#68

FACTS AND FICTION  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - DECEMBER 20, 2007

CONTACT: Lakota Freedom

Naomi Archer, Communications Liaison - (828) 230-1404

lakotafree@gmail.com or press@lakotafreedom.com

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status
Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five-State Area in U.S. West Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law

 

[WASHINGTON, DC - December 20, 2007] Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

"This is an historic day for our Lakota people," declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. "United States colonial rule is at its end!"

 

"Today is an historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit," shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. "They never honored the treaties. That's the reason we are here, today."

 

The four-member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

 

"In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children - we have no choice but to claim our own destiny," said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

 

Property ownership in the five-state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years, despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five-state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

 

Young added, "The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people".

 

Following Monday's withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.

 

Lakota's efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are "very, very interested in the Lakota case" while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with "respect and solidarity."

 

"Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations," explained Garry Rowland. "As a nation, we have equal status within the national community."

 

Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. "Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty," said Means. "Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people."

 

The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average. 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.

 

"After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative," emphasized Duane Martin Sr. "The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway."

 

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have traveled to Washington D.C. to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com.

 

National Reparations Congress: Lakota Indians Declare Sovereign Independence

Lakota Indians cancel treaties with U.S. Government
By Ashahed M. Muhammad, Assistant Editor
January 17, 2008

Russell Means

www.FinalCall.com  - In a bold and unprecedented move, representatives of the Lakota Freedom Delegation recently declared the Lakota Nation is formally and unilaterally withdrawing from all agreements and treaties with the government of the United States.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States,” said longtime indigenous rights activist Russell Means at a press conference at Plymouth Congregational Church in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 19. “We offer citizenship to anyone provided they renounce their U.S. citizenship,” said Mr. Means.

Canupa Gluha Mani, leader of the Lakota Strongheart Warrior Society, speaks at press conference.


‘We are no longer citizens of the United States....We offer citizenship to anyone provided they renounce their U.S. citizenship.’ — Russell Means, Lakota Freedom Delegation


 

The Lakota delegation delivered signed documents to the U.S. State Department informing officials of the decision to formally declare sovereignty from the United States as a result of its genocidal assault on the political, cultural and economic freedom of the Lakota Nation. The geographic area making up what will be called the Republic of Lakota covers portions of northern Nebraska, half of South Dakota, one-quarter of North Dakota, 20 percent of Montana and 20 percent of Wyoming. Mr. Means used the term “apartheid” to describe the dire conditions facing the Lakota Nation.

The life expectancy of Lakota men is less than 44 years; 97 percent of the Lakota people live below the poverty line. The Lakota infant mortality rate is 300 percent higher than the national average. The tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is 800 percent higher than the national average; cervical cancer is 500 percent higher than the national average; the rate of diabetes is 800 percent higher than the national average.

The unemployment rate on reservations is over 85 percent with the median income between $2,600 to $3,500 per year. One-third of the homes on reservations lack clean water and 40 percent of the homes lack electricity. In addition, alcoholism affects 8 in 10 Lakota families with rates of drug abuse and suicide increasing.

Naomi Archer, communications liaison for the Lakota Freedom Delegation, said many other indigenous nations and political independence movements in North America, South America, Europe and Africa have reached out in solidarity and support. A portion of the document delivered to the State Department read, “Should the United States and its subordinate governments choose not to act in good faith concerning the rebirth of our nation, we hereby advise the United States Government that Lakota will begin to administer liens against real estate transactions” within the five state area of what will be called the Republic of Lakota.

A history of broken treaties. The first contacts between the Lakota and the United States began after what is commonly known as the “Louisiana Purchase” in 1803. It is estimated that the United States bought 530 million acres of land from France for $15 million. Part of this sale included land already inhabited by the Lakota. They never consented to the sale of any of their land.

As U.S. citizens began to move into the area in large numbers, further encroaching upon the Lakota territory, tensions increased and violence broke out, leading to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. In that treaty, the U.S. agreed to respect the independence and sovereignty of the Lakota Nation. After repeated violations, another conflict known as the “Red Cloud War” broke out. After being defeated, the U.S. asked for another treaty which became the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. According to the terms of this second treaty, the U.S. was to abandon Lakota territories including the U.S. military forts that they built, and they were to keep U.S. settlers out of the Lakota territories.

Again, the U.S. violated the agreement by taking land and resources, setting up commerce routes and establishing railroads through the land belonging to the Lakota. In 1871, the U.S. decided to no longer sign treaties with the indigenous people. In 1874, led by George Custer, the U.S. conducted a military invasion of the Black Hills area of the Lakota territories establishing a military occupation of the land.

Strongheart Warrior Society leader Canupa Gluha Mani said local governments as well as the federal government have always collaborated to control indigenous lands and people. It is time for all oppressed people to throw off the chains of their colonial masters, he said.

