Yellow Spectral Warrior/ Yellow Lunar Star - Magnetic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 13

                                                                               Courtesy Rick Flores/UC Santa Cruz

Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, addresses an environmental conference at UC Santa Cruz.

Amah Mutsun Tribal Chairman: ‘Assimilation Is Surrender’:

Chairman Valentin Lopez presides over a ceremony for 2,000 Amah Mutsun buried in a shallow grave in 1885

Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, is driving his pickup from Santa Cruz to Sacramento. It is 113 degrees on a June day, the air conditioner is on the fritz, and he is sweating.

He has just coordinated a religious ceremony at Holy Cross Cemetery in Santa Cruz to commemorate nearly 2,000 members of his tribe who’d been dumped in a shallow grave in 1885 to make room for a church. Local volunteers had researched the site and found the remains of 2,583 bodies, most of them members of the Amah Mutsun tribe. With Lopez’s help, the volunteers erected a monument listing the “slave” names of the Indians—those given to them by the colonizing forces.

The Amah Mutsun trace their ancestry to the Mutsun-speaking peoples of Mission San Juan Bautista and the Awaswas-speaking peoples of Mission Santa Cruz. At the cemetery, tribal members performed a ceremony with songs, dances and prayers, although there were constraints that touched a nerve.

“The church refused to let us set up a port-a-potty in the cemetery, forbade the use of fire, and cut the time of the ceremony to two hours,” said Lopez. “This was undoubtedly nothing more than an attempt to control and dominate our people, culture and spirituality.”

But the Church said the restrictions were due to local regulations and safety issues.

“The Diocese of Monterey respects all cultural and religious ceremonies,” said Monterey Diocese spokesperson Erica Yanez. “The diocese does not allow port-a-potties to be set up where loved ones are buried, so arrangements were made to set them up outside the cemetery grounds.”

Yanez also said that since Holy Cross is no longer an active cemetery, it is not fully staffed. Moreover, she added, regulations banning fire on cemetery grounds had been lifted specifically to allow for the ceremony, noting that Lopez had expressed gratitude for the gesture.

Lopez, who was raised a devout Catholic, served as an altar boy and a candidate to enter a local seminary. But he said he grew apart from the church when he saw how well priests treated the wealthy parishioners as opposed to the poor, and how the church refused to tell the truth about what had really happened during the mission period.

Balding and stocky, Lopez, 65, retired at age 53 from his job as a civil service tester with the State of California. He is married and has two  grown children. He now works full time without pay for his tribe.

At age 18 Lopez received a full scholarship to Sacramento State University, where he majored in English literature and applied himself in order to improve his writing skills.

“I read a lot of African American, Chicano and Native American literature and took a course in women’s studies,” he said. “I wanted to learn how other people dealt with their issues.”

Lopez knows California highways well. He puts 50,000 miles per year on his black 2003 Toyota Tundra. He commutes from his home in Sacramento to Santa Cruz, Gilroy and surrounding towns, meeting with tribal members, university personnel, health professionals, horticulturalists and public officials.

Healing the ‘Soul Wound’

His consuming passion is preserving his tribe’s traditions, stories, language, customs and well-being. Because of his interest in wellness, he was appointed as a Native American adviser to the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

“In one week I had four calls,” he said. “Three of them were young mothers, each with three children. They were addicted to methamphetamine, and about to lose their kids to adoption.”

“It’s called the ‘soul wound,’ ” said Dr. Donna Schindler, a psychiatrist who advises Lopez in his work as a healer at wellness meetings. “One of Chairman Lopez’s major concerns is to heal the historical trauma and wounds of his people.”

Bishop Francis Quinn

Lopez advises Donna Schindler, M.D., by cell phone that he will be a little late for a meeting with her and Bishop Francis Quinn at his retirement center in Sacramento.

Schindler and Lopez have a warm friendship with Quinn, 94, who retired as bishop of Sacramento in 1993, then spent 13 years as a priest volunteer at Arizona Indian reservations. When he returned to California he made news when he offered an unsolicited apology to the Indians at Mission San Rafael for the mistreatment they had received from the Franciscan missionaries.

Quinn also expressed strong opposition to the canonization of Junipero Serra, the Spanish friar who founded nine of California’s 21 Spanish missions. Serra had the reputation as a strict authoritarian who authorized physical punishment of Indians allegedly guilty of laziness, theft or escaping from the missions.

Quinn wrote to Pope Francis urging him to call off the canonization, but never received a direct answer from the Vatican. When the Pope declared Serra a saint in Washington D.C. on September 23, 2015, Schindler, Lopez and other activists held a press conference at a nearby Protestant church to denounce the ceremony.

At today’s meeting, the bishop agreed to write another letter to Pope Francis, requesting that he abrogate the medieval papal bulls (decrees) that justified the Spanish conquest and the subjugation of the Indians and their lands to the Spanish crown. Quinn assumed, though, that he would simply receive another pro forma response from the Vatican, acknowledging the receipt of his letter and offering him prayers and good wishes.

With Serra’s sainthood, Lopez believes the prospect of the Catholic church ever taking responsibility for the atrocities of the mission period are remote.

“The fact is, we don’t expect or even want an apology,” said Lopez. “It would be hollow and insincere without true feelings and deeds. The fact is, they don’t do anything. They need to acknowledge the atrocities against our people, to give the land back, to work on healing.”

Cover-ups, insisted Lopez, are not going to work for the Amah Mutsun people.

Federal Recognition

The Amah Mutsun are not a federally recognized tribe, due to the vagaries of history. They have no land, no sovereignty and no access to funds, health care and education that other tribes receive.

“In 1929 the federal government sent out Indian agents to take a census of California Indians,” Lopez explained. “A guy named Lafayette Dorrington got federal recognition for tribes in northern, eastern and southern California, but ignored all the tribes from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo.”

Dorrington reported that the Amah Mutson were well taken care of by Catholic priests at Mission San Juan Bautista, that no land was required for them. Lopez searched for any evidence of this at the mission archives, but found none.

UC Santa Cruz

Since being appointed tribal chairperson by the elders, Lopez has encouraged his tribe to learn the Mutsun language, to study the effects of historical trauma, and to reclaim and relearn native plants and habitats. In 2009, UC Santa Cruz Arboretum began partnering with Lopez and the Amah Mutsun to pursue those goals through the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program.

“We have work-and-learn gatherings here where tribal members come to work on 40 acres, weeding and planting and learning about the various uses of plants,” said Rick Flores, curator of the California Plant Collection at the arboretum. “What is happening is not just relearning the past, but ensuring the future. This helps the tribe move forward and become land stewards again in their traditional territory.”

Back on the road again, Lopez gives a talk in Berkeley, California to a gathering of 150 young Native American environmentalists from throughout the U.S., most of them scientists.

“I urged them to address their work from a spiritual perspective, to develop a close relationship to plants, water and the environment,” Lopez said. “I told them that working the land can be healing, and at the same time the land is being healed. They responded well.”

‘Assimilation Is Surrender’

Driving long distances gives Lopez a chance to reflect on his work and to think about his autobiography, Assimilation is Surrender. He is planning chapters and themes that have influenced him on the psychological, emotional and even physical effects of resisting assimilation into white society.

“All my life I’ve experienced forces on our people to accept false histories, the destruction of our environment, our culture, and our spirituality,” Lopez said in a telephone interview. “I couldn’t verbalize it, but I couldn’t accept it.”

Life, he said, would have been a lot easier if he had stopped resisting, questioning and denying.

“But all this has been healing for me,” he said.

“It’s also important to get the perpetrators to acknowledge that they, too, need healing,” Lopez added. “They say, ‘We didn’t kill.’ But the institutions did, and they have to heal. The government needs to heal. The church needs to heal. But they want us to feel shame for our protests and for not accepting the lies they tell us.”

His outspoken style has earned him praise from friends who see him as a tireless advocate. But he also faces opposition, especially within the Catholic Church.

“The bishops prefer a small circle of Native American Catholics who promote their agenda,” said Lopez. “That’s why we never get invited to their meetings. It’s all about ‘toxic shame.’ ”

Lopez added that growing up as a Catholic he learned that for sins to be forgiven, Catholics must confess their sins, offer penance and make atonement.

“But now it’s time for the bishops to confess their own sins and to atone for them,” he said. “Only then can we move to a place where we can have healthy relationships.”

California bishops said they have worked to make amends, and have indeed acknowledged those wrongs.

“I respect Valentin Lopez’s energy, determination and his accomplishments, but he’s not always willing to give the church credit for its efforts on behalf of Native Californians,” said Bishop Edward Clark, a spokesperson for the California bishops.

Clark said that the Serra canonization served as a wake up call for the bishops. Since then they have conducted outreach meetings with several tribes and are revising the mission curriculum at Catholic schools to reflect a better understanding of what happened during the mission period.

“The present curriculum is biased and sugar coated,” Clark said. “We need to revise and reevaluate all the displays at our missions, museums and cemeteries, not just from the viewpoint of historians, but also from the Native American perspective.”*

By Mark R. Day • August 3, 2017

*https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/traditional-societies/amah-mutsun-tribal-chairman-assimilation-is-surrender/

CIB

Kin 76: Yellow Spectral Warrior

I dissolve in order to question

Releasing fearlessness

I seal the output of intelligence

With the spectral tone of liberation

I am guided by my own power doubled.

We are pure consciousness within the evolving order of the universe.*

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

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

www.mayanmajix.com

The Sacred Tzolk'in 

Manipura Chakra (Limi Plasma)

Blue Planetary Eagle/ Blue Magnetic Hand - Magnetic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 12

Igniting the Fire of Truth on Behalf of Earth-Is-Woman, the Creator and the Nnee

The People—the Nnee (known today as Western Apache)—need to follow the lead of their great ancestors and fight for life

During my current journeys through Europe I have come upon many place of historical significance to the Nnee (like the Ndee, the Nnee people are known to English speakers as Western Apache). Although we have played a part in the formation of this world as we know it, many of our own Nnee don’t realize how much we have influence upon our beautiful Earth-Is-Woman. My trips abroad have given me occasion to reflect on the influence we have upon the world of the past, present and soon future.

In the past, as far back as the 1540s, the Nnee were making treaties of peace between the king and queen of both Castille and Aragon, or now current Spain. The Nnee women were being trafficked by beaver fur merchants as part of the bigger slave trade that was happening at this time. Slavery in the new world actually has it roots not in the black slave trade but the trading of our Nnee women to Spain and Europe as the Native slave trade that began in Caribbean spread west. We must also take into account the mining of gold, silver, and copper in our lands for the profiteering of the Crowns of Castille and Aragon after gaining permission of the Nnee. The influence of the Nnee language is seen worldwide with the proliferation of the word tatsa (basket in our language, cup in Italian, and container in Polish), and shi ta and shi ma (without the shi), which is used amongst most Spanish speaking countries meaning father and mother.

To this day we still hold value and influence upon the body politic scene of the world. In 2015, The Apache Ndee Nnee Working Group, wrote a report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, for review of the Holy See, The Catholic Church and Vatican, for the disruption of our way of life through its Papal Bull Inter Caeterum of 1493. This Papal Bull or Pope’s Law was used in 1823 in a court case called Johnson v. M’Intosh, which eliminated aboriginal title of the Original Peoples in the eyes of the United States. This affected we Nnee only after 1848 when the United States and Mexico split our mighty nation, and imposed alien governance systems through patriarchy and patriarchal laws that reduced the power of our matrilineal forms of governance. But the dissolution of our power wasn’t their only motivation, either: Minerals and precious stones were being found in our lands. Greed seduced Americans and Mexicans to invade and encroach upon our homelands with war and conquest, which they then justified with the 1852 Gadsen purchase. The San Carlos and White Mountain Apache nations are categorized as “executive order” and “non-treaty” because of this seizure. The United States and Mexico stole our lands through illegal action even though our Nnee was already an international body politic to be reckoned with.

It is up to Nnee again, in these times, to chart our future. Decades ago, our land was contaminated by Agent Orange contamination, and the threat to us today is both real and hidden. We need to listen to what the land is saying to us. We also need to start caring about each other and about everyone else around us. What we don’t need is denial and fear. It is sad to see every week someone dying prematurely because of cancer and or some terminal illness; it’s worse to think that Indian Health Services, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the San Carlos Apache Tribal government and many others have known for years that we have been contaminated with the worst man-made chemical known, dioxin.

We have a future if you believe in it. We must do work in the Earth-Is-Woman to help repair and continue the good work of our ancestors which the Creator, Bik’ehgo’ihi’nan, gave us in the beginning. So, whomever you are in our Nnee communities, whether it’s in Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or wherever you are found, it is time to get ready and start praying it up with the heart and not with money or whatever else that comes between yourself and Bik’ehgo’ihi’nan alone. Bik’ehgo’ihi’nan is the only way things will get better but we must pray without judgment upon anyone. None of us is clean but it’s time to stop the insanity of thinking it’s ok for The People to die off without saying anything or caring for ourselves and community, even if it’s our own people who are bent on perpetuating death. Remember, it takes an Ndee to get an Nnee. Remember also who you are as The People. Don’t be ashamed if you want to pray all the time in both the ways of the ancestors or in the new ways of Christianity. As for me, I am balanced to sing the Holy Ground Songs and pray in English to Yeshua HaMashiach (Christ the Anointed) without prejudice. So be free in all that you do and be in truth because it is the truth that sets us free. Let us start our journey together as one, undivided, for the sake of the generation of Nnee to come.

Nzhoo doleel,

By Michael Paul Hill

Michael Paul Hill is an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. He is a Spiritual, Legal and Human Rights Advocate in the tribal, national and international systems. His work has been cited in many publications including The Academy of Social Sciences for the People’s Republic of China, Cambridge University Press, The United Nations, and both local and national news outlets, just to name a few. Currently, he is traveling throughout Europe igniting the fire of truth and advocating on behalf of Earth Is Woman and the Creator.*

* https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/igniting-fire-truth-behalf-earth-woman-creator-nnee/ttps://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/igniting-fire-truth-behalf-earth-woman-creator-nnee/

MEN

Kin 75: Blue Planetary Eagle

I perfect in order to create

Producing mind

I seal the output of vision

With the planetary tone of manifestation

I am guided by the power of abundance

I am a polar kin

I extend the blue galactic spectrum.

The cultivation of will provides the direction or force of momentum that helps us to attain higher goals on behalf of the All.*

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

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

www.mayanmajix.com

 The Sacred Tzolk'in

Visshudha Chakra (Alpha Plasma)

White Solar Wizard/ White Cosmic World-Bridger - Cosmic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 11

                                                                                         Mary Annette Pember

Hannah Orie, 18, (left) and Memengwaa Paap, 13,

 both of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Wisconsin.

The Power of Ojibwe Women:

Ojibwe women survived European attempts to undermine their role as ‘one who holds things together’

Ojibwe culture is not matriarchal in the anthropological sense. We trace our clan affiliation through our fathers rather than our mothers. Traditionally our hereditary chiefs have been men.

Hearing these facts, an outsider might get the idea that Ojibwe women are not in the forefront of our communities. Even the thought of expressing such a notion to the strong Ojibwe women in my immediate family makes me shiver a bit with fear.

My mother Bernice and my famous Aunty Pat were tiny ladies, barely 5 feet tall, but had the ability to make even the biggest, toughest male a little weak in the knees with fright once they began dressing him down for failing to meet their duties.

When I think of Aunty Pat, I see her sitting in her easy chair in the cramped living room of her little HUD home, where she held court. At first glance, one could mistake her for a child sitting in that enormous chair. But when she was riled, she had a way of drawing herself up and rooting her little rear end into that chair that made you want to run for cover. Even in the waning moments of her 85-plus years, she could make my cousins jump up suddenly at her commands to fetch a tray for a visitor’s bologna sandwich.

I recall that my Uncle Don used to call her “Jaws.”

Ojibwe men are easily identified by the notorious flatness of their rear ends. According to my mother, those butts got that way because of the enthusiastic verbal skills of Ojibwe women. She didn’t mean this as a criticism but rather as recognition for our women’s tenacity in keeping our families together and defending the land and water against all threats, both inside and out.

My mother described Uncle Don as a “flamboyant” character. Like many of the men in my family, he was loud, funny and outrageous, seemingly immune to responsibility and public criticism. I recall the time he went to early mass one Sunday morning in the little church in Bad River. Still tipsy from the previous night’s debauch, he swayed as he stood in the pew. He hadn’t been to church in a long time and was surprised when the man next to him turned and shook his hand, offering him the peace blessing.

“Peace be with you,” the man said.

“Well, pleased to meet you too,” Don roared.

Haw-hawing around the rez, he retold the story for days to approving audiences. He made the fatal mistake, however, of visiting Aunty Pat’s house. After hearing his tale, she took the opportunity to remind him of his family duties left undone. When he left her house, he looked several inches shorter and his rear end seemed nearly non-existent.

Many of the Ojibwe women of my youth were often bitter, quick-tempered creatures who could unleash an acid tongue or a crack upside the head if one got too close at the wrong time. These women are the ones who survived poverty, brutal men, sexual violence, Indian boarding schools and everything else the white world dished out to Indian women in the 20th century. Those prickly exteriors, however, camouflaged a capacity for deep love of family and culture and tenderness as soft as a mouse’s belly.

As Brenda Child of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe notes, older women in our tribe are called mindimooyenh, or “one who holds things together.” Child, Ph.D and professor in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, is the author of Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community.

Holding things together is not a wordy or showy endeavor for Ojibwe women. Life lessons and spiritual teachings are embedded in doing even the most humble tasks, such as preparing food and helping others get ready for ceremony.

Dora Mosay Ammann, 76 of the St. Croix Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin is a mindemooyenh. She describes her duties as a woman. “We were put here to keep our ceremonies alive,” she says. Ammann, whose Ojibwe name is Ashazhawaagiizhig, or Crossing Sky Woman has been part of traditional spirituality her entire life.

“If I am feeling bad, I try to help someone else. The work takes away my worry,” she says.

“I meet the spirits early in the morning each day and find out what they have in store for me. This is what sustains me.”

She adds, “Without our spirituality we have nothing! So this is what I try to teach the young people.”

Babette Sandman, of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, agrees. “Nothing could happen without our spirituality.”

Sandman, whose Ojibwe name is Makade Miigwan, or Black Feather, marvels at how Ojibwe culture and spirituality saved her life. “As a young woman, I was so filled with rage over the injustices in the white man’s world, but our ways helped me transform that anger into strength and the ability to get things done,” she recalls.

“I learned that in order to survive, women must work for the people and pass along the same strength that enabled our ancestors to keep these ways alive for us today.

“Sometimes I wonder where Ojibwe women’s strength comes from. How is it we’ve survived and kept our ways and identity even when the federal government outlawed our religion? Then I remember that the ancestors taught us that there is some kind of energy that comes right out of the earth, into our feet and into our hearts if we take time to put down our tobacco and listen,” she says.

In Ojibwe culture, spirituality is the bedrock for all aspects of life; women have traditionally played a central role in forwarding this philosophy and practice.

For instance, in her book, Child describes the essential role Ojibwe women historically held in the daily life and fabric of society and the great regard with which the tribe and family held them.

“Women inhabited a world in which the earth was gendered female, and they played powerful roles as healers. They organized labor within their community and held property rights over water, making decisions and controlling an essential part of the seasonal economy. Ojibwe women lived in a society that valued an entire system of beliefs associated with women’s work, not just the product of their labor,” she writes.

“Women performed an indispensable role in passing on cultural values and attitudes about labor across generations. Elderly women were granted considerable power and authority in their society,” she continues.

For instance, women were considered to be especially powerful when giving birth. Their skills in midwifery and healing made them sought after figures in tribal life. Traditional Ojibwe teaching stories describe Nokomis’s (grandmother) special power and knowledge of healing plants that were invaluable to the community.

Child further notes that in traditional Ojibwe society, men did not gain the right to direct a woman’s life or resources after marriage. “Women continuously worked and otherwise interacted with relatives and the roles of daughter, sister, mother and aunt were important mantles of responsibility,” she writes.

Child also describes the crucial role that Ojibwe women played in negotiating treaties and relationships with European settlers.

“Ojibwe ideas about property were not invested in patriarchy as in European traditions,” she observes.

For instance, she describes how collectives of women controlled the social organization of the wild rice harvest, an essential dietary and spiritual staple for Ojibwe who used the food in ceremony as well as for sustenance.

Child further opines, “When early travelers and settlers observed indigenous women working, it would have involved a paradigm shift for them to appreciate that for the Ojibwe, water was a gendered space where women held property rights.”

This notion of water as a gendered space may contribute to the relationship between Ojibwe women and water. We are taught that it is our duty as women to care for the water. The most important and essential element of life, water encircles our young in the womb and influences all life on earth.

In the end, Ojibwe women have survived European attempts to undermine our role as “one who holds things together.”

Our resilience and determination to know who we are, how to pray and make ceremony and pass this knowledge along to our children and community, this is our enduring strength.*

By Mary Annette Pember • August 4, 2017

*https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/people/power-ojibwe-women/?mqsc=ED3902247

IX

Kin 74: White Solar Wizard

I pulse in order to enchant

Realizing receptivity

I seal the output of timelessness

With the solar tone of intention

I am guided by the power of heart.

Within the 13-20 frequency our functioning is syntropic of ever-greater harmonic arrangements and rearrangements of reality.*

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

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

www.mayanmajix.com

The Sacred Tzolk'in 

Svadhistana Chakra (Kali Plasma)

Red Galactic Skywalker/ Red Crystal Serpent - Magnetic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 10

Dr. Davis E. Henderson will be heading to the University of Mississippi.

 He is the first Navajo to join the staff there.

Native Doctor Heading to Ole Miss, Research Will Focus on Navajo Children:

First Navajo doctor at University of Mississippi knows a cultural language difference from a speech impairment

Dr. Davis E. Henderson is leaving Pueblo Pintado, New Mexico, to take up his appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders at the University of Mississippi. He will be the first Navajo hired by the department and will join four other American Indians who serve on the faculty at Ole Miss.

Dr. Teresa Carithers, interim chair of the Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, said, “We are very excited to welcome Dr. Henderson to the department. He comes to us as a teacher scholar credentialed and experienced in his clinical discipline, with an exciting original and innovative research agenda which has focused on the Navajo population. He also brings knowledge and passion for the importance of understanding the interrelationship of culture to teaching, research and practice.”

Henderson’s three sisters and parents will be going with him as he fulfills a dream that began two decades ago when he was living in a dorm for American Indian kids attending Aztec High School.

By his senior year, Henderson had completed all but one English class, “but they wouldn’t allow me to go back to the dorm and just hang out and watch TV all day. They said I either had to go to school from home, which was two hours away, so that wasn’t an option, or add more courses and stay at school all day.” He volunteered for peer tutoring and was assigned to a special needs student. “I worked with him individually and noticed that he would sometimes leave the classroom with another teacher. I found out he was seeing a speech and language pathologist. I watched her work with him and I really fell in love with what she was doing and I thought to myself, that is what I want to do.”

Two years at Diné College in Crownpoint, New Mexico earned Henderson an associate’s degree in elementary education and liberal arts, then he transferred to the University of New Mexico to earn a bachelor’s in speech and hearing sciences. “It was a very big transition,” he recalled. “At Diné College we had only 10 or 15 people in a class. My first biology course at UNM was in a huge auditorium with approximately 250 students. It was something very unexpected, but I adjusted quite well.” He said going to class each day and being aware that this environment was going to be his everyday reality helped.

After UNM, Henderson took a year off. “To be a speech language pathologist you had to have your master’s. I wasn’t really keen on going to get my master’s. I decided to work in a non-profit organization with special needs children in Gallup, New Mexico. A lot of people were saying maybe you should at least try to get your master’s. But I knew how competitive the field was; I didn’t know if my GRE scores would be high enough to compete.” He finally applied to Central Michigan University and tried not to have any expectations about the outcome. When the letter finally came, he left it on the table unopened for a week.

“I went there for two years,” he said, “and that was another huge transition, going from New Mexico to Michigan. It started snowing in October, and I asked my classmate, ‘Why is it snowing? it’s only October.’” She said it was normal. Both the early snow and the summer humidity were tough and though he enjoyed the school, he packed up his car and drove straight home as soon as he graduated in 2007.

He got a job with the Gallup-McKinley County Schools and there began the work that would shape his research and career for the next several years. Working as a speech and language pathologist, Henderson found that it was almost impossible to “graduate” Navajo children from the program. “It was very difficult to exit Navajo children out of speech therapy. We would see they were making gains, but then we had to use a standardized assessment and those assessments were not appropriate,” so the kids did not pass, he explained.

The required tests, Henderson said, “did not take into account the linguistic characteristics of Navajo children. Often their first language is English, but we carry over Navajo speech sounds into our English speech sounds. So when we speak, our Navajo language becomes apparent and often speech and language pathologists who are not aware of these characteristics will identify Navajo children as having a speech impairment or speech impediment when they do not.

“For example, in the Navajo language we do not have the r sound. But in English we do have the r sound. So a Navajo child who spends a lot of time with their grandparents who do not produce the r sound will probably not produce that sound in English. When we gave the assessment we would say this child still has a speech impairment when it’s not an impairment—it’s a cultural language difference.”

In May, Henderson graduated from Arizona State University with a PhD. For his dissertation, he investigated using a dynamic assessment—which involves a pre-test, a teaching intervention and a post-test—to evaluate Navajo preschoolers’ language status. “We found that the dynamic assessment does indeed differentiate between Navajo children with language impairment and Navajo children with typical developing language. This is a better way to identify Navajo children who need services rather than using the traditional standardized assessments.”

Henderson will be teaching at Ole Miss and pursuing his research into creating speech and language assessments for Navajo children that accurately reflect their abilities. “What I would like to do is to look at the speech sounds Navajo people produce—how do they produce the English sounds, what Navajo influences carry over into their English that should not be counted as errors but as cultural speech differences?” His work would have implications for speech and language assessments for children from other tribes as well. He also wants to look at how speech and language pathologists can implement and incorporate cultural values into their interventions for a Native population.

But the first challenge, Henderson said, is to figure out what to pack!

The University of Mississippi’s Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders offers a fully accredited graduate program that develops entry level speech language pathology professionals, students transitioning into audiology and graduate research venues. The department admits 30-35 graduate students per year and now has over 400 undergraduates enrolled for the upcoming academic year, according to Carithers.*

By Tanya H. Lee • August 4, 2017

*https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/education/native-education/native-doctor-heading-ole-miss-research-will-focus-navajo-children/?mqsc=ED3902036

BEN

Kin 73: Red Galactic Skywalker

I harmonize in order to explore

Modeling wakefulness

I seal the output of space

With the galactic tone of integrity

I am guided by the power of navigation.

As we develop the telepathic pulsar technologies we will see the potential of our mind as a powerful cosmic force.*

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

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

ww.mayanmajix.com

The Sacred Tzolk'in 

Ajna Chakra (Gamma Plasma)

Yellow Resonant Human/ Yellow Spectral Seed - Magnetic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 9

                                                                                      The Weinstein Company

Gil Birmingham and Jeremy Renner in Wind River (2017).

 Review: Taylor Sheridan’s ‘Wind River’ is Gripping, Realistic and Beautifully-Crafted:

‘Wind River,’ set on a Reservation, has an all-star Native cast, including Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene, Martin Sensmeier, Tantoo Cardinal

Wind River, which was featured at Cannes and has an American release date of August 4, 2017, is set on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The film stars Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye in Avengers franchise, Bourne Legacy) and Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch in Avengers and Captain America), and features a list of all-star Native actors, including Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal and Martin Sensmeier, among others.

In the film, Renner and Olsen’s characters investigate the murder of a Native woman and interact with Native characters who represent the life on a Native reservation with a true, if difficult reality. The film has received praise from critics and an 86% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Wind River was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, known for Hell or High Water (2016), Sicario (2015) and his work on the TV series Sons of Anarchy (2008-2010).

Wind River is a gripping, realistic and beautifully-crafted film. A Native woman, portrayed by actress Kelsey Asbille (Eastern Band Cherokee), is found dead on the Wind River Indian Reservation. She is also a victim of sexual assault, which is addressed with disturbing consequences.

Jeremy Renner’s character, Cory Lambert, finds the body and later meets with Elizabeth Olsen’s character, FBI agent Jane Banner, and Tribal Police Officer Ben, played by Graham Greene, in an attempt to solve the murder.

This movie is not about “White Saviorism.” Taylor Sheridan has created a profound and gripping reality about the complexities of relationships between different peoples.

I believe this to be the most realistic and respectful portrayal on film of the relationships between Native people and others outside ‘the rez.’

The performances by Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene, Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen are wonderful. I would say for all four actors, they each delivered their finest performance of their careers.

Wind River spoke to me and resonated with me and, in a necessary way, is a devastating look at reality.

Look no further, Wind River is the film to see this year.

One more exceptional note about Wind River is its long list of Native cast and crew members:

CAST

Tantoo Cardinal – Alice Crowheart (Cree)

Graham Greene – Tribal Police Officer Ben (Six Nations)

Julia Jones – Wilma (Choctaw, Chickasaw)

Gil Birmingham – Martin (Comanche)

Martin Sensmeier – Chip (Tlinglit, Koyukon Athabascan)

Kelsey Asbille – Natalie  (Eastern Band Cherokee)

Tokala Clifford – Sam Littlefeather (Oglala Lakota)

Apesanahkwat – Dan Crowheart (Menominee)

Dana Anquoe – Coroner Assistant (Kiowa)

CREW

Joyce Posey – Language Consultant (Eastern Shoshone) 

Daryl Ross Begay – Native Advisor (Navajo)

Myrtis ‘Cy’ Begay – Set Production Assistant (Navajo)*

By Vincent Schilling

*https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/arts-entertainment/movie-review-taylor-sheridans-wind-river-gripping-realistic-beautifully-crafted/?mqsc=ED3901820

EB

Kin 72: Yellow Resonant Human

I channel in order to influence

Inspiring wisdom

I seal the process of free will

With the resonant tone of attunement

I am guided by the power of flowering

I am a galactic activation portal

Enter me.

The soul, the mind and consciousness are part of one continuum. The soul cannot develop without a mind. The mind cannot develop without consciousness.*

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

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

www.mayanmajix.com

 The Sacred Tzolk'in

Muladhara Chakra (Seli Plasma)

Blue Rhythmic Monkey/ Blue Planetary Night - Magnetic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 8

                                                                  Stephanie Woodard

Until a lawsuit settlement compelled Jackson County to offer more ballot-box access in Wanblee, South Dakota, residents of northeastern Pine Ridge traveled off reservation to access the full range of voting and registration in the county seat, Kadoka.

Native Voting Rights in South Dakota—We Do the Math:

The Native Vote: ‘We want equal rights, not just a little more rights.’

South Dakota’s Help America Vote Act Grant Board has approved funding for Indian-reservation satellite-voting centers for the 2018 elections. Secretary of State Shantel Krebs created the bipartisan board in 2015. It distributes federal HAVA money to counties that use it for maintaining voting machines and other election-related expenses. Krebs praised board members for “their dedication to improving ballot access and keeping our county election equipment current.”

Dewey and Jackson counties will open one satellite polling place each on the Cheyenne River and northeastern Pine Ridge reservations. Leading up to the primary and general elections, the offices will provide nine of the state’s 46 days of late registration and in-person absentee voting, for just under one-fifth of the time off-reservation voters receive.

Buffalo County will open an office on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation for nine days, but prior to the general election only, for a total of one-tenth other South Dakotans’ access. Crow Creek’s chairman, Brandon Sazue, emphasized the inequality for his 1,400-member tribe: “It’s well established that our people do not have vehicles and gas money for the 50-mile round trip to register or early vote in the Buffalo County seat, Gann Valley—which has a population of about a dozen, by the way.”

“Aren’t we are all created equal?” Sazue continued, in a reference to the U.S. Declaration of Independence. “We at Crow Creek are still fighting for that. This struggle is all too familiar for us. We want equal rights, not just a little more rights.”

Krebs said county commissions decide what they want to offer, and the HAVA board acts on their requests for funding. At publication time, email and phone efforts to reach Buffalo County commissioners for a comment on their decision-making process had proven unsuccessful. The commissioners “do not have offices,” said an unidentified woman who answered a phone number on the county’s website; she hung up abruptly when she learned the call was from a representative of the media.

