BOOZHOO! We've amassed tons of information and important history on this blog since 2010. If you have a keyword, use the search box below. Also check out the reference section above. If you have a question or need help searching, use the contact form at the bottom of the blog.
We want you to use BOOKSHOP! (the editor will earn a small amount of money or commission. (we thank you) (that is our disclaimer statement)
This is a blog. It is not a peer-reviewed journal, not a sponsored publication... WE DO NOT HAVE ADS or earn MONEY from this website. The ideas, news and thoughts posted are sourced… or written by the editor or contributors.
EMAIL ME: tracelara@pm.me (outlook email is gone)
ALMOST THREE MILLION VISITORS!
Murray
Sinclair made his mark on Canadian society as a judge, activist,
senator, the chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission and the co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry — and now
he writes all about it in his memoir Who We Are. The
book answers the four guiding questions of Sinclair's life — Where do I
come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I? — through stories
about his remarkable career and trailblazing advocacy for Indigenous
peoples' rights and freedoms.
Murray
Sinclair is a former judge and senator. Anishinaabe and a member of the
Peguis First Nation, Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge appointed
in Manitoba and the second appointed in Canada. He served as Co-Chair of
the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba and as Chief Commissioner of
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has won awards including
the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, the Manitoba Bar
Association's Equality Award and its Distinguished Service Award (2016)
and has received Honorary Doctorates from 14 Canadian universities.
Sara
Sinclair is an oral historian of Cree-Ojibwa and mixed settler descent.
She teaches at Columbia University and is currently co-editing two
anthologies of Indigenous letters.
Niigaan Sinclair is a
writer, editor, activist and the head of the Department of Native
Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the co-editor of Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water and Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories. He won the Peace Educator of the Year award in 2019. He is also the author of the book Wînipêk.
LISTEN | Murray Sinclair reads from his memoir on The Current:
Former
judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Murray Sinclair reads an excerpt from his book Who We Are: Four
Questions For a Life and a Nation. The memoir draws from his personal
experiences to reflect on truth and reconciliation in Canada.
When Cheri Power tried to book a new round of therapy this week at her clinic of 16 years, she got an unwelcome email.
"You must provide proof of Indigenous ancestry," it said.
It
was a new policy, the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health informed her.
She would need a status card or an official letter from a federally
recognized band.
Power has relied on the Ottawa
clinic for her doctor, for mental health and addiction support and for
everything from nutritionists to chiropractors. Though she's able to
hold onto her doctor for now, she was devastated to read that she would
lose access to other services with so little warning.
"It's just not fair," Power said. "To do this without any notice to their clients is cruel."
Wabano
says the new policy is needed to combat fraudulent claims of Indigenous
identity and that it will offer a transitional period to allow people
to gather documents.
But Power doesn't think she should have to revisit past trauma to keep care.
Her
Cree mother was a day school survivor facing homelessness and drug
problems, Power said, when she was born. Put in foster care and then
adopted out to a white family, Power said she was always told she was
Indigenous.
She said she finally found her birth mother five years ago.
"I
don't have the paperwork to prove any of that," she said. "All of a
sudden, there's this incredible barrier to service that I don't know how
I'm going to overcome."
'It's a lot of bureaucracy'
Colleen Hele-Cardinal of the Sixties Scoop Network said the barrier can be high and it can sometimes take years to surmount it.
"If
you know that you're First Nation, but you can't prove it and the band
doesn't sign you on as a member, it's very difficult for you to get
status," she said.
"The
time it takes to write for this information [and] to get it back [is
substantial]. And if you don't get the right information, you have to
send out more requests. It's a lot of bureaucracy."
Survivors
can face redacted child welfare records, she said. The problems can be
far worse if their father is the one with status but doesn't appear on
their birth certificate.
"Once you get the information,
you have to apply to [Indigenous Services Canada], and there's a huge
backlog for that as well," said Hele-Cardinal.
Wabano blames fraud that denies Indigenous people care
In
a statement to CBC, Wabano's director of administration, communications
and engagement, Natalie Lloyd, said the centre will accept other ways
of confirming Indigenous identity.
Those could
include "a letter of kinship connection" for Indigenous people who were
caught up in the Sixties Scoop or have no formal records, Lloyd said.
But
that possibility was not mentioned in the email to Power, who said it
also never came up in subsequent phone calls with the centre.
Lloyd
told CBC the policy change was necessary to conserve limited resources
for Indigenous people in the face of increasing fraud that deprives
Indigenous people of health resources they need.
