Thursday, August 31, 2017

Yellow Solar Sun/ Yellow Cosmic Human - Lunar Scorpion Moon of Challenge, Day 9





Power of Oceti Sakowin Women, Great Sioux Nation, Oceti Sakowin, Keystone XL, DAPL, Dakota Access Pipeline, Cultural Knowledge, Ceremony, Coming of Age Ceremony, Brave Heart Society, Faith Spotted Eagle, Native American Elders, Tribal Communities, Missouri River, Ella Deloria, Waterlily, Boarding Schools, Native American History, White Buffalo Calf Woman, Traditional Teachings, Ella Deloria, Indigenous Rights, Federal Indian Policy, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Activism, Native American Activists, Indigenous Activists, Treaty Rights, Occupation of Alcatraz, Alcatraz Island, AIM, American Indian Movement, Women of All Red Nations, Lakota People’s Law Project, ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act
“Waterlily” by Ella Deloria



The Power of Oceti Sakowin Women:

Oceti Sakowin women continue to be committed to the land, their relatives and traditions


The Oceti Sakowin (Seven Councils Fires) is comprised of seven distinct yet related bands of Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people. The traditional territory of the Oceti Sakowin spans the Northern Plains of the United States, and stretches from the Great Lakes to the headwaters of the Missouri River in present-day Montana. Settler colonists later dubbed the Oceti Sakowin, “The Great Sioux Nation.”

Like many tribes, the Oceti Sakowin operated and thrived as an egalitarian society, where both women and men occupied esteemed roles in the community. Women of the Oceti Sakowin were affirmed through creation stories, ceremonies, and daily activities. Stories centered on female figures, like that of Pte Sa Win, the White Buffalo Calf Woman, informed the Oceti Sakowin of foundational cultural teachings, including how and why women must be respected.

Today, winyan (women) of the Oceti Sakowin continue to live out their commitment to tradition, to the land, and to their relatives. They adapt to changing times, and stand strong to retain the cherished lifeways that sustained their people for millennia.

Winyan: Keepers of Tradition

Faith Spotted Eagle, Ihanktonwan Nakota elder, said that to be a woman is a beautiful thing. “In the path of life, as you relish what it means to be a woman, we understand that it’s not like you have to be a woman, it’s that you get to be a woman.”

Spotted Eagle, who also descends from the Sicangu Lakota, Hunkpati, and Mdewakanton Dakota, has led efforts to reclaim traditional teachings of Oceti Sakowin women by establishing the Brave Heart Society in 1994.

“Many of our women’s teachings were destroyed,” Spotted Eagle said. “A large part of my life has been devoted to bringing back the framework of those teachings that existed in the old days, which were fragmented by boarding schools and other government policies.”

During the first two years of the Brave Heart Society, Spotted Eagle and other Oceti Sakowin women began by interviewing elders to assist in reviving the women’s society, traditional women’s teachings, and women’s ceremonies. Many of those teachings came from the late Ella Deloria, Dakota ethnographer and author of the novel, Waterlily.

“Okodakiciye, or women’s society, literally means a special group of sisters,” Spotted Eagle said. “It was a bundle of teachings that taught you to be a good relative as a woman, to not try to be better or more powerful than any other gender, to have compassion, and to be in relationship with your surroundings, which included nature.”

With the establishment of the Brave Heart Society, a number of traditional women’s ceremonies have been revived, including the coming of age ceremony, where young women are instructed on their roles, their power, and their responsibilities as women.

“There is such a need for the ceremony today,” Spotted Eagle told ICMN. “In the old days, the coming of age ceremony was done individually with families, but because families are so fragmented today, we do the ceremony in larger groups in a camp setting.”

To date, 141 women have gone through the coming of age ceremony with the Brave Heart Society, which occurs annually in White Swan, South Dakota, along the Missouri River. The Brave Heart Society has also assisted other Oceti Sakowin communities with reviving coming of age ceremonies.

