More on Burma

Burma recently was approved for chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN):

The leadership of the Asean regional grouping rotates on an annual basis, but Burma was not allowed to take the top position last time because of its human rights record.

Some critics say it is still too early to award the high-profile role to Burma, where between 600 and 1,000 political prisoners are thought to remain behind bars.

Several political prisoners were released in October.

The country's continued detention of about 2,000 political prisoners is a crucial reason why Western nations maintain sanctions on Burma....

Speaking to the BBC shortly after his release, Zarganar was wary of his new-found freedom, describing it as conditional.

"If I do something wrong they will send me back. I'm not happy today because there are so many of my friends still in prison," he said.

Several hundred political prisoners remain behind bars, including some of the most high profile activists.

The BBC's analysis suggests that

The move is the latest in a series of developments that suggest the new military-backed government is taking some steps towards reform.

There is a very clear divide between those who look at the changes and say they are a first step, but do not go nearly far enough, and others who say they show that the Burmese government needs to be encouraged.

The BBC has excellent coverage of Burmese politics and the struggle for democracy.

Child Removal Continues

One of the primary forms that the genocide of Indigenous people has taken is that of child removal. It continues unabated in South Dakota (and, based on anecdotal evidence, in other states as well), where an investigation by National Public Radio uncovered systemic injustice in the foster care system, in particular a very high rate of removal of Native children.

As the investigation overview explains,

Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes under questionable circumstances. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is largely failing to place them according to the law. The vast majority of native kids in foster care in South Dakota are in nonnative homes or group homes, according to an NPR analysis of state records.

It is, unfortunately, the same old story that you've seen in several of our texts and films thus far. The systematic removal of Native children from their families is one of the reasons that the UN Convention on Genocide includes "removing children from one group and placing them with another group" in its definition of genocide.

The whole series is here: Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families.

I have to admit that I found this so demoralizing--the fact that, at this point in time, with a law designed to protect Native children from removal because so many Native children were being taken away, this is still happening--that I just couldn't bring myself to post for a while.

Bolivian Indigenous People Halt Highway

In a protest against a multinational highway project through the Amazon, Indigenous Bolivian groups have halted planned construction through the Isiboro Sécure National Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). Note that part of the issue are the rights guaranteed in ILO Convention 169, of which Bolivia is a signatory.

Two main concerns lie behind the indigenous protests of the highway: its environmental effects, as well as the indigenous community’s frustration with facing deadlock in their attempts to gain access to the decision-making process.

The TIPNIS...was recognized as indigenous territory in 1965. Such legal recognition provides the 49,000 indigenous residing in the park with the right to participate, by consultancy, in any governmental decision that could affect the integrity of their territory. What’s at stake, therefore, is more than the highway itself: indigenous jurisdictional recognition in general. Bolivia is among the Latin American countries that has ratified Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) regarding indigenous population rights. One of the convention’s points is the need to guarantee consultation “whenever consideration is being given to their capacity to alienate their lands” and that “peoples must be consulted [previously] whenever consideration is being given to legislative or administrative measures which may affect them directly.” Consequently, so far as it has kept indigenous communities out of the decision-making process about the highway, the Bolivian government is breaking an international convention.

Who's Indian: DNA Testing

Some tribes are turning to DNA testing to determine who qualifies as Indian. This is raising all kinds of new problems, especially when you consider that statistics suggest mistaken paternity is far more common (across the board, not just in Native communities) than we think it is.

And in Wisconsin, a young Indian woman, Daria Powless, had the fruits of her sweet basketball season turn to vinegar when the apparently jealous family of a teammate unearthed a painful secret to challenge her qualifications as a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation. On September 17, the Ho-Chunk Nation General Council voted to disenroll her. ... Sheila Corbine, attorney general for the Ho-Chunk Nation[, said,] “But as with many tribes there is rumor and innuendo about who is a tribal member or not. All the DNA testing is designed for, in our instance anyway, is to prove parentage. And that is to arrive at what the blood quantum is.”

“I have been living with my grandmother since I was two days old,” says Powless, who turns 21 this month. She was born to a mother who left immediately, and a father who came around rarely. “They weren’t married, they just had a kid, and I was going to be up for adoption and my grandmother decided to take me.”

She was raised in a Ho-Chunk house and culture, which included pow wows, regalia, fancy dancing and later a more-modern expression of Indianness—playing basketball. Powless, a six-foot-two power forward and center, was one of three talented players for a Wisconsin Dells high school team that won their conference two years in a row. Powless then enrolled at Division I Texas Southern University and made the basketball team as a freshman walk-on.

It is too common, she says, to see young people blow through tribal funds in a matter of months, spending them on shiny things. For Powless, her future—as a player and an aspiring athletic trainer—was the shining thing, paid for with a scholarship from the tribe. And she feels it has been stripped from her. She says the grandmother of one of her high school teammates called one night while she was home from college on a holiday break to reveal a dirty secret Powless says she had never heard: that the man she’d always believed was her father wasn’t.

It seems to me that this is one of the pitfalls of using blood quantum: a young woman who was by all accounts involved in and committed to her tribal culture, who undeniably has Ho-Chunk ancestry but now, as it turns out, doesn't have enough... should she really be disenrolled from the tribe? It seems that hurts the tribe far more than it benefits anyone.

DNA testing may also open a whole can of worms that no one really wants to deal with.

