Canadian Rights researcher Russell Porisky has conducted extensive studies into common law versus Admiralty law, and its attendant natural persons versus legal fictions. Porisky provides us with the answer. In book one of his five part study series on, Canadian Rights and Freedoms, Mr. Porisky – who describes himself as a “natural person,” brings forth definitions from two credible sources…
Gage Canadian Dictionary 1983 Sec. 4 defines Capitalize adj. as… “To take advantage of – To use to ones own advantage.”
Blacks Law Dictionary – Revised 4th Edition 1968, provides a more comprehensive definition as follows …
Capitis Diminutio(meaning the diminishing of status through the use of capitalization) – In Roman law. A diminishing or abridgment of personality; a loss or curtailment of a man’s status or aggregate of legal attributes and qualifications.
Capitis Diminutio Maxima (meaning a maximum loss of status through the use of capitalization, e.g. JOHN DOE or DOE JOHN) – The highest or most comprehensive loss of status. This occurred when a man’s condition was changed from one of freedom to one of bondage, when he became a slave. It swept away with it all rights of citizenship and all family rights.
“Slave- one who is under the power of a master, and who belongs to him so that the master may sell and dispose of him, of his able to so anything, have anything, or acquire anything, but what must belong to his master. Civ.Code La. 1838, art 35. Black’s Law Dictionary, rev. 4th ed. p.1559 ”
Capitis Diminutio Media (meaning a medium loss of status through the use of capitalization, e.g. John DOE) – A lessor or medium loss of status. This occurred where a man loses his rights of citizenship, but without losing his liberty. It carried away also the family rights.
Capitis Diminutio Minima (meaning a minimum loss of status through the use of capitalization, e.g. John Doe) - The lowest or least comprehensive degree of loss of status. This occurred where a man’s family relations alone were changed. It happened upon the arrogation [pride] of a person who had been his own master, (sui juris,) [of his own right, not under any legal disability] or upon the emancipation of one who had been under the patria potestas. [Parental authority] It left the rights of liberty and citizenship unaltered. See Inst. 1, 16, pr.; 1, 2, 3; Dig. 4, 5, 11; Mackeld. Rom.Law, 144.
Capite. -Lat. By the head
Diminutio. – Lat. In civil law. Diminution; a taking away; loss or depravation. Read more
Should this not be a worldly decision… and not just one of the United States NASA…?
The American Peoples need to eliminate NASA $17.6 Billion Budget. In doing so the United States could enhance the lives of many , such as adequately taking care of the elderly, providing quality health care for all American citizens. Housing for the homeless. Perhaps we need to mend our relationship with the earth before raping another planet.
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is now traveling to the moon at 5592 mph and will crash-land on Oct. 9 in order to gather data from the 6-mile-high impact cloud it will create. Today, as NASA announced the crater where LCROSS will land (Cabeus-A), the mission continues to drum up controversy. Is crash-landing on the moon really necessary for science? Will it be worth the damage done to the moon? To both these questions, PM answers a resounding, Yes. Here’s why we’re rooting for NASA’s October mission to bombard the moon.
NASA today announced the site of a mission that aims to send an empty fuel tank into a lunar crater to assess the amount of frozen water that is kicked up by the impact. On October 9, a kamikaze spacecraft will crash into the moon’s Cabeus-A crater, kicking up a 6-mile-high debris cloud that a follow-on craft will surf through, using infrared spectrometers and video cameras to determine how much—if any—water ice exists. A series of space-based and terrestrial telescopes will also examine the plume.
So it appears the mission is on track, but it’s been a tough summer for LCROSS. For several weeks in August, the spacecraft suffered from a strange software malfunction that caused it to consume too much fuel. After two weeks spent in an emergency mode, mission planners last week returned operations to normal. While this 240,000-mile reprogramming was underway, a chorus of online readers of mainstream science websites were rooting for the mission’s failure. These armchair space critics call LCROSS crude, violent and silly. But even a cursory look at the mission reveals a clever, scrappy mission that should be cheered instead. Here’s why we like LCROSS, and are looking forward to its date with Cabeus-A.
1) It’s a cheap, creative and scrappy mission. This is what many people want NASA projects to look like in the future.
LCROSS is a Class D mission, denoting one with the highest risk of failure. Once-in-a-lifetime missions and those with human passengers are considered Class A missions, and carry a high cost in time and money to ensure that the equipment won’t fail. The extra testing, custom-built gear and redundant equipment drives up costs to levels that give even members of Congress pause. NASA could launch more risky missions like LCROSS instead of just a handful of marquee ones, and reap more rewards even if some fail.
The cost of LCROSS is about $79 million—cheap in the spaceflight world—and its planners delivered it on budget and on time. The engineers adapted available parts and technology for their craft: commandeering an empty fuel tank for its mass, crafting an internal fuel tank from a communications satellite and copying avionics from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is to be delivered into the lunar orbit on the same ride as LCROSS. (The impactor mission is hitching a ride on the Lunar Reconnaissance Obriter’s launch.) LCROSS’s skeleton, an aluminum ring that looks like a section of sewer pipe with six portholes, is leftover from an Air Force project designed to release multiple satellites from a single rocket. The moon-bombing engineers cobbled these parts together to make a cheap spaceship in just two years. Some risks are worth taking: LCROSS is one of them.
So many space missions leave people scratching their heads. Sometimes the science is obscure, or simply a preparation for some other event that may or may not occur in some future decade. For example, LRO will provide ground-breaking images of the moon, and will support any return by America, but people can rightfully ask, “Don’t we have images of the moon? And are people really going to return in 2020?” LCROSS has a specific scientific mission and a payoff that is almost immediate. In 1998 a probe called Lunar Prospector spotted tantalizing signs of hydrogen in craters at the lunar poles. But no one’s entirely sure if the hydrogen is the chemical signature of water ice, possibly deposited by comets and meteors. LCROSS should not only confirm that water-ice is on the moon, but in what quantities. Any future moon base would rely on this water, so love or hate lunar aspirations, the information will be useful.
3) The scar will be very small.
LCROSS will create a 6-foot-deep crater inside another crater on the south pole. The moon has suffered much worse from the cosmos, and this latest gouge pales in comparison. Note that there are no explosives on board—the mass of the impactor alone is enough to create a plume. Also, the craft will be empty of all fuel before impact, to keep results uncluttered.
4) Humans have been crashing things into the moon—not to mention leaving trash behind—for a long time, so what’s one more if it actually gleans some data?
There is nothing pristine about the moon. It’s lifeless surface is cluttered with spent probes, landing craft, seismic sensors and moon buggies. Every time an Apollo mission took off, the crew threw out all unneeded equipment to save weight on the return. The idea that the moon will somehow be ruined by LCROSS is bizarre. Besides, even if a fraction of previous impacts hit the moon in the future, any human traces will in time be pulverized. So the moon will recover, you thumb-sucking Luddites!
American Indian racial stereotyping is once again presented in the Hollywood movie; “Inglourious Basterds” written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and released in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures. Tarantino has repeatedly stressed that despite its being a war film, the movie is his “spaghetti western but with World War II iconography”
Inglourious Basterds does indeed have some of the characteristics of a spaghetti western such as the blatant racial stereotyping of the American Indian.
Brad Pitt plays the character Lt. Aldo Raine, the “Apache”, a redneck with a distinctive Southern drawl, (he is nicknamed “Apache” because his ancestral family tree includes American Indian blood.) “Supposedly” a direct descendent of mountain man Jim Bridger, with an accent to match, he does not mince words when he gives his squad of eight their behind-the-German-lines marching orders, personally requiring 100 Nazi scalps and other cruel barbarism from each of his men. In the movie, Brad Pitt’s character states, “That means I got some “injun” in me.” He continues on, pointing out that this will evoke fear in the minds of the enemy, implying that Indians are well known savages. Although this particular stated line is missing from any script, media or movie trailer, it is what prefaces Lt Aldo’s demand that each man barbarically mutilates 100 enemies. Perhaps Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt or the movies producers have some deep rooted defective racial genetics of their own.
Note: In 1835 Jim Bridger married a woman from the Flathead Indians tribe with whom he had three children. After her death in 1846, he married the daughter of a Shoshone chief, who died in childbirth three years later. In 1850 he married a Shoshone with whom he had two more children. Some of his children were sent back east to be educated. (Definitely neither one of them was Brad Pitt or Lt. Aldo Raine.)
Lt. Aldo Raine the “Apache” stated to be a direct descendent of mountain man Jim Bridger? Why not General Samuel Curtis “I want no peace till the Indians suffer more…No peace must be made without my directions.” Or perhaps General John Chivington,the Butcher of the Sand Creek Massacre: U.S. soldiers inevitably chased the defenseless Cheyenne and Arapaho by horse and foot with knives and guns in hand. Their victims had to be positioned before ripping off their scalps, cutting off their ears, smashing out their brains, butchering their children, tearing their breastfeeding infants away from their mother’s breasts, and then murdering those infants. The “Bloody Third” soldiers had to kill the infants before cutting out their mother’s genitals.
Hollywood continues to perpetuate American Indian racial stereotyping to portray the indigenous peoples of this county as loathsome barbarians or savages.
The Script:
CHAPTER TWO
“INGLORIOUS BASTERDS”
FADE UP
EXT – SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND – DAY
A bunch of SOLDIERS are lined up at attention.
LIEUTENANT ALDO.RAINE, a hillbilly from the mountains of
Tennessee, walks down the line. He recruits the men, the
Germans will later call; “The Basterds”. Lt.Aldo has one
defining physical characteristic, a ROPE BURN around his
neck. As if once upon a time,. he survived a LYNCHING.
The scar will never once be mentioned.
LT.ALDO
My name is Lt.Aldo Raine, and I’m puttin together a special team. And I need me eight soldiers. Eight – Jewish – American – soldiers Now y’all might of heard rumors about the armada happening soon. Well, we’ll be leavin a little earlier. We’re gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we’re in enemy territory, as a bushwackin, guerrilla army, we’re gonna be doin one thing, and thing only, Killin Nazi’s.
The Members of the National Socialist Party, have conquered Europe through murder, torture, intimidation, and terror. And that’s exactly what we’re
gonna do to them. Now I don’t know bout y’all? But I sure as hell, didnt come down from the goddamn Smoky mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half Sicily, and then jump out of a fuckin air-o-plane, to teach the Nazi’s lessons in humanity. Nazi ain’t got no humanity. There the foot soldiers of a Jew hatin, mass murderin manic, and they need to be destroyed. That’s why any and every son-of-a–bitch we find wearin a Nazi uniform, there gonna die.
if.
LT.ALDO
(CON’T)
We will be cruel to the Germans and through our cruelty, they will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty, in the disembowed, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brother we leave behind us. And the German will not be able to help themselves from imagining the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives.
And the Germans, will be sickened by us.
And the Germans, will talk about us.
And the Germans, will fear us.
And when the Germans close their eyes at night, and their sub conscious tortures them for the evil they’ve done, it will be with thoughts of us, that it tortures them with.
He stops pacing, and looks at everybody.
LT. ALDO
Sound good?
They all say;
ALL
Yes, sir!
LT.ALDO
That’s what I like to hear. But got a word of warning to all would-be warriors. When you join my command,
you take on debit. A debit you owe me, personally. Every man under my command, owes me, one hundred nazi scalps.
And I want my scalps.
And all y’all will git me, one hundred
Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazi’s… .or you will die trying.
By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff | Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Offensive’ souvenir figure pulled from store shelf
This novelty wine holder depicting a Native American drinking from a bottle of wine was recently removed from Gold Diggers, a Rapid City retail shop, after complaints that it was racially insensitive. (Courtesy photo)
The owners of a Rapid City souvenir shop have removed a miniature statue after Native Americans complained it was offensive.
Roger and Cindy Thompson, owners of Gold Diggers on Mount Rushmore Road, said they pulled a ceramic wine holder off shelves Thursday after receiving a complaint from a Native American woman.
The statue is of a Native American man in a headdress holding a wine bottle to his open mouth.
A picture of the statue circulated late last week, and Rapid City native Robert Cook, president of the National Indian Education Association, wrote to the city to express his disappointment.
Cook could not be reached for comment Tuesday but stated in his letter that the community has moved forward with bridging the gap between Native Americans and the rest of the community, but it falls “several steps back due to the insensitivity of some of our business owners in the community.”
Cook said he was told the statue was being sold in more than one location, but the Journal could not confirm that Tuesday.
Mayor Alan Hanks responded to Cook’s complaint by sending a letter to the Gold Diggers owners Friday, requesting the statue be removed because it was “in poor taste and disrespectful.”
The mayor applauded the Thompsons for being so willing to correct a mistake.
“Cindy (Thompson) has been very good about this,” Hanks said Tuesday. “This gal is very respectful. I sent an e-mail asking that they remove the item, and she did. Quite honestly, if anything, I’m proud of her. I’m very pleased that she showed respect.
“I wish we had more folks in the community who, when something is pointed out as being offensive, were that willing to step up and do something about it.”
The owners of Gold Diggers say about 40 percent of their employees are Native American and the issue has been blown out of proportion.
“We cater to the Native American community; we admire them,” said Roger Thompson. “We don’t make fun of them, we employ them.”
Cindy Thompson said she asked her Native American employees if they thought the statue was offensive before she put it on the shelves. She said no one disapproved.
“One said, ‘No, it’s really cute,’” Cindy said, and another added, “No, it’s 2009.”
The couple issued a written apology to the woman and said they didn’t realize the wine holder would offend anyone.
Gold Diggers manager Jackie White said the holder was included in a pallet of several wine holders of the same design, which also featured cowboys, antlers, bears, moose, raccoons and horses.
She said the Native American statues will be thrown out, because they can no longer be returned to the manufacturer.
“It’s completely ridiculous. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
Roger said some may be offended that the wine holder is offensive to others.
“It’s like slapping a Native American in the face,” he said, because it assumes that all Native Americans have a problem with alcohol and can’t have a wine holder in their house. “A percentage of any population has a problem with alcohol. Many Native Americans are responsible users of alcohol.”
The Thompsons said it was never meant to be disrespectful, and their store welcomes people of all cultures and backgrounds. Cindy said Gold Diggers, which features Native American jewelry and other items, was founded on her own appreciation of the Native American culture and artwork. She lived on reservations in the Southwest for many years.
She is frustrated that her commitment to the Native American community and her works of service could be tarnished by one piece of merchandise.
“I’m embarrassed over the situation and humiliated.”
It’s not the first time Native Americans in Rapid City have pushed back against merchandise and displays. A large bronze statue in front of Prairie Edge of a Native American man with his hands tied behind his back was replaced last year after complaints. Most recently, McDonald’s fielded complaints about its Night At The Museum Kids Meal toy: Gen. Custer riding a motorcycle.
Below, an URGENT request for assistance from Silvia Burley, Chairperson of the California Valley Miwok Tribe (CVMT). The Tribal community has lost their land to foreclosure and an eviction notice was issued for their removal. The eviction was scheduled to take place yesterday, June 17, 2009.
In response to the eviction, Silvia Burley and others from the community have barricaded themselves in the Tribal Office building.
The eviction has not been carried out as yet, however, the community is deeply concerned because they have nowhere else to go.
June 17, 2009 at 9:00pm – I just got off the phone with Silvia Burley. Everybody’s safe at the moment, but the situation is still very much uncertain. She said they barricaded themselves in the tribal office, placing file cabinets against the doors and anything else they could use to secure the building.
They’re now waiting to hear from lawyers to get a TRO (temporary restraining order), but it’s unclear if it’s going to happen. They do not have any dedicated legal advice
And the BIA is refusing to speak with her. She said they literally hung up on her after saying “she waited too long” even though she’s been doing everything in her power for the past five years to have this situation addressed. They’ve consistently brushed her and her people off since day one.
At this point, she said they have nowhere to go if the eviction is carried out – and that they are doing what they can to defend their Sovereignty and their Rights as a Federally Recognized Tribe.
I’ve asked Silvia to send me updates by email. I will post them as they come in. If you can help, please do not hesitate calling Silvia Burley, Chairperson of the California Valley Miwok Tribal Council, at 209 931 4567.
To: Subject: CRISIS AT CVMT – PLEASE CONTACT US AT 209 931 4567
To All:
We need immediate assistance, this is the outcome from Troy Burdick’s (Superintendent at the Central California Agency/BIA, located in Sacramento Calif.) continued efforts to illegally interfere into our Tribal Governmental Affairs (and the effects of our rightful Tribal members pleas for assistance, being ignored by the Bureau). We are a federally recognized Tribe, listed in the Federal Register and in the Dept. of the Interior/Bureau of Indian Affairs, Tribal Leaders Directory, Winter 2009.
Because our pleas for help have been constantly ignored, we now have lost our only piece of tribal property to foreclosure and will be removed by force on June 17th, 2009 (Elders and children included). We are asking for your assistance…. if anyone of you that I am contacting have a way to contact Mr. Salazar or Mr. Echohawk to make them aware of our crisis…. please do so!!!!!
PLEASE HELP!!! PLEASE FORWARD THIS INFORMATION ON TO ALL WHO CAN BE OF ASSISTANCE.
We need to get the attention of Mr. Echohawk or Mr. Salazar, IMMEDIATELY!!!!
The Tribe has no money and nowhere to go…. we will be forced to barricade ourselves at the property for local and international news crews to hear what is happening to our Tribe and how the BIA is allowing this to happen.
Our Tribe will not go willing on the 17th (we have no where to go) and we will not allow our Tribal Governmental “Confidential” documents to be given to INDYMAC BANK. We are asking that someone help us get this important information to the attention of Mr. Salazar and/or Mr. Echohawk. The Tribe has been located at this property for over 7 years. The “TRIBE” and its legitimate members have vowed to not leave this property until we have a place to move to. That means we need Mr. Salazar, Secretary of the Interior and/or Mr. Larry Echohawk to CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY to help resolve this URGENT MATTER/CRISIS.
Dozens of countries have embassies in Washington, D.C. Beginning next week, that number will increase by about 560, when an embassy representing American Indian tribes opens its doors.
The National Congress of American Indians, a longtime advocate for tribes, is moving this weekend from its rented space to an $8 million mansion near the capital’s Embassy Row, said Adam McMullin, a spokesman for the group. The new building will be called the Hall of Indian Nations.
The embassy signals a new era for tribes, said Ron Allen, NCAI secretary and chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe on the Olympic Peninsula.
“We’re stepping into that international arena now,” he said. “We have so many domestic needs and challenges, but the international forum will become a higher priority.”
Tribal leaders in recent years have connected with indigenous groups in other countries to discuss economic development and self-governance. Tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Canada in 2007 signed the United League of Indigenous Nations treaty, pledging to honor one another’s sovereignty and seek out opportunities for trade and commerce across international lines. Indigenous groups in Australia and other areas are involved in the effort.
That type of treaty will likely be more common among indigenous groups worldwide in the future, Allen said. With more than 500 federally recognized tribes, American Indians can share experience and expertise on self-governance, he said.
“We can share our systems and structures with indigenous people of other countries and other areas throughout the world and show them, ‘Here’s what you can do,’ ” Allen said.
The embassy will also draw together experts on all of the issues in Indian Country. Many tribes have become politically powerful, but many others don’t have advocates in D.C., Allen said. The embassy will help ensure that those tribes aren’t forgotten.
Tribes nationwide contributed to a $3 million down payment on the embassy building, Allen said. The Tulalip and Stillaguamish Tribes support the project, but haven’t pledged any money, he said. Allen expects that more tribes will give as NCAI pays down the remaining $5 million on the building.
Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422, kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
We, the undersigned, support the Winnemem Wintu struggle for justice. The California Legislature passed AJR 39, a joint resolution memorializing Congress to restore recognition to the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. The next step to correct an historic wrong now goes to the Federal level. We ask that you, as Senators representing California, sponsor and support a bill for the restoration of the Winnemem Wintu tribe. Change the message relayed in 1852 which refused to honor the treaty this tribe signed, in peace and friendship, by restoring the basic human rights they have been fighting for over the past 156 years.
Comments:
The importance of caring for and praying for the earth, the spirits of the land and the spirits of the earth’s water cannot be overstated. Humans are not any more separate from mother earth, than are the waters, the fish, the wildlife or the plants. There are those who understand this in the very core of their being and there are those who live out this knowledge in their daily thoughts and actions. These are the true caretakers of our planet earth.
Who can better care for and preserve the Mt Shasta lands and waters than those who trace their very existence to it? Centuries of ancestry have reached into the present through the Winnemem Wintu people. Winnemem people are still here doing the work the Creator set forth for them, despite the fact that their ancestors have been murdered and their ancestral lands have been robbed. Their sacred sites and their ancestral burial sites have been flooded, relocated and then stolen again.
In the 1980’s their very identity and existence was conveniently discounted. How can it be that these non-existent people signed treaties with the Federal government? Why is it that as recently as the 1970’s, they received the rights and restitution afforded to all American Indians if they did not exist, if they were not a tribe? How is it logical that individual Winnemem families received their rightful health care and education benefits and yet their own descendants no longer “qualify” for these rights because the entire tribe has been “accidentally” left off “the list?”
How can the disgrace of this error of non-recognition be allowed?
It is incomprehensible to me that this travesty continues to be perpetrated against these stewards of the land and water.
The United States government cannot in good conscience, do anything less than restore recognition to the Winnemem Wintu tribe of California. This omission MUST be addressed, and it must be addressed now. Our failure to rectify this wrong destroys the honor of all who consider themselves to be part of the United States of America.
Mary Favero
METRO – Somerset High School student Jesus Figueroa, 17, walks to his hearing at the U.S. Courthouse for his First Amendment lawsuit concerning his right to have long hair due to his Native American heritage on Friday, March 27, 2009. LISA KRANTZ/lkrantz@express-news.net
Like a character from the Bible, 17-year-old Jesus Figueroa draws strength from his shoulder-length hair.
It is spiritual, and the honors student at Somerset High School said he considers his locks part of his Native American heritage, which he has been discovering as he matures.
But, according to a federal lawsuit he filed, his hair doesn’t sit well with the rules of the Somerset Independent School District. The district bars male students from having hair that touches the shirt collar.
Figueroa had to serve two in-school suspensions last year until he cut his hair. After he refused to trim it a third time earlier this year, he was suspended again until he filed the lawsuit and got a judge to order the district to allow him back into his regular classes. By then, he had served a month of the latest suspension.
On Friday, Figueroa tried to make his case that the district’s actions trample on his Constitutional right to religious expression. Native Americans don’t cut their hair unless they’re in mourning, he argues.
He wants to be able to graduate in May taking his regular courses, and the district seems inflexible and indifferent, he argues. He’s already has a scholarship to attend Our Lady of the Lake University.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery gave him a partial victory, at least until a school board meeting April 13.
“This is a learning experience, but I wish I didn’t have to go through this,” Figueroa said of his battle with the district. “To me it shows they are not receptive to diversity.”
According to the district’s lawyers, Figueroa only recently — on Jan. 29 — made the claim that his hair is important to his Native American ancestry. They agree the district has granted religious exemptions to students in the past, but school lawyer Craig WoodÖ said Figueroa did not go completely through the administrative process before taking his case to court.
Figueroa said school and district officials were taking too long to hear his intra-district appeals. Rather than formally put his issue on the school board’s agenda, he filed suit. He said, however, that he spoke informally before the board in the past about the hair issue.
Court documents submitted by Figueroa’s lawyer, St. Mary’s Law School professor Amy Kastely, said the district wants him to submit proof he is Native American. School officials asked Figueroa for a card verifying his tribe is recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, for instance.
There are 562 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Natives in the United States, the BIA’s Web site says. The BIA has been repeatedly criticized for not recognizing those who claim affiliation with smaller or dying tribes. It does not recognize those from tribes outside the U.S.
Figueroa is originally from Michoacan, a central state in Mexico, and his family says they are P’urhépecha Indians. He has lived in the U.S. since he was 3 years old, and moved to Texas in March 2007 from California. But he embraces his roots. He is a member of Danza Azteca and the Native American Church.
A small group of members from various tribes protested the school district’s actions outside federal court Friday. They held placards that read: “We demand respect for Native People” “God Bless our Native Students” and “Justice for Native Peoples.”
“They’ve taken everything away from us, and now they want to take our hair too?” said Ray Rios, who is Yanaguana. Figueroa’s choice not to cut his hair “is not something he’s doing to rebel or be dirty. It’s a source of pride. …I think they sometimes don’t know there’s a native presence here.”
After hearing arguments for an hour later Friday, Biery ordered that the matter be taken before the school board at its regular meeting April 13, but he instructed the district to keep him in his regular classes until then.
Story Published: Apr 3, 2009
Story Updated: Apr 3, 2009
Editor’s note: The following is in response to the
editorial, “Five youth should not frame race debate,” which appeared March 29 at RapidCityJournal.com.
This incident and others like it that are never reported nor reported on are but the tip of the iceberg as to the true nature and extent of racism in not only Rapid City, but throughout the state. Do not expect too much in the way of positive changes, now or ever.
The entire state of South Dakota, and more specifically, Rapid City, is populated mainly by whites who are primarily lower middle class in sociological terms; people who are less educated, less socially enlightened and less accepting of the growing diversity of America as we venture forth into the 21st century.
When I lived in Rapid City, basically on and off all of my life thus far, I have made the observation that the vast majority of Indian-haters are whites who not only embody the aforementioned description, but who tend to suffer greatly, both individually and collectively, from what I have come to regard as a severe form of “self-esteem deficiency.”
Rapid City is largely peopled with illiterate, stupidly politically conservative, disenfranchised whites who labor for slave wages and essentially view themselves as much “less than” most other human beings. All of the hundreds of racist whites who I have personally confronted in Rapid City over the years have that much in common – their own self-image is so low that they, like their counterparts in the American south have no recourse to feel better about themselves but to publicly disparage or outright physically attack Indians whenever the opportunities arise.
Anyone who hates themselves and despises their station in life will, of course, hate and despise others – and will often act upon these negative feelings, as occurs in Rapid City on a continuous and tragic basis.
Lastly, if this incident does not compel a greater degree of public dialogue as to the “larger issue of race issues in Rapid City,” then the majority of people there can simply remain mired in the quicksand of the denial that people attempt to accomplish via a convoluted and very sorry minimizing of what actually happened – innocent, helpless and essentially disabled people were targeted for mistreatment on the basis of their race.
– Melvin Martin
Detroit, Mich.
The author is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.
Feds go after illegal feather trade
Mar 28, 2009 – 19:05:03 CDT
By JODI RAVE
Lee Enterprises
Darcey Anaquod, a men’s traditional dancer, wears scores of eagle feathers as part of his dance regalia. He received every feather in a sacred manner, allowing him to say he’s never bought an eagle feather in his life.
“Two years ago, I had a shabby looking bustle,” said Anaquod, a First Nations Muscowpetung Native who lives in Missoula, Mont. “My adopted brother honored me by giving me a bustle. He took pity on me.”
But an ongoing federal investigation has found some people who are allegedly disrespecting the revered bird and violating laws intended to protect bald and golden eagles. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s undercover operation is targeting people who are illegally buying, selling and receiving feathers.
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We, the undersigned, support the Winnemem Wintu struggle for justice. The California Legislature passed AJR 39, a joint resolution memorializing Congress to restore recognition to the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. The next step to correct an historic wrong now goes to the Federal level. We ask that you, as Senators representing California, sponsor and support a bill for the restoration of the Winnemem Wintu tribe. Change the message relayed in 1852 which refused to honor the treaty this tribe signed, in peace and friendship, by restoring the basic human rights they have been fighting for over the past 156 years.
METRO – Somerset High School student Jesus Figueroa, 17, walks to his hearing at the U.S. Courthouse for his First Amendment lawsuit concerning his right to have long hair due to his Native American heritage on Friday, March 27, 2009. LISA KRANTZ/lkrantz@express-news.net