"Akin
to other organizations across Canada, we have seen an increase in
individuals fraudulently claiming Indigenous identity to access services
and benefits," she said.
"Over the last two years we
have consulted with subject matter experts and community stakeholders to
assist us in developing our eligibility policy to prevent misuse of
limited resources funded for First Nations, Inuit and Métis."
Lloyd
would not share how many of Wabano's clients could be affected by the
policy change, citing privacy reasons. She said the centre will help any
patients who can't prove their Indigenous identity find appropriate
health and wellness services elsewhere in Ottawa.
She did not respond to follow-up questions on how long the transitional period will last and whether it applies to all services.
Revisiting past 'filled with emotion and turmoil and pain'
Power
said she'd have little chance of getting an official letter from a band
she has never been to. She said she has previously tried to get her
status card but faced similar issues to those Hele-Cardinal described.
Since finding her mother, she now has more information.
"I
have a place to start, but this isn't something I ever expected I'd
have to deal with or be forced to do," she said. "All of it is so murky,
and so filled with emotion and turmoil and pain that it's really hard
to even think about starting."
She called the experience
of having her Indigenous identity questioned and losing access to
medical care "painful and traumatic."
"It's difficult,
because a lot of us don't know where we come from," she said. "It
touches a really sore spot for a lot of people."
As for
the transitional period, Power said it wasn't offered for mental health
services. She confirmed she is still being allowed to see her
doctor, and saw a nurse on Thursday, though she doesn't know how long
that will continue.
"I have a recent diagnosis of a
genetic condition that requires a lot of medical follow through right
now, and I'm in a bit of medical turmoil requiring a lot of care with
surgery and specialists and a lot of co-ordinating," she said.
On the occasion of the major exhibition showcasing renowned black ash basket weavers, Kelly Church & Cherish Parrish: In Our Words, An Intergenerational Dialogue,Stamps Gallery is proud to organize an important public discussion
on the tragic legacy of American-Indian Boarding Schools in the United
States and the intergenerational trauma and suffering they inflicted on
Indigenous communities. Church and Parrish explore the consequences of
this time through their boundary-breaking basketry as they pay homage to
their community’s resilience, strength, and bravery.
Rochelle Ettawageshik is
a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and serves
as vice chair of the tribe’s child welfare commission. She currently
sits on the board of directors for the National Indian Child Welfare
Association and is vice president of the Michigan Indian Education
Council. Ettawageshik recently retired from the State of Michigan as the
director of Native American Affairs in the Child and Family Services
Administration, where she developed policies to improve services to
American Indian families in Michigan.
Benedict Hinmon is
the Director at Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. Little
Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Hinmon is
the grandson of Obwaandiak (Chief Pontiac) and comes from a proud
family of Michigan Anishinaabe.
Matthew L.M. Fletcher
is the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at Michigan
Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of federal Indian law, American
Indian tribal law, Anishinaabe legal and political philosophy,
constitutional law, federal courts, and legal ethics. He also sits as
the chief justice of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Poarch
Band of Creek Indians, and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and
Chippewa Indians.
Wenona T. Singel is an
Associate Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law
and the Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center. Her research
and writing address issues related to Tribal Sovereignty and Indigenous
Rights. She is working on a book about the intergenerational impact of
federal Indian law and policy on Native families.
On
view through December 7, this exhibition centers the subjectivities of
two contemporary Indigenous artists whose practices have sustained and
bolstered the relevance of the age-old Anishinaabe practice of black ash
basket-making in the 21st century. Kelly Church and Cherish Parrish
explore the themes of Native women’s labor as carriers of culture, the
legacy of boarding schools, treaties, and stories from ancestors who
walked on through their work.
Curated by Srimoyee Mitra with Curatorial Assistant Zoi Crampton.
“My
vision is to see First Nations protecting their traditional lands and
waters by developing and implementing their own Self-Determination Plans
for Community Development and Nationhood based on restoration of stolen
lands, territories and resources, or restitution where lands and
resources aren’t returned.”
On
September 19, 2024, Russell released an updated summary of his
analysis, CANADA'S WAR ON FIRST NATIONS, which opens with this
statement:
My
belief--which is based upon my policy experience and observations over
the past 4 decades of First Nations-Canada relations--is that the Crown
(governments & courts) is continuing to empty out (limit &
restrict) the meaning (scope & content) of Aboriginal and Treaty
Rights….
First
Nation Peoples would be better served focusing on internal organizing,
networking and capacity building instead of hoping a federal political
party will save us.