Dewey, Jackson and Buffalo counties received satellite-office funding because they met HAVA board criteria, said Krebs: 50 percent or more of their population lives below the poverty line and resides, on average, 50 percent farther from the county seat or other voting locations than other county inhabitants. As reported in ICMN, the three counties first planned satellite offices after a 2013 tribal civil-rights complaint; Jackson and Buffalo also faced federal voting-rights lawsuits.

Three more South Dakota counties provide satellite voting with HAVA support. Tripp County staffs a Rosebud Indian Reservation office for nine days prior to primaries and general elections. In 2012, a federal judge ordered Fall River and Oglala Lakota counties to provide satellite services for western and southern Pine Ridge, which they agreed to do through 2018. It is the only reservation office with 46 days of access for both primaries and general elections, Krebs noted.

What happens after 2018? “I don’t anticipate changes to the forty-six-day schedule, though by 2020 we will have used our HAVA money and will be requesting more,” said Fall River County’s head elections official Sue Ganje.*

By Stephanie Woodard • August 1, 2017

*https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/politics/native-voting-rights-south-dakota-math/?mqsc=ED3901626

CHUEN

Kin 71: Blue Rhythmic Monkey

I organize in order to play

Balancing illusion

I seal the process of magic

With the rhythmic tone of equality

I am guided by my own power doubled.

Noosphere is the mind space of inner time which stretches infinitely into the galactic future.*

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

www.mayanmajix.com

The Sacred Tzolk'in 

Sahasrara Chakra (Dali Plasma)

White Overtone Dog/ White Solar Wind - Magnetic Bat Moon of Purpose, Day 7

Trailer for "Neither Wolf Nor Dog".

A Conversation with ‘Neither Wolf Nor Dog’ Director and Writer Steven Lewis Simpson:

Film based on Kent Nerburn’s award-winning autobiographical novel, ‘Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder’

Neither Wolf Nor Dog (Roaring Fire Films), is the most recent film based on author Kent Nerburn’s award-winning autobiographical novel, Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder.

As reported by ICMN, Steven Lewis Simpson took his crowd-sourced indie-film Neither Wolf Nor Dog on a national tour this year, using the internet and social media for promotions. As a result of his efforts, the film’s opening in Minneapolis at The Lagoon Theatre on May 26 was a big success.

“The Lagoon’s opening weekend of Neither Wolf Nor Dog was the best weekend gross in the entire country. It’s nice to see that beautifully told stories can still find an audience” said Landmark Theatre’s PR executive, Hugh Wronksi.

The film is by Scottish writer, director and producer Steven Lewis Simpson. During a rare break in a bumper-to-bumper schedule, here is what he had to say about the film and his creative process as a writer and filmmaker.

What was it about Kent Nerburn’s novel that compelled you to put this story on film?

For me, any story that takes an audience deep into an elder’s reality, and especially into the continuing echoes of the massacre at Wounded Knee, will forever be an important one.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog is doing well in a way my other films haven’t, and I’ve had others that were seen by more people. But film is a business that will chew you up if you invest too much energy in success or failure. The danger then is that creatively you don’t take enough risks. Neither Wolf Nor Dog was creatively a very easy project. The hard part was from the logistics standpoint.

I have spent 18 years filming three features and a TV show and hanging out in many parts of the Indigenous world of North America. I can’t even express how much I have grown through all those friendships and experiences.

What’s your favorite project thus far?

All my projects were different, so it’s hard to judge a favorite. Neither Wolf Nor Dog cannot be eclipsed in terms of the four people I worked with each day—they are immense human beings. A Thunder-Being Nation was my most epic project, so I [will] always carry a deep satisfaction about that. My film Retribution is the one I enjoy watching the most.

If you could collaborate with any artist from any time and place in history, who would you choose and why?     

I would collaborate with Marlon Brando. It would be a great challenge to experience his genius first-hand. And I would love sharing stories, as we had mutual friends.

What do you hope your creative legacy will be?

I hope creatively my legacy will be a body of work that will have opened people’s hearts and minds and [removed] barriers by pushing the artform in new [directions].

 What’s next on the creative horizon?

My next film will most likely be a very edgy, raw character film set mostly in Eastern Europe. It couldn’t be more different than Neither Wolf Nor Dog.*

By RoseMary Diaz (Tewa) • July 31, 2017

*https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/arts-entertainment/neither-wolf-nor-dog-director-simpson/?mqsc=ED3901408

OC

Kin 70: White Overtone Dog

I empower in order to love

Commanding loyalty

I seal the process of heart

With the overtone tone of radiance

I am guided by the power of endlessness.

True freedom is knowing your own mind, and therefore not being subject to automatic or unconscious impulses.*

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

www.lawoftime.org

www.tzolkincosmology.com

www.13moon.com

www.mayanmajix.com

The Sacred Tzolk'in

Anahata Chakra  (Silio Plasma)