#NativeJusticeNow: Police Violence, Colonialism, & #JusticeForLoreal by Indigenous Action Media

Klee Benally is the definition of an inspiring activist. Steady in his word and action, Klee has been working to bring justice to Native people, the U.S. and the world for many years. Recently,  he offered this well researched, critical piece on police violence. Read his words, follow the resources at the end for further education. In Solidarity.

From Indigenous Action Media:

According to The Guardian’s “The Counted” database, there have been 1,403 people’s lives taken by police terrorism in the US since 2015.

We’re not addressing a few “bad apple” cops here though, this whole system is rotten to the core. This reality was brought close to home on Sunday, March 27, 2016 when 27-year-old Diné woman Loreal

Loreal Juana Barnell Tsingine (Photo courtesy of Adam James)

Juana Barnell Tsingine was gunned down by a Winslow, Arizona police officer who was responding to an alleged act of shoplifting.

Loreal was shot 5 times by the white officer who was reportedly wearing a body camera. Apparently the officer felt threatened because she had scissors.
There have been 53 people killed by cops in AZ since 2015. 0 people have been killed by scissors.

Police violence is systemically rooted in white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. 

According to Eastern Kentucky University professor Victor E. Kappeler, “New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.”

According to a 2010 census more than 25% of the 10,000 people who live in Winslow are Indigenous. Although Winslow is considered a “border town” to the Navajo Nation; like Farmington, NM, Durango, CO, and nearby Flagstaff, it’s occupied stolen lands steeped in a legacy of settler colonial violence and class war with resounding impacts of historical trauma and a range of associated social disorders (i.e. poverty) that impact power relations to this day. The City of Flagstaff, which has sanctioneddesecration of the San Francisco Peaks (held holy by more than 13 Indigenous Nations), arrests an average of more than 3,000 Indigenous People every year yet only 7,000 Native people call Flagstaff their home. Disproportionate arrests due to racial profiling are not the exception but appear to be the expectation in these hostile environments.

Piecemeal policy adjustments within police institutions such as body cams, cultural sensitivity training, and so-called “less-than-lethal” options, demonstrate no critical change of the power that cops have to kill those who pose no significant threat (not to legitimize cops killing armed folks either). Unless of course we recognize that brown and black bodies are also a factor in what constitutes a “threat.”

Keep reading Here

It's Not About Trump, It's About What He Symbolizes

If you have any ounce of hope for the well being of planet earth then you are as surprised as anyone that Donald Trump has made the headway he has in mainstream American politics. Is it scary? Yes. However, is this what is needed for a revolution? Perhaps.

The truth is Mr. Trump doesn't matter. What he symbolizes does. Back in December he called for barring all Muslims from entering the U.S. He has also supported action to spy on mosques, and create a database of all Muslims living in the country. He was quoted as saying, "until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat is poses [ISIS], our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad".

The mans ignorance is clear. So all Muslims must face persecution because of one group of extremists?

On women, follow this link and check out his views for yourself.

On Latinos, follow this link and again, check out his views for yourself.

The truth is the country and our world continues to try and heal from the brutal past of colonization and slavery, exacerbated in the past 200+ years by unfettered capitalism and hegemony. With Trump, don't let anyone get away with saying he's confident, good for business, and even better for politics. Look at what he stands for, look at what he symbolizes, understand who truly supports him. As disgusting as it might sound, as he continues to rise into mainstream American political prominence, perhaps this is exactly what soft "progressives" and the like need to get activated, to be pushed to the edge, to revolt for the better of people and the planet. Affinity across diversity, for peace, justice and sustainability has never been more necessary than right now.

A Tool for Educator's, Food for Thought for All

If you're a student, or in educational fields, you're most likely (hopefully) concerned about supporting diversity across all humans and all species. In this piece by Samduzi an argument is made for decolonizing education as opposed to merely diversifying education. It's a great read, enjoy! (retrieved from here)

We Need A Decolonized, Not A "Diverse", Education

Black History Month has passed; the pushback of white supremacy through critical education resumes its daily, hourly, minute-to-minute work. 

