Yesterday, I spent a fair amount of time struggling with the internet and email – trying to get paperwork to my doctor’s office to get my car registration renewed. His email account is set to reject any email from someone he hasn’t approved. He did approve me,but my email was not going through. Thinking maybe it was the number of attachments, I sent seven separate ones today – one for each attachment. But it was late in the business day, so I’ll have to check again today. They were all jpgs – before retiring I converted them all into pdfs in case I have to resend again. If I can’t get it done in time, I’m going to go see Virgil Sunday anyway (I did get confirmation yesterday; I looked for it Monday but of course that was a holiday.) In less personal news (but still kind of personal, since we all love the Carters), Rosalynn has been diagnosed with dementtia. She is still at home with Jimmy and is able to see loved ones and enjoy the spring weather.
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Short Takes –
NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian) – Why We Serve
The National Museum of the American Indian is one of many institutions which come under the purview of the Smithsonian. There isn’t a lot of information about Native Americans that you won’t find somewhere under its umbrella. “Why We Serve” is a website dedicated to Native Americans in the military – active duty, veterans, and war dead. It’s an online exhibition that you can wader through, just as you would wander through a physocal exhibition on site. I was pleased to learn about NAWW – Native American Women Warrriors – group specifically for women veterans who are native Americans. The Museum’s “Object of the Month” for May is a blue jingle dress worn by Mitchelene BigMan (Apsáalooke [Crow]/Hidatsa) during the 2013 presidential Inaugural Parade. You’ll find it (along with three others) under the topic “War and Peace.”
The Warning (Steve Schmidt) – The distortion and delusion of the MAGA/GOP view
Quote – The greatest crime in human history began with the rise of a far-right political party of losers, crackpots, opportunists and alienation that sowed division, hate, intolerance and grievance against its enemies, status and condition. The Jews were the target of its scapegoating, hate, conspiracies and terror. Ultimately, an extremist political party became the State and then the nation. Hitler’s rise was abetted by countless small acts of moral appeasement and accommodation by people who were appalled by him. Ambition and cynicism fueled a merger of industry with extremism and hate with national identity. All of it was sustained by propaganda, lies, and conspiracy theories. Before it was over human civilization nearly fell. Click through for column. You’ll probably have to click on “Let me read it first.” It isn’t the full column, since I’m not a paid subscriber, but it’s enough to sound an alarm.
Glenn Kirschner – Judge ORDERS Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to testify AGAINST Trump, and appellate court agrees!
Thom Hartmann – Fascist Bullies Don’t Stop… Unless We Stop Them
Ring of Fire – Trump’s Biggest Legal Problem Isn’t Getting Enough Attention
MSNBC – Supreme Court hears case on Navajo Nation water dispute
Abandoned Puppies Are All Grown Up And Looking For Their Forever Homes
Beau – Let’s talk about the water situation out west…. (Most of the snowpacks are above normal. There is ONE which is at only 80%. It is the one that feeds the arkansas River. The Ark is rhe river I would drive along after turning left at Pueblo when Virgil was in Las Animas. I feel like Rick – “Of all the basins feeding all the rivers, the one that is below normal is mine.”)
Yesterday was Black Friday – or, as the North SHore Animal League put it, Bark Friday. I used to be pretty good at using sales and coupons, butnow that I’m retired and my time is my own, that is more important to me. And the pandemic just made thatmindset even stronger. Not that I would shop on Black Friday on principle. But I hope that those who do shop (many of whom are working to hard for too little pay) find bargains that stretch their budgets farther than they dreamed. Also yesterday, I “printed” (to pdf) DCCC’s guide to what facts to have handy when dealing with Republican relatives. It was intended for Thanksgiving, but by the time I received the email, Thanksgiving was over. However, there’s always Christmas. It loads huge and prints weird (I ended up zooming out, snapshotting it a page at a time – it’s only 4 pages – putting the snapshots into a Word document, and “printing” that. But there are probably ways to manipulate the online pdf to print better.) If you have any Republican relatives, or know someone who does and could use it, here’s the link.
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Crooks & Liars – Dems Already Going On Offense Against Coming House Investigations
Quote – The New York Times reports that a network of Democrat-aligned groups is planning “a multimillion-dollar counteroffensive,” including a “SWAT team,” to combat the coming deluge of GOP investigations into President Biden, his family and his administration. Although the White House is planning its own defense, the outside groups plan to push back “in a more adversarial manner,” the Times says…. The Democratic counteroffensive is designed to avoid another Benghazi which, fake scandal that it was, nonetheless dragged down Hillary Clinton. Some of those involved in the efforts include Facts First USA, whose president is David Brock, the former right-wing hit man turned left-wing advocate; the Center for American Progress; and the Congressional Integrity Project. Click through for more informaion, and links to both the Times and Politico. The money is not taxpayer money but activist money (from some pretty flush activists.)
Mother Jones – After Decades of Public Service, Dr. Fauci Gives His Final White House Briefing
Quote – His departing message to the public: get vaccinated before the holidays. “My final message, maybe the final message I give you from this podium, is, please, for your own safety and the safety of your own family, please get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible,” Fauci told reporters. Click through for article. I have nothing to add to the Food for Thought.
Lakota People’s Law – Help the Cherokee Nation Seat a Congressional Delegate
I had a video up on this yesterday (which was made before the hearing). Then O got this emai from Chase Iron Eyes, including:
“[A]fter nearly two centuries of delay, Congress held its first ever hearing on the subject — and it went very well! To be clear, it isn’t a done deal. However, as NPR accurately reports, last week’s House Rules Committee hearing represents by far the biggest step the federal government has ever taken toward fulfilling a promise it made to the Cherokee way back in 1835’s Treaty of New Echota. And while we can’t celebrate prematurely, the U.S. government making progress toward doing what it said it would for any Native nation is historic and a reason for optimism.”
Now Chase is asking us to write to our Representatives and encourage them to accept the selected delegate, Kimberly Teehee. The link above is to the page to help you do that – thre is also a video, which is a bit over a half hour, and doesn’t have CC there, but it does on YouTube at this link
Yesterday, I had already picked out short takes for today – being a holiday, and specifically a holiday for gratitutde, I didn’t want to be gloom and doom, and i haven’t changed them. But I was – you migt say sucked in – by the title of Steve Schmidt’s newsletter for the day: “It’s time to pick up JFK’s unfinished business.” An an unpaid subscriber, I didn’t reveive the full article, but he opens discussing oratory. JFK was no mean speaker, but Schmidt transitions to MLK’s Promised Land speech and Bobby’s extemporaneous speech on MLK’s death – “one of the greatest pieces of oratory in American history” and “the greatest extemporaneous speech in American history” respectively – and links to videos of them. Truly, all three men deserve our gratitude, and if yours is up to the associated grief at their loss, you can read (part of) the article here and link from it to videos of those two speeches. I don’t know whether they have CC; I couldn’t. Also, Virgil called, and Pat emailed to let me know that, between Thanksgiving and multiple famiy birthdays, we may not see her for a couple of days.
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Crooks & Liars – Russian POW Offers Himself In Exchange For Stolen Raccoon
Quote – A Russian prisoner of war (POW) has offered to exchange him for a raccoon stolen by Russians from the Kherson zoo. The relevant statement was made by Kherson Regional Council First Deputy Head Yurii Sobolevskyi on Facebook, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. The video shows the Russian military saying: “I, Oleg Mokashov, a private, born in 1975, from Novosibirsk, am asking the government of Russia to swap me for the Kherson raccoon.” Click through for story, meme, and video. This seems to be a new level of trolling (which apparently is not always a bad thing.)
Open Culture – Jim Henson’s Commercials for Wilkins Coffee: 15 Twisted Minutes of Muppet Coffee Ads (1957-1961)
Quote – Drink our coffee. Or else. That’s the message of these curiously sadistic TV commercials produced by Jim Henson between 1957 and 1961. Henson made 179 ten-second spots for Wilkins Coffee, a regional company with distribution in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. market, according to the Muppets Wiki: “The local stations only had ten seconds for station identification, so the Muppet commercials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight seconds for the commercial pitch and a two-second shot of the product.” Click through for video collection. Yes, I could have put this in the video thread, but I already have Mrs. Betty Bowers there, and this is pretty unusual – typical Henson, and quite amusing.
The Warning – “0ur faith sought the harmony of man with his surroundings”
Quote – There is an accompanying arrogance that rides comfortably with obliviousness and ignorance. It gives license to people in the present who know nothing of the past to indict the totality of the struggle for justice and progress against a present standard that is as deluded as it is preening. It is also not cost-free. There is a cost for fighting over the past, which cannot be changed, and it is a terrible one. The fight costs the future and strangles the imagination needed to create it…. Apache, Black Hawk, Kiowa, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota are the names of the great tribes, which the US Army has named their helicopters. They are named in honor of the warrior spirit and fierceness of those tribes’ warriors. Yet, the greatest attribute of a warrior in Lakota culture was not fierceness, deadliness or success. It was humility. Strength will be required to forge reconciliation. Weakness will be required to sustain more fighting. Humility will be required to listen. Listening will be required to hear, and hearing will be required to obtain wisdom. There is great wisdom in the culture of America’s native peoples who have forged this nation from its first hours. Harmony is at the center of much of American Indian belief. The white man has much to learn from this. There was a Lakota word for “white man” that roughly translated as “fat taker.” Click through for full article (you may have to click “Let me read it first.”) The faith in the title is the faith of Native Americans. I don’t always agree with Steve … but he certainly knows a thing or two about what we as Americans need to do, and he’s not shy about saying it.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
The premise of this article is summed up on one sentence from it: [T]he U.S. government has often acted as if Indian traditions were somehow not truly religious and therefore not eligible for the constitutional protections of the First Amendment. I would file that under Captain Obvious (or preferably under my NSFW way of saying the same.) Finally at least some progress is being made, though probably not enough and not fast enough. How wold you feel if the government wanted to, say, run an oil pipeline through the cemetery where your parents are buried? Or under your house?
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Native Americans’ decadeslong struggle for control over sacred lands is making progress
Who should manage public land that is sacred to Native Americans?
That is the question that the United States government and some states hope recent policy changes will address by giving Indigenous people greater input into managing such land. Co-management, as the policy is called, might alleviate the friction that emerges when sacred landscapes are managed without Native American input.
Mauna Kea, a 13,802-foot dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii, is one example. The mountain is managed as public land by the state of Hawaii. Native Hawaiians have protested the state’s management of Mauna Kea for decades, saying Hawaii has allowed too many research buildings on their sacred mountain, which disrupts their ability to practice their religion.
This kind of conflict is not unique to Hawaii. Indigenous peoples have lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years and developed intimate relationships with the lands they call home. For years, Native people across the country have demanded more input into how the government manages areas they consider sacred.
Native Hawaiians believe that Mauna Kea is the first creation of the Earth Mother, Papahānaumoku, and the Sky Father, Wākea. The mountain is an important part of their origin narrative.
For astronomers, the mountain has another significance. They believe the summit of Mauna Kea has the clearest skies for conducting research. For the past 50 years, the state of Hawaii has leased the summit of the mountain to dozens of research institutions. Together, they have built 13 telescopes and numerous buildings on Mauna Kea.
For years Native Hawaiian leaders have argued that the state ignored their concerns over such construction. When Mauna Kea was selected in 2009 as the preferred site for the Thirty Meter Telescope, a new class of extremely large telescope, Native Hawaiians protested to stop the project.
Native Hawaiians, like those from other Indigenous religious traditions, believe that sacred areas should be left alone without roads or buildings because they are the homes of the divine.
“We worship there, the iwis of our kupuna [bones of our elders] are buried there,” Mililani Trask, the Hawaii island’s trustee for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, said at a public meeting regarding an environmental impact statement of Mauna Kea with the National Science Foundation on Aug. 9, 2022. “No,” she continued, “you will not build here.”
The state of Hawaii is hoping to address this ongoing conflict with the creation of a new eight-person commission that includes three Native Hawaiian leaders to manage Mauna Kea.
“I believe we can find a way for science and culture to coexist on Mauna Kea in a mutually beneficial way,” Hawaiian Gov. David Ige said on Sept. 12, 2022, when he announced the new commission.
What makes land sacred?
Native American religions, similar to other religions, view areas as sacred because they are the homes of gods or places that are sanctified by a god. Sacred places may be physically small or large areas, they may be built or natural areas, such as churches and shrines, or mountains and rivers.
Religious studies scholars such as Tisa Wenger have argued that religious freedom for Native Americans has been difficult because “the U.S. government has often acted as if Indian traditions were somehow not truly religious and therefore not eligible for the constitutional protections of the First Amendment.”
In one dispute in the 1980s, the U.S. Forest Service wanted to construct a road across a sacred mountain in Northern California. A consortium of tribes fought back, and the case ended in the Supreme Court; the tribes lost.
Following that decision, in 1996, President Bill Clinton created a definition of Native American sacred land as a “specific, discrete, narrowly delineated location on Federal land.”
This language intentionally excludes large areas such as mountains or open landscapes in favor of smaller sites. That does not fully represent the variety of places that Native peoples consider sacred, say religious studies scholars, leading to inevitable clashes over the meaning and uses of such lands.
Co-management is one small step
On Sept. 13, 2022, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland released new federal guidelines to help address these long-standing conflicts.
This new policy, which focuses on publicly managed areas that Native Americans view as sacred or culturally important, will allow some tribes to share management responsibilities with federal agencies.
“By acknowledging and empowering Tribes as partners in co-stewardship of our country’s lands and waters, every American will benefit from strengthened management of our federal land and resources,” Haaland said.
In a related effort, Congress on Sept. 14 held hearings on two new bills to address this same issue. If they pass, their backers hope they will facilitate the inclusion of “tribal management of public lands” and strengthen the “protection of sacred and cultural sites.”
Such changes are “a small step, but an important one, in giving Tribal nations the respect and authority they deserve,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona.
But, he added of the federal government’s new desire to share land management with tribes, “There is no deed that can undo or fully compensate for this country’s historical neglect and desecration of Indigenous Peoples’ culture and places that are sacred to them.”
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I realize I am preaching to the choir here. But, I don’t know, maybe the choir needs to sing louder. Both bills mentioned here have been introduced – and that is not nothing, because it means they have made it through some committees and gotten to the House floor. But that’s all. Neither has passed. I didn’t look up the Senate versions (which were also introduced), but dang, if the House can’t get it done – the Senate is even more of a jungle – I don’t really expect much from this Senate. It surely appears to me they will need to be re-introduced in the 118th Congress, or else they will die. Anyone can track them at these links – HR 8108 and HR 8109 – those are the general pages, and one can dig deeper from them.