinking.  In the feminist world, that automatically excludes me from being called a feminist.  This point of view wasn’t easy to come by, either, as I have seen the photo of the woman dead on a hotel room floor with a hangar protruding from her vagina.  I don’t want to see women in such desperate circumstances that they resort to that–it is much better to have safe, reliable contraceptives available to her. (Yes, men should be responsible for contraception, too, but since she is the one who will be most impacted by a pregnancy, and he could be unreliable, she needs to take responsibility for her own sake.)

Feminists in the 70s were so anti-homemaking that women who chose this route were treated as if they were mindless dummies.

It’s an odd circumstance that things that defined us as women–the home, childbirth and raising children, became so hated.  It’s as if they wanted us to become equal by embracing the stereotyped attributes of men.

In other words, we could only be thought of as valuable and therefore equal….if we became men…

…and the unintended consequences of that is the world tilted even more towards the masculine and diminished the feminine.

What we need to right the world is to once again embrace the feminine as valuable–to recognize that one can be soft as well as strong and that those two attributes don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  That we can prop each other up when one is feeling weak, instead of attacking.  That it’s okay for women to have an opinion different than a man’s and it’s just as valid and valuable. That taking care of the Earth is the feminine that needs to be honored.

There’s more to write, but perhaps for another day.  I’m out of time.

Acts of Kindness

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You know, going through my metamorphosis, one of the hardest things for me to reconcile was that just because someone is believed to be a progressive doesn’t necessarily mean that they follow through with that ideal.

I had a boss that “did all the right things” (attending a peace vigil against the Iraq War as an example), but when it came to acting in a progressive manner, he was the opposite on many accounts.  One of which was that he would hire someone at minimum wage, keep them for six months or so, and when it came time to start giving raises or including them on the healthcare plan, they were suddenly terminated.  And with at least one employee, he was more generous with the wage….but he expected something in return, if you get my drift.  Not a good character.

I repeatedly found this and it really messed with my mind.  I couldn’t *get* that disconnect between spouting off progressive ideals and then behaving in the opposite way.  And one could be conservative and be more apt to follow the progressive ideal.

Chief Wilma Pearl Mankiller mentions this in her autobiography, Mankiller.  She stated that there were “rednecks” who helped the Native Americans out—perhaps just as much or more so than those that claimed to be progressive.

So I am always skeptical (in a healthy way) of those who put it out there that they’re progressive…I’m cautious to take it at face value because I’ve been disappointed so many times.

I was glad to read of this.   Being considerate of others is somewhat of a lost art.

Thanks for keeping the faith, George.  Little acts of kindness are truly acts of Peace.

Peace, too…

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It came to me that my post Friday had one glaring omission: the Native American spirituality.

A Native American friend of mine gave me this prayer once:

Great One,

Please guide my thinking today.

Please help me to be still and listen to your wisdom.

Help me to love my brothers and sisters and help me to respect all that you’ve made. 

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I think this is the same as “do unto others…”, including nature, as well.

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Onto other Native American issues, Turtletalk has this up on the question of what is the definition of being Native American?  As the story illustrates, someone may belong to a tribe because they are one-quarter Native blood, but their child cannot belong because they are less than that.  The concern is that the tribes are self eliminating themselves by such restrictions.  It’s an interesting and complex topic.