In A Case for Whiteness History Month, I make a short case for the introduction of Whiteness History Month, a month dedicated to kyriarchy: the overlapping and interconnected oppressions around gender, sexuality, race, class, and physical ability that are made invisible by violent normativities. Inherent to this case for this history month is a case for critical pedagogy. 

Critical pedagogy is a kind of instruction that challenges dominant structures (such as whiteness) through dialogue and ultimately seeks to create a social and political consciousness that empowers individuals and communities to name and identify oppressions. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire named this “critical consciousness,” and the process of consciousness-raising was called “conscientization.”

In his book Education, Power, and Personal Biography, Argentinian sociologist and educator Carlos Alberto Torres challenged mythologies of liberal education and its “notion that education is a neutral activity, and that education is an apolitical activity.” It is impossible for American education to be neutral and/or apolitical when lesson plans of all educational levels are sites of historical revisionism. One of my favorite quotes is an Ewe-Mina (peoples from Benin, Ghana and Togo) proverb: “Until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Until indigenous communities can tell the story of America’s “discovery” by European explorers, until the African diaspora can write the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, until marginalized communities are the storytellers of their experiences, history will be rendered partially complete but wholly privilege the knowledges and perspectives of colonizers.

In this context, diversity agendas are hindrances rather than stepping stones to justice and equity. Diversity might be the inclusion of a lesson about Chinese-American contributions to American infrastructure within a lesson about westward expansion. It might also be learning about traditional Native American garments during November lessons about the observation of Thanksgiving at Plymouth colony. In both cases, diversity signifies the inclusion of communities on the margins in ways that do not decenter dominance, but actually insulate it. 

The inclusion of marginalized identities and experiences without decentering dominant narratives is an understanding of diversity that leaves oppressive structures intact, and in fact, insulates them from criticism. Diversity is very frequently the linchpin of liberal racism in education, and inclusivity becomes functionally useless if we do not also exclude via decentering violent normativities positioned as normal:

"Through a white-writing of history (and history textbooks) that erases and minimizes all of the revolts that were necessary for change, liberals are able to demand that protesters remain totally peaceful, pacifist, and nonviolent (by which they mean non-destructive of property) in the face of dehumanization, degradation, and absolute repressive violence (the actual destruction of human life). White liberals and their sympathizers take ideas and quotes from Martin Luther King out of context and use them to shame disruptive protesters as rioters and looters, dismiss more militant activists as spiteful and vengeful, blaming them all for their own conditions.”

Many professors are taking the initiative to subvert the normative values imposed by certain curriculum and educational requirements, and I’d like to highlight two wonderful women I know: Dr. Terri Coleman a first year composition professor at Dillard University in New Orleans, and Dr. Charity Clay, a sociology professor at Merritt College in Oakland. Terri draws on black feminist, womanist, and postcolonial theorists like Victor Villanueva, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Edward Said, and Julius Lester. As an critical race sociologist and symbolic interactionism, Charity’s work also centers black womanhood and similarly draws on the black feminist scholarship of Dorothy Roberts, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Alice Walker and Audre Lorde, as well as Joe Fegin, Eduardo Bonilla Silva, Stuart Hall, and others.

Terri refers to her teaching as “unteaching” because she wants “[her] students to unlearn the ideas they’ve internalized about language” and the idea “that there’s ‘good’ English and ‘bad’ English…If you believe there’s ‘good’ English and ‘bad’ English, then you’re going to think that using ‘bad’ English is a sign of cognitive deficiency. If your identity aligns with ‘good’ English, that’ll make you an entitled jerk. But if your identity aligns with ‘bad’ English, that sets you up to believe you’re inferior, you’re stupid, that you are inherently unworthy and unable.”

As a sociologist, Charity prefaces her teaching by “deconstructing dominant narratives” because “many students are not aware of how intentionally structures of domination work.” She tries to link classroom teaches to students’ real life experiences by ensuring that all groups in her class are represented in the concepts taught. 