Getting rid of the Indian Act? That's colonialism (2024) in action... Trace
Darrell Waters, a brash young attorney,
returns to his childhood home in Montana to broker a deal between a
large energy company and the Blackfeet Nation. In the process, he is
forced to confront his reclusive father about their
painful past. Through a childhood sweetheart, Dorothy Dark Eyes, he
rediscovers his identity and feels his perspective shift: his clever
business deal will destroy her language school, further erode Blackfeet
culture and taint their land. Darrell must grapple
with the paradigm of being Native American in America.
Our
work matters because we are bridging the gap between generations,
offering a way for families to stay connected to their culture, their
language, and their stories.
In
the words of Quindrea Yazzie, a Navajo editor of the ICT Newscast, even
though not everyone can live on the reservation, their children still
get to experience their heritage in meaningful ways through ICT. This is
the heart of what we do—ensuring Indigenous stories and voices are
heard, preserved, and shared widely.
Tink Tinker (Osage Nation) is Clifford Baldridge Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, where he teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies. Tinker is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. His publications include “American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty” (2008); “Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation” (2004); and “Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide” (1993). He co-authored “A Native American Theology” (2001); and he is co-editor of “Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance” (2003), and Fortress Press’ “Peoples’ Bible” (2008).
This lecture is made possible through the support of Gerald Facciani ‘13 M.A.R., the Native American Cultural Center, the Department of Religious Studies, the Forum on Religion and Ecology, and the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.
I have often wondered about how we adoptees were affected by our adoptions, as far as our mental health. (I know there is damage.) And if our situation has long-lasting effects. This interview is about damage, psychopaths, the psyche and neuroscience.
About the video:
Chase Hughes retired from the
US military in 2019. After a 20-year career, Chase now teaches
interrogation, sales, influence, and persuasion. And he had a personal health crisis. And explains how he healed. (Very long interview)
READ: The Childhood Development Triangle
The Childhood Development Triangle consists of three critical elements, and each one is an element of something we absorb. These are the building blocks of our personalities, and they influence us well into adulthood.
Safety:
From a young age, we are programmed to seek out environments, relationships, and different things that make us feel secure and safe. This could be physical, or emotional safety, they can be different for each person.
Friends:
As humans, we are social creatures, and from the moment we start interacting with the world around us we're on a quest for connection with other people. This can narrow down to the friends we make, and the groups we belong to, and these all play an incredibly important role in how develop into adults.
Rewards:
The rewards are different for every person, and it's all about the feedback loop of action, and then some kind of gratification to be received. As children, we learn that very specific behaviors can lead to positive outcomes.
Flooding
in North Carolina following Tropical Storm Helene. (Courtesy Sgt. 1st
Class Leticia Samuels / North Carolina National Guard)
Over the weekend, President Joe Biden approved
a Major Disaster declaration for North Carolina, including for the
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, to help people access funds and
resources to recover from Hurricane Helene.
The funds are available for essential items like food and water, repairs, or a temporary place to stay.
In preparation for the storm, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians declared a state of emergency last week.
The tribe still plans to hold its Cherokee Indian Fair this week.
In
a statement issued by tribal leaders, they said they’re moving forward
with the fair with a deep understanding of the devastation caused by the
hurricane to surrounding areas.
They said the fair represents a time to gather, reconnect, and strengthen bonds.
The tribe will gather supplies during the fair to help those in need.
VIMEO: https://ebci.com/live-streams/
*
(Courtesy Asm. James Ramos / Facebook)
On Friday, California Native American Day, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed seven tribal bills.
The
bills introduced by Assemblymember James Ramos (Serrano/Cahuilla/D-CA)
include protections for the Indian Child Welfare Act, strengthens the
Feather Alert for missing Indigenous persons, and requires schools to
teach about the impacts of Missions and the Gold Rush.
If
you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, you can speak with a
trained listener by texting 988, the national Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline, or calling +1 (800) 273-TALK (8255).
Oglala children, Native boarding school victims laid to rest in weekend-long ceremony
The remains of three Oglala Lakota
students who died while attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
in the 1890s were returned home this month and reburied in their South
Dakota homelands
This article is free to access.
OGLALA, S.D. — As darkness descended, the procession to rebury
Samuel Flying Horse (also known as Tasunke Kinyela) made its way along a
dirt road to the Brave Blue Horse Family Cemetery outside of Oglala,
S.D., on Sunday, Sept. 22. The memorial service and community gathering
had run behind schedule and now the blue skies that marked the day and
golden light of the setting sun were gone.