“When you go through this road of life, and through ceremony, it taps into your cell memory. When the girls go through their coming of age, they remember who they used to be as a people, and they get lonesome for who we once were. They say, ‘I want to be like this all the time.’ I tell them, ‘you can.’”

A variety of ceremonies accompanying womanhood have also been central to the existence of the Oceti Sakowin, from girlhood, to womanhood, to entrance into the age of courtship, motherhood, and all the way to the esteemed position of becoming an elder.

“These important ceremonies make you a force to be reckoned with, and in a good way,” Spotted Eagle said. “You know how to claim your space. When you enter a room, people will respect you, and you don’t have to holler.”


The Brave Heart Society continues their work mentoring women long after ceremony, taking them to cultural events and gatherings, like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline resistance camps, which were centered on asserting indigenous rights to land and water. “There is a silent assurance you get when you live through this cultural knowledge. You just know there is always going to be a way to make change or make things good.”

Winyan: Defenders of Land and Life

“The stability of our people has always been with the women, regardless of what disease has come along, whether it has been religion, or federal Indian policy,” said Madonna Thunder Hawk, Lakota and Dakota grandmother. “I look at these things as diseases, because that’s how they affected us.”

As a long-time indigenous rights activist, Thunder Hawk was propelled into activism in the 1960's as a young woman, and has been committed to it ever since.

“I grew up along the Missouri River, and I saw that land go when it was flooded,” Thunder Hawk told ICMN. “I’ve never been able to take my children or grandchildren to where I grew up. That was probably one of the major events that put me on the road to activism.”

Thunder Hawk later participated in the 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz, where a collection of men, women, and their children established themselves as the Indians of All Tribes, and occupied the island in the name of indigenous treaty rights. In 1971, the occupation ended, and occupants were removed from the island by federal agents.

“Being there, I learned about treaty rights and land rights. That’s what sustained me all of these years, and I’m still at it,” said Thunder Hawk. “For our ancestors, there was no giving up, no moving on or retiring. That’s not for us. For Indian country, you make a commitment. This work becomes your life story,” Thunder Hawk told ICMN.

After the Alcatraz occupation, a wave of activism spread throughout Indian country. Thunder Hawk became involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970's, the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973, and in 1974, co-founded the Women of All Red Nations (WARN), an organization that championed indigenous rights and indigenous women’s issues.

“As women, we’ve never had to fight for our position. We don’t need to prove ourselves to anyone,” Thunder Hawk said. “We don’t need to be looking at ourselves through the dominant society filter. We know who we are.”

In more recent times, Thunder Hawk co-founded the Lakota People’s Law Project, an organization born out of investigating violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Today, the Law Project works to reclaim ancestral lands, and defend Lakota lands and resources.

Thunder Hawk, like many other committed women of the Oceti Sakowin, continues to show up for her people and their cherished homelands.

“If there are enough of us women that are going to hold things down, and hold down our identity, and I say that in broad terms, then there is hope that we’re going to survive as a people,” Thunder Hawk said. “It’s up to us as older ones and those of us who are clean and sober, it’s up to us to pull it through. We have to. It’s not our choice.”*

By Sarah Sunshine Manning • August 30, 2017 




AHAU


Kin 100: Yellow Solar Sun

I pulse in order to enlighten
Realizing life
I seal the matrix of universal fire
With the solar tone of intention
I am guided by the power of intelligence.


The Fourth dimension is the pure imaginal mental dimension wherein all of the astral movies are stored.*


*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.








The Sacred Tzolk'in 





Muladhara Chakra (Seli Plasma)




Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Blue Galactic Storm/ Blue Crystal Monkey - Lunar Scorpion Moon of Challenge, Day 8





Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year will be published in early October.
Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year will be published in early October.




‘Onigamiising’: an Ojibwe Woman’s Life:

Linda LeGarde Grover’s ‘Onigamiising’ is lyrical, insightful and very personal


Now a grandmother in the fourth season of her life, Linda LeGarde Grover, Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe, has crafted 50 short essays that address what she characterizes as “contemporary and historical Ojibwe life in northeastern Minnesota from my perspective as an Ojibwe woman.” Each is a finely nuanced reflection on the spiritual and the mundane, the everyday and the extraordinary, the seasons of the year and the seasons of a life.

