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...

Brazil Dam Project Halted

The Belo Monte dam project (which was also the subject of the preceding post) has been halted, at least temporarily.

Judge Carlos Castro Martins barred any work that would interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river.

He ruled in favour of a fisheries group which argued that the Belo Monte dam would affect local fish stocks and could harm indigenous families who make a living from fishing.

The government says the dam is crucial to meeting growing energy needs.

Judge Martins barred the Norte Energia company behind the project from "building a port, using explosives, installing dikes, building canals and any other infrastructure work that would interfere with the natural flow of the Xingu river, thereby affecting local fish stocks".

Norte Energia, of course, plans to appeal, so this is by no means over.

Indigenous in Iraq

This is an issue in Iraq we almost never hear about:

The Senate Appropriations Full Committee legislated support for Iraq's indigenous Assyrians, including Chaldeans and Syriacs. The Full Committee supports the Art. 125 process towards the establishment of a province in the Nineveh Plain. Policy submitted by Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), received Full Committee support, asserting:

The Committee continues to recognize the importance of providing targeted assistance to ethno-religious minorities in Iraq to help ensure their continued survival, especially those living in the Ninevah Plains region. The Committee directs the Department of State to submit a report, not later than 90 days after enactment of this act, detailing U.S. efforts to help these communities, including assistance consistent with Article 125 of the Iraqi Constitution; assistance in building an indigenous community police force in the Ninevah Plains; and efforts to support NGOs in the region.

Brazil Approves Mega-Dam, Displacing 40,000 People

Dam building seems to be one of the most consistent threats to Indigenous lands; Brazil just approved a new mega-dam project in the Amazon.

In the face of fierce opposition from indigenous peoples, social movements and scientists, IBAMA issued an environmental licence on 1 June, which will enable the Norte Energia consortium to start construction work.

COIAB, an alliance representing many indigenous organizations in Brazil’s Amazon said it ‘rejected IBAMA’s decision vehemently and with profound indignation’, stating that the government will not consult with indigenous peoples and treats their interests with ‘an authoritarianism never before seen in our young democracy…. In truth it wants to destroy indigenous communities with its model of development.’

This photo, of "Chief Raoni crying when he learned that the President of Brazil approved the Belo Monte dam project on the Xingu indigenous lands," really is worth a thousand words in getting across how devastating this is for the communities, and honestly just breaks my heart.

Israel - Palestine

It's all about indigeneity and who gets to define it. A photo essay "delineating the borders and porous entries between spaces.''

Individual Voices:Israelis and Palestinians on how the two sides can share the Holy City.

Wampanoag Powwow in Bermuda

In 1675-1676, during and after King Philip's War (that link goes to Jill Lepore's book The Name of War, which is an excellent read), victorious colonists sold members of the defeated Wampanoag tribe into slavery in Barbados. (Slave owners and traders tended to prefer slaves who were not native to any given area, as it decreased the likelihood of successful escapes.) Centuries later, the descendants of those Wampanoag people still celebrate their Native American heritage.

"Development" and Human Rights Abuses

An independent United Nations expert has released a report detailing current problems facing Indigenous populations; resource extraction and "development" projects are "the most significant sources of abuse of [Indigenous peoples'] human rights worldwide":

“In its prevailing form, the model for advancing with natural resource extraction within the territories of indigenous peoples appears to run counter to the self-determination of indigenous peoples in the political, social and economic spheres,” the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples James Anaya told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Anaya also pointed out that more understanding of Indigenous concerns could help resolve some of these conflicts.

“The lack of a minimum common ground for understanding the key issues by all actors concerned entails a major barrier for the effective protection and realization of indigenous peoples’ rights,” he added, praising a new Peruvian law compelling private companies to consult indigenous communities before going ahead with major projects such as mining.

Cherokee Freedmen Agreement Reached

Apparently, the Cherokee Nation, the Freedmen, and the U.S. government have reached an agreement on the issue of citizenship for the Cherokee Freedmen.

"We've agreed to everything," Freedmen attorney Jonathan Velie said. "We've agreed upon an order between the Cherokee Freedmen, Cherokee Nation, the (federal) government ... to essentially reinstate the citizens into the Cherokee Nation, so that they may vote equally with fellow Cherokee citizens."

The agreement was reached as a preliminary hearing was held in federal court in Washington, D.C. to decide whether the September 24 election for principal chief of the 300,000-member Cherokee tribe could proceed without Freedmen votes.

102-Year-Old Athabascan Matriarch Passes Away

Hannah Solomon was a living part of history.

The longtime parishioner and respected Native leader died peacefully at her Fairbanks home late Friday afternoon with family members by her side. "It's time," she said, in her Native Gwich'in language, before taking her last breath, daughter Daisy Stevens said.

Born on Oct. 10, 1908, in Old Rampart, a remote community on the Porcupine River near the Canada border, and raised in Fort Yukon, Hannah's life experience is unmatched by few living today.

She grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle, which meant moving around to seasonal trapping and fish camps.

...Recently, during one of her daily visits to see her mother, Varner said Hannah told her of a dream that foretold her death. "I was sitting on a stump on the bank of the Yukon River. It was so beautiful all around, and then I saw people walking by with their heads down and I wondered why they were so sad. And then I saw a coffin and I wondered why they were so sad, because I was so happy."

Bringing a Language Back to Life

Reviving a language that's no longer spoken? It's possible - one child is even being raised with it as her first language!

