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State of March 2003 Newsletter - Part 1
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Greetings,
I hope all is well with you. Based on a question from a previous
newsletter, I thought I would remind you of something. Anything above
the line above which says "Start of March 2003 Newsletter" is an ad from
the company which runs the website through which I distribute this
newsletter. The newsletter comes out for free, so they get to put their
ads there (also at the bottom). I do not necessarily support or condone
the products being advertized there.
This newsletter will also come in two parts. I have been a bit busy at
work, and the American Indian Studies class I am taking online. The
class in proving to be very interesting. We are looking at many subjects
which I have covered in some way or another in the newsletter. The class
is on contemporary issues in American Indian society. The text is
"Native American Voices." It is a collection of articles by a variety of
people. It makes for interesting reading.
I also took a week off this month. I went to Utah to visit a good
friend, Haylee Nez. I really love the amazing landscapes of Utah. Haylee
was kind enough to loan me her couch. She also too me around to many
different places centered around her home south of Provo. She lives at
the base of Mt. Nebo. It is an great looking mountain which rises almost
7,000 feet from the valley floor to an elevation of almost 12,000 feet.
We also went to Fremont State Park. This is an area with lots of
pictographs made by the "Fremont People." I really like rock art, and
this was a great place. I'll post some pictures in a few days.
I will probably be on Washington, D.C. radio station WPFW again tonight
(Sunday) at 8pm Eastern Time. You can listen online through their
website (or so they say).
http://www.wpfw.org/
Some time back, I told you about a website where you could add your name
to a spacecraft going to Mars. I thought I would post this update. The
final count is 3,551,645 names. If you did add your name, you can see it
through this page: http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/
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Every so often, I like the feature the work of an individual. This
month's "Link of the Month" is by Patrick Minges. Patrick appears to
keep quite busy. His work "I am Keetoowah's Son!" is an extremely
detailed, and well annotated look at one aspect of Cherokee culture and
history. Even if the Cherokee are not your favorite subject, Patrick's
work is well worth visiting. You can find it at:
http://users.rcn.com/wovoka/
Hal and Cheryl Carson passed this site along to me. Thanks!
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This months Treaty of the Month is TREATY WITH THE WYANDOT, Mar. 17,
1842 | 11 Stat., 581. It covers such subjects as: Cession of lands to
the United States, Grant by the United States to the Wyandotts, Annuity,
School, Value of improvements to be paid the Wyandot, Who may share the
annuity, Heirs of Horonu, and Reservations.
You can read the details here:
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/wya0534.htm
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Need to find out if there is a federal grant program that might help
your American Indian based group? Try the following link:
http://www.cfda.gov/query/query.idq?CiMaxRecordsPerPage=10&CiScope=%2F&CiRestriction=indian&TemplateName=query&CiSort=rank%5Bd%5D&HTMLQueryForm=query.htm
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Postings from other people:
I received this e-mail from several people during the last month.
More great logic provided by American folk lore.
Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that was
going on inside himself.
He said, " My son, it is between 2 wolves. One is evil: Anger, envy,
sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment,
inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.
The other is good: Joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness,
benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith..."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his
grandfather, " Which wolf wins? "
The old Cherokee simply replied, " The one I feed."
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Joe RedCloud sends me lots of interesting material. Here is an article
(from 1998) he passed along to me. While you may not agree with the
logic of the article, it does pass along an interesting persective:
Robert Jensen, Department of Journalism
University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990 rjen-@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert William Jensen 1998 first appeared in the Baltimore
Sun, July 19, 1998
by Robert Jensen
Here's what white privilege sounds like:
I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright
and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college
admissions, which he opposes and I support.
The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned
advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United
States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever
benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes,
he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white
privilege.
So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white
privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I
ask.
He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white
privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but
ignore what it means.
That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism
with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the
dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a
world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think
much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of
affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal
is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white
privilege.
White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white
supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not
they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such
privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects
of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of
privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has
played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.