“Our time on Mother Earth will end, but we mindimooyag dash akiiwensii know that when our seasons have completed there is continuity beyond our existence as individuals. Biboon [winter] leads that greater life to what always follows, which is another spring [Ziigwan] and thus the continuation of the story,” explains Grover in her introductory observations.

Written over ten years, the volume of essays is titled Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year (University of Minnesota Press, October 2017). Onigamiising is the Ojibwe word for Duluth, where Grover was born, as were her grandparents—and her grandchildren. A great part of what she is writing about is continuity—of family, language, customs and culture. An important preserver of that continuity for the Ojibwe is storytelling, of which this collection is a superb example.

Considering hankies, moccasins, dream catchers and urban chickens, Grover escorts us through her personal landscape, recalling a childhood summer [Niibin] graced by an ersatz vehicle made from the discarded frame of a worn-out baby buggy, a visit to the temperature-controlled Tweed Museum of Art on a hot and steamy afternoon, the gatherings and rituals of women: wedding showers, the collective sewing of ribbon skirts, and a tea party/luncheon/baby shower arranged by a plethora of girl cousins—all in the service of Mino-bimaadiziwin, the living of a good life, a concept that is “at the foundation of traditional Anishinaabe teaching and learning,” she writes.

Grover talks about the trauma of the boarding school era between 1879 and 1934, when most Indian children were removed from their homes, and notes that the children were not the only ones to suffer grievous harm.

She refers repeatedly to the federal Indian boarding school system that damaged so many lives and led to what she prefers to call inter-generational, rather than historical, trauma. And she delights in writing about the children, grandchildren, cousins and relatives whom she has had the privilege of helping to raise—all in the gentlest possible lyrical prose that is a joy to read.

“The privilege and blessing of raising children were cruelly denied, which hurt tribes and communities far beyond the family unit,” she writes. “The heart’s blood of a nation is its families, and the future of a nation is its children.”*

By Tanya H. Lee • August 29, 2017



CAUAC



Kin 99: Blue Galactic Storm


I harmonize in order to catalyze
Modeling energy
I seal the matrix of self-generation
With the galactic tone of integrity
I am guided by the power of abundance.


By exerting mental and spiritual energy, you create space in your mind so you do not have to manufacture thought.*



*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.









 The Sacred Tzolk'in



Sahasrara Chakra (Dali Plasma)





Tuesday, August 29, 2017

White Resonant Mirror/ White Spectral Dog - Lunar Scorpion Moon of Challenge, Day 7





Mount Rushmore, Mount Rushmore National Monument, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, United Native Americans, Treaty of Fort Laramie, South Dakota, Black Hills, Paha Sapa, Lehman Brightman, Colonel George Armstrong Custer, General Custer, Native American History, Six Grandfathers, Native American Protesters, Native American Activists, Treaty Rights, Indian Treaties, Great White Father
                                                                                        iStock
On August 29, 1970, United Native Americans occupied Mount Rushmore
 protesting the broken Treaty of Fort Laramie.


This Date in Native History: Natives Occupy Mount Rushmore:

United Native Americans occupy Mount Rushmore over treaty rights


Near dusk on August 29, 1970, a group of Native Americans ascended Mount Rushmore and set up camp behind the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Led by United Native Americans, a San Francisco-based group established in 1968 to promote Natives’ general welfare, 23 young activists made the initial, 3,000-foot climb to the top of the national monument. The occupation lasted for several months and was orchestrated to protest the broken Treaty of Fort Laramie, in which the United States in 1868 had granted the Sioux rights to all land in South Dakota west of the Missouri River.

That included Mount Rushmore, a batholith that sports the 60-foot-high faces of four prominent U.S. presidents, and the surrounding Black Hills. Protesters renamed the monument “Crazy Horse Mountain” and shouted slogans from the top of the mountain, CBS News reported on Sept. 2, 1970.

Indians set up camp “against federal regulations,” CBS correspondent Ike Pappas reported. “They claim the hills of South Dakota are legally theirs by treaty, and they have come to take them back.”

Three times per day, supporters climbed the mountain to deliver supplies to the Indian camp as protesters waited for a response from Interior Secretary Walter Hickel, Pappas said. “To dramatize their protest, the Indians perch on a ledge and shout slogans to the tourists below.”

Among the protesters was Lehman Brightman, an outspoken activist and president of United Native Americans, who helped organize the occupation at the behest of local Sioux people. Brightman, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was speaking at the National Indian Education Conference in Minneapolis when he learned of the protest. He chartered a bus and made the 600-mile journey to Mount Rushmore with a group of students.

“The federal government said this land would belong to us as long as the grass grows and the water flows and the sun shines,” Brightman told CBS News. “Then six years later, they sent Gen. Custer into this area on an expedition and they discovered gold here in the Black Hills. Then they turned around and took this land from us.”

Brightman called the protest a “breeding ground” for “new warriors” ready to fight for land that was rightfully theirs.

“We’re sick and tired of sitting back and turning the other cheek, and then bending over and getting those other two kicked,” he told CBS News. “You’re going to see some wide-awake, educated Indians. …You’re going to see a lot of spark.”

In the same news segment, Wallace McCaw, then president of Mount Rushmore National Monument, said the question of ownership was still unresolved.

“They say they have a right to the land,” McCaw said of the protesters. “It’s never been finally determined in the courts or by the means that are open. Who does own the land? It’s still in litigation.”

The mountain, traditionally known to the Sioux as Six Grandfathers, was renamed Mount Rushmore in 1885. Backed by Congress and federal funding, work on the massive carvings spanned 14 years, from 1927 to 1941.

But even today, ownership of the Black Hills—and of Mount Rushmore—remains in dispute. McCaw admitted that during the 1970 occupation.

“There’s a 50-percent chance that (the Natives are) right, that it is theirs,” he told CBS News. “That does give them, possibly, a little more right than you or I have.”

The original protesters sewed three bedsheets together into a makeshift flag, said Brightman’s son, Quanah Parker Brightman. They used red paint to scrawl the slogan “Sioux Indian Power” on the flag and then draped it over the monument.

After 10 days, the original protesters—mostly students—had to return to school, Quanah Brightman said. But by then, the movement had caught on.

“Indian people from across South Dakota were visiting the mountain,” he said. “A lot of people helped occupy, brought supplies and food and participated in prayer vigils for the return of the land.”

The occupation, which ended in November 1970 when severe winter weather forced Natives to withdraw, is billed as the first Indian uprising in South Dakota since the Sioux defeated Gen. George Armstrong Custer in 1876.

Seven months later, in June 1971, Indian activists again took over Mount Rushmore. Protesters occupied the mountain for 12 hours, demanding that the government honor its treaty promises. Twenty protesters were arrested.*

By Alysa Landry • August 29, 2017



ETZNAB



Kin 98: White Resonant Mirror


I channel in order to reflect
Inspiring order
I seal the matrix of endlessness
With the resonant tone of attunement
I am guided by the power of heart.


Cosmic History introduces a new vibration and frequency which contain a new galactic store and lode of knowledge.*


*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.






The Sacred Tzolk'in 





Anahata Chakra (Silio Plasma)




Monday, August 28, 2017

Red Rhythmic Earth/ Red Planetary Moon - Lunar Scorpion Moon of Challenge, Day 6





Sockeye salmon
                                                                      istock
Sockeye salmon jumping up falls during the annual migration.





Salmon Recovery Continues to Be an Upstream Battle:

Billy Frank Jr. 2014: ‘The battle for salmon recovery is being lost for one main reason: Salmon habitat is disappearing faster than we can restore it’


Salmon are taking a beating in Washington state.

According to a comprehensive study by the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, wild salmon populations continue to decline because of culverts, which block fish migration; shoreline modifications, which affect nearshore habitat; impervious road surfaces, which result in more polluted storm water runoff; loss of forestland cover that provides nutrients and shade for streams; and an increase in the number of wells, which use water needed to recharge aquifers and streams.

The result: according to the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife, between 75 and 90 percent of salmon caught in Washington are hatchery-bred.

“The battle for salmon recovery is being lost for one main reason: Salmon habitat is disappearing faster than we can restore it,” the late Billy Frank Jr., NWIFC chairman, wrote in The Seattle Times on February 16, 2014. “The treaty Indian tribes are leading the fight for salmon recovery. We bring funding, operate hatcheries, conduct research, restore and protect habitat and share traditional knowledge of local watersheds to benefit everyone who lives in Washington.”

And so state Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s August 17 petition before the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging a lower court ruling that the state must replace more than 800 state-owned culverts that block fish passage, drew responses ranging from concern to rebuke from Native and state leaders.

“This is a sad day for Washington state,” Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby said in a statement released by his office after Ferguson filed his petition with the high court. Cladoosby is also president of the National Congress of American Indians.

“We haven’t seen an attack on tribal treaty rights like this by the State of Washington in a very long time. It is my understanding that the state agencies responsible for repairing fish-blocking culverts asked him not to do this. [Attorney General] Ferguson has gone out of his way to attempt to undermine our treaties and our way of life. By this petition, [he] is arguing that it is perfectly OK for the state to destroy thousands of acres of salmon habitat without any consequence. It is an outrageous claim, the 9th Circuit [Court of Appeals] rejected it and we will fight him with all the strength we have.”

In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez gave the state 17 years to replace its most troublesome culverts. Doing so is expected to cost the state as much as $2 billion. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Martinez’s ruling.

In an announcement of his petition before the U.S. Supreme Court, Ferguson outlined reasons he is seeking the high court’s review of the appeals court’s decision.

Money should be spent on “more effective restoration efforts”: “The 9th Circuit’s decision forces the state to expend resources on projects that will not benefit salmon,” Ferguson stated. “The decision requires the state to replace culverts even when other barriers, such as dams or federal culverts, block salmon from ever reaching the state’s culvert. Money squandered on such projects could and should instead be used for more effective salmon restoration efforts.”

Feds share some responsibility: “The lower court decision forces state taxpayers to pay for problems largely created by the federal government,” Ferguson stated. “For decades, the federal government specified the design for the state’s highway culverts. The state then invented and began using a new design that is better for salmon. Then, the federal government sued Washington over the old culverts designed to federal standards. The petition asks that the federal government be blocked from bringing its claim, or at least be required to contribute to the cost of fixing the federally designed culverts.”

There are other causes of salmon population decline: “While Washington is committed to protecting salmon — spending hundreds of millions toward this goal in recent years — many factors beyond the state’s control affect [the salmon population] … including global climate change and ocean acidification,” Ferguson stated. “Therefore, the state may be unable to comply with the court’s order if factors outside the state’s control negatively affect the salmon population, regardless of how many culverts it restores.”

Ferguson said he supports culvert replacement and that “the state should increase the pace of culvert replacement.” But he hinted that the state – which is struggling to meet court mandates that it adequately fund basic education and improve the state’s provision of mental health services – may not have the money to replace culverts in the time frame set by Martinez. According to the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission’s math, the current pace at which the state is replacing its culverts puts completion in 2060, 30 years after the deadline.

“I will support any proposal from the Legislature, the governor or other public officials who control land use and spending decisions that would accelerate the pace of culvert replacements,” Ferguson said. “The state should not need a court order to restore salmon habitat.”

According to Ferguson’s office, the Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to take the case in Fall 2017. If the court decides to hear the case, it will be argued in spring 2018, with a decision before adjournment in June that year.

Meanwhile, state Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, who heads the state Department of Natural Resources, wrote in an August 11 letter to Ferguson that she opposed an appeal. She wrote Ferguson that the state should instead “work collectively and focus on actions that address and actively aid the many concerns that our tribal governments — and so many of our non-tribal residents — have been raising for years” regarding culverts and the hindrance they pose to fish migration.

Franz reported in May the results of collective action. On her blog, she wrote that 43 large forest landowners – among them corporations, two cities and a Native corporation – upgraded 25,000 miles of forest road and removed 6,000 fish-passage barriers to re-open about 3,500 miles of upstream habitat to migrating fish. And they did it before the state Forest Practices Board deadline of 2021. In addition, more than 50 other large forest landowners are in the midst of making required improvements, Franz reported.

“Their efforts are worthy of special recognition because they completed their work on time, and despite the many challenges of a major economic recession,” Franz wrote.

Lorraine Loomis, chairwoman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, said of the state’s responsibility to replace the culverts it owns: “Fixing fish-blocking culverts under state roads will open up hundreds of miles of habitat and result in more salmon. That means more fishing, more jobs and healthier economies for all of us …

“Reserving the right to fish so that we can feed our families and preserve our culture was one of the tribes’ few conditions when we agreed to give up nearly all of the land that is today western Washington. The treaties our ancestors signed have no expiration date and no escape clauses.”

Issue At A Glance

Indigenous leaders in what became the state of Washington signed seven treaties with the United States in 1854-56, ceding land to the U.S. in exchange for certain considerations. In addition, those leaders reserved land for their people, as well as “The right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations.”

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that treaties are the supreme law of the land. The treaties signed between the U.S. and indigenous nations have as much weight under the Constitution as treaties between the U.S. and other governments.

U.S. District Court Judge George H. Boldt upheld Indian treaty fishing rights in his 1974 decision in U.S. v. Washington. His decision established the treaty tribes and the State of Washington as co-managers of the state’s salmon population.*

By Richard Walker • August 27, 2017




CABAN



Kin 97: Red Rhythmic Earth

I organize in order to evolve
Balancing synchronicity
I seal the matrix of navigation
With the rhythmic tone of equality
I am guided by my own power doubled.


Everything that has ever been thought, said or done is registered in the noosphere.*



*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.








The Sacred Tzolk'in 





Manipura Chakra (Limi Plasma)





Sunday, August 27, 2017

Yellow Overtone Warrior/ Yellow Solar Star - Lunar Scorpion Moon of Challenge, Day 5





Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path


Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path: A Superb Little Book:

The book should be required reading everywhere to understand the tragedy, duplicity and stupidity of 19th century US policy, while giving a closer look at the leader known as Black Hawk


Roger L. Nichols, a professor at the University of Arizona, is one of the nation’s leading scholars of American Indian history, with more than a dozen books and about 50 scholarly articles. The first edition of Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path, initially designed for classroom teaching, came out in 1992. After a quarter of a century, Nichols has lots more to say.

It is too bad the press has not marketed it as a “trade book,” because it is extraordinarily well written, has no technical jargon and does not engage in debates with other scholars. Nichols clearly and engagingly tells the complicated history of U.S.-Indian relations in the upper Mississippi Valley from the Revolution to the 1830's. He recounts the history of the Sauk and their often grim and violent relations with the Osage, Menominee and Sioux, and their alliances with the Mesquakie, Winnebago and Kickapoo. All of this is shown through the eyes and experiences of one of the most famous leaders in American Indian history: Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (1767 – October 3, 1838).

In 1832, Black Hawk led the Sauk in the short war that bears his name. Curiously, it is one of only two post-colonial Indian wars named for the Native leader. The other is Tecumseh’s War (1811-13). With the exception of the mostly futile attempts to defeat the Seminole in the Florida Territory, Black Hawk’s War was the last U.S.-Indian conflict east of the Mississippi River. It ended in disaster for the Sauk, and left Black Hawk in leg irons as a prisoner of war. Few people know much about the war other than it ended in massacre of women, children and Indian soldiers, and that Abraham Lincoln served as a militia captain. He saw no combat, but learned how unpleasant military service could be. The war was short and bloody, and when it was over, the Sauk permanently moved west of the Mississippi.

Who was Black Hawk? In 1831, Black Hawk attended a meeting at Rock Island, Illinois, where Gen. Edmund P. Gaines ordered the Sauk to abandon the traditional center of their nation at Saukenuk, along with buildings, well-tilled farms and graves of ancestors. Saukenuk was on the Rock River, just south of the present day city of Rock Island. (Unlike the whites, who built their cities right on the Mississippi River, the Sauk were smart enough to respect the power of the Father of Waters, and built a few miles from it, knowing it often flooded and wiped out everything in its path.) The Sauk chiefs at the meeting were ready to acquiesce to the inevitable and leave their homes.

The aging warrior Black Hawk arrived at the meeting with a band of followers carrying bows, full quivers of arrows, “lances, spears, and war clubs.” Black Hawk held no official position among the Sauk, but he was a former war chief, a respected elder and a warrior of great fame and honor. As soon as Gaines stopped talking, Black Hawk vehemently denounced him, declaring, “we are determined to hold onto our village.”

Gaines demanded to know “Who is Black Hawk?” The aging warrior responded, “I am a Sauk. My forefather was a SAUK! And all the Nations call me a SAUK!” A year later, Black Hawk would lead his people into battle one more time, in a futile effort to hold his village.

Nichols paints this Sauk as a conservative, often inflexible, man, steeped in the traditions of his people, trying to preserve a culture and way of life against the tide of history – and white settlement and military power. The war did not have to happen, Nichols writes. Black Hawk claims he never wanted a war, but only crossed back into Illinois (from Iowa) to claim his rightful land, or to move north into Wisconsin. He sent some of his warriors to negotiate with Americans under a flag of truce. The American soldiers shot at the Indians instead and the unnecessary war began. This is one of the many moments in this book where we see tragedies that might have been averted.

After the war, the Army imprisoned Black Hawk for about a year, in St. Louis, Missouri, and then Virginia. He was in part a prisoner and in part a famous guest. He sat for portraits, met with dignitaries and his captors made him tour the U.S., seeing the vast cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. He witnessed a man ride in a hot air balloon, travelled on the newly invented trains, and returned to Iowa understanding the impossibility of making war on such powerful enemies. Back in Iowa, Black Hawk was a local celebrity and dictated his autobiography, which is one of the earliest autobiographies of a Native leader. The Life of Ma-Ka-Tia-Me-She-Kia-Kiak or Black Hawk, was published in Cincinnati in 1833. It was a minor best-seller and brought fame and honor to Black Hawk in the last years of his life.

His celebrity remains. Parks and historic sites are named for him. The U.S. Army honors his memory as a warrior with the famous Black Hawk helicopter. I suspect Black Hawk would smile at the irony of the descendants of his enemies honoring his bravery and military skills in this way. At the other extreme, the National Hockey League team in Chicago bears his name—and then desecrates it with a racist, cartoonish caricature that looks nothing like Black Hawk. What makes the Chicago Black Hawks mascot particularly awful is that we know exactly what Black Hawk looked like. During a trip to the East in 1828 and during a year of incarceration in 1832-33) a number of famous painters, including George Catlin, Charles Bird King, Richard M. Sully, and John Wesley Jarvis, did his portrait. The Black Hawk State Historical Site in Rock Island has a plaster cast of his head from about 1830 and a respectful statue of the great Sauk leader. Not surprisingly, none of these portraits resemble the cartoon of a Native man that serves as the mascot for the hockey team, perhaps surpassed only by the mascot for the Cleveland Indians in over-the-top racism.

This superb little book ought to be required reading everywhere so all Americans can see the tragedy, duplicity and stupidity of U.S. policy in the early nineteenth century while also appreciating the wisdom, bravery and sometimes stubborn failures of Black Hawk. Like all great leaders, he is flawed, imperfect and also heroic. His humanity jumps from this book to our own world.*

By Paul Finkelman, Ph.D, the John E. Murray Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh, and in the fall of 2017 will hold the Fulbright Chair in Human Rights at the University of Ottawa. His book, Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court will be published by Harvard University Press in January 2018.




CIB



Kin 96: Yellow Overtone Warrior



I empower in order to question
Commanding fearlessness
I seal the output of intelligence
With the overtone tone of radiance
I am guided by the power of flowering
I am a galactic activation portal
Enter me.


A time/space is a matrix for the creative organization of intelligence according to specific stages of cosmic evolution. There are innumerable super-mental (cosmic) civilizations throughout the universe that are telepathically seeking receptive frequencies to establish communication.*


*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.










The Sacred Tzolk'in 





Vishuddha Chakra (Alpha Plasma)




Saturday, August 26, 2017

Blue Self-Existing Eagle/ Blue Galactic Hand - Lunar Scorpion Moon of Challenge, Day 4





Supporters and a drum group gather amid news that the baby of Savanna Greywind has been found safe.
                                                                         Chelsey Luger
Supporters and a drum group gather amid news that the baby of Savanna Greywind has been found safe.




Baby Girl Found Safe As Search For Savanna Greywind Continues:
The national spotlight on the case of Savanna Greywind may bring more attention to the plight of murdered and missing women in Indian Country



FARGO, ND—It has been a harrowing week for a Native family in Fargo, North Dakota. Since Saturday, August 19th, 22-year-old Savanna LaFontaine Greywind has been missing.

At the time of her disappearance, she was 8 months pregnant, looking forward to bringing a new life into the world. This morning, authorities announced that after executing a search warrant, Ms. Greywind’s days-old baby girl has been found in an upstairs neighbor’s home in the same apartment building where Greywind resides with her parents. Greywind had last been seen on her way up to the neighbor’s apartment, where the female resident had asked Greywind for assistance with sewing a dress. When Greywind didn’t return several hours later, her family reported her disappearance to the police.

Days later, after police found the baby, the neighbors, Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32 and were arrested and taken into custody for questioning. Both have since been charged with a Class A felony: conspiracy to commit kidnapping. One suspect, Hoehn, has a prior record of convictions for child abuse and neglect and domestic violence. Fargo police said that no other suspects are under consideration at this point, and that neither suspect has cooperated or answered any questions regarding the possible whereabouts of Ms. Greywind.

The baby girl is currently receiving medical attention at a local hospital while in custody of Child Protective Services. It is up to CPS if and when they will release the baby to the Greywind family.

Meanwhile, the investigation and search for Savanna continues.

In a press conference this morning, Fargo Police Chief David Todd asked that the public now help with search efforts. He asked that landlords check any vacant apartment units for any sign or evidence that anybody has been there, and that residents check buildings, garages, and dumpsters.

This case has already captured the attention of a nationwide audience, bringing light to the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, which has devastated Native communities everywhere for decades. Hope remains that Ms. Greywind will be found alive somewhere. Until then, the public will continue to help with search efforts, to support the Greywind family, and to follow the example of the local Native community, who are gathering en masse to pray for her safe return.

Responding in solidarity, buses and carloads of search parties from the Turtle Mountain Reservation, the Spirit Lake Reservation, and other nearby Native communities have arrived in the Fargo area to search for Savanna.

On Friday, Native students at Minnesota State University Moorhead, across the river from Fargo, organized a gathering to show support and offer prayers for the Greywind family. Dozens joined on campus to show support.

The Greywind family is in the process of setting up a bank account for donations. Meanwhile, volunteer search parties are welcomed and needed in the entire Fargo-Moorhead area. If you are joining in search efforts, it is recommended to bring reflective or brightly colored clothing.*

By Chelsey Luger • August 25, 2017




MEN



Kin 95: Blue Self-Existing Eagle



I define in order to create
Measuring mind
I seal the output of vision
With the self-existing tone of form
I am guided by the power of magic
I am a polar kin
I convert the blue galactic spectrum.


All of life, every molecule, every grain of sand has the seed of unity: pre-conscious, unconconscious or conscious*


*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2016-2017.





The Sacred Tzolk'in 





Svadhistana Chakra (Kali Plasma)