With winter setting in, government actions at Standing Rock follow a long history of betrayal.
Already, before I even start typing, I know that the title for this article has made some people angry. To say that America is not great is, in the minds of some, a statement bordering on treason. I disagree with that point of view. America, as a country, has always had its shortcomings. We try desperately to cover them up with revisionist history that glosses over things such as the Japanese internment camps during World War II or the blind eye the government turned to Jim Crow laws in the post-Civil War South. The United States, like every other country on the planet, has had to find its way through the various aspects of civil rights and, like every other country on the planet, we have too often failed. In fact, we are failing right now at this very moment.
I’ve hesitated to take on the issue of what is happening at Standing Rock. Protests such as this one are not new and, typically, the native people are thoroughly overrun, again, by law enforcement. When this situation first began, I fully expected that to be the outcome. As a nation, the needs and mistreatment of native peoples has been ignored so frequently that I expect that trend to continue. While there was a flicker of hope that President Obama might actually take decisive action in support of the tribes, which would make him the first US President to do so, he didn’t. Like every other goddamn president before him, he caved to other interests.
Now, with winter setting in, the first snow having dumped six inches of cold on the Dakota plains, the US Army Corp of Engineers has set December 5 as a deadline for all protesters, both native and not, to leave the area. At the same time, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has ordered an “emergency evacuation” of the land, attempting to hide behind the weather, claiming that the evacuation order was to protect the health and safety of the protesters. Time to speak up.
First, The Backstory
I have a personal connection here. I don’t mention it often because I was taught to avoid drawing the attention. My maternal Grandmother’s family were Bucks, an old Cherokee family that could trace its lineage long before their forced removal from Georgia by Andrew Jackson. My ancestors walked that trail. Two children were lost along the way. They arrived in what is now Oklahoma and established a home only to have that taken away from them as well.
My Grandmother died when I was only six months old. However, I had Uncle Lawrence, “Windy” Buck to tell the stories and the family history. There were times when it was difficult to tell whether Uncle Windy was exactly telling the truth or not. As I got older, though, we started checking out his claims and found the majority of them to be accurate.
One of the matters about which Uncle Windy was most adamant about was not registering as a tribal member. “Cherokees are fools to trust the government,” he said. “They’ve already betrayed us more times than we can count. They’ve already gone back on every treaty they ever signed. Trust me, the only reason they want your name on tribal rolls is so they can round us all up again. Whatever you do, never trust a deal with the government.”
We didn’t. While our relationship with the tribe was close, especially while we lived just outside Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capitol of the Western band of Cherokee, Mother was as adamant as Uncle Windy about not signing up for anything. We turned down scholarships and other advantages out of the fear that being associated too closely would eventually bring government interference.
During the 1973 AIM incident at Wounded Knee, the fear my Mother felt was palpable. “They’ll kill all of them and not think twice about it,” she worried. “They’ll kill them then come for the rest of us.” Fortunately, she was wrong, but she never lost her fear, always hiding the fact that she was Cherokee. Of course, her given name, Wynema Oresia, was a bit of a giveaway. She made sure not to repeat that error when naming my brother or me.
A History of Betrayal
I found it interesting that a video produced by Teen Vogue featuring six young women from various tribes received a lot of attention prior to the Thanksgiving holiday and immediately thereafter. Just in case you missed it, here it is. Please pay careful attention:
The facts mentioned in the video are true. From the moment European settlers, the “Pilgrims” set foot on this continent, they have done their best to rid the land of its indigenous peoples, people who had been here thousands of years before them. Excavations at the Etowah mounds in what is now North Georgia show that hundreds of thousands of native people lived in that area as early as 1000 ADE. These were predecessors to the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Seminole, and other tribes whose names are familiar. They had cities. They had agriculture. They had commerce. They were a fully functioning civilization long before the Europeans figured out how to cross the ocean.
Almost every interaction native tribes have had with the US government has been a betrayal. By some counts, which I cannot quickly confirm, the government has broken over 500 treaties with indigenous tribes. In a 1785 treaty with the Cherokee for instance, stipulations of the treaty specified that non-tribal people were to not settle on tribal grounds, which, by terms of the treaty, encompassed parts of Tennessee, Georgia, and both North and South Carolina. Crimes against the tribe and/or members of the tribe, were to be punished. Trade with the US was established and the Cherokee were promised a deputy in Congress to address their concerns. The final article of that treaty reads:
The hatchet shall be forever buried, and the peace given by the United States, and friendship re-established between the said states on the one part, and all the Cherokees on the other, shall be universal; and the contracting parties shall use their utmost endeavors to maintain the peace given as aforesaid, and friendship re-established.