I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European
heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in
the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by
racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a
reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically
significant non-white population, American Indians.
I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism
of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely
trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the
institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself,
one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.
What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to
a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look
threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things
look like me-they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves,
and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am
one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I
am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.
My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain
that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with
mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty
who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates
Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for
the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the
university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has
mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but
is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of
second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their
flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on
gender, class and ideology.
Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a
bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real
people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know,
because I am one of them.
I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the
drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published
a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional
stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue,
actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a
fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the
end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash
my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.
But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I
benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean
that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never
have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have
soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country
taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a
well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned
that white people like me made this country great. There I also was
taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests
written by and for white people.
All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted
for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching
position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a
white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department
with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured
professor.
There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people
have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy
families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had
it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women
face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all
have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.
Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked
hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good
about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as
defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can
acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant
boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of
my life from certain hardships.
At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because
I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my
individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the
rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology
that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like
all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't
really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do
with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or
rugged, that I wasn't special.
I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't
special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride
in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in
my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people
have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be
anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all
dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us.
But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what
the society in which we live lets us be.
White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want
to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man
and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am
benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the
ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is
clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white
supremacy is erased from this society.
Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about
the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in
the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act
morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to
admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we
are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice
about what we do with our success.
Jensen is a professor in the Department of Journalism in the University
of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjen-@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
-----------------------------------------------
Roth Torres sent this along:
Oneida, NY
Editor/Special Effects
1-29-2003
Editor/Special Effects
Four Directions Entertainment, an American Indian owned production
company with ingenuity and forward looking technology, is seeking a
qualified Editor with title graphic and special effects experience.Our
successful candidate will work well as an integral member of a
production team and be open to performing a variety of tasks as needed.
Edit and oversee post production for a range of programming, both
broadcast and non-broadcast, including: documentary, reality,
commercial, studio and drama.
Bachelor's Degree in related combined with 2-3 years related experience
desired, combination of education and experience will be considered.
Demonstrates superior aesthetic and editorial judgment,knowledge of
videographic techniques, equipment and lighting is a plus.
Hands on experience with the following is desired: AvidHD, Avid After
Effects, Final Cut Pro, Media 100, DVD Authoring, Pro Tools, and
Premier. Exceptional communication skills and organizational skills are
essential.
Four Directions Entertainment, an enterprise of the Oneida Indian
Nation, provides an enjoyable working environment and atmosphere as well
as a competitive salary and excellent benefits package. Interested
candidates should submit, a Demo Reel, brief cover letter, resume and
list of references to:
Human Resources, 223 Genesee Street, Oneida, NY 13421, fax to (315)
829-8938 or email ploug-@oneida-nation.org.
Four Directions Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer.
-----------------------------------------
Haylee sent this a bit of information for those of you who have noticed
the rise in fuel prices:
You Think A Gallon Of Gas Is Expensive? Makes one think, and puts
things in perspective.
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ...... $ 9.52 per gallon
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ........ $10.32 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ....... $10.00 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ............. $10.17 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ............... $25.42 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 .......... $33.60 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 ................ $84.48 per gallon
Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 .........$123.20 per gallon
Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 ......... $178.13 per gallon
this is the REAL KICKER......
Evian water 9 oz for $1.49 ........ $21.19 per gallon.
$21.19 FOR WATER! ....and the buyers don't even know the source. But
then again Evian spelled backwards is naïve.
So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on
water, Scope, or Whiteout, or heaven forbid, PEPTO BISMOL or NYQUIL!!!!
Just a little humor to help ease the pain of your next trip to the
pump...
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Here are some websites or newstories which might interest you....
