articles- august 26

Kunkuamo indigenous leader killed
Aug 26, 2004

The Aug. 6 murder of Kankuamo leader Freddy Arias brings to 261 the number of people from this indigenous group who have been killed in the last two decades, 92 of whom have died in the two-year-old government of President Álvaro Uribe.

Arias, who acted as human rights coordinator of the Kankuama Indigenous Organization, was shot down by unidentified gunmen in Valledupar, capital of the northeastern department of Cesar. full article

Pechanga may expand reservation

By: MICHAEL BUCHANAN - Staff Writer

TEMECULA ---- Up on a hill behind the Pechanga Resort & Casino sits a cluster of rocks that, when the sun hits it just right, looks like a crouching bear. Folks on the reservation are familiar with that rock, tribal Chairman Mark Macarro said Wednesday, and the tribe has taken steps to make sure those rocks and nearly a thousand acres of sage-covered hills south of the reservation are left undisturbed.

Legislation has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Temecula, to transfer more than 990 acres of federal land over to the tribe. Issa introduced the bill in late July and the matter has been referred to a House committee. full article

Native Americans race against diabetes

By Esther Avila, The Porterville Recorder

"Wow!" said 9-year-old Devon Quair when he saw the Indy 500 race car unloaded from a trailer on the Tule River Indian Reservation. Within seconds, the car was completely surrounded by children. "How fast can it go?" "Have you ever crashed?" "Can I get inside?" "How much does it weigh?" Those were just some of the questions the wide-eyed children asked Cory Witherill, the first full-blooded Native American to race in the Indy 500.

Witherill, 31, and his shiny white, purple and red Dallara chassis with an Infiniti engine, that can reach a top speed of 190 miles per hour, was making a pit stop at the reservation Wednesday afternoon to talk with children and adults about his career as a race car driver and talking about diabetes, the fifth-deadliest disease in the United States that has no cure, according to the American Diabetes Association. full article

Navajo and Anishinabe youths take on industry in Climate Justice Corps

Posted: August 26, 2004 - 2:07pm EST
by: Brenda Norrell / Southwest Staff Reporter / Indian Country Today

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - Navajo and Anishinabe youths are tackling the political and industrial causes of climate change, after being selected by the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative to work in a new environmental justice corps in
their communities.

Roberto Nutlouis, Climate Justice Corps member working at home on the Navajo Nation, said American Indian communities realize that as climate change transforms their environment, it endangers their culture.
While these cultures have been here for thousands of years, Nutlouis said Native communities are habitually excluded from the political process. "It is important to shed light on the unjust politics of climate change. People who contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions - indigenous peoples, people of color, and disempowered communities - are the first to be impacted full article

Circle of learning: Tribal groups keep culture alive through education

By Jennifer Lloyd
Times Snohomish County bureau
STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Students, teachers and parents sit around a large drum, their vocals and staccato drumbeats reverberating through the Monroe Junior High School library.

The practice is more than just a lesson in rhythm. It's a weekly exercise in culture for these participants in the Skykomish Valley Indian Education program.

Members of the Native Spirit Singers belong to different tribes, but they're eager to learn this Plains Indian drumming as a part of the 24-year-old program in the Monroe and Sultan school districts full article

Native American dwellings found along Tenn. River

August 26, 2004

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Trying to find the UT golf team a new place to practice has lead to a major prehistoric find along the Tennessee River.

Field work has uncovered two Native American dwellings from the 1300's.

Researchers have also identified human remains dating from the same time.

There's even evidence of a small town or village that existed between 400 to 700 years ago. full article

’Bloodshed’ if seabed bill passed, professor warns

By SIMON COLLINS

One of the country’s top Maori academics says parts of New Zealand will see the same kind of bloodshed as seen in Palestine and Israel if the Government nationalises tribally owned parts of the coastline.

Professor Margaret Mutu, the head of Maori Studies at Auckland University and chairwoman of the Ngati Kahu tribe of the Far North, told the parliamentary committee on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill in Auckland yesterday that Ngati Kahu would stop the bill being implemented in its district.