“If I have Black, Indigenous, Asian and pacific islander, queer, women, immigrant, parents, etc. as students, I try to make sure that I make connections to them with the examples, with the authors we read, with the work they are assigned.  And this is not only for the inclusion of these students but it is also to provide an understanding to other students.  This inclusion encourages students to share, and that sharing can create a very powerful learning environment where students are listening to and learning from each other.”

Dr. Charity Clay

Diversity is antithetical to critical education, to any politics that ultimately seek to dismantle oppressive systems. The real problem with diversity in Terri’s eyes is that “because it is based on difference, [it] almost always includes whiteness,” which isn’t useful for anybody. 

Because we are constantly taught that our lives, understandings, and experiences are invalid: 

“people of color…need to see our own worlds centered; we need to be able to assume our validity. White people need practice recognizing and accepting the validity or traditions that have nothing to do with them; they need to practice inhabiting marginal spaces. Diversity doesn’t allow that, because it makes different groups (including whites) share the center.”

Dr. Terri Coleman

Charity’s understanding of diversity in education is a “surface diversity,” i.e. “the presence of different ‘looking’ people, without a sincere acknowledgement of different ideologies or perspectives.”

She ultimately seeks to instill her students with the understanding that their “experiences and realities are important."

Not seeing themselves represented in the textbooks they read often discourages them in school. 

Dr. Charity Clay 

There is demonstrable evidence that students perform better when their curriculum is representative and instills within them a sense of pride in their identities. Otherwise schools become yet another site in which students of color are repeatedly taught and begin to internalize their own degradation.

Diversity alone is not enough to redress centuries of hegemonic understandings and socialization via education. We need campaigns like Dismantling the Master’s House, Rhodes Must Fall in Britain, and Fees Must Fall and Open Stellenbosch’s Luister in South Africa, among other movements and initiatives around the world. We must support students and faculty members at institutions like San Francisco State University where the College of Ethnic Studies is facing huge funding cuts, at least in part because most American institutions devalue whiteness de-centered cultural programming. We’ve got to fight for the non-violence education and knowledge we deserve.

If you'd like to support this writer and help HARLOT MAGAZINE continue paying marginalized writers for their work, you can buy a "DECOLONIZE EDUCATION" t-shirt inspired by this article.

If you don't know what environmental injustice looks like, check out the Clean Up The Mines Project

Danika Worthington/Cronkite News

Navajo protesters like Klee Benally, above, were joined by members of several other tribes from around the country at the EPA protest.

Environmental racism targets people of color, and other disenfranchised communities by fostering unequal amounts of burdens to these folks through their environment. Dirtier air, more polluted land, and heavily impacted water sources are just a few examples of environmental injustices faced by predominately Black, Latino and Indigenous communities in the U.S.

This recent piece by Indian Country speaks to an ongoing issue faced by Native American communities and others through abandoned uranium mines.  Read it, check out the Clean Up The Mines Project, and understand how alleviating environmental justice issues is central to the attainment of a sustainable way of life for all.

Navajo, Others Press Feds to Clean Up 15,000 Water-Poisoning Uranium Mines

Jessica Swarner, Cronkite News

2/4/16

Longtime Sanders, Arizona, resident Wayne Lynch was told in July that the water on his ranch contained dangerously high amounts of uranium, yet he is still using it.

“There’s no other water source we have,” Lynch said in late January. “There’s no other well that they could tap in to.”

Lynch said the problem extends to the Sanders community, including nearby schools, which have no choice but to use contaminated wells.

“People are always getting cancer,” he said, naming his mother, an aunt and a grandmother among those who have been diagnosed with the disease.

Lynch’s case was just one of the stories brought to Washington last week by Clean Up the Mines,a group that highlights the detrimental effects of abandoned uranium mines, especially those on and near reservations.

