Winona LaDuke On The Art Of Indigenous Resistance: What Kind Of Ancestor Do You Want To Be?

Winona LaDuke, two time VP candidate for the Green Party,
as depicted by Rob Shetterly for his Americans Who Tell The Truth series.
"The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that
a society that consumes 1/3 of the world’s resources is unsustainable.
This level of consumption requires constant intervention
into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on."

I had the opportunity to hear Winona LaDuke speak at a nearby college this week; someone had gifted my sister two tickets, and she shared one with me. My sister knows that I value the wisdom of indigenous elders and I'm interested in hearing from their matriarchs, enough so to be out late on a school night.

The theme of LaDuke's talk to students was an invitation to think about what kind of an ancestor they want to be. She shared the Anishinaabeg ancestors' prophecy from many generations ago that we are in the time of the 7th fire:

We have a choice between two paths. And one path, they said, was well-worn but scorched. And the other path, they said, was not well-worn, and it was green. 

Fundamentally the question is, how's that going to be determined? Fifty years from now, what's my village going to look like?...And who's in charge of that? Where's our water going to come from? What will we be eating? What will we be thinking? How will we treat each other?

LaDuke considers herself privileged to belong to the land where food grows on water (native wild rice is found in northern Minnesota) and sugar comes from trees. She was no doubt aware when making a strong argument for local living and local thinking that most of the affluent Colby students in her audience are super transient or, as Mainers say, "from away." 

She offered them this counsel: the U.S. frontier mentality of always thinking we can move on to a new place that is greener is over. She challenged them to settle down someplace because, "We're all here, and we've all got to work this out...Where's that place that you know? Where's that place that you care for?" 

The place that LaDuke cares for is threatened by another pipeline, a replacement for the now defunct Keystone XL pipeline project.
The project threatens the Anishinaabeg homeland and the Great Lakes region, wherein lies 1/5 of the planet's fresh water.
(Source of this and the next two visuals: HonorEarth.org)

LaDuke herself grew up in Los Angeles and attended Harvard. She's traveled to Washington DC "riding horse" accompanied by her sister and her teenage sons. Now, for many decades she has lived where her great great great great greats harvested the wild rice, and she watches her grandchildren there playing that they are front line NoDAPL water protectors.

Her first act was asking the audience to wait while she retrieved her metal water bottle, explaining that she could not use the water in plastic bottles that the college had set out for her on the podium.

I started the applause for that wisdom; years ago I heard environmentalist Maude Barlow's counsel that boycotting bottled water was the most powerful thing we could do to protect the planet's aquifers.

LaDuke and family spent a lot of time with the water protectors in North Dakota and reporting on that was presumably a reason she'd been invited by the Environmental Humanities Subcommitee of Colby College. Only two young people in the audience had been to the noDAPL camps; that seemed to surprise LaDuke more than the plastic bottles. (My note: possibly one explains the other?) But, in her generous way, she noted that many people had supported the water protectors materially and spiritually.

There was more applause later when she shared her plans for making America great again. She's actively working to restore the biodiversity that was lost when 8,000 varieities of corn cultivated by indigenous, largely women, farmers were replaced by those "invented by a guy in a white lab coat working for Monsanto."

"When America was great there were 250 species of grass in the northern plains, and 50 milion buffalo. That's when America was great."


I reflect with sadness as I hear the cooing doves of early morning in the Maine woods where I belong. Thousands of miles away the ecological disaster of the many wars for empire unfolds; I woke up this morning remembering that yesterday my government dropped a bomb in eastern Afghanistan larger than the one that flattened Hiroshima. Air strikes on the tunnels of the Hindu Kush mountains betweeen Afghanistan and Pakistan to kill "terrorists" is an old trick that will do nothing to end the war there. Collateral damage includes the ancient irrigation systems devised by the people who belong to that land. The endless "war on terror" is a profit scheme, and not a sustainable one. As a local man in Kabul told me in 1979: "As long as there is one Afghan left alive, the Soviets will never rule our country."

LaDuke showed us data assembled by Honor the Earth, the organization she helped found, demonstrating that it is game over for oil. It's no longer profitable to drill for it, and the most extreme extraction schemes like fracking or processing tar sands increase the cost. But greed drives corporations to continue building pipelines that LaDuke predicts will soon be abandoned.

