The powerful and hard-hitting documentary, American Holocaust, is quite possibly the only film that reveals the link between the Nazi holocaust, which claimed at least 6 million Jews, and the American Holocaust which claimed, according to conservative estimates, 19 million Indigenous People.
Showing posts with label Native American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Native American. Show all posts
25 Jul 2015
4 Jul 2015
Millions of Americans Have Nothing to Celebrate on the Fourth of July
To ring in another July Fourth, most Americans will kick off celebrations with beer, BBQ and fireworks. Most, but not all.
On Independence Day, the stirring words of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, promising "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," set the tone. Buried a bit further down, however, is another passage that is somewhat less well-known:
"...the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."
That line, and America's subsequent history with Native Americans, goes a long way toward explaining why the holiday largely does not resonate with the United States' roughly 5.2 million indigenous peoples.
"Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating," Simon Moya-Smith, a culture editor at Indian Country Today told Mic. "[July Fourth] is a day we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions — literally millions — of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism." For him, Independence Day is a celebration of genocide. A number of tribes and nations contacted for this story expressed various levels of discomfort with the holiday.
13 Oct 2014
The Canary Effect: Kill the Indian, Save the Man
Delving deeply into the often misunderstood and frequently over looked historic realities of the American Indian, The Canary Effect follows the terrifying and horrific abuses instilled upon the Indigenous people of North America, and details the genocidal practices of the US government and its continuing affects on present day Indian country.
26 Aug 2014
11 Jul 2014
The Invasion of America
Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America's indigenous people by treaty and executive order. The Invasion of America shows how by mapping every treaty and executive order during that period. It concludes with a map of present-day federal Indian reservations.
1 Jun 2014
10 Mar 2014
Free Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Peltier's indictment and conviction have been the subject of much controversy; Amnesty International placed his case under the "Unfair Trials" category of its Annual Report: USA 2010, citing concerns with the fairness of the proceedings. Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Coleman in Florida. Peltier's next scheduled parole hearing will be in July 2024. Barring appeals, parole or presidential pardon, his projected release date is October 11, 2040.
19 Jan 2014
29 cultures and tribes at risk of disappearing
It took over four years for photographer Jimmy Nelson to document 29 cultures and tribes at risk of disappearing from their remote corners of the world. He set out to "celebrate the beauty of these cultures and their traditional ways of life" and beautifully captured his subjects.
29 Nov 2013
The American Holocaust
The powerful and hard-hitting documentary, American Holocaust, is quite possibly the only film that reveals the link between the Nazi holocaust, which claimed at least 6 million Jews, and the American Holocaust which claimed, according to conservative estimates, 19 million Indigenous People.
26 Jul 2013
Honor The Treaties
A few years ago, Aaron Huey journeyed to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to photograph members of the Oglala Lakota Nation. The disarming stories of deceit, heartbreak, and violence he heard there changed his life forever. (Featuring Shepard Fairey)
Upworthy.com - Reelhouse.org - Aaron Heuy Ted Talk: America's native prisoners of war - www.aaronhuey.com
13 Oct 2012
The Great Indian Wars 1840-1890
American documentary (1991) with Dutch subs - Documentation of the encroachment of European settlers upon Native American lands and the violent reaction of the Indians in their struggle to survive. Covers the major campaigns and some of the minor revolts by the Native American population against the US Army.
25 Feb 2012
They Came For The Children-The Truth & Reconciliation Commission Of Canada
“In order to educate the children properly we must separate them from their families . Some people may say that this is hard but if we want to civilise them we must do that” .
Hector Langevin - Public Works Minister, Canada 1883
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada have released an interim report “They Came For The Children” into the treatment of native American children in Canada from the late 1800s to the 1970s who were sent to government sponsored residential schools.
To say their treatment was appalling is an understatement . The children were taken from their families in a deliberate attempt to ‘christianise’ them and in effect kill off their customs and beliefs . At these schools a large number of children died from disease and ill treatment and they were subjected to both physical and sexual abuse.