According to government data, there are about 15,000 uranium minesin the West, with 75 percent of those on federal or tribal lands.

Clean Up the Mines was in the District for a week, working to spread awareness of what it calls an environmental crisis. That included a Thursday, January 28 protest outside the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) building.

The group demanded that the federal agency conduct studies on radiation levels in water supplies and move to clean up uranium waste. Group members met with about 10 EPA officials after their protest.

“They listened to our frustrations,” said Tommy Rock, a Navajo and member of Diné No Nukes who was in Washington D.C. for the protests.

“They didn’t really say much—they just listened to us,” he said.

It was Rock, a doctoral candidate in environmental sciences at Northern Arizona University, who tested the water near Sanders and found uranium levels of 47 parts per billion—well above the legal limit of 30 parts per billion.

The Sanders Unified School District draws water from wells where uranium levels have been tested at 37 parts per billion—forcing the district to rely on bottled water for its offices, schools and teacher housing, said interim Superintendent Dan Hute.

“There is uranium. It is over the limit. It’s been a mess,” Hute said.

Except for the occasional donation, bottled water costs come out of the district’s budget. Hute said the district drilled a new well, but it tested at about the same level of uranium as the old one. He said the school facilities board is considering a filtration system or a deeper well—but that could cause more problems because of arsenic levels in the area.

Hute is frustrated by what he sees as a lack of response by government agencies.

“All they’re doing is talking about this,” he said, “but nobody is bothering to call my office. It’s all being dumped in our laps.”

Apache County Director of Public Health Chris Sexton said the state health department conducted a risk analysis for personal health effects from water contamination in the Sanders community, which he said has been an issue for the last year.

“They advised small children not to drink the water or mix it with formula,” he said, but the department concluded that adults were not at risk.

An Arizona Department of Health Services spokesman confirmed Tuesday that children under age 1 should use an alternative water source for drinking and for formula, but adults are not at risk if they drink the tap water.

In a written statement Tuesday, an EPA spokesman said the agency has already spent more than copy00 million to address the highest-risk areas under a multiyear plan developed in 2007 to address uranium contamination at mining sites.

“The federal effort has focused on identifying the most imminent risks first by addressing contaminated structures, water supplies, mills, dumps, and mines with the highest levels of radiation,” said the statement, which added that the agency continues to work on the issue.

A statement from the EPA’s regional office, meanwhile, said it has been working since last year to fix the problem of tainted water that is being delivered in Sanders by the Arizona Windsong Water System.

It said the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality has given the water system until April 1 to bring quality into compliance with the 30 parts per billion standard, while the Arizona Corporation Commission last month terminated the system’s certification, clearing the way for another supplier.

“Efforts are underway with various stakeholder agencies to facilitate a change in water supplier for the residents of Sanders, Arizona,” the statement from the regional EPA said.

In the protesters’ meeting with EPA officials in Washington last week, Rock said he presented some of his research, urged the agency to include Sanders in its next five-year plan, and asked that provisions protecting communities from uranium waste be included in the Clean Water Act.

Charmaine White Face, a scientist and member of Clean Up the Mines, said her Oglala Sioux community also experiences high cancer rates, and that she has found water supplies on her chapter’s land with dangerous uranium levels.

Charmaine White Face of the Oglala Sioux tribe speaks at the Clean Up the Mines protest outside of the EPA. (Photo: Danika Worthington/Cronkite News)

White Face said her father died of cancer, and both she and her daughter have battled the disease. She said her son is dying of lupus, another disease linked to radioactivity.

But, she said, the federal government has failed to respond to what she sees as a health crisis.

“I’ve been dying to wake everybody up,” she said. “I can’t get anybody to listen.”

She said part of the problem are laws that do not hold mining companies responsible for cleaning up their sites when they abandon them.

The Clean Up the Mines protesters said they delivered a letter to the EPA from Lynch, who hopes it will convince the agency to do more testing in his community and consider drilling new, deeper wells that would bypass the aquifer that holds the contaminated water.