On Anishinaabeg land, LaDuke joins with people building solar and wind power sustainable energy solutions. She supports public art for their spiritual health. She is active and she is hopeful -- because that's the kind of ancestor she wants to be.

When Other Nations Interfere in U.S. Government, Some Are More Equal Than Others

Illustration of a carnival float recently unveiled in Viareggio, Italy -- a nation where the U.S. has meddled in elections since 1948.

The most raging controversy of many on my social media posts lately has been the argument sparked by sharing an article from Dan Kovalik on The World Post, "Listen Liberals: Russia Is Not Our Enemy." I had not anticipated that the arguments presented for this point of view would draw so much ire; in general the older, whiter respondents are the angriest, while the younger and more diverse respondents see Kovalik's point. I suppose the polarizing of the public's outlook in the current era is best explained by media diet, with those consuming MSNBC most likely to be drinking the Koolaid of Russia as boogey man.

Sharing this meme did not seem to dampen the ardor of the hate Russia brigade:

To me this map suggests an authentic motive for demonizing Russia: look at all that thawing Arctic shoreline, ripe for Western imperialists to sink in their drilling gigs and piplelines. 

The responses ranged from demanding to know why Kovalik was "whitewashing Stalin" (not alive during the time period being analyzed) and why I was bashing liberals rather than opposing the current regime. People I used to think stood on the same side of the antiwar movement with me -- people who were notably absent during the Obomber years -- object to criticism of the narrative being sold by the corporate press, and I think it is probably because they don't get out of the echo chamber very often to seek information elsewhere.

I tried to broaden the texts we were considering by suggesting "The Neocons and the 'Deep State' Have Neutered the T$$$$ Presidency, It's Over Folks!" by The Saker in GlobalResearch and the documentary Ukraine on Fire by Oliver Stone. The latter describes how the U.S. supports neo-Nazis there.

What I should have shared is something the came across my screen the next day: "Israel interferes in our politics all the time, and it's never a scandal" by Philip Weiss in Mondoweiss.

As spring approaches, the prospect of the annual AIPAC gala in Washington DC for U.S. lawmakers is on my mind. Plus,"Bibi" Netanyahu and the demagogue have just taken a meeting upon the occasion of a state visit by the Israeli Prime Minister. Mondoweiss contributor Katie Miranda created a cartoon of their exchanges titled "The day the two greatest salesmen in the world met at the White House."

Actually I had been thinking about Bibi or, more specifically, his wife, as news rolled in about how much the lavish life style of the First Family is costing U.S. taxpayers (allegedly one month of guarding them costs approximately as much as one year of guarding the Obamas). Sarah'le as she is popularly known is sometimes the subject of columnist Uri Avnery's observations on government by kleptocracy.  Last summer his column on Gush Shalom's website "Petty Corruption" revealed

The generous Israeli taxpayers (including me) paid for the five days of Bibi's stay in New York last fall, to the tune of some 600,000 dollars. This sum – more than 100 thousand dollars per day – included the payment for his private hairdresser (1600 dollars) and his make-up woman (1750 dollars). The purpose of the trip was to address the UN General Assembly. I wonder how much each word cost. 

The information was disclosed by order of the court under the Freedom of Information Law.

There are more ominous parallels between Israel's government and the current regime in the U.S. Both aspire to an apartheid state where white makes right and profits are to be had building separation walls and supplying the technology for human rights violations based upon racism. 

Photo shared by Dawn Neptune Adams at Oceti Oyate camp, Standing Rock:
"HolyElk Lafferty standing in front of the militarized police response to a Grandmothers' Tipi Teaching" Feb. 19, 2017

Both the U.S. and Israel practice vicious suppression of indigenous people's demand to live in peace and without inteference on land and waterways their families have nurtured for many generations.

A Palestinian woman mourns the destruction of olive trees. | Photo: Flickr / Frank M. Rafik

Just this week the Senate considered appointing David Friedman the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, a man who maintains a home in Jerusalem courtesy of ethnic cleansing during al-Nakba. In his piece on Electronic Intifada Michael Brown wondered "Why won't Democrats call out Friedman's crimes?" 