Samuel died as a student at the Carlisle Indian Industrial
School and waited 131 years to be disinterred and returned to his
homeland. Those gathered were not about to let darkness make him wait
longer.
Approximately 20 vehicles in an open field encircled and
directed their headlights on the small fenced-in cemetery. The pounding
of the drum, the singing of songs, and prayers drifted up as pinpoints
of starlight began dotting the night sky. Eventually, a group of men
lowered Samuel’s casket, covered in a star quilt and a bouquet of red
roses, into the ground. Samuel was now part of the land he had left
behind in 1891.
Along with
Fannie Charging Shield
and James Cornman, Sameul was reburied on the Pine Ridge
Reservation this past weekend. Fannie and James were buried at St.
Julius Cemetery in Porcupine on Saturday, following a community
gathering at the Pahin Sinte Owayawa School to celebrate the homecoming
of the three Oglala Lakota students. Samuel was reburied the following
day.
They died in the early 1890s as students of the Carlisle
Indian Industrial School, the first federally run, off-reservation
boarding school for Native Americans. Approximately 8,000 Native
American students attended the school in a misguided attempt at forceful
assimilation into white civilization by cutting all links in their
cultural chain. It became the model for more than 400 schools across 37
states and territories in the U.S. and provided a blueprint for Canada’s
notorious residential school system.
The three students were
among the estimated 232 students who died during its years of operation
from 1879 to 1918. Each passed from tuberculosis, then called
consumption. It was the leading cause of death at the Carlisle school.
The dream
It wasn’t until the three students came home to Pine Ridge a
week earlier that Corrine Brave, 70, checked her family tree and
realized she was a relative of Samuel Flying Horse, who school records
indicate was an orphan. With some trepidation, she stepped forward to
claim Samuel and offer a burial site.
As the mourners gathered, illuminated by the headlights of the
surrounding cars, Corrine Brave told the gathering the story of a dream
she had had the night before. A figure of a man descended a steep series
of steps toward her. He kept slipping and falling, appearing to be
legless. She could not make out the features of his face, but his voice
was distinct. As he got closer, he said “wopilayelo” (the male version
of thank you) to her four times. She felt the man was Samuel.
The dream woke her.
“I
sat straight up, looked around thinking I was hearing things,” she
recalled. “Then I said to myself, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ … So that's
when I knew I was doing the right thing for my relative,” Brave said.
“It was for love – the love of my relatives, the love of my
family. … I just really felt that in my heart that there was a
relationship between us.” She began to think of herself in the role of
an auntie.
He was buried beside his namesake, her late brother Samuel Brave.
The 'peaceful war'
The weekend’s ceremonies started Saturday morning when a convoy
of nearly 25 cars made their way from Pine Ridge through the rolling
hills. It traveled along the Chief Bigfoot Highway past the Wounded Knee
Massacre site. It was a morning to celebrate and memorialize the three
students.
Fannie, James and Samuel left home for Carlisle in the name of
education. The students did not realize they were taking part in a
“peaceful war,” one fought in the classroom using education as the
ammunition to force assimilation and cultural destruction. Books and
blackboards were deemed a cheaper solution to “the Indian problem” than
bullets and battlefields.
The school, located on a vacant U.S.
Army base in Pennsylvania, was run in a military fashion. It was only
fitting that upon their return they be memorialized in a school, Pahin
Sinte Owayawa, in Porcupine, S.D.
It was the graduation day they had not lived to see.
The
three caskets were carried into the school gym and placed in ceremonial
tipis. About 100 community members and students sat in folding chairs
and bleachers. They gathered to gain knowledge from all the students had
endured over a century before by traversing 1,500 miles across the
country to a school that had all intentions of erasing their culture.
The trio of students and their experiences had become the teachers.
Courage, perseverance and overcoming adversity were their subjects. It
was their time to be honored.
“They were innocent, and they were raised right. And when they
went to Carlisle, their parents got them ready,” Pat Janis, a medicine
man and relative of Fannie Charging Shield, had said the previous day in
an interview with ICT. “They said, ‘This is a different way than we
live, but you got to go forward. You got to learn these things. This is
the way we're going to live now. So you got to have strength. You got to
have courage and do your best. Get educated. You're going to help us.’
So they prepared them. Although those students didn't want to go there …
they took it as a warrior. … They said, ‘I'm scared. I don't know what
this is, but my parents believe in me, and they want me to move forward
into this way of life. I'm not selling out our people.’”