Below a snippet from the report which hopefully will give you an idea of the children’s experience:
Although the death rates fell in the following years, there are no clear records as to how many children died while attending residential schools, and the total may reach into the thousands. As at Red Deer, many children were buried in school cemeteries. In some cases, parents never were told what had become of their children.
The memoirs of former residential school students are filled with remembrances of death and disease.
Merovee – Read the Report “They Came For The Children” (PDF)
14 Sept 2011
Citizenship Denied: The Latest in the Cherokee Freedmen Saga
The late Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller wrote in her autobiography the following words: “The truth is that the practice of slavery will forever cast a shadow on the great Cherokee Nation.”
The repercussions of slavery are still being felt within the Cherokee Nation, as a five-year legal battle between the Cherokee Nation and the descendants of freed Cherokee slaves ended on August 22, with the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruling against freedmen who had sought to have their status as citizens of the Cherokee Nation validated.
The ruling upheld a 2007 Cherokee Nation Constitutional amendment that requires the nation’s citizens to have at least one Indian ancestor on the Dawes Rolls, the primary document used to determine Cherokee Nation eligibility. That amendment was passed after the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the freedmen could qualify for tribal citizenship. This latest ruling immediately revoked the citizenship of approximately 2,800 non-Indians, whose enrolment had been reinstated by a Cherokee Nation District Court four years ago. This ends the membership of Cherokee Nation members who are descendants of freedmen or of intermarried whites who had been granted Cherokee Nation citizenship.
One of the main legal arguments of the freedmen was based on a treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. government in 1866, after the end of the Civil War. Article 9 of that treaty states that the Cherokee Nation abolished slavery by 1863 and that “all freedmen who have been liberated by voluntary act of their former owners or by law, as well as all free colored persons who were in the country at the commencement of the rebellion, and are now residents therein, or who may return within six months, and their descendants, shall have all the rights of Native Cherokees.”
6 Sept 2011
Jailed Native American activist wins human rights prize
Leonard Peltier, an indigenous rights activist jailed in the United States for decades, has received the first Mario Benedetti Foundation international human rights prize, the group said Monday. The group called Peltier, a Native American activist convicted in 1977 for the murder of two US FBI agents, the longest serving political prisoner in the Americas. The case stemmed from a shootout at a reservation in the US state of South Dakota.
"Leonard Peltier, who on September 12, 2011 will turn 67, has spent more than half his life in prison. He is a symbol of resistance to repressive state policies by the United States, where there are people in jail for ethnic, racial, ideological and religious reasons," a foundation statement said. Ricardo Elena, a member of the foundation's honorary board, said Peltier's case "is one that is repeated over and over: violation (of rights); persecution, eviction, invasion and expropriation of the indigenous people from the time it was 'discovered' until now.
3 Sept 2011
Hidden No Longer
This documentary (2006) reveals Canada's darkest secret - the deliberate extermination of indigenous (Native American) peoples and the theft of their land under the guise of religion. This never before told history as seen through the eyes of this former minister (Kevin Annett) who blew the whistle on his own church, after he learned of thousands of murders in its Indian Residential Schools..."
Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust – The untold story of the genocide of Aboriginal Peoples
Catholic sex abuse cases (Wikipedia) - Download Genocide in Canada, Past and Present here. – More on Red Ice Radio
27 May 2011
The Continuation of the Wars Against American Indigenous People
The Obama administration has sparked outrage in the Native American community following the revelation it used the name of the legendary Apache leader Geronimo as a secret code word during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Geronimo was an Apache leader who fought to preserve tribal lands against U.S. and Mexican forces in the 19th century. We get reaction from Native American activist and writer, Winona LaDuke. "The reality is that the military is full of native nomenclature,” says LaDuke. "You’ve got Black Hawk helicopters, Apache Longbow helicopters. You’ve got Tomahawk missiles. The term used when you leave a military base in a foreign country is to go 'off the reservation, into Indian Country.' So what is that messaging that is passed on? It is basically the continuation of the wars against indigenous people."
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