The posting of a settlement advocate as US ambassador to Israel would certainly mark a new extreme. But it would not be illogical. 

For decades, the US political elite – Democrats and Republicans alike – have advanced Israel’s colonialist project by providing billions of dollars in military aid. This is simply another step toward the US government normalizing the illegal settlements it has watched grow over the last 50 years.

An old joke comes to mind. Q: Why doesn't Israel just become the 51st state already? A: Because then they would only have two senators.

Police cooperation is a less well-known aspect of the cozy relationship between the alleged "only democracy in the Middle East" and the alleged democracy I live under; militarized police response to nonviolent civil disobedience looks similar in the U.S. and Israel because law enforcement officials regularly go to Israel for training. Sometimes the training occurs here, on U.S. soil.

But, hey, let's keep demonizing Russia and deflecting attempts to see ourselves as others in the world see us: the most violent, warmongering, election-interfering nation in existence. No matter whether there's a D or an R in the Oval Office. 

Because: do as we say, not as we do.


https://youtu.be/Iy0dox4l09o

Standing Rock Corporate Media Blackout: Nothing To See Here? #NODAPL

Photo: 350.org Minneapolis

So this is a photo of 1,000 people swarming city hall in Minneapolis to demand that members of the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office be recalled from the Standing Rock, North Dakota pipeline standoff. It worked, with staff and equipment now headed home.

The heavily militarized police and National Guard attacking water protectors in North Dakota are receiving scant coverage in corporate media.

CNN infamously only covered the effort by supporters to flood facebook with a million location check-ins to confound the use of that locating tool by law enforcement. 

Corporate media fell all over themselves covering this aspect of the story, most with cutesy headlines like "Why all your friend didn't suddenly head north."

Thank the goddess for facebook which gets a bad rap as the most sophisticated spying machine ever, one that gets you to do the work of spying on yourself. If it were not for social media platforms like it, I would receive precious little news of the historic standoff in North Dakota. 


Thank you, my facebook "friends" for all the informative postings. 

Here I will share just a few of the best.

Coverage of attacks in the water by a reporter on the scenes for The Young Turks.

But this got some corporate news coverage: the state capitol of North Dakota was splashed with oil and a message was left behind

Which is more dangerous, splashing oil on a building or running an oil pipeline through the heart of the watershed millions depend on for their drinking water?  

Which law is more powerful, that of government's owned and operated for the profit by frackers and pipeline builders? Or the natural law that says all life on Earth depends on access to water?

Ann Wright: The Warmth Of Solidarity #NODAPL #FreeGaza

Ann Wright (center) at JFK Airport with supporters after being deported from Israel
this month for attempting a humanitarian mission to Gaza.

Just back from detention in Israel, arrested in international waters on the "Women's Boat to Gaza" (read her report here), activist Ann Wright went directly to North Dakota to join those facing militarized police attacks that have included dogs and pepper spray. 

It can sometimes seem like Ann Wright is everywhere in the struggle for justice. Since retiring from the State Department in protest of the Iraq war in 2003, this Veteran for Peace has devoted her life to what she describes as "the warmth of solidarity."

In North Dakota Ann joined in the resistance to corporate takeover of the water supply under tribal lands of the Standing Rock Sioux. She went to stand shoulder to shoulder with water protectors like Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle who has been arrested, strip searched and slapped with a restraining order for engaging in peaceful resistance to running an oil pipeline through the watershed that supplies millions in the U.S.



From Camp Casey in Texas to Hawaii (where she hails from) to Jeju Island, South Korea, Ann can be found in the struggle for justice in the face of corporate government.

Ann Wright with Father Mun Jeong Hyeon of the
Catholic Church Solidarity to Make Peace on Jeju Island

This month we are lucky enough to have her in Maine for a speaking tour that begins tomorrow, October 28, in Brunswick. Her full schedule:

Saturday, October 29 Curtis Public Library, Brunswick, noon
Saturday, October 29 Belfast Free Public Library, Belfast, 4pm
Sunday, October 30 Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Bangor, 3pm
Sunday, October 30 Blue Hill Library Blue Hill, 6:30pm
Tuesday, November 1 State Street Church, Portland, 7pm

The title of her talk, "Never Silent Until Our Sisters Are Free," comes from a song that the international band of women on the boat to Gaza sang about the suffering of Palestinian women and their families under Israeli occupation.