There is no perfect system, in part because the methods used to determine Indianness are not Indian. “It was white people who determined how we measure this,” says Sherman Alexie, the Spokane/Coeur d’Alene poet and novelist. “The thing about DNA testing is that if you are going to do it for potential members, you should do it for everybody. I think people in favor of DNA wouldn’t like their results. Depending on the studies [of U.S. populations], between 10 and 20 percent of kids are being raised by fathers who aren’t biological.

“And,” he jokes, “considering the hair on my chest, one of my grandmas had to lie.”

The article covers the myriad issues of identity and sovereignty very thoroughly, and you should read it in its entirety.

Australian Constitution to Acknowledge Indigenous Rights?

Very interesting: Australia (which as you may recall was one of the few countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People) is considering changes to its constitution to "include acknowledgment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's custodianship of the land." The Aboriginal Advisory Panel of Sydney is pushing for use of the word "invasion" to describe white settlement in Australia, as the city of Sydney has already agreed to do:

Several members of the panel that convinced the Council to use the word invasion in the preamble to its corporate plan believe the same word should be included in the preamble to the constitution.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has promised a referendum to recognise indigenous Australians in the constitution, probably at the next election, and has appointed an expert panel to discuss with the community the options for constitutional change...

''I think we have to tell the truth about what happened, that's why it [the word invasion] has a rightful place in any preamble to do with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, it should be included,'' he said.

Undoubtedly there will be a lot of debate on this; the Sydney Morning Herald will be one of the papers to watch if you want to learn more (or, if you want more background, search their archives for "aboriginal").

Tar Sands / Keystone XL Pipeline Issues

I mentioned this in class, so here is some information on the anti-tar-sands protests that are happening in Canada and the U.S., and which centrally involve Indigenous people. Activists are protesting against a proposed oil pipeline which would move oil from the Alberta tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast in Texas (right, because the U.S. Gulf Coast doesn't have enough of its own problems...), while the primary issue is the damage the pipeline's construction and use would do, there is also concern about the environmental damage caused by extracting oil from the tar sands, which is among the most environmentally detrimental ways of obtaining oil.

Protests against the pipeline in the U.S. and Canada have had substantial Indigenous participation, including some that led to arrests:

Cree protesters were among those arrested in Ottawa on Monday, demanding an end to the dirty tarsands and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, an environmental disaster in the making from Canada to the Gulf Coast. George Poitras, former Chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, and First Nation youths, were among those arrested Mon., Sept. 26.

The Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network also reported on the arrests:

Lionel Lepine, 33, and Gitz, 28, from Fort Chipewyan, Alta., were in the first line of protestors to get arrested. After smudging themselves with sweet grass smoke, the two hugged, then held hands before marching toward the metal barricade and the ribbon of yellow police tape strung from one end to the other.

They both climbed over the barricade and peacefully surrendered to the RCMP officers waiting for them on the other side. Their hands were bound behind their backs with zip ties before being led away.

“I vow, till my dying breath, to continue this fight,” Lepine told the crowd of protestors shortly before his arrest.

“We are gathered here today to wake up the rest of Canadians,” said Gitz, who also spoke to the crowd.

Indian Country Today, a U.S. Native newspaper, reported on parallel protests outside the White House in Washington, D.C. (which also resulted in arrests):

“We have to stand up for Mother Earth. We have to stand up for our sacred water—for our children, our grandchildren, for the coming generations,” said Lakota activist Debra White Plume at a rally prior to her arrest. She said that the aftereffects of oil sands drilling that would come along with the expansion of the pipeline would likely desecrate the freshwater Ogallala Aquifer near her homelands in Pine Ridge, S.D.

Meanwhile, a pro-pipeline Aboriginal senator, George Brazeau, criticized what he called a tokenizing use of First Nations people to fight this environmental battle:

“What is really problematic is when you have organizations like Greenpeace…who use Aboriginal leaders and communities to basically ask them to support their message,” said Brazeau, during APTN National News’ weekly political panel. “For organizations like that to use Aboriginal people when it is creating jobs and when it’s good for the economy and good for the country, I find it very hypocritical.”

Of course, his assumption appears to be that the Native leaders in the protests didn't really know what they were doing, which is also problematic.

Appropriations of Native Culture

If you haven't already bookmarked the blog Native Appropriations, you should. It offers smart and often funny commentary on the many ways in which Native American culture gets appropriated by various corporations, communities, and individuals. As a sample, take a look at their post "Your Daily Pueblo Pirate Clown on a Bicycle":

What do you get when you combine a ken doll, some sharpies, maybe a little tempra paint, a small dancing mud kachina that looks like a bear, and an intricately carved to scale wooden three wheeled motorcycle?

This, apparently.


Questions I have in viewing this piece:
- Is he wearing an eyepatch?
- Does he have sharpie 5'oclock shadow?
- Is he wearing a chocolate old-fashioned donut on his head?
- Is he scratching his behind?
- Why doesn't his friend sit down in the comfortable-looking back seat? Isn't dancing on a moving vehicle dangerous?

All joking and WTF-ing aside, this guy is making "art" pieces that include sacred pueblo kachinas, and is making a mess of them. Talk about appropriation and mis-representation. Not cool.

I'd suggest bookmarking the blog now, and making sure to check in especially as Halloween gets closer...