Skowhegan School Board Director Poirier Ignores Legal Vulnerability, Brings NAGA To Town

Birds of a feather flock together. Pretendians and actual Native supporters of Covington Catholic School boys who mocked Native ceremonial drumming at an Indigenous People's Day March in Washington DC last month while wearing clothing with the slogan "Make America Great Again".

Skowhegan school board director Jennifer Poirier has decided to ignore her legal vulnerability for bias in conducting MSAD 54's business of educating children.

Plowing straight ahead into that particular storm, in her capacity as an organizer for the Skowhegan "Indian Pride" (SIP) group she has invited the Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) to Skowhegan for an invitation-only event to be held at the bowling alley.

NAGA was established by people affiliated with the Washington R#%$kin$ football franchise and their efforts to resist calls to retire their racist team name.

The sports site Deadspin has been following their efforts in Washington DC as well as their involvement in local mascot controversies at schools in New York and Utah, among other places. 


Post from Cedar High School, Utah mascot controversy where the "R*dmen" were recently retired. Posted by Not Your Disappearing Indian podcaster Jacqueline Keeler.

Now, NAGA will come to Maine.

So much for SIP's constant refrain that they are tired of people from "away" telling them what to do about the Indian team name they claim is a purely local issue.

Probably the most convincing evidence that NAGA does not actually represent Maine's Native people is their own statement, "NAGAs[sic] mission is to preserve and perpetuate Native American culture..."  As we know, Maine alone has four Native groups, each with their own distinctive culture which includes language. Passamoquoddy is not Penobscot, and vice versa, etc. 

There is literally no such thing as Native American culture, singular.

(Also, the white people who lead NAGA might want to study their own cultural practices around correct use of the possessive apostrophe.)

MSAD 54 school board members should probably listen to legal advice and check themselves before they wreck themselves. What they do during board meetings is protected by insurance in place to cover any liabilities incurred while conducting official business. We, the taxpayers, pay those insurance premiums, presumably because there would be too much risk to an individual making policy decisions that might lead to a lawsuit. What directors do outside of board meetings is not protected unless they have their own insurance for this. They are acting as individuals, and can be held liable as such.

For broader context, here's news of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan filing a federal discrimination complaint against the Paw Paw Public School district. What's the mascot/team name at Paw Paw High School? The R#%$kin$.

(I use a euphemism for this name because of the connotation of scalping and bloodletting that were foundational to the attempted genocide targeting indigenous people in North America.)

The ACLU of Maine has already notified Poirier and the other MSAD 54 directors, on more than one occasion, that they consider the team name Indians violates non-discrimination statutes that schools receiving federal funds must observe.

This screenshot from the SIP Facebook group indicates that changers who want to weigh in at the event this Sunday, February 24 from 1-3pm at the bowling alley would do well to stand on the public road (Route 201) with their signs.

As someone who has exercised my 1st amendment rights in Skowhegan on many, many Sundays, I feel safe in saying that the local police are well aware of where people may engage in political speech. Hooray for the Constitution!

As for why pretendians and some actual Native people from away represent for NAGA, we know that the majority owner of the Washington NFL franchise and its branding is very, very wealthy. Could be it's all about the Benjamins, baby.

Created In 2003, ICE Is The New Gestapo -- How Will We Stop Their Crimes Against Humanity?

My sister posted this photo of the young woman murdered by border patrol with the comment, "Looks really threatening, huh?" Maybe it's because I've been reading I, Rigoberta Menchú recently, but I can totally understand why a traditionally dressed young woman from Guatemala with a sober expression on her face is perceived as a threat by the violent patriarchy that rules the U.S.

Image: GoodReads

Women in Central America, especially women from indigenous cultures, have mounted decades of serious resistance to right wing governments and the thieving corporations they enable.

So, the kleptocracy ascendant here in the USA rightly fears indigenous women.


Note that I am not in any way excusing the murder of Claudia Gómez by ICE. 

The death, which her boyfriend waiting for her in the U.S. called "an assassination," was reported by Molly Hennessy-Fiske in the Los Angeles Times. The story includes an interview with a witness on the scene, amateur videographer Marta Martinez, who sees people running and hiding from ICE in her Texas neighborhood all the time.