You won't want to miss hearing from Ann. 

We can't rely on the corporate media to tell us what is happening in the world, but we can rely on Ann Wright and activists like her to bring us real news.

 Ann Wright at the University of Hawaii to greet President Obama as he arrived
to promote militarization to Pacific Island leaders in September.

Why Letting Violent Patriarchy Dominate Our Narratives Could Mean The Death Of Us All

A peaceworker buddy of mine, retired Bath Iron Works mechanic Peter Woodruff, published a great guest column in the local Times-Record this week. In it Pete detailed the recent history of BIW's pivot from building "anything" to being owned by General Dynamics and in thrall to corporate government that gives it only huge, costly floating weapons to build. The need to diversify was recognized decades ago but BIW turned away from building offshore wind turbines for the Gulf of Maine after outside corporate interest group ALEC put our current governor in office. 

Now our state is torn to shreds to build pipelines for "natural" (i.e. fracked) gas instead while BIW launches one ship every few years with a price tag in the several billions. They could be laying off 1,000 workers soon.

Not to take credit away from Pete, but something that struck me in reading his highly interesting account was the dearth of women's voices. In detailing the 20th and 21st century history of the shipyard, eleven men and zero women were quoted or noted as key decision makers.

Perhaps I noticed this because the national buzz the past few days has been about the recorded misogynist boasting of the demagogue with the bad hair who is the Republican Party's candidate for president. Grabbing women's genitals at will because he is famous and wealthy seems to be ok with him but it did not go down well with liberals who will vote for the Democratic Party's candidate, the first woman to be so nominated. A producer for The Apprentice, the reality t.v. show that made the demagogue super famous in the first place, has warned that there was much more, and much worse, in the offing.

The orchestration of false dichotomy in this election has been particularly effective. It has to be, because fear of the demagogue is the only driving force behind many voters who will line up obediently behind Wall St.'s preferred candidate, a woman who exhibits the opposite of feminist values as she has lived entirely in service to the violent patriarchal system that is late stage capitalism. 

To say that she has blood on her hands would be putting it mildly; that doesn't particularly concern so-called "cruise missile liberals" who have never faltered in their support of the first black president as he bombed, droned, imprisoned or deported millions of innocent people for the past eight years. And he stood by while police gunned down one unarmed black person after another while still managing to remain wildly popular.

The reason for tepid support of the female candidate is primarily, in my opinion, that she lacks charisma. The current president can deliver his lines with fidelity while exuding charm and sex appeal. Unfortunately for the fatally ambitious Mrs. Clinton, she can do no such thing. If charisma could be manufactured, I am confident that she would have paid any price to have it, because that is what gets people to mark their ballot for their preferred celebrity spokesperson of the oligarchy that is our government.

I am also confident that the demagogue -- who oozes negative charisma -- will not be placed in this position by our corporate overlords. He actually might be delusional enough to believe, as George W. Bush appeared to have believed, that he is the "decider" rather than merely a glamorous spokesman.

Meanwhile, the system is upheld by ignoring the wisdom of, for instance, indigenous elder women's voices telling us that the life support system of our planet is fragile and at risk. You can hear them as they explain why they have taken a stand to protect the watershed threatened by the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
I AM A LIFE featuring Randi LeClair (Pawnee), Kelli Brooke Brady (Seminole/Creek), Isabelle Cox (Choctaw), J. Nicole Nahmiapiah (Comanche/Kiowa), Lauren Palmer (Choctaw), Elizabeth Sweetly (Comanche), Ekayah Rosete (Comanche). Read more at Indian Country Today Media Network.

With the rise of social media those voices are available to us all as never before, but corporate media instead fill the airwaves with the demagogue's boorish demeaning of womankind and superstorm Matthew battering the unfortunate residents of coastal regions.

Many older women will vote for Mrs. Clinton because of having to listen to this kind of shit all their lives. The vehement misogyny of Internet trolls and hate radio pundits that has focused on her person since at least her stint as a bloodthirsty Secretary of State has been appalling and many, many people see their own support for her as determined by the need to stand against this sort of thing.