According to literature from the project, “Recognizing that the colonists preferred” written documents, the native people of Cape Cod “became the first American Indians in the English-speaking New World to develop and use an alphabetic writing system…to record personal letters, wills, deeds, and land transfers amongst each other and between communities.”

Ironically, the very method that the settlers used against the natives has become a tool for the reclamation. Court documents use written Wampanoag language, and those records allow scholars of the language to deduce rules of grammar and vocabulary.

Sounds like a fascinating project on a lot of levels.

Blood Quantum Issues

A very interesting blog post over at the National Museum of the American Indian blog, written by NMAI cultural specialist Dennis Zotigh, about blood quantum and determining tribal identity.

A colleague and I were discussing tribes that use blood quantum to determine their membership. She said, "Tribes that do this are setting themselves up for extinction. Eventually intermarriage will wipe fixed blood quantum out.” I totally agree with her: under the current blood quantum of my own tribal membership, my future grandchildren will not qualify to be members. As an American Indian and tribal member, this concerns me.

My colleague said her tribe recently opened up their membership for new members including new babies, people who moved out of state, etc. In order to become a new member each person seeking enrollment had to answer, historical, cultural, and family questions that pertained to the tribe's identity. For newborns, their parents had to answer these questions.

It was this tribe’s belief that if prospective members were connected to their community roots, they would know the answers to the tribe’s questions. Individuals who moved away and did not maintain any connection to their tribal community were not able to answer the questions and were refused membership, regardless of blood quantum. Perhaps this is one alternative that tribes will consider to replace blood quantum requirements.

Worth reading in full - and keep an eye out for the podcast of Friday's conference session on this. I have it marked in my calendar already.

Faultlines of Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship: Cherokee Freedmen

The issue of the Cherokee Freedmen is one of the more interesting intersections of sovereignty, racism, treaty rights, and tribal identity. The Freedmen are African Americans who are descended from slaves owned by Cherokees; the Cherokee Nation granted them citizenship after the U.S. Civil War, as part of its articles of surrender. (Though there were Cherokees on both the Union and the Confederate sides, the Cherokee Nation as a whole was considered part of the Confederacy.)

In 2007, the Cherokee Nation voted to approve a constitutional amendment restricting citizenship to people who could prove descent from a Cherokee ancestor, which essentially terminated the citizenship of most Cherokee Freedmen. The battle over their Cherokee citizenship has gone back and forth through many courts (both tribal and federal), and this past week, the U.S. Federal Government demanded that the Cherokee Nation reinstate the citizenship of members who were descended from Cherokee-owned slaves. Chad Smith, the current Principal Chief of the Cherokees, has voiced his support for removing the Freedmen's citizenship, as Indian Country Today explains:

Smith wrote and spoke publicly in support of the 2007 constitutional amendment to remove freedmen from Cherokee Nation citizenship rolls if they had no documentable Indian blood. “Cherokees are Indians,” he wrote in a March 9, 2007 Indian Country Today editorial. “They are the indigenous and aboriginal people of this land and there is a commonality of history, language, heritage and culture. It finally came to a point that non-Indians were claiming to be Cherokee when, in fact, they are not. So the vote was an affirmation of identity as Indian for those voting.”

Representatives of the Cherokee Freedmen strongly disagreed:

“I think it’s a huge injustice,” said Marilyn Vann, Cherokee Freedmen and president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association. “Number one, the freedmen people have citizenship based on the 1866 treaty. Our ancestors helped build up the tribe. [Citizenship] was something promised by the U.S. government and the tribal government, just as every nation that has enslaved or [colonized] people has brought those minorities into their society. Ancient Rome; the U.S. with the blacks in the Deep South; Romania, which enslaved Gypsies—they’ve all done it. That’s only the right and proper thing to do.”

This issue shows the multiple fault lines that exist when we talk about membership, citizenship, sovereignty, indigeneity, and national belonging. (It is also connected to an ongoing tribal election in the Cherokee nation, but that's a whole other story.)

Malaysian Indigenous Tribes Lose Case Against Dam

Indigenous tribes in Malaysia brought a lawsuit against the seizure of their lands to make way for a giant hydroelectric dam. The nation's highest court decided that their eviction was legal and did not violate their rights.

"It is an unfair decision. I have not been fully compensated," said Ngajang Midin, 50, of the Ukit tribe, as tears rolled down his face. He has already moved to higher ground and the multi-billion-dollar dam has begun operations.

"My cocoa and pepper trees are underwater. My ancestors' graves are buried under the sea of water," he said.

About 15,000 people were forcibly relocated to make room for the dam and a reservoir about the size of Singapore, which began generating power last month. Many have made an unhappy transition to life in drab resettlement areas, and representatives of the evicted indigenous people launched a series of legal appeals.

Colin Nicholas, founder and coordinator of the Center for Orang Asli Concerns -- whose name uses the Malay term for indigenous people -- said..."The fear now is these people will become internal refugees because they can be forced to relocate," he said.

Sounds familiar - Chippewa Flowage anyone?

Language Politics in Australia

In Australia's Northern Territory,

Almost three-quarters of the 1300 Aboriginal children who enter Northern Territory schools each year are from families where languages other than English are spoken in the home.

The Northern Territory Government recently revised its law on English-only instruction during the first four hours of the school day, allowing for flexibility in deciding what language young children are taught in.

Under the draft policy, bilingual schools would be able to continue teaching in Indigenous languages during the first four hours of each day. English will now be regarded as an additional language rather than the primary language is some schools.

There has been a considerable amount of debate on this issue; some articles to get you started are Early language support for Indigenous school learning success and English off pedestal in remote language schooling.