That treaty didn’t hold, though, even though it was witnessed by the man who would become the fourth president of the United States, James Madison. By the time Madison took office, seven more treaties had been signed, each of which, under threat of military strike, whittled away at the rights and land given in the first.
An examination of treaties with all the tribes, from the Apache to the Wyandotte and Yakima, show similar patterns where the government appears to give something to the tribe then systemically takes it back. When the treaties because too inconvenient, the government used force. They have repeatedly and consistently stepped over every right the indigenous tribes had in order to get their way.
Indigenous people were not recognized as US citizens until 1924. Even then, many states continued to deny native people the right to vote. Even as recently as 2004, native peoples have been denied the right to vote in certain counties around the country.
From before its inception as a country, the United States has consistently and intentionally trampled the rights of North American indigenous peoples. The US can call itself great all it wants, but with a history like this such rhetoric cannot be considered true.
End the madness now
I am aware that there are currently multiple lawsuits pending both against the government and the oil and holding companies involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline. I have no expectation for any of them to be resolved in favor of the tribes. Neither do I have any expectation that any of them will be resolved prior to January 20. President Obama shows every sign of having checked out on the problem and is hoping to ignore it until he goes away.
While both the Army Corp of Engineers and Governor Dalrymple has said they do not plan to use force to remove any protestor, the fact that officials have already used water cannons against them suggest the government’s words are, once again, insincere. What the action effectively does is prevent emergency personnel from getting to and/or treating any protestors who might become ill or injured. So, as the snow from the North Dakota winter continues to pile up, if use of the water cannons continues, native people affected by such obvious mistreatment will now be unable to find medical care without leaving the site.
This isn’t making America great. This is showing how the United States continues to be a disgrace when it comes to matters of civil and human rights, especially when directed toward indigenous people. When people from other nations, such as Philippine President Duterte, accuses us of being hypocrites, this is exactly what he’s talking about. If any other country were to treat its native residents in the same way, we would invoke sanctions against them and do our best to turn the affected people against the government harming them. Yet, there we are at Standing Rock, denying the rights of our own people to protect their drinking water.
America is not great. America has never been great. Until we accept and recognize our responsibility toward indigenous people and the rights they inherently hold on this entire continent, we never will be great, no matter who is President.
We need to fix this now.
5 Things You Need To Know: 12/16/16
https://youtu.be/oF6T8wd7nMc
Do Friday’s Matter Anymore?
Hi there. I would say, “Thank goodness it’s Friday,” but I’m not sure Friday matters that much anymore. The news keeps churning and we’ll be watching it all through the weekend. I’m up at 4:00 AM every morning making sure the world hasn’t completely blown up while we were asleep. There really should be at least six people doing all this work, but it’s just me. Yes, I’m patting myself on the back, and perhaps that’s the value of Fridays. Find a reason to pat yourself on the back, even if it’s only because you managed to survive the other four days of the work week.
We’re skipping over the war between North Carolina’s governor and it’s state legislature for now. We’re also refusing to enter into the speculation of what cabinet nominees might or might not do. We only work with news we can verify as being accurate and you should be doing the same. So, that being said, let’s take a look at our top five stories for today.
1. The White House Says Russia Hacked US
One of the many questions we have this morning is whether the whole Russian hacking scandal has gotten out of control? If you were watching yesterday afternoon, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters, “Only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,1” in reference to reports from three US intelligence agencies that not only was Russia involved in hacking the servers of political parties, but that Putin himself knew and directed the attacks. That the White House would officially support the intelligence reports is a pretty big deal since both the Kremlin and the president-elect has been denying them.
If you’re listening to NPR this morning, you’re hearing President Obama tell Steve Inskeep, “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action. And we will — at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.”2
If the statement from the president sounds just a little ambiguous, it is. That might be because, at least from a public information perspective, actual evidence of Russian involvement is a little ambiguous. Yes, the White House likely has access to evidence that the public does not. What we see on this side of the fence, though, is a bunch of anonymous sources, none of which can be confirmed. We need some names, we need some faces, and we need their butts sitting in front of a Congressional hearing to give validity to all these accusations.
Furthermore, there is no precedent for how to react to this situation if the reports are indeed true. There’s nothing in the Constitution that adequately covers direct intrusion into an election by a foreign power. What President Obama might have up his sleeve isn’t clear, either, but we know he doesn’t have long if he’s going to do something before he moves out of the White House.