It's evil but brilliantly executed, this false dichotomy manipulation. One can't criticize Mrs. Clinton for using the power of office to force capitalism down the throats of people all over the planet because...the demagogue with the bad hair is too scary! 

I really can't account for why people continue to believe that their vote actually counts even after witnessing the skillful manipulation of election results to ensure that Mrs. Clinton and not Bernie Sanders would emerge as the Democratic Party's candidate. I suppose many don't; voting rates are at an all-time low in the purported "democracy" we live under.

I'll tell you what I find scary. The understanding that, if we continue on the path we're on, silencing the voices of the grandmothers from cultures built on wise living that maintained the balance among the systems of Mother Nature, we humans and many other life forms are doomed. Sure, I won't be around to see the gruesome end of drinkable water and life-sustaining agriculture. But my grandchildren might be. And no one would wish that ending on people they love. 

The wisdom of indigenous grandmothers all over the world is this: respect and honor life. And we had better listen, or collectively suffer the consequences.

Teach The Truth About Columbus & Stop Celebrating Genocidal Maniac Day

Ella Sekatau, Naragansett tribal historian: "The truth is the truth is the truth. And it's just waiting to be discovered." From the documentary film Language of America: An Indian Story by Maine filmmaker Ben Levine.

If you've never had the experience of teaching the truth about the Columbus,  you might give it a try.

It can take a form as simple as a five year-old raising her hand during a Columbus Day presentation in Kindergarten to say, “My grammy says that Columbus was a really bad man.”

Or it could be reading and discussing the hair-raising first chapter of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. A rapist and slave trader who chopped off the hands of native people of the Caribbean islands who didn’t bring him gold fast enough, this well-documented genocidal maniac was just waiting for historian Zinn to reveal the sad truth: Columbus is not a person to be celebrated.

Now, if you’re a teacher emerging from the exhausting pace of the first month of school it’s hard to argue with a three day weekend in early October. When I taught high school social studies a Penobscot student asked me to help her organize an alternative to celebrating. With her parents and student volunteers she recruited, we convened a day of outdoor education, read some truth, and visited an extensive collection of native artifacts at Nowetah’s Indian Store and Museum in New Portland. (A Passamoquoddy artist who uses traditional porcupine quill methods to create beautiful baskets, Nowetah traveled and traded with native artists all over the continent to build her collection and she welcomes school visits. Check out the facebook page here.)

Maulian Smith, Penobscot leader of the Not Your Mascot, Maine Chapter campaign to retire the Skowhegan High School "Indian" mascot speaking at Indigenous People's Day, 2015.

In the intervening years Penobscot leaders have convened Indigenous People’s Day each October to further the effort of re-educating people, and last year the town of Belfast became the first in Maine to follow a growing national trend toward renaming the holiday.

One of the most popular tools for re-educating about Columbus is The People vs. Columbus ready-to-use curriculum materials available free on the Zinn Education Project’s website. I’ve used this tool many times with teenagers who enjoy the mock trial format and role play that explores, not only Columbus’ role, but that of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, the crew members of the ships that Spain sent, and the system of empire itself.

The related text Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years explains:

Why rethink Christopher Columbus? Because the Columbus myth is a foundation of children's beliefs about society. Columbus is often a child's first lesson about encounters between different cultures and races. The murky legend of a brave adventurer tells children whose version of history to accept, and whose to ignore. It says nothing about the brutality of the European invasion of North America.

That text was banned by schools in Tucson, Arizona under legislation that abolished Mexican American Studies, a program targeted by conservative politicians. Despite numerous studies finding that native students and students of color are adversely affected when their history and culture is not taught, schools continue to serve powerful interests by suppressing the truth.

Photo credit: Rob Wilson from "Over 20 Arrested After Militarized Police Raid #NoDAPL Prayer Ceremony" Sep. 29, 2016 by Lauren McCauley, CommonDreams.org

How many of us are teaching about the coalition of native groups taking a stand against oil pipeline construction that in North Dakota that threatens the water supply for millions? The wisdom of indigenous people about how to live on the planet without crashing its life support systems is sorely needed as the potable water supply dwindles and record temperatures continue to climb. Why would we suppress their voices now?

Whichever tools you choose, and especially if you have a young audience, you could find the experience of reteaching Columbus exhilarating. Then, move on to reteach Thanksgiving!