“You don’t need colonial practices anymore. Return to the life way that you once had prior to signing treaties with this government. Enough is enough! They’ll probably kill me for talking like this, but I’m tired of being backed into the corner. I’m not a White man! I’m tired of using his language! The Great Spirit made me like this! If he wanted me to be a White man, he would have made my skin that way,” Mr. Mani told The Final Call.

“They lied to us all the time, and they have been lying in treaty after treaty, so now that unilaterally we withdrew from them, this is the only way we can get them to understand that we are sick and tired of their oppressive behavior, we are sick and tired of being lied to,” said Mr. Mani.

“We’ve never done anything (bad) to the White race. We’ve welcomed him, we taught him how to live off of the land, and we are going to have to re-teach him,” said Mr. Mani, adding that the Warrior Society will be ready if state governments come to disturb the rights of those living within the Lakota Nation. “They are coming to a foreign nation and we will meet them at our border line,” Mr. Mani warned.

Mahdi Ibn Ziyad for Congress
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856.655.9488; fax 856.964.5661
www.mahdi-ibn-ziyad-for-congress.com
Stepping Forward With New Vision & Renewed Hope
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NOVEMBER 22, 2007

Thanksgiving Fairy Tales  Environment News Service (ENS)
A Hard Time to Be Giving Thanks, When Truth Need Be Told!


"The Europeans were able to conquer America not because of their military genius, or their religious motivation, or their ambition, or their greed. They conquered it by waging unpremeditated biological warfare." -- Howard Simpson

"Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? Is it necessary to the American psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history?" -- Michael Dorris

"European explorers and invaders discovered an inhabited land. Had it been pristine wilderness then, it would possibly be so still, for neither the technology nor the social organization of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries had the capacity to maintain, of its own resources, outpost colonies thousands of miles from home." -- Francis Jennings


Drawing by Laura Jamison

It is difficult in these troubled times to give thanks, but millions of people in the U.S. will do so on Thanksgiving. However, the story that most families will tell and reflect upon is far from the truth about how this nation was settled. In fact, with nearly all of America’s reasons for invading Iraq proving to be fabrications, the true tale of the invasion of North America is particularly disturbing.

Most Americans speak of remembering the Pilgrims who, in 1620, chose the land around Plymouth Harbor, Massachusetts for their settlement. You might remember being told in your elementary school days that since they arrived in the winter, they were unprepared for the harsh climate. Fortunately, they were aided by some friendly Indians who gave them food and showed them how to grow corn. When the warm weather came, the colonists planted crops, fished, hunted and became much better prepared for next winter. And when they harvested their first crop, they invited their Indian friends to celebrate with them what was to become the first Thanksgiving.

This story is taught today in thousands of classrooms across the nation, and around the world, and is ingrained in most people’s consciousness. Unfortunately, the entire story, from start to finish, is a complete lie.

The true story will likely leave you feeling bruised, betrayed, and unsure of what to believe. If that is the case, revel in the feeling, since challenging the assumptions we all hold dear is the first important step of developing critical thinking skills.

The story actually begins after 1492 as Europeans came in significant numbers to the newly found Americas. When people began moving, the microbes that they evolved with moved along with them. Before the arrival of Europeans, the inhabitants of North and South America were remarkably healthy. But along with the Europeans came their illnesses and their livestock and the native inhabitants were now exposed to the many diseases that can be passed back and forth between those animals and humans----anthrax, tuberculosis, cholera, streptococcus, ringworm and various poxes.

The British and French had fished in Southern New England for some time before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. It is likely that they came in contact with the Indians at that time. The native inhabitants had no resistance to the diseases brought by the Europeans and within three years, a plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England!

This death rate was unknown in all previous human experience. For comparison, the Black Plague in the 1300s killed about 30 percent of Europe’ s population.

This piece of history is usually omitted from most textbooks, yet these plagues, which ravaged the Indian population for the next 15 years, set the tone for the relationship of the European settlers with the indigenous people of America.

The English settlers inferred from the plague that God was on their side in taking over the land. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, wrote that the plague was "miraculous." He said, "God hath thereby cleared out title to this place." Is it any wonder that our political and military leaders of today ask for God’s blessing and protection as they go to war to kill?

Between 1520 and 1918, there were 93 epidemics among Native Americans.

The affect that these plagues had on the native populations reached into their psyches as well. They felt that God had abandoned them. Some survivors of the Cherokee lost all confidence in their gods and priests and destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe. Indian healers could do nothing and their religion provided no cause. But the Whites usually survived and their religion seemed to save them. Many Indians turned to alcohol, Christianity or simply committed suicide. So it was a psychologically and physically devastated people that for the first 50 years of European occupation presented no real opposition to the invaders.

Prior to the arrival of European invaders, the native population of North and South American was 100 million in 1492. The entire population of Europe at the time was 70 million. If colonists had not been able to take over lands that the Indians had already cleared and cultivated, and if the Indian population had not been devastated by disease, there might not have been any colonization at all.

By 1880, the Indian population was 250,000, a drop of 98 percent.

It is quite likely that the Pilgrims knew well of these plagues. In fact, pretty much everyone knew about them. Ziner, in the book “Squanto,” wrote that before the Mayflower sailed, King James of England gave thanks to “Almighty God in his great goodness and bounty towards us” for sending “this wonderful plague among the savages.”

Few Americans know that the persecuted Pilgrims numbered only about 35 of the 102 settlers aboard the Mayflower, which was headed for the new Virginia colony. It is believed by some historians that it is possible that the Pilgrims bribed the Mayflower captain to drop them off in Massachusetts. Some say they may have even hijacked the ship. In any case, the non-Pilgrim majority, who had joined the ship because of the economic opportunity afforded by the Virginia tobacco plantations, were quite upset at being taken someplace else.

Historians, in their search for a story that told the mythical beginnings of American culture, probably chose to omit facts about the Pilgrims story rather than tell the tale of Virginia. In Virginia, the British took the Native Americans prisoner and forced them to show the colonists how to farm.

James W. Loewen, in his revealing book Lies My Teacher Told Me says: “In 1623, the British indulged in the first use of chemical warfare in the colonies when negotiating a treaty with the tribes near the Potomac River, headed by Chiskiack. The British offered a toast ‘symbolizing eternal friendship,’ whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison.”

The Pilgrims choose their site at Plymouth because it had beautifully cleared fields, recently planted corn, and excellent water supplies. The Pilgrims did not start from scratch in the wildness, but used a common practice of the European invaders of appropriating Indian cornfields for their initial settlements. This is why so many of the names of East Coast towns end in “field.” Every field represented thousands of murders.

The Indians who created and lived in this new Plymouth were mostly dead from the plagues, so they provided little opposition.

The Pilgrims robbed graves, stole what they could find in abandoned Indian homes, and filled their larder with the harvest of a dying culture’s labors.

The reasons for the lies about the origins of Thanksgiving go deep into culture, psyche, and religion and is covered in depth in Loewen’s book. But one thing is for sure--the true history of Thanksgiving reveals some very embarrassing facts, to say the least.

The most remarkable part of the story may be that the Pilgrims did not even introduce the tradition of Thanksgiving in America. The fabricated story of the Pilgrims was not even included in the holiday, until the 1890s. The term “Pilgrim” was not even used, until the 1870s.

This environmental and social devastation wrought by the European invaders of North America continues today. Oil company explorers, miners and loggers continue to introduce disease to the isolated cultures of Brazil and Venezuela, where one fourth of their population was killed in 1991.

The myth of Thanksgiving has created a false sense of self in Americans that has done great damage throughout the world. It has resulted in children being planted with the seeds of racial hatred and white superiority. It is an insult to us all, especially since most Americans are ignorant of the truth, even though the facts about the grave robbing, Indian enslavement and murder, and the plagues, were common knowledge among the settlers of New England.

Loewen gives us excellent reasons why we should seek out the truth of American history. If the conflicts of the true story were revealed, he says, then “students might discover that the knowledge they gain has implications for their lives today. Correctly taught, the issues of the era of the first Thanksgiving could help Americans grow more thoughtful and more tolerant, rather than more ethnocentric.”

We can redefine Thanksgiving for ourselves and our families. We can make it a day when we not only give thanks for the bounty we have received, but a day when we acknowledge the injustices that have been and are being perpetrated on so many people and animals in the world. After feasting, we could choose a way for our families to help lessen the suffering of some creature somewhere in the world, animal or human.

We must remember these tragedies as we shape the new millennium. With genetically engineered bacteria, crops and animals being created every day, are we risking a biological devastation like the Indians experienced?

As the U.S. carries out plans to dominate the Middle East, are we repeating the sins that began this nation?

We must examine how we are using this stolen gift of a nation. As life-support systems crumble and species become extinct every day, can we really say we have learned anything in the last 500 years?

Happy Thanksgiving.

RESOURCES

1. Read Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen to learn about more surprises in American history. Buy a few copies and give them to elementary school teachers in your community. If you have children, make sure your child’s teacher has one. Visit a website devoted to this book at: http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/

2. Read the Indian Country Newspaper at: http://indiancountry.com/

3. For many perspectives about Native Americans and the environment, check out: http://www.cnie.org/NAE/

4. Learn about ongoing harassment of native and indigenous people around the world at: http://www.theofficenet.com/~redorman/pagea~1.htm

5. Check out the Indigenous Earth Sciences Project at: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~eriggs/IESP/

6. Read a powerful international perspective on the terrorism against the U.S. in Briton's The Independent at: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=94254

7. Find alternative sources for information to understand the complexity of world events.

8. Many of the world's despots, dictators, and terrorists were trained by the United States at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia. Follow the protests against this U.S. sanctioned school for terror at: http://www.soaw.org

9. Find out who your elected representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them you will not tolerate the continued exploitation of indigenous people throughout the world. You can find them at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of Healing Our World: A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light, available at: Healing Our World or your local bookstore. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.comand visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com
 

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003. All Rights Reserved.

[Correction to This Article: Previous versions of this article in print and on the Web misstated the academic specialty of Columbia University professor Ronald B. Mincy. He is an economist and professor of social welfare policy, not a sociologist. This version has been corrected.]

Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families
Many Blacks Worse off Than Their Parents, Study Says

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; A01

Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study -- a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

Forty-five percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle class in 1968 -- a stratum with a median income of $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars -- grew up to be among the lowest fifth of the nation's earners, with a median family income of $23,100. Only 16 percent of whites experienced similar downward mobility. At the same time, 48 percent of black children whose parents were in an economic bracket with a median family income of $41,700 sank into the lowest income group.

This troubling picture of black economic evolution is contained in a package of three reports being released today by the Pew Charitable Trusts that test the vitality of the American dream. Using a nationally representative data source that for nearly four decades has tracked people who were children in 1968, researchers attempted to answer two questions: Do Americans generally advance beyond their parents in terms of income? How much is that affected by race and gender?

"We are attempting to broaden the current debate" beyond the growing gap between higher- and lower-income Americans, said John Morton, Pew's managing director for program planning and economic policy. "There is little out there on the question of mobility across generations, and we wanted to examine that."

The data source, called the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, followed 2,367 people from across the country, including 730 African Americans, since 1968. The study participants have been repeatedly interviewed about their economic status through the years, allowing for income comparisons across generations.

The Pew reports found that in many ways the American dream is alive and well. Two out of three Americans are upwardly mobile, meaning they had higher incomes than their parents. About half the time, moving up meant not only that they earned more money than their parents, but also that they were better off in relation to other Americans than their parents were.

That growth was most evident among lower-income people. Overall, four out of five children born into families at the bottom 20 percent of wage earners surpassed their parents' income. Broken down by race, nine in 10 whites were better-paid than their parents were, compared with three out of four blacks.

Median family income for adults now in their 30s and 40s rose by 29 percent, to $71,900 between the two generations covered in the reports. And as incomes grew, households shrank, from an average of 3.1 individuals in 1969 to 2.3 in 1998 -- meaning that income per person grew even more. 

Julia B. Isaacs, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who authored the three reports, noted that between 1974 and 2004, the median income for men in their 30s actually dropped 12 percent. But because more women entered the workforce, and earned much more than their mothers, median income for women more than tripled during the period, to $20,000.

"The growth we've seen in family incomes is because of the increase in women's income," Isaacs said. "Without that, we would not have seen an increase, because men's earnings have been flat and even declined."

Again, the reduction has been more dramatic for black men than whites. And income for white women, who were less likely than black women to work outside the home a generation ago, has grown faster than it has for black women. Black women earned a median income of $21,000 in 2004, almost equal to that of white women. Black men had a median income of $25,600, less than two-thirds that of white men.

Overall, family income of blacks in their 30s was $35,000, 58 percent that of comparable whites, a gap that did not surprise researchers. Startling them, however, was that so many blacks fell out of the middle class to the bottom of the income distribution in one generation.

Ronald B. Mincy, a Columbia University economist and professor of social welfare policy who has focused on the growing economic peril confronted by black men and who served as an adviser on the Pew project, said skeptical researchers repeatedly reviewed the findings before concluding they were statistically accurate.

"There is a lot of downward mobility among African Americans," Mincy said. "We don't have an explanation."

Pew hopes to develop some answers in future reports in its series on economic mobility. Reports scheduled to be released early next year will probe, among other things, the role of wealth and education in income mobility.

Mincy and others speculated that the increase in the number of single-parent black households, continued educational gaps between blacks and whites and even racial isolation that remains common for many middle-income African Americans could be factors.

"That's a stunner," said Orlando Patterson, a Harvard University sociologist, when told about the Pew finding. "These kids were middle class, but apparently their parents did not have the cultural capital and connections to pass along to them."

Another reason so many middle-class blacks appear to be downwardly mobile is likely the huge wealth gap separating white and black families of similar incomes. For every $10 of wealth a white person has, blacks have $1, studies have found.

"We already knew that downward mobility was much more likely for blacks," said Mary Pattillo, a Northwestern University sociologist who studies the black middle class. "But this is an even bigger percentage drop than I have seen elsewhere. That's very steep."

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

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NBC NIGHTLY NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS" SPECIAL FIVE-PART SERIES "AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN: WHERE THEY STAND" TO AIR BEGINNING ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26
 
New York, N.Y. – November 15, 2007 – Throughout the week of November 26, "NBC News With Brian Williams" will take a look at the issues facing African-American women across our nation in a new series African-American Women: Where They Stand. The series will cover a wide-range of issues from their role in the ’08 Presidential race, to the increased health-risks that they need to be concerned about.
 
Monday’s installment will discuss African-American women's progress in the education field. Nearly two-thirds of African-American undergraduates are women. At black colleges, the ratio of women to men is 7 to 1. And that is leading to a disparity in the number of African-American women who go on to own their own businesses. Rehema Ellis will talk to educators, students and businesswomen about why this disparity exists.
 
Tuesday, Ellis will look at relationships within the African-American female community. Many agree the gender disparity in education and business among African-Americans is having an effect on relationships that African American women have. Some even say the implications could redefine "Black America's family and social structure." In the past fifty years, the percentage of African-American women between 25-54 who have never been married has doubled from 20% to 40%. (Compared to just 16% of white women who have never been married today). Ellis sits down with the members of a Chicago book club and talk about this difference and how it impacts them.
 
Dr. Nancy Snyderman will discuss the increased risks for breast cancer for African-American women on Wednesday. Mortality rates for African-American women are higher than any other racial or ethnic group for nearly every major cause of death, including breast cancer. Black women with breast cancer are nearly 30% more likely to die from it than white women.

Premenopausal black women are more than twice as likely to get a more aggressive form of the disease. And, not only are African-American women more likely to die from breast cancer, but they're less likely to get life-saving treatments. Dr. Snyderman will profile one of the only oncologists in the world who specializes in the treatment of African-American women with breast cancer.

On Thursday, Ron Allen will take viewers to South Carolina -- the first southern primary state -- and ask the question: Will race trump gender or gender trump race? In South Carolina, black women made up nearly 30 percent of all democratic primary voters in 2004. This year, polls show a significant number are undecided, torn between choosing the first African-American or first female Presidential candidate. Allen talks with the undecided, as well the state directors for the Clinton and Obama campaigns, who happen to be African-American women.
 
To close the series on Friday, Dr. Snyderman will raise the frightening statistic that African-American women are 85% more likely to get diabetes, a major complication for heart disease. And, like breast cancer, more black women die from heart disease than white women. Dr. Snyderman will profile a leading expert and a unique church-based outreach program in South Carolina that seeks to spread the word about heart disease risks to black women congregants.
 
Mara Schiavocampo, Digital Correspondent for "Nightly News," will address two hot topics in the African - American community: interracial dating and the impact of hip hop music on black women. Interracial dating is a growing trend in the African - American community. An Essence poll found that 81% of participants approved of black women dating non- black men. According to a U.S. Census Bureau report in 2000, 95,000 black women were married to white men. In 2005, that number increased to 134,000. Schiavocampo will talk to experts about the trend and discuss how this defines the "Black family" of the future.

Schiavocampo will convene a panel of leading black men and women from the hip-hop industry for an engaging discussion on whether hip hop lyrics and videos positively or negatively affect black women. The roundtable will address how these portrayals are affecting relationships between black women and black men.
 
Consumers can go online to join the discussion and share their thoughts on message boards. They can also read and respond to blog entries.

Black Indians United Legal Defense and Education Fund Thanksgiving Day

Black Indians United Legal Defense
Education Fund Thanksgiving Day Message


Halito family and friends!

Wednesday, 21 November 2007

I am Angela Finley Molette (Tuscaloosa Ohoyo), Black
Warrior Woman.

Little doubt remains that people will be gathering together on the date that Euro-Americans call "Thanksgiving"; in remembrance of all they are thankful for. I ask that you dedicate at least a portion of this day to being thankful for all that we have learned in recent years about our ancestors and to learning, acknowledging, discussing, conversing and making peace with the fact that a rather large percentage of the Aboriginal First People of the Americas were ethnic Black Indians affected by foreign invasion, the Trail of Tears and Indian removal, as well as having been impacted by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Black holocaust.

I am thankful for what I have been able to uncover of the Black Indian holocaust and first terrorist acts committed in the Americas upon its Aboriginals, our ancestors. In the West the ancient ones, Autochthonic Indigenous Black Natives - Austronesian or Australo-African in ancestry - who resided historically from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, 10,000-plus miles south of the Bering Strait and produced older bones than Bering Strait arrivals, the Mexican mainland, Loreto, Mexico, Baja, California, to La Jolla, San Diego, Imperial Valley, up to the northernmost tip of California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska . They also filled the interior Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico areas and resided as the Anasazi, Pima Mandinka, Folsoms, Pericu, San Diegitos, Yacquis and others. Their bones and archaeological science confirms their presence. Notes found from the Mission priests and the director of the Museum of Man in 1958 referred to the ancient Natives as Australian Blackfellows.

In the Eastern Aboriginal Indian Country, ethnic Natives emigrated from the Canary Islands, Africa and Spain (Moors), Canada, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Virginia and Maryland down to the tip of Florida. This is not to say that ethnic Autochthons did not also reside in these areas. Indeed, Owsley, an archaeologist associated with the Smithsonian Institution, reclassified bones dredged up from a Native American burial as having been phenotypically African upon review - despite the Native American clothing and burial ways.

The Eastern and Western ethnic Aboriginals converged in a myriad of ways in America's interior and they resided in the Carolinas, now known as North and South Carolina, and what has become known as the American Black Belt - Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. They outflowed into Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Of course every one of us remembers the stand taken by the free Black Seminoles who signed a treaty in Florida, which brought them to Oklahoma in the 1830s and 1840s to make new settlements at Wewoka, Deep Fork and other places.

The treachery of the U.S. Solicitor reached an all time high, when he rendered a decision that the free Black Seminoles would be reduced to a condition of slavery to the Creeks in Oklahoma. They had been free from Slavery to the Creeks for 100 years prior to traveling to Oklahoma. Upon hearing this news, the Black Seminoles felt they would rather die than be slaves to any man, so they self-emigrated to Mexico in the winter of 1849, where they were allowed to live in freedom upon a reservation granted to the Black Seminoles by the Mexican central government in 1850.

The remaining Seminoles in Oklahoma were quarantined - placed in a concentration camp - to prevent them from joining the Black Seminoles of Texas and Mexico. The two bands of Black Indians remaining in Oklahoma are still tenuously attached to the Seminole Nation today, despite attempts to exile them in recent years also. However, they are not eligible for the same benefits, treaty rights and entitlements available to Red Indians because of unequal rules of federal access to loans, along with other programs available to Indians, accessed through the Indian Reorganization Act.

All attempts to compel the United States government to correct the equal and racially discriminatory disparities have been met with disinterest and half-hearted attempts to feign fleeting interest that dies with our outcries that have been drowned out by wag the dog incidents and the continuing faux war on terror.

Black Indians are caught between a massive "rock" and a "hard place."

Native America is afraid that Black Indians will awaken African Americans, who likely have Native American ancestry and the same valid a claim as Black Indians to what has been stolen from them.

The other problem is the failure of Black Indians in defeating the media traps that will not allow us to let African Americans know how big a stake they have in righting the wrongs committed upon Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes. Because of the media disconnect, African Americans have not expressed solidarity with Black Indians in demanding redress for governmental ineptitude. Neither have the majority of the Native American populace, who seem to believe that all Black Indians want is what little bit the Indians have.

In reality, Native Americans should be joining Black Indians in forcing the U.S. government to deal fairly with Black Indians who have legitimate treaty rights, to fund their own sovereign nations, which takes the stress off of the parent tribal nations in having to deal with the throngs of Black Indians who are truly eligible as lineal descendants and heirs of their Native American ancestors. Black Indian tribal governments can deal with dispensing tribal programs and funds to their own people. This is the answer to the ills facing Black Indians and African Americans in general.

Upon the continuance of forced exile of Black Indians from the former Indian Territory from 1924 to the 1960s, our Indian ancestors continued their great Western migration into the Central Valley of California and points south - San Diego, Compton, Los Angeles, Inglewood - and points north - Sacramento Valley, Fresno, Oakland and San Francisco.

I don't ask that you simply take my word for it. Use your good sense, open mind and newly aroused visual senses to take in the truth behind the truth on this day. Black Indians have an aboriginal claim to the lands of the Americas and as such have as much right and entitlement as Red people, our relatives, and mixed breeds, to part and parcel of the lands of our ancient fathers.

Our people were decimated by illegal European aliens in aboriginal Indian Country and their manifest destiny and foreign diseases nearly destroyed the majority of Aboriginal America, including the Creator's favored ethnic Aboriginals. However, we live to tell the story of our beginnings and our present plight, which includes waging an epic struggle to reclaim our stolen lands, treaty rights and to rebuild our aborted economic infrastructure. Because of America's penchant for avoiding the truth, its deceit and selective amnesia, many of our people believe they are solely African American. America has a vested interest - to the tune of billions of dollars in land, mineral rights, oil, natural gas, coal and other revenues - in keeping you blind and unknowing of your true ancestral past and wants you to think that you are a transient people having no claim to the aboriginal soil of America.

They have treated us and continental Africans like our African blood makes us ineligible for anything, especially aboriginal claims. Not even eligible for life itself. We have survived purposeful ethnic reclassification, our ancestors' histories have been whitewashed - obliterated in many cases - and we have been alienated from the truth of our ancestral origins and we have been lied to about our true nationality. There are not many people who know that Black Indians - specifically those hailing from Oklahoma Indian Territory, have no other nationality than Native American.