Something interesting I learned today from sister activist Jessica Stewart:

ICE was only created in 2003, as part of the US's post-9/11 hyper-militarized, xenophobic frenzy.

We didn't have this department 16 years ago, we do not need it, and we should abolish it immediately. 

I do not say this lightly: ICE is America's gestapo and we should treat them with that level of serious resistance.

Ms. Gómez’s family in Guatemala City

Her aunt had this to say about the death of her niece, as reported by Sofia Menchu for Reuters:

“To the government of the United States,

(I ask) that you do not treat us like this, like animals, just because you are a powerful and developed country,” 

Dominga Vicente, Gómez’s aunt, told reporters in Guatemala City. The young woman from the Guatemalan highlands had left her home in search of work and education opportunities, Vicente said.

From the YouTube post of Martinez's video:

Gómez Gonzáles was a Maya-Mam indigenous woman and had reportedly graduated from a program in forensic accounting in 2016. She had hoped to further her education, her father, Gilberto Gómez, told the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre. 

Lidia Gonzáles, the woman’s mother, told a local news channel that the family didn’t have enough money for her daughter to continue her studies. “She told me she wanted to keep studying at university but we don’t have the money,” Gonzáles said, according to a translation by The Guardian. “We’re poor and there are no jobs here. That’s why she traveled to the U.S. But they killed her. Immigration killed her.” 

Back to the Gestapo theme.

Did Nazi Germany as a "powerful and developed country" treat Jews, including young women and children, as animals? Unless you're a child yourself, you know full well that they did.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has achieved infamy by telling reporters for NPR that separating families is a effective deterrent to asylum seekers, and that it's not cruel because the minor children are “put into foster care or whatever.”


Did you think as you learned about the Holocaust: If I had been living in Europe at that time in history I would have resisted with all the resources I had available to me? Well, here we are now.

More from Jessica Stewart:

Who is following recent news about Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)? For those of us who are citizens, what if it were your kids or my kids? What would you or I want people to do? 

1. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced that for families seized by ICE, children will be separated from their parents in detention with no word on when they will be reuinted (more here: http://time.com/526…/jeff-sessions-illegal-border-separated/) 

2. Of the 7,000+ children that ICE has captured from their families, 1,475 are unaccounted for. Gone. And this is only the first report, numbers may be much higher. (More here: http://time.com/5256734/government-missing-migrant-children/) 

3. Documents obtained by the ACLU show massive horrific abuse of children in ICE custody, including kicking a child in the ribs, running over a 17 year old with a patrol car, sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl in a search, and detaining a 4 pound premature baby and her mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell full of sick people. (More here: https://www.aclusandiego.org/civil-rights-civil-liberties/) 

4. ICE plans to destroy records of immigrant abuse, including sexual assault and deaths in custody (From an August 2017 report, more here: https://www.aclu.org/…/ice-plans-start-destroying-records-i…) 

Here's reporting from Curt Prendergast and Perla Trevizo for the Arizona Daily Star:

Alma Jacinto covered her eyes with her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.

The 36-year-old from Guatemala was led out of the federal courtroom without an answer to the question that brought her to tears: When would she see her boys again?

Jacinto wore a yellow bracelet on her left wrist, which defense lawyers said identifies parents who are arrested with their children and prosecuted in Operation Streamline, a fast-track program for illegal border crossers.

Image: Facebook post by Jeanne Morales, an immigration attorney in Texas

Anne Frank and her family were deemed illegal border crossers, forced to wear badges on their clothing identifying them as Jews and criminals.

One thing you can do: teach Holocaust history, which many young people in the U.S. are completely ignorant about. 

Photo by Henryk Ross "Children being transported to Chelmno nad Nerem (renamed Kulmhof) death camp." 

You can also join or donate to the ACLU to support the legal fight against ICE detention and separation of families. Or find other organizations to support that are battling ICE forces of evil.

You could write to the kleptocrats in Congress and the White House for all the good it will do (note that Obama's record on immigrant detentions and deportations was also abysmal). 

You can also write letters to the editor, which are free and reach thousands of people daily. 

Spread the news!!!