articles-september 14

Attorney: Release Peltier documents
By Carolyn Thompson, Associated Press Writer

BUFFALO, N.Y. — An attorney for imprisoned American Indian activist Leonard Peltier accused the government Monday of withholding documents in the case to cover up its own misconduct 30 years ago.

Michael Kuzma asked a federal judge to order the release of all documents from the FBI's Buffalo field office as part of the larger effort to free Peltier, 60, who is serving life for the killing of two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Earlier this year, the FBI released 797 of the 812 pages compiled by Buffalo investigators but withheld 15 pages, citing national security and foreign relations concerns.

Department of Justice attorney Preeya Noronha told U.S. District Judge William Skretny the Freedom of Information Act, under which the documents were released, provided for such exemptions. full article

American Indian women's contributions often overlooked

September 14, 2004
 
When Sally Tuttle married a Hoosier in 1972 and moved east from Red Oak, Okla., her grandmother warned her: "Be careful. They don't like Indians out there."

This seemed so odd -- a state named Indiana that didn't care for Indians. Indiana also had no federally recognized tribes then and no Bureau of Indian Affairs. Tuttle learned that when she attempted to take her card, identifying her as a member of the Choctaw nation, to the local BIA to apply for educational grants -- and no BIA office existed.

Then her son came home from elementary school in Kokomo and told her his class had read a story about an Indian boy who slaughtered a pack of horses. "Indians did not do that," she told him, firmly.

Obviously, Tuttle had work to do. full article

Montana tribes oppose return to cyanide mining

Posted: September 14, 2004 - 10:33am EST
by: Brenda Norrell / Southwest Staff Reporter / Indian Country Today
FORT BELKNAP, Mont. - While the Bush administration pressed for a record number of oil and gas leases in the West, American Indians in Montana opposed new legislation that would permit mining companies to return to cyanide leach gold mining.

Montana Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, said American Indians have a sacred responsibility to protect nature and points out the water and soil has already been poisoned by cyanide leach mining in Montana.
"It is the fight that we have to do to protect nature, what was left here for us. We don’t own anything; it is not our place to tear up what does not belong to us.

"We don’t even own our lives; we are here only on borrowed time. It is up to us as humans to protect what was put here for us to protect," Windy Boy told Indian Country Today. full article

Peruvians battle Newmont

Farmers and others gather recently in Cajamarca, Peru, to protest the expansion of Newmont Mining’s nearby Yanacocha mine onto a mountain that residents believe is sacred and that supplies water.

A water shortage was just one reason why hundreds of farmers invaded Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp.'s Yanacocha gold mine in Peru earlier this month and showered police with a storm of stones fired from slingshots.

The farmers oppose a proposed mine expansion because they fear it could reduce and contaminate water supplies they need for growing potatoes and watering livestock.

Newmont executives at Yanacocha have suspended exploration at the proposed expansion area, called Cerro Quilish, and point to a two-year water study recently completed by Boulder-based Stratus Consulting. full article

Group Says Authorities Engaging In Racial Profiling

Amnesty International Report Calls For Changes In Oklahoma Law

POSTED: 11:15 am CDT September 14, 2004

TULSA, Okla. -- Black, American Indian and Muslim Oklahomans have been targeted by law enforcement or airport security personnel because of their race, according to a report on racial profiling.


The national report released Monday by human rights group Amnesty International USA calls for changes in Oklahoma's racial-profiling law and urges passage of the federal End Racial Profiling Act.

The report is based on a series of hearings across the nation, including one in Tulsa last year. It also analyzes existing studies and reports regarding profiling practices by law enforcement. full article

Bushmen Tour U.S. to Fund Court Land Fight

Stefan Lovgren in Los Angeles
for National Geographic News
September 14, 2004
The worlds of the wild and vast grasslands of southern Africa's Kalahari region and the meticulously manicured mansions of Beverly Hills couldn't be much further apart.

So Roy Sesana would be forgiven for looking a little bewildered as he took the stage at an Amnesty International fundraiser to tell a glitzy Hollywood crowd gathered at musician Jackson Browne's Beverly Hills home about the plight of his Bushmen people. full article

Cry of Excluded Brings 1 Million to the Streets of Brazil      

The participation of indigenous people in the 2004 Cry of the Excluded protest brought the issue of their presence in urban areas of the country to the surface. In Campo Grande, MS, the Cry brought together 700 people in the Água Bonita settlement, which is located on the outskirts of the capital city.

In Manaus, state of Amazonas, where, according to IBGE, there are around 18,000 indigenous people, the speeches made by the people during the Cry drew attention to their presence in the city and to the challenges and difficulties generated by this situation.

The Cry has taken place for the last 10 years on September 7. This is the same day as the official commemorations to celebrate Brazil’s independence, and has become established as an event marked by the presence of social movements full article

Colombian Indians protest against war abuses
14 Sep 2004 15:29:41 GMT
Source: Reuters
BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept 14 (Reuters) - About 40,000 Indians from southwest Colombia marched on Tuesday to protest against abuse of their communities by forces fighting the country's 40-year-old war.

The demonstration followed an action last week in which hundreds of Paez Indians, armed only with decorated sticks, pressured Marxist guerrillas into releasing two kidnapped community leaders in the jungle region of Caqueta. full article

The Orations of Zell Miller

The Peckerwood Pericles

By WERTHER*

"If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses. He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without any shame or dignity. What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition - the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine."

Anno 1925, H.L. Mencken penned those uncharitable words about William Jennings Bryan after the letter exited both his public career and the realm of the animate. Anno 2004, as the Hon. Zell Miller, senior Senator from Georgia, approaches the end of his public career, the nation - or at least that portion of it that still possesses of a sense of irony - wishes the Sage of Baltimore could be living at this hour, so as to properly limn the life and works of this latest personification of a recurring American archetype: the country-fried demagogue.

Bryan himself was hardly the purest example of this species: he was born in Nebraska and as candidate for president held economic views that today, a century later, Sean Hannity would denounce as socialist. The true hatchery of genus demogogus is the Deep South: that intellectual Gobi where Kudzu strangles the Magnolia even as revivalism strangles thought. full article