2. Venezuelan Parents Are Giving Away Their Children
We talked earlier this week about the Venezuelan government confiscating some four million toys and promising that “every child will get a toy.” News coming out of the beleaguered country yesterday shows us that those toys may be all many Venezuelan children have. Reuters is reporting that three local councils and four national welfare groups are all confirming a rise in parents giving their children away, sometimes to other family members, sometimes to neighbors, because they can no longer afford to feed them and keep them safe3.
If you’re a parent or plan on ever being one, I want you to stop and think a moment about just how desperate one has to be and how devastating it must feel to have little choice but to give up your child. Average wages in Venezuela are less than the equivalent of $50 a month. Normally, in places where wages are so low, we see food prices around the same level. Not here. Food prices are in some cases higher than they are in the US, and that’s when food is available. Food scarcity across the country has caused unrest there for over a year.
Children’s rights groups say that the increase in parents giving away children is exponential, with many of the children already suffering from malnutrition. Plunging oil prices are partly to blame, as well as social policies of president Nicolas Maduro. Yet, more than politics, this is a humanitarian disaster of untold proportion. Some parents are simply abandoning their children, leaving them to die on the streets.
So much for a merry fucking Christmas.
3. Dyllan Roof Found Guilty Of Murder
We knew when the jury left the South Carolina courtroom yesterday that they would come back with a guilty verdict. Roof has been convicted of a total of 33 counts involving hate crimes in the shooting of nine people in a Charlotte, South Carolina church4. He never shied away from the fact that he was guilty. In fact, at one point during the trial, he fired his attornies and disastrously tried defending himself. Immediately after the verdict was announced, Roof fired his attornies again.
The jury returns on January 3 to determine exactly what his sentencing will be. There are only two options available: life in prison or death by lethal injection. Roof has already said he doesn’t want to introduce embarrassing evidence that might save his skin. Yet, as we saw last week, lethal injection hasn’t necessarily been going all that well with multiple botched attempts around the country over the past couple of years. There are also plenty of arguments against capital punishment.
One thing for certain is that this horrible massacre has left a lasting impression upon the state of South Carolina. The confederate flag no longer flies at the state capitol. The effects of hate are very visible and efforts to defuse that hate are strong. Dyllan Roof is a good example of why we cannot allow the alt-right white supremacy movement to go unchecked. We don’t need another incident like this to happen anywhere in our country. Ever.
4. A Colorado School Approves Guns in the Classroom
As incredible as it may seem, a school district in Colorado has actually approved a measure allowing some teachers and other school employees to carry guns inside classrooms5. That this decision would come the same day as the third anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary shouldn’t be ignored. The Board of Education for Hanover School District #28 voted 3-2 to approve the resolution on Wednesday night.
Now, before we all go off on some knee-jerk reaction, we should be aware that the Hanover School District is very small and very remote. The board’s president, Mark McPherson, who didn’t vote in favor of the plan, told the press that it was the town’s distance from any kind of assistance that fueled support for the resolution. The school is 30 minutes away from the nearest law enforcement. The resolution lists “national events” and, get this, potential trouble from marijuana grows, as the justification for the action.
Now, for any teacher or staff member to actually carry a gun on campus, they must first volunteer for extra duty as a security officer. Then, they must complete training before receiving their permit to carry. There is no limit as to how many of the school’s 20 teachers can carry weapons. Let’s just hope their finals weeks never get too stressful.
5. And Finally …
Facebook announced yesterday that they’re going after fake news and enlisting a number of partners, including Snopes, the Associated Press, and ABC News, to help validate stories6. The announcement comes as the world’s most dominant social media company attempts to wrestle with accusations that fake news shared on its site contributed to the outcome of the US presidential election.
Understand, Facebook has yet to say that it would actually remove content that is flagged as being fake. Instead, the content will be marked as “disputed” with a link to the reasons for the decision. In fact, they’re only focusing on what they call “the worst-of-the-worst” of fake news producers, those who create deliberate lies for financial gain.
However, this hasn’t kept publications with a right-leaning tilt from going all boo-hoo over the new policy7. Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the conservative-leaning Daily Wire wrote, “It’s an attempt to restore gatekeepers who have a bias as the ultimate arbiters of truth.”8 Perhaps someone should tell the whining little brats that if they’re not producing fake news then they don’t have anything to worry about. Facebook’s efforts are gentle compared to what they could have done. Hell, you’ll still get in more trouble for posting a picture of women’s nipples on your profile than you will for distributing blatantly false news. Some alleged news sources need to grow the fuck up.
But hey, this whole fake news thing is exactly why we bother bringing you these reports every morning. We always verify our stories and provide links to our sources. We want news we can trust and know that you do as well. Thank you for your time. Here’s hoping your Friday kicks some ass.
Share this:
Like this: