Orchestrated censorship of Native news powerless to halt defenders

By Brenda Norrell

Indigenous Resistance

Photo 1 by Owiskawin, photo 2 by Akimel O'odham Youth Collective

The censorship of American Indian news in the United States is no accident. It is carefully orchestrated by acts of deception, distortion and omission. The bottom line is dollars, as revealed by following the money to the corporate core of the censors and contract spies in the media.

Regardless of the censorship, Native Americans continue to block fracking trucks and megaloads, continue to organize the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline and continue to defend the sacred.

Lakota Joye Braun was arrested on Wednesday as she attempted to block fracking trucks on Cheyenne River land in South Dakota. Regardless of a tribal law that prohibits the trucks, Braun spent the night in jail.

The struggle to protect the sacred continues in Arizona, where Akimel O’odham of Gila River Indian Community protested the planned South Mountain Loop 202 south of Phoenix.

"Gila River has said no three times. As recently as 2012 the Gila River Indian Community voted for the No Build option because Moadak (South Mountain) is a sacred site,” said Andrew Pedro of Sacaton. “No means No.”

In Mexico during August, the Zapatistas in the stronghold of La Realidad, Chiapas, hosted the National Indigenous Congress.

SubGaleano, formerly known as Marcos, spoke at the concluding press conference, honoring those who have died since the struggle for dignity and autonomy began. During the gathering, SubGaleano and the Comandantes also sent a message of support to Palestine.

Meanwhile, Bolivia President Evo Morales continues to plan for the upcoming United Nations World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in New York. During the planning, the North American Caucus called for cancellation of the conference. However, grassroots Natives, who are not part of non-profits or any caucus, say they will have no voice at the gathering, Sept. 22 -- 23 in New York. Many grassroots Natives say their issues have been co-opted by well-funded non-profits of the UN.

As the conference approaches, President Morales spoke on capitalism and imperialism. "The best way to fight capitalism and imperialism is implementing the policies and experiences of the original indigenous peoples, such as living in community, in fellowship, in solidarity, in peace. That's the experience, plus harmony with Mother Earth," he told Telesur.

It comes as no surprise that so little of the news of Native Americans or Indigenous People is known in the United States, especially if one looks at the owners of the American Indian media.

The owners of Indian Country Today Media Network, the Oneida Nation of New York, donated more than one quarter of a million dollars to the ultra-conservative Patriot Prosperity political action campaign this year. In fact, the Oneida Nation was the top donor this year.

Previously the top donor to Patriot Prosperity was Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam. Sheldon is owner of a daily Israeli newspaper and the 10th richest person in the world. The couple owns Adelson Drug Clinic.

Meanwhile, the owners of another national Indian news outlet, Ho Chunk, Inc., which owns the Indian news website indianz.com received an $80 million contract from the US State Department for domestic and international spying this year. The contract was awarded to Ho Chunk Inc.'s All Native subsidiary. A second contract gives them an office at the Pentagon in 2014. Ho Chunk Inc. is owned by the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and its subsidiaries work in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Further, national Native American news in the United States has become widespread deception and plagiarism. Instead of reporters actually going out and covering news stories, reporters routinely stay home and plagiarize the news that is online. They rewrite it, and often disguise it with a brief telephone interview, and finish it off with a stolen photo from the Internet.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press and mainstream news outlets usually take a different approach, focusing on corrupt tribal politicians, while failing to be present and interview Natives living on the land on the issues that really matter for future generations.

Read more: National Indian news owned by patriots and spies

http://indigenousresistancejuly2014.blogspot.com/2014/08/national-indian-news-us-patriots-and.html

Lakota woman arrested blocking fracking trucks

http://indigenousresistancejuly2014.blogspot.com/2014/08/lakota-woman-arrested-blocking-fracking.html

Akimel O’odham protest desecration by proposed South Mountain Loop

http://indigenousresistancejuly2014.blogspot.com/2014/08/akimel-oodham-protest-desecration.html

Words of SubGaleano on Palestine, Israel and the media

http://indigenousresistancejuly2014.blogspot.com/2014/08/words-of-zapatistas-subgaleano-la.html

Brenda Norrell has been a reporter in Indian country for 32 years, beginning as a reporter for  Navajo Times. After serving as a longtime staff reporter for Indian Country Today, she was censored and terminated in 2006 and created Censored News, with no advertising, grants or funding. Today, Indigenous Resistance carries forward the work of Censored News.

To repost this article, contact brendanorrell@gmail.com

Tribunal on Indian Boarding Schools Oneida, WI, Oct 2014

October 22 -- 25, 2014: Wisconsin event to focus on U.S. Indian boarding schools, promote healing

Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School
More than 200 undocumented deaths of
children including Anishinaabe. 

Blue Skies Foundation has scheduled a Tribunal to focus on the experiences of Native children who were forced at early ages to attend Indian boarding schools. This Tribunal is scheduled for October 22 through the 25, 2014 at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, at Oneida, Wisconsin.

Blue Skies Foundation is working with the staff of the Human Rights Action Center, from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, Jack Healey of the Human Rights Action Center, Bill Means, co-founder of the International Indian Treaty Council, and with Sheron Leonard, Pele Films, as well as numerous other individuals interested in documenting the history of the Indian boarding schools.