We have been covered by treaties exclusively and, as residents of Indian Country, were not the beneficiaries of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation intended to benefit those in U.S. held states. Since Oklahoma never adopted or ratified the 14th Amendment - because it was Indian Territory - our people were not covered by the citizenship granted persons in the states in 1865. The lineal descendants of America's ethnic Black Indians are each invited to come and learn about your true history at Leona Mitchell Southern Heights Heritage Center and Museum in Enid, Oklahoma.

I invite you to take this day to learn about the groups that are fighting to restore our treaty rights, citizenship rights, land rights and more. Learn about the class action claim of Black Indians and Freedmen, a legal fight taken on by Harvest Institute Freedmen Federation of Washington, D.C., Black Indians United Legal Defense and Education Fund of Enid, Oklahoma, and Chief William Warrior of the United Warrior Band of the Seminole Nation, the lineal descendants of John Horse's Seminole Negro Scouts.

Learn about the numerous Freedmen bands of Black Indian tribal nations arising from the parent tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Nations. Learn about the United Ishtehotopih Band of the Chickasaw Nation, the United Tuscaloosa Band of the Choctaw Nation, the United Warrior Band of the Seminole Nation, the Chunchula Alabama Band of the Mississippi Choctaw Nation, the Kelly-Carolina Cherokee-Blackfeet Band of the Cherokee Nation, the United Loyal Muscogee Creek Band of the Creek Nation and others as they fight for independent sovereign rule of their people, free from the tyranny and oppression of their parent tribes who have each abdicated their 1866 treaty mandated fiscal and legal responsibilities for Native American citizens having African blood.

Learn about the illegal application of blood quantum in the 20th century as a tool of exclusion. Learn about the revised exclusionary tribal constitutions of the parent tribal nations of the Five Civilized Tribes. Learn about how the United States federal government dropped the ball in their 1866 federal treaty mandate to provide for the ethnic protectorate of the tribes in equity and fairness. You also need to learn who is supporting Indian Freedmen and ethnic Black Indians of the Five Civilized

Tribes in our monumental struggle and the surprising list of those who are not supporting Ethnic Black Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes in the fight to reclaim, maintain and sustain our indefeasible treaty rights as heirs, beneficiaries and assigns of our ethnic Black Indian ancestors.

Above all, learn how and why you should support all of the following Indian Freedmen and Black Indians entities, organizations, tribal bands and attorneys:

  • Harvest Institute Freedmen Federation of Washington, D.C.;
  • Black Indians United Legal Defense and Education Fund of Enid, Oklahoma;
  • Sen. Diane Watson's HR 2824; J.C. Watt's Native American Reconciliation Campaign;
  • Attorney Percy Squire;
  • Attorney Jon Velie;
  • United Ishtehotopih Band of the Chickasaw Nation;
  • United Tuscaloosa Band of the Choctaw Nation;
  • United Warrior Band of the Seminole Nation;
  • Chunchula Alabama Band of the Mississippi Choctaw Nation;
  • Kelly-Carolina Cherokee-Blackfeet Band of the Cherokee Nation;
  • United Loyal Muscogee Creek Band of the Creek Nation;
  • Cherokee Freedmen Nation of Oklahoma;
  • Indigenous Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations.
A Bit of Black History:

December 24, 1837 Seminoles Whip US Army

Celebrating A Victory for Freedom
by William Loren Katz

This Christmas Eve, the freedom-loving Bush administration has a chance to mark the anniversary of a great victory for formerly oppressed people on U.S. soil.  The President is unlikely, however, to notice or heed the meaning of this particular milestone, whose cast of characters and historical lessons he would undoubtedly regard as all wrong.

December 24, 1837, marks the 170th anniversary of the U.S. government's first significant military defeat in its first foreign incursion. The place was Florida, then a Spanish colony. The foe was a united force of Africans, on the run from the south's slave plantations, and Seminoles, whose self-determination was endangered. The runaway Africans had been establishing prosperous, self-governing communities in the peninsula since 1738. During the American Revolution they merged with Seminole Indians into a multicultural nation that cultivated crops according to techniques learned in Senegambia and Sierra Leone. Out of this came an alliance that shaped effective diplomatic and military responses to invaders and slave catchers.

By the early 19th century, U.S. slaveholding classes saw these groups as a clear and present threat to their system of wealth production through chattel slavery. Hoping to plug the leak, they began invading Florida during the administration of President James Madison, father of the U.S. Constitution and Virginia slaveholder. Then in 1811, Madison authorized covert U.S. military operations to assist the posses, and in 1816 General Andrew Jackson invaded, seeking annexation. A leader in that invasion, Army Lt. Colonel Duncan Clinch, reported: "The American negroes had principally settled along the Appalachicola river and a number of them had left their fields and gone over to the Seminoles on hearing of our approach. Their corn fields extended nearly fifty miles up the river and their numbers were daily increasing."