Events mark 30th anniversary of Wounded Knee
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/26/wk
http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2003/02/28/build/tribal/woundedknee.php?nnn=4
The Lewis and Clark Bicentenary: Trailing a fallacy
http://thenavajotimes.com/opinion.html
THE NAVAJO RESPONSE TO CRIME by The Honorable Robert Yazzie Chief
Justice of the Navajo Nation
http://www.american.edu/spa/justice/publications/navajo3.htm
THE HEALING AND COMMUNITY JUSTICE POLICY of the JUDICIAL BRANCH OF THE
NAVAJO NATION
http://www.american.edu/spa/justice/publications/navajosp.htm
Tribes and states stress cooperation not conflict
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/28/paiute
Pechanga disenrollment campaign to continue
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/25/pechanga
Indian leader asks Bush aid on health, poverty
http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2003/02/03/build/tribal/us-indianaid.php?nnn=4
The colonial freedom of federal Indian law
http://indiancountry.com/?1046256088
Youngblood wins Native music award at Grammys
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/24/grammy
The Third Quinnipiac Treaty
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7199643&BRD=1632&PAG=461&dept_id=8229&rfi=6
Choctaw tribal cultural director among award recipients
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/5277392.htm
Ancient Ways meets modern technology
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2003/02/16/news/business/44a99a0d7652dec8e7bf736e5cbda828.txt
Calif. tribe subject to state election laws
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/28/agua
News from the North: A digest of First Nations news from Canada
http://indiancountry.com/?1045581691
Fight continues to save Kaho'olawe (Hawaii)
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Feb/09/op/op14a.html
Indian lawmakers say Martz out of touch with tribes
http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2003/02/10/build/tribal/martz.php?nnn=4
Cherokee board upholds chief's residency
http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=992673
Juneau resident receives Golden Jubilee Medal from Queen Elizabeth II
http://indiancountry.com/?1045059020
Editorial: Oklahoma tribes should share with state
http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=990041
Traditional Cheyenne leaders fix modern problem
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?display=rednews/2003/02/21/build/local/45-cheyenne-dispute.inc
The Red Copy
http://www.theredcopy.com/
Sacred words: Tribes race against time to preserve native languages
http://www.jsonline.com/lifestyle/people/feb03/121878.asp
Seminole Tribe moves to oust Billie for good
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/28/seminole
Opinion: Approve recognition of Lumbee Tribe
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/27/lumbee
Dodd, Lieberman Say Bill Would Not Preclude Tribal Recognition
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/mktplace/re.aspx?reIDx=df30bc0a-1dc7-49b2-9ff4-b4b6317e1a7a
Terms of Potawatomi compact defended
http://www.dailyreporter.com/news/2_241/construction/7836-1.html
Local governments want voice in tribal-state casino talks
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/5270663.htm
First Nations President and ICT Columnist Rebecca Adamson honored in
women’s history month
http://indiancountry.com/?1046359965
You can succeed, aboriginal youth told
http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=7470ec05-c93f-441c-b595-8b159538b7c2
FBI report responds to claims of unsolved Indian deaths.
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2003/02/27/news/local/news02.txt
Oregon mayor meets with tribe on stadium deal
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/28/grandronde
The Mexico Solidarity Network indigenous rights program
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/indigenous_rights.html
Indian termination by Connecticut (with help by anti-Indian media)
http://indiancountry.com/?1044633100
Lenape Clan Plans Cultural Center
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/blairsvilledispatch/s_121010.html
Crownpoint opens MADD chapter in battle against drunk driving
http://thenavajotimes.com/nation.html
Firedancers return from shuttle search
http://www.okit.com/news/2003/mar/firedancer.html
Indian Gambling Rejected
http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2002/12/18/build/tribal/highstakes.php?nnn=4
Objections delay Bush's trust fund pick
http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/02/27/swimmer
Name Shame
http://www.reznetnews.org/news/030217_mascot/
New anti-mascot bill introduced in California legislature
http://indiancountry.com/?1046446546
Bill would ban 'squaw' names
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0224squaw24.html
Don't balance state budget on backs of sovereign Nations
http://www.shobannews.com/opinion.html#anchorop4
'Red Ink' erases Native American stereotypes
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0225redink25.html
Meet The Magpie
http://www.reznetnews.org/news/030224_magpie/
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The second part of this newsletter will be out in a day or two...
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End of the March 2003 Newsletter - Part One
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