A panel of qualified Native judges will be listening to the witnesses as they provide first hand testimony of the abuse and mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the federal government, and of the Council of Churches, while being forced to live away from their families and Nations. In the words of the founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian School, General Richard Henry Pratt, “Transfer the savage born infant to the surroundings of civilization and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.”

At the conclusion of the Tribunal the Judges will issue an executive summary with their findings, which will be shared with the Native communities.

This Tribunal will be live-streamed by professionals out of California and the contents will be formatted into DVD form to be used as an educational tool in the schools, especially the Tribal schools. We are trying to provide a clear history while we have some of the witnesses able to tell their stories.

One reason to put together a Tribunal on the boarding school era is to bring an

Haskell, where children were beaten and tortured,
and buried in the marsh.

awareness of the treatment of Native children while in those schools and try to begin to understand the effects this treatment had on the survivors. We are told of the physical punishment the children suffered for speaking the language, and of the sexual assaults, the physical and mental violence that took place in the name of “educating” our children in order to strip them of the “savage upbringing” and introduce them to civilization.

We feel that while we have the ability to capture the first hand documentation from some of our people, it is vitally important because we will have in their own words, the harsh reality of the boarding school experience.

Fort Spokane

There are those of us who feel that as Native people, we are all victims of the boarding school era. Some of our parents entered the boarding schools at ages as young as three to four years of age. In their most formative and impressionable years they weren’t given guidance in a kind and loving way. According to our sources they were raised with military standards in the way they were served meals, the way they made their beds, and in the way they were forced to march from place to place. It had all the makings of a military handbook. Punishment for any infraction such as speaking the Native language was cruel and left a lasting imprint. Some of the forms of punishment carried over and when some of these children grew up to have families, the same kind of punishment was used on their children.

The Tribunal will focus on boarding schools as another form of genocide used against our people. We understand it to be a form of IDENTITY THEFT, with our language, our culture, and our spiritual way of life being taken from us. Although some communities have initiated healing ceremonies to assist in moving on from the past, we feel in order to heal completely we have to first deal with whatever it is that keeps us in limbo emotionally. We are going to attempt to create a bridge so as Nations, we can outline a plan that will come as close as possible to making us whole again. We want the cooperation of the U.S. Government and the World Council of Churches to assist in exploring the possibilities of authenticating our rich and beautiful way of life.

Albuquerque Indian School

This is an invitation to join us, participate by either giving testimony as a witness, or by listening and assisting financially to help make possible the documentation of the stories of truth. This is an undertaking that is deserving of a total community effort in order to have the impact that can initiate the healing process. We know that in order to heal and be able to move forward in a healthy way, we need to confront the issues that we need to heal from. We can no longer bury our heads in the sand and pretend all is well in our communities. The high rates of suicide, the out of control alcohol and drug abuse and now the gang problems cannot be ignored. We can’t wait for someone else to fix our problems. We need to step up and get to the root of all the evil that we are faced with. We are facing many challenges as Native people. We need to start to hold accountable the “Handlers” who were entrusted by force with our children. Our parents went off to these schools as innocent babies and were made to feel ashamed of themselves for the color of their skin and for speaking the language they were born with. They tried to escape reality because they felt they were in a hopeless situation with no way out. Some turned to alcoholism, some committed suicide, and some gave in and adapted to this foreign way of life where nothing is sacred. We want to attempt to honor our ancestors, by letting them know the sacrifices they made, we want to honor all the babies that sleep in the little graves that are marked “unknown” and the parents who wondered for years when their child was coming home. We need to tell our own story with our feet standing proud on our ground.

Carlisle 'The Children Who Never Came Home'
Longest Walk 2 Photo by Brenda Norrell

I will leave you with a reminder of what our parents and grandparents were up against and ask that you join us on our journey towards healing.

“I do not believe that Indians- people who for the most part, speak no English, live in squalor and degradation, make little progress from year to year, who are a perpetual source of expense to the government and a constant menace to thousands of white neighbors, a hindrance to civilization and a clog on our progress have any right to forcibly keep their children out of school to grow up like themselves, a race of barbarians and semi-savages.” --T. J. Morgan- Commissioner of Indian Affairs,,1889-1893

Navajo and Apache children in the prison of Fort Sumner, N.M. Longest Walk 

Blue Skies Foundation, Inc. has a 501C3 federally recognized non-profit status, organized exclusively for charitable, educational and spiritual purposes (ID#45-2364127). Specifically, Blue Skies seeks to represent, uplift and preserve Native American people, culture and spirituality.

Blue Skies Foundation, Inc.
N5679 Skylark Drive
De Pere, Wisconsin 54115

US Spying on American Indians and Muslims

By Brenda Norrell

Denver Columbus Parade protest 2007

Today's news focuses on the revelations that the US is spying on prominent Muslims in this country. The fact that the US is spying on activists is of course nothing new -- even Martin Luther King, Jr., was spied on by the US, up to the day he was assassinated. What is new today, is the extent of the spying on prominent Muslims, including attorneys and one person who worked at Homeland Security.

Long before Snowden exposed NSA syping, the secret Denver police spy files exposed police spying on Native Americans.

The US spy files on American Indian activists became public in Denver more than a decade ago. It was old news to the American Indian Movement. AIM always knew they were out there somewhere listening. The facts were made public in a Denver court case. The spying didn't stop in Denver. It extended to Big Mountain Navajos, and beyond. Even an 82-year-old in Denver was targeted, just because the grandmother had a Leonard Peltier bumper sticker on her car.