A question becomes a movement
The movement to repatriate the remains of students from the
Carlisle cemetery began in 2015, when the Sicangu Youth Council of the
Rosebud Sioux Tribe stopped at Carlisle following an youth event in
Washington, D.C. It began with the simple question no one had thought to
ask in earnest before, “Why aren’t we doing something to bring them
home?”
The question ultimately led the Office of Army Cemeteries to
begin the process of returning students’ remains to their tribal
communities. Since 2017, the Office of Army Cemeteries – which oversees
the Carlisle cemetery along with other military gravesites, including
Arlington Cemetery – has disinterred and returned the remains of 32
children from the school’s cemetery. Still, 146 students have yet to be
returned to their tribes prior to this fall’s disinterment.
Three
former members of the Sicangu Youth Council, Chris Eagle Bear, Rachel
Janis, and Jayden Whiting, were recognized and honored at the memorial
service for initiating the return of Carlisle students.
“You know,
10 years later, I didn't expect to be where we are today. Because at
the end of the day, we were just kids with a curious question,” said
Chris Eagle Bear, 26, who is currently a Rosebud Sioux Tribe councilman.
“My
generation is the first generation that is not a part of the boarding
school era. And with that, we're able to share what we feel. We're able
to speak on matters that a lot of our people couldn't speak on for a
long time because they were scared,” Eagle Bear said. “The older
generation started sharing their stories, started sharing things that
they've never shared before with anyone.”
Janis called the relatives of the three students forward for a ceremony of healing and compassion near the end of the event.
“We are still in mourning over it. It's a good thing that we
can get over it now, because sometimes we walk around with sadness and
mourning, and we don't even know we're in mourning ’til we get a
physical sickness like diabetes,” he said.
For Justin Pourier, the
Oglala Sioux Tribal Historical Preservation Officer, who had gone to
Carlisle and accompanied them on their homecoming, there was the
satisfaction of a mission accomplished. He often thought of all they had
endured and felt a love and an attachment to the three students.
Yet, there was so much more work to be done. Pourier thought
about other Oglala Lakota children who remain buried at other boarding
school cemeteries and artifacts in the possession of museums and
academic institutions. He spoke at the event of the Oglala Lakota
students buried at the White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a
Quaker-run, Native American residential school in Wabash, Ind.,which was
initially established by Quaker missionaries in 1862. And he talked
about his hope to continue to have artifacts, such as war bonnets and
moccasins with beautiful beadwork, returned from various museums to a
place where Native youths could draw inspiration and pride in the
beautiful craftsmanship.
“If they can see all these things, it
reestablishes their pride and their sense of knowing who they are. I’m
hoping it brings healing, and helps our children grow back into the
strong nation we used to be,” Pourier had said while in Carlisle. “We
can't afford to send a busload of kids all the way to New York to look
at something that should be back home.”
As the morning of speeches and prayers came to a close
Saturday, Michael Littlevoice, a Ponca and Omaha man living in Ponca
City, Okla., asked permission to address the crowd. He had attended
Chilocco Indian Agricultural School with Orville Flying Horse of
McIntosh, S.D., in the early 1970s. He felt compelled to attend the two
events to help the community heal and celebrate.
He performed an
original composition on his flute inspired by the occasion. The haunting
yet peaceful music echoed through the room, setting the mood for the
reburial that would follow shortly, the ending to the long and
unfortunate journey home of Fannie, Samuel and James. While he performed
as an instrumental, he informed those gathered of the words:
“After all of these years, I'm home, I'm home. I'm home after all these years.”
This story was originally published on ICTNews.org.
This
story was written by one of our partner news agencies. Forum
Communications Company uses content from agencies such as Reuters,
Kaiser Health News, Tribune News Service and others to provide a wider
range of news to our readers. Learn more about the news services FCC uses here.
Using DNA tests, Dean Lerat has created a massive family tree for the Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan... By day, Dean Lerat is an RCMP st...
Bookshop
You are not alone
To Veronica Brown
Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.
Diane Tells His Name
click photo
60s Scoop Survivors Legal Support
GO HERE:
https://www.gluckstein.com/sixties-scoop-survivors
Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines
click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie
We conclude this series & continue the conversation by naming that adoption is genocide. This naming refers to the process of genocide that breaks kinship ties through adoption & other forms of family separation & policing 🧵#NAAM2022#AdoptionIsTraumaAND#AdopteeTwitter#FFY 1/6 pic.twitter.com/46v0mWISZ1
As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.