"The warning by a senior civil servant of the inevitability of civil war if this bill is enacted is not hyperbole," she said in a prepared statement.

When National MP Dr Wayne Mapp asked her if she seriously believed civil war was inevitable in Ngati Kahu’s district if the bill was passed, she said: "I think that is clearly stated in this paper, which is authorised by Ngati Kahu." full article

Mexico: Guerrero's Indigenous Communities Report Lack of Teachers

(Washington, D.C., August 25, 2004) - The Mexican state of Guerrero should ensure that all children have full access to primary education, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Guerrero Governor René Juárez Cisneros. The school year begins this month across Mexico.
Human Rights Watch has received credible reports that children in several indigenous communities in the state's La Montaña region have been unable to attend primary school due to an absence of teachers where they live.  
 
"Guerrero should do all it can to make teachers available to all the state's children," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "When a community lacks teachers, its children are denied their fundamental right to an education and often condemned to lives of poverty and marginalization." full article

No Peace for Indigenous Peoples in Burma

The United Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) reported on August 5 that killings, torture, sexual harassment, and other human rights violations against indigenous people in Burma have continued, despite recent peace negotiations with insurgent groups.

The Karen National Union (KNU), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the Shan State Army-South (SSA-South), and small armed opposition groups in the Mon State are actively opposing the Burmese government’s policies against indigenous peoples. In December, the KNU and the KNPP entered into a cease-fire, but fighting continues throughout the country due to the longstanding history of mistrust between the Burmese government and its indigenous people. For some indigenous groups, the only form of outside contact has been through violent interactions with the Burmese military. full article

Bush is No Sun Tzu

War Rules

By DIANE CHRISTIAN

"All's fair in love and war."
-popular saying

"All's fair in love and war" is usually taken to mean that nothing's fair in love or war, that anything goes, and regular rules don't apply. Concepts like 'crime of passion' and 'fog of war' indicate reduced responsibility. You may do things in the extreme states-like have and revenge sex, and kill-which you cannot do otherwise. Honor killing to avenge sexual misconduct or shame is sanctioned in some societies and war is sanctioned in most.

What are the rules of war? For us, the Geneva Conventions-distinguish combatants and civilians, and care for the wounded, prisoners of war, victims of armed conflicts. Also don't use asphyxiating or poison gases, expanding bullets, or bacteriological weapons. (Forbidding land mines continues to be debated in international forums.) The great Chinese warrior Sun Tzu suggested in the sixth century BCE that there should be some limit to the waging of war. The idea of 'rules' suggests limit and control and reason. In practice the rules are often ignored or waived as stopping war is more difficult than starting it. The Marine appetite to 'get some' is not easily converted to 'humane care.' The soldier you shoot who dies is enemy dead; the sniper you wound who languishes is your humane responsibility. In the US Civil War, Confederate Officer Henry Wirz was executed for murdering Federal prisoners of war. Robert MacNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, mused in the film "The Fog of War" that the civilian bombing of Tokyo he planned in World War II, would have been a war crime if we had lost the war. full article

What Would Machiavelli Do? The Big Lie Lives On
by Thom Hartmann
 
There is nothing new about the Swift Boat ads.

German filmmaker Fritz Kippler, one of Goebbels' most effective propagandists, once said that two steps were necessary to promote a Big Lie so the majority of the people in a nation would believe it. The first was to reduce an issue to a simple black-and-white choice that "even the most feebleminded could understand." The second was to repeat the oversimplification over and over. If these two steps were followed, people would always come to believe the Big Lie.

In Kippler's day, the best example of his application of the principle was his 1940 movie "Campaign in Poland," which argued that the Polish people were suffering under tyranny - a tyranny that would someday threaten Germany - and that the German people could either allow this cancer to fester, or preemptively "liberate" Poland. Hitler took the "strong and decisive" path, the movie suggested, to liberate Poland, even though after the invasion little evidence was found that Poland represented any threat whatsoever to the powerful German Reich. The movie was Hitler's way of saying that invading Poland was the right thing to do, and that, in retrospect, he would have done it again. full article