Spain, whose claim to Florida rested on a visit by Ponce De Leon and imperial hubris, gave in to U.S. persuasion and agreed to sell the colony. But this led to a protracted U.S. occupation known as the “Three Seminoles Wars." In 1837, the well-informed Major General Sidney Thomas Jesup found that Africans had become resistance leaders.  He stated: "Throughout my operations I have found the negroes the most active and determined warriors; and during conferences with the Indian chiefs I ascertained they exercised an almost controlling influence over them." 

Citing the dangers presented by the two peoples from different continents having forged a single nation, he said, "The two races, the negro and the Indian, are rapidly approximating; they are identical in interests and feelings . . . . Should the Indians remain in this territory, the negroes among them will form a rallying point for runaway negroes from the adjacent states; and if they remove, the fastness of the country will be immediately occupied by negroes."

Although U.S. forces destroyed crops, cattle and horses, violated agreements, and seized women and children as hostages, the multicultural Seminoles, as they protected their families and homes, ran circles around the technologically and numerically superior invaders. U.S. tactics aimed at racially dividing the Africans and Seminoles also failed. "The negroes rule the Indians,” Jesup observed, and to seek peace, “it is important that they should feel themselves secure." But peace lay two decades in the future.

The day before Christmas in 1837, U.S. Colonel Zachary marched 1,000 troops in pursuit of about 400 Seminoles. Commander Wild Cat and his sub-chief, the African Seminole known as John Horse, positioned their black and red marksmen in trees and tall grass in the northeast corner of Florida's Lake Okeechobee. As Taylor's 180 Missouri riflemen, 800 soldiers from the U.S. Sixth, Fourth, and First Infantry Regiments and 70 Delaware scouts approached, the wary Delawares hesitated, then fled.  Next, the Missourians broke and ran. Taylor then ordered his regular Army forward, reporting later that pinpoint Seminole rifle fire had brought down "every officer, with one exception, as well as most of the non-commissioned officers" and left "but four . . . untouched." 

On Christmas morning Taylor found the Seminoles had fled in canoes. He counted 26 U.S. dead and 112 wounded, found less than half a dozen slain Seminoles and took no prisoners. This Second Seminole War alone (1835-1842) would involve U.S. Naval and Marine units, at times half of the Army, cost 1500 military deaths and taxpayers $30,000,000.

Once his decimated army limped back to Fort Gardner, Zachary Taylor won promotion by claiming, "the Indians were driven in every direction." Later, his self-promotion as an "Indian fighter," won Taylor election as the 12th President of the United States.

Lake Okeechobee was the Army's worst defeat in Florida. But the truth of that battle and the war remain buried or distorted. For example, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. in The Almanac of American History [1982], wrote: "Fighting in the Second Seminole War, General Zachary Taylor defeats a group of Seminoles at Okeechobee Swamp, Florida."  Well, not exactly.

The Seminoles' sustained and heroic resistance to the new American Republic's first foreign invasion created one of liberty's proudest moments.  As a people born out of freedom-fighters, all Americans should know celebrate their story. And how about those in power who have a penchant for waging "preemptive" wars?
__________________________________________________
Copyright William Loren Katz. He is the author of BLACK INDIANS: A HIDDEN HERITAGE  [Atheneum Publishers] from which this article is adapted.

His website is: www.williamlkatz.com

This article appears on these websites: History News Network, Black Agenda Report, The Black World Today

Author of "The Black Holocaust for Beginners" Social Activism is not a hobby: it's a Lifestyle lasting a Lifetime http://blackeducator.blogspot.com

Use the day called Thanksgiving wisely by discussing the following:

  1. Black Indian signatories and representatives in the Treaties of 1865.

  2. Indian Freedmen specifically mentioned in the Treaties of 1866.

  3. Continuing treaty rights for Red Indians, but discontinued treaty rights for Black Indians - stemming from the same treaty.

  4. Black Indian nationality - covered by historic Indian jurisdiction, geographical boundaries, residence, adoption and treaty guarantees beginning with 1785 Treaty of Hopewell (South Carolina).

  5. Indian Nation sovereignty vs. citizenship and nationality guarantees by treaty and adoption.

  6. Black Indians did not live in U.S. states but in Indian Country, territory, reservations and districts.

  7. Legality of being stripped of nationality without having committed treason, sedition, or overthrow of government.

  8. Should Black Indians be timed barred or restricted from reclaiming their treaty rights if their was malice involved, preventing their gaining access to information about their rights?

  9. Is the U.S. government justified in denying Black Indians access to lands and tribal trust funds set-aside for their exclusive use and benefit, simply because their claim was not made within some arbitrary 20th century - a six-year statute of limitations?

  10. Should the Cherokee Nation support the treaty rights of their Black Indians or help the U.S. government deny treaty rights to a rightfully entitled group just because they also have African ancestry or were formerly enslaved?

For more information, check out Black Indians United at http://home.kc.rr.com/blackindiansunit.