White Face said they will continue to spread awareness of the problem and press for change.

“We are not just victims,” she said, “we are survivors. And we are still resisting.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everyday is an opportunity to give thanks and reflect on the great word and acts put forth by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On this symbolic day of remembrance please take a few minutes to read these words and follow the link to a newly discovered speech on civil rights, segregation and apartheid. 

From Democracy Now!:

In a Democracy Now! and Pacifica Radio Archives exclusive, we air a newly discovered recording of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. On December 7, 1964, days before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, King gave a major address in London on segregation, the fight for civil rights and his support for Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. The speech was recorded by Saul Bernstein, who was working as the European correspondent for Pacifica Radio. Bernstein’s recording was recently discovered by Brian DeShazor, director of the Pacifica Radio Archives.

AMY GOODMAN: Today is the federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King. He was born January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated April 4th, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor, organizing the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

In 1964, Dr. King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Days before he received that award in Oslo, Norway, Dr. King traveled to London. On December 7th, 1964, Dr. King gave a speech sponsored by the British group Christian Action about the civil rights struggle in the United States, as well as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The speech was recorded by Saul Bernstein, who was working as the European correspondent for Pacifica Radio. Bernstein’s recording was recently discovered by Brian DeShazor, director of the Pacifica Radio Archives. This is that address by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I want to talk with you mainly about our struggle in the United States and, before taking my seat, talk about some of the larger struggles in the whole world and some of the more difficult struggles in places like South Africa. But there is a desperate, poignant question on the lips of people all over our country and all over the world. I get it almost everywhere I go and almost every press conference. It is a question of whether we are making any real progress in the struggle to make racial justice a reality in the United States of America. And whenever I seek to answer that question, on the one hand, I seek to avoid an undue pessimism; on the other hand, I seek to avoid a superficial optimism. And I try to incorporate or develop what I consider a realistic position, by admitting on the one hand that we have made many significant strides over the last few years in the struggle for racial justice, but by admitting that before the problem is solved we still have numerous things to do and many challenges to meet. And it is this realistic position that I would like to use as a basis for our thinking together tonight as we think about the problem in the United States. We have come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved. 

Now let us notice first that we’ve come a long, long way. And I would like to say at this point that the Negro himself has come a long, long way in re-evaluating his own intrinsic worth. Now, in order to illustrate this, a little history is necessary. It was in the year 1619 when the first Negro slaves landed on the shores of America. And they were brought there from the soils of Africa. Unlike the pilgrim fathers who landed at Plymouth a year later, they were brought there against their wills. And throughout slavery, the Negro was treated in a very inhuman fashion. He was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. The United States Supreme Court rendered a decision in 1857 known as the Dred Scott decision, which well illustrated this whole idea and which well illustrated what existed at that time, for in this decision the Supreme Court of the United States said, in substance, that the Negro is not a citizen of the United States, he is merely property subject to the dictates of his owner. And it went on to say that the Negro has no rights that the white man is bound to respect. This was the idea that prevailed during the days of slavery.

Read, watch and listen to the rest of this inspirational speech by following this link.

At the end of 2015, what will 2016 bring? A New Economy? Peoplecentric Politics? Climate Justice?

There are so many stories from 2015. What's stuck with you the most? From anarchists currents in social movements for people and the planet, to those working to dismantle the oppression wielded by capitalist, neoliberal politics, to the continued aggression towards people of color by police in the US, the list is truly stacked. To highlight just one would be narrow sighted as this blog is meant to offer as open as a place as possible to envision a new world that can be formed because every issue brought to the world has been done by humans, so it can therefore be undone by them as well.

The COP21 was looked by some as a major triumph. With respect to those who lost their lives and were impacted in the Paris attacks, these climate talks were nothing more than the same conversation that's been had for years, only redone for 2015.

Read this. The Indigenous activist piece linked breaks down the failure of Paris and what really needs to be done.

