Human rights
When Columbus got lost in America, he found healthy, thriving native peoples. Within 100 years, the civilizations he first met were decimated. In North America, north of Mexico, the pre-Columbian population has been estimated at 18 million people.
In 1898, just eight years after the Wounded Knee Massacre, the U.S. Congress passed a bill that created a new federal facility: The Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians.
We know that acts of genocide were perpetrated on our people because we refused to be separated from our lands.
After multiple recounts and one court-ordered do-over, Bill John Baker has defeated incumbent Chad Smith to become the new Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Greetings on Colonization Day,
I feel like I have been waiting for this moment an entire lifetime. More like a hundred lifetimes when I count the 500 years and lifetimes of all our indigenous ancestors who went to their graves wondering if justice would ever again prevail on Turtle Island.
I hope we have all been following the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) action that is unfolding before us. Why are they protesting? Hopefully OWS is not only due to the rich-poor gap -although, that is reason enough.
Tellingly, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave his speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday, he made no mention of the this year's u
We read and absorb as truth the accounts of idealistic observers like Thomas More, Amerigo Vespucci, Las Casas, Rousseau, and others who bolster our view of our ancestors. We paint our people as innocents, pristine in relationship with all of nature, and pure in social structures and systems.
Of late, left leaning groups have raised concerns about a prayer meeting convened by Texas Governor Rick Perry and hosted by the American Family Association.
Chairman Daniel Akaka of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs called for critical thinking about federal Indian law at the June 9 Oversight Hearing on Domestic Policy Implications of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He repeatedly asked where the U.N.
The late Seneca scholar and philosopher John Mohawk said: "In order to be free, you must act free." Mohawk was a contemporary of mine, and he knew the struggle for freedom for indigenous peoples is not theoretical, it is real; it is also difficult, constant and requires remembering where we, as A
This week, nearly 40 passengers (unarmed peace activists and media people) will board The Audacity of Hope, a U.S. flagged boat, which will set sail from Greece and join the international Freedom Flotilla II.