As "we" look to 2016, take a breath and think about how you can play your own role in a revolution to bring about well being to all people and the planet. Think about community, and think about those who have been disproportionately burdened by socially constructed forms of oppressions, and systems that DO NOT HAVE TO EXIST. They do exist though, and we are all forced to deal with them on some level. But that does not mean you have to accept that reality.

Believe in LOVE, believe in YOU, be the change you wish to see, and do whatever you can to stay good with yourself. Then give what you can.

With thanks and solidarity, in the hope for a better world for all!

The bill to replace Minnesota's derogatory geographic site names that are offensive to Indigenous People

Whether you don't understand what cultural appropriation means, why mascots like the Redskins should be obliterated from the NFL, or question why in the now folks are still trying to heal from the past, this should be helpful:

Introduction

The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) asked me (Thomas Dahlheimer) to write and send Annamarie Hill-Kleinhans, the council's executive director, a MIAC draft resolution endorsing the bill to replace Minnesota's derogatory geographic site names that are offensive to Indians. My draft resolution is presented below. It has not yet been approved by the MIAC. And this posting of the draft is not posted on behalf of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council.

Alfred Bone Shirt (Sigangu), a nationally renowned Indian activist who is the contact person
for the Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Human Rights Advocacy Coalition, published the following Minnesota Indian Affairs Council draft resolution.

Reference: http://www.astate.edu/mascot/NDNAIM_Fwd_Minnesota_Indian_Affairs_Council.pdf

_______________________________________________________________________________

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Draft Resolution

Dear Minnesota Legislators,

In respect to Representative Mike Jaros' bill to change our state's derogatory and, in some cases, also profane geographic site names, names that are offensive to American Indians as well as to a lot of other people, we, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, request that you pass this important bill.

We find our state's geographic site name that refers to the Dakota people as a snake, as does, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's Web site, Snake River, to be very demeaning and insulting. And because some of our state's Dakota/Sioux people, consider the name Sioux to be a derogatory and offensive name, we therefore request that the geographic site names, Sioux River, Little Sioux River, Cut Foot Sioux Lake and Indian Sioux River be considered derogatory and therefore included with the other geographic place names that we would like for you to replace by passing this bill.

The name Dakota, a Dakota language name meaning friend or ally, is the name that we would like for you to use to replace the name Sioux. The name Sioux was given to the Dakota people by colonial Frenchmen. It is an abbreviation of a past derogatory Ojibwe name for the Dakota people (Nadouesioux), a term of hatred, meaning "snakes, enemies".

We also find the geographic site name that refers to both the Dakota and Ojibwe people as redskins, as does Redskin Lake, to be demeaning and insulting. We also find the geographic site names that refer to Dakota and Ojibwe people as savages, as does, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's Web site, Savage Lake and East Savage Lake to be very demeaning and insulting.

We also find it very demeaning and insulting that our state has two geographic site names that are the White man's faulty translation names for a lake and river that the Ojibwe named to honor their Great Spirit (Manido), Manido bimadagakowini zibi is the Ojibwe name for this lake and its outlet river, it means the spirits (or God) walking-place-on-the-ice river. However, white men mistranslated Manido as Devil, hence our state, unfortunately, has a lake named Devil Track Lake and a river named Devil Track River. We not only find these names demeaning and insulting, but also very disrespectful toward the Ojibwe 's traditional religion and spirituality.

In a book published by the Minnesota Historical Society, a book titled, "Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origins and Historic Significances", Warren Upham wrote that the Rum River name is "the white men's perversion of the ancient Sioux name Wakan". He also wrote, in this same book, that: "The name of Rum river, which Carver in 1766 and Pike in 1805 found in use by English-speaking fur traders, was indirectly derived from the Sioux. Their name of Mille Lacs, Mde Wakan, translated Spirit lake, was given to its river, but was changed by the white man to the most common spirituous liquor brought into the Northwest, rum, which brought misery and ruin, as Du Luth observed of brandy, to many of the Indians..."

We find it very demeaning and insulting that the Dakota people's sacred "name" for a river (Wakan River), translated as (Great) Spirit River was mistranslated by white men to mean the alcohol spirit rum, and that the river was then give the faulty and punning translation name (Rum).

And we believe that what makes this "Rum" River name even worst is the fact that, at the time when the river was named Rum, rum was not only bringing misery and ruin to many of the Dakota people, it was also being used to help steal their land.

White European rum runners were transporting rum from the trading posts on the Mississippi River to the Dakota people's villages on the headwaters of the badly named "Rum River". They were supplying them with enough alcohol to cause a lot of the Dakota people to become alcoholic drunkards. This was a method that the European settlers used to separate the Dakota from their traditional religion and spirituality, a religion and spirituality that was intimately connected with their sacred relationship with their land and consequently to their attachment to it. This made it easier to lure a lot of the Dakota people to leave their sacred homeland and go to where they could get a steady supply of rum to satisfy their alcoholic addition cravings.

According to colonial European international law, after Duluth planted the flag of France on the Dakota people's land it officially belonged to France, provided the French annex the Dakota people from their land. The French not only supplied these Dakota people with a lot of alcohol they also supplied a band of Ojibwe people (a band that had recently migrated from the east coast into the Dakota people's territory) with a lot of alcohol. According to information presented on our state's DNR Web site, "Early White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of the area by white men. The French, instigated fights between the Ojibwe and Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." The Dakota and Ojibwe people were abusing alcohol and the French knew that they were abusing it. And the French also knew that by continuing to supply them with a lot of alcohol they would cause the Dakota and Ojibwe people to become hateful and violent toward each other. This occurred, and when it occurred, the French sided with the Ojibwe, including providing them with gun powder. They did this in order to be successful in using the Ojibwe (in a radically abusive way) to drive all of the Dakota people from their sacred land on the headwaters of the "Rum River". And by doing so, they finalize their land grabbing transaction.

We believe that these derogatory and, in some cases, also profane names demean our traditional cultures and languages, and in some cases, also desecrate sacred sites of ours, and that they are legacies of racism that are a shameful scandal to our wonderful state of Minnesota.

In addition, we believe that replacing the derogatory and profane "Rum River" name would help our people who are suffering from alcohol abuse to increase their appreciation of our/their traditional cultures and values and that this would help to heal the wounds that are contributing to their drinking problems, and that this, in turn, would be good for all of our Minnesota Indian communities.

We appreciate the local, national and international support for the effort to change the derogatory and profane name of the "Rum River". We are aware that there is a United Nations Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues promoted international movement to change derogatory and profane geographic site names that are offensive to indigenous peoples who are still suffering from the oppressive effects of colonialism. We are more than happy to participate in this international movement by endorsing our state's name-changing bill. We believe that indigenous people all around the world will be helped by, both, our endorsement of this bill as well as by, hopefully, your passage of it.

We are also aware that there is a national movement to replace derogatory and profane geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians and we are more than happy to also participate in this movement by endorsing our state's name-changing bill. We believe that our endorsement of this bill sets another national precedent and that if you pass this bill, it will also set another national precedent that will help our nation to replace all of its racists names, names that demean American Indian cultures and languages and, in some cases, also desecrate sacred American Indian sites. We believe that our endorsement of this bill and, hopefully, your passage of it will help promote the national movement to replace all of our nation's derogatory and profane geographic site names, and that this will help our nation to become a better place to live.

We also believe that this campaign to change our state's derogatory and profane geographic site names is a valuable history lesson and that if you pass this bill, this valuable history lesson will even more so help to transform our wonderful state so that the people of the dominate culture more fully respect and appreciate our people's traditional cultures and languages.

We also believe that in the wake of a recently published on-line document by the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism that the true history of what happened to our people will be revealed to the general public, and be revealed by (1.) the campaign to replace our state's derogatory and profane names, (2.) our endorsement of this bill as well as (3.), hopefully, your passage of it, and that this true history will cause both our state's Ojibwe people, especially the Mille Lacs Band of Ojiwe, as well as the dominate culture to apologize to the Dakota people as well as offer them restitution justice. In addition, we also believe that the revealing of this true history of our people will cause the dominate culture to also apologize and offer restitution justice to our state's Ojibwe people, and especially to the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, for the injustices committed against them, and that everyone will benefit from our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it.

After reading a recent United Nations' World Conference Against Racism document and then searching to find out why our state has these derogatory and profane names it becomes clear as to why our state has these derogatory names. Thanks to both this World Conference Against Racism document and campaign to replace our state's derogatory geographic place names, for the first time, the true history of what happened to our state's Dakota and Ojibwe people is fully revealed. On-line articles about what happened to our state's Dakota and Ojibwe people can be viewed at:
(1.) http://www.towahkon.org/Regaining.html 
(2.) http://www.towahkon.org/Renamingsites.html
(3.) http://www.towahkon.org/Dakotarights.html.
(4.) http://ili.nativeweb.org/pope. html
(5.) http://www.towahkon.org/Messengerletters.html

Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer, the person who originally drafted the name-changing bill and who also asked Representative Jaros if he would like to introduce an apology resolution, which Rep. Jaros said he would, has, so far, also asked the Minnesota Council of Churches, Greater Minneapolis and Saint Paul Area Councils of Churches, the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota, the Diocese of Saint Cloud, the Bishop of Minnesota's United Methodist Church and the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota to not only apologize for their ties to the exploitation of our people, but to also radically repent and reform their lives, and do so, in order to treat our people with due respect.

Mr. Dahlheimer has been corresponding with the leaders of these Christian organizations and churches and this causes us to believe that our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it will help influence the establishment and promotion of an, indigenous peoples rights, social and political movement that will greatly transform our state, and that this movement will spread throughout our nation as well as throughout the Americas, setting all of the Americas' indigenous peoples free from the subjugated state of existence imposed upon us by Pope Alexandria the VI's 15th century Papal Bull (Inter Caetera). A Papal Bull that continues to be the source of the oppressive White racism being perpetrated against us to this present-day. We believe that Pope Alexandria the VI's present-day predecessor as well as the leaders of both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestant Churches continue to abide by this papal bull's, subjugation of indigenous peoples, racist edicts.

In the Papal Bull (Inter Caetera) Pope Alexandria the VI called for the "subjugation of the New World's barbarous nations and their lands". And ever since, first colonial and then successor States have subjugated our people and our lands as well as kept our people and our lands in subjugation. According to the Papal Bull (Inter Caetrea) and colonial European international law (law basis on this Papal Bull) a law that was later incorporated into U.S. law only White European Christian nations could own land. Therefore, we believe that there is a need for the leaders of Christian Churches as well as their people to radically repent and reform their lives. Christian leaders and colonial European international law denied us two of our basic human rights. And U.S. law, currently, denies us these same basic human rights. We had, and still have, a right to absolute root ownership of our homelands as well as full sovereignty rights. However, thanks to, primarily, Christian Church leaders we are still being denied these two basic human rights. This has to change to make things right.

And we also believe that this Christian reformation will occur, primarily, because of our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it, and that this Christian reformation will cause a great and wonderful transformation of our state, our nation and the entire world.

This campaign to change our state's derogatory and profane names is revitalizing our appreciation of our traditional cultures and languages. And we believe that your passage of this bill would even more so help us to preserve what is left of our traditional cultures as well as restore that which has been lost. And we believe that this would be good for everyone, and especially for everyone living in our wonderful state of Minnesota.

Sincerely,

Minnesota Indian Affairs Council

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-----Click apology resolution to view and read my draft Minnesota Apology Resolution for the
----- exploitation of Minnesota's Native Americans

-----Click truth and reconciliation commission to view and read my article U.S. and states should
----- establish truth and reconciliation commissions.

Thanks to http://www.towahkon.org/MIACdraftresolution.html for the share.

In Solidarity.