Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community

Forwarded on behalf of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

URGENT! Leonard Peltier’s Safety in Jeopardy!

Dear LP Supporters,

I am so OUTRAGED!  My brother Leonard was severely beaten upon
his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary.  When he went
into population after his transfer, some inmates assaulted him.
The severity of his injuries is that he suffered numerous blows to
his head and body, receiving a large bump on his head, possibly
a concussion, and numerous bruises.  Also, one of his fingers
is swollen and discolored and he has pain in his chest and
ribcage. There was blood everywhere from his injuries.

We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI
orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about
his safety.  It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not
even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this
heinous assault.  Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be
a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner. He was placed in solitary
confinement and only given one meal, this is generally done when you
won’t name your attackers; incidentally being only given one meal
seriously jeopardizes his health because of his diabetes. Prison
officials refuse to release any info to the family, but they need
to hear from his supporters to protect his safety, as does President
Obama. His attorneys are trying to get calls into him now.

This attack on LP comes on the heels of the FBI’s recent letter,
prompting this attack by FBI supporters as an attempt to discredit
LP as a model prisoner. Anyone who has been in the prison system
knows well that if you refuse to name your attackers or file charges
against them, then you lose your status as a victim and/or given
points against your possible parole and labeled as a perpetrator. It
is not uncommon, in fact is quite common for the government to use
Indian against Indian and they still operate under the old adage
“it takes an Indian to catch an Indian”. In 1978, they made an
attempt to assassinate him through another Indian man who was also
at Marion prison with LP. But Standing Deer chose to reveal the
plot to him instead of taking his life in exchange FOR A CHANCE
AT FREEDOM. When Standing Deer was released in 2001, he joined
the former Leonard Peltier Defense Committee as a board member. He
also began to speak on Leonard’s behalf until his murder six years
ago today. Prior to his murder, Standing Deer confided with close
friends and associates that the same man who visited him in Marion
to assassinate Peltier, had came to Houston, TX and told him that
he had better stay away from Peltier and anything to do with him.

We are aware that currently, the FBI is actively seeking support
for his continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier and also also
seeking support from Native People.  So please be aware, and keep
Leonard in your prayers. The FBI is apparently afraid of the impact
we are having. If they will set him up to blemish his record just
before a parole hearing, what will they do when it looks like his
freedom will become a reality? We need to make sure that nothing
happens to him again!

Please write the President, send it priority or registered
mail.  Email to Change.gov or email President Obama.  Call your
congressional representatives and write letters, not email, to
them. Do what you can to get the word out to insure that LP is
receiving adequate medical attention for his injuries.

I am asking you, supporters of Leonard and advocates of justice at
this time to help.  I don’t know what else to do. Please Help!

Thank you Betty Peltier-Solano Executive Coordinator
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

Also call and request Leonard be treated with dignity and
respect. Canaan Federal Prison
570-488-8000

—–

Time to set him free… Because it is the RIGHT thing to do.

Friends of Peltier
http://www.FreePeltierNow.org
——————————————————————————-
To subscribe,   send a blank message to freepeltiernow-on@mail-list.com
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to freepeltiernow-off@mail-list.com
To change your email address, send a message to freepeltiernow-change@mail-list.com
with your old address in the Subject: line
To contact the list owner, send your message to
freepeltiernow-list-owner@mail-list.com

mail-list.com    1302 Waugh Dr. #438    Houston, Texas    77019    USA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPixWM6qFGQ&feature=related

MORTON, Minn. – Gripping a cane tightly, Ernest Wabasha slowly reached to touch a pair of heavy iron shackles hanging from his mantel – the same shackles his great-grandfather, the legendary Chief Wabasha, wore during a forced march across the southwestern Minnesota plains a century ago.

  A portrait of Chief Wabasha hung nearby, surrounded by the strong faces of the Wabasha line before and after. The most recent are photos of Ernest and his son, Wabasha No. 6 and No. 7.

Ernest Wabasha’s eyes are watery and his 73-year-old body is frail, but the proud lift of his chin and the straight line of his mouth echo the framed pictures of his Mdewakanton Dakota ancestors.

Wabasha’s band endured a bloody war and was stripped of its south-central territory in the last century, but in time they made their way back. Asked about the strength of the Dakota – why they were driven to return – Wabasha became quiet and started straight ahead.

"It all comes back to leadership," Wabasha said.

The Wabashas, the Goodthunders and the Bluestones are among the old names in new generations in the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Today’s Mdewakanton Dakota say they are renewing a commitment toward unearthing their past from these river bluffs and surrounding prairies.

"We are coming together as a group again, as a Mdewakanton tribe," said Jody Goodthunder, a council member and former chairman. "We are reverting back to our culture. A lot of our members are moving back to the old ways."

Read the rest of this entry »

They had a beautiful baby boy, his name is Nicholas B. Monahan.

He was born on Dec 17th, 2008.

Nicholas is Sharon Lennartson grandson.

We are so happy that we have a new baby in the family.

Roland John Morris, Sr.  Fall, 1998

What made this Tribal Elder want to work against Tribal government and federal Indian Policy?   Roland John Morris, Sr., tried of watching his family die, asked Senators in Washington DC to step away from current Federal Indian policy and begin to treat all men equally.  Read his story below.

My name is Roland Morris Sr. I am a full-blooded Anishinabe American citizen from the Leech Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa. It is my hope you will discern the truthfulness of my message by examining both my heart, as well as my words.

When my brothers and sisters and I were growing up in the 50’s, the hateful overt racism did hurt. However, the reverse was also hurtful. When patronizing people essentially pat us on the head and said; "you poor dear, you are a victim and can’t possibly take care of yourself." and "you can’t be to blame for your actions", that was just as hurtful, if not more so.

On top of that, Federal Indian Policy itself views Native Americans as

Read the rest of this entry »

Tiffany Eggenberg offers sensitive pastel portraits of contemporary individuals whom she evidently encountered on an annual march commemorating the Dakota’s 1862-63 incarceration near Fort Snelling.

One of the more troubling incidents in Minnesota history occurred in Mankato 146 years ago today when 38 Dakota Sioux Indians were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Their deaths were the culmination of four months of warfare between the Dakota and white settlers in the Minnesota River Valley. Sparked by white incursion into Indian lands, the battles were fueled by the federal government’s violation of its own treaties, exploitation by traders who impounded payments due the Indians, retaliatory theft and slaughter by the Indians and subsequent atrocities on both sides.

Starvation, cultural differences, bounties, race hatred, disease and injustice contributed to

Read the rest of this entry »

Patzin:  Wombs and Land
By Patrisia Gonzales
Column of the Americas (c) July 16, 2008;
Patzin, “respect-worthy medicine” in Nahuatl,  is a monthly feature on Indigenous medicineMiriam Aviles-Reyes was pulled over by Tucson police while driving
brown, pregnant and without papers in December 2007.  In this era
where the border has been extended into city streets,  the uterus of
Indigenous women cannot escape militarization. Tucson police quickly
called in the border patrol; Miriam went into labor. Instead of her
husband by her side at the hospital, an immigration office kept watch,
insisting that she hurry up and push.  As her baby descended through
the birth canal, she recalled, the officer persisted in his threats to
deport her.

Nez Perce-Chicana scholar Ines Hernandez-Avila has addressed how the
reproducing bodies of Indigenous women are subject to state control
because they threaten many nation states and occupying forces with
their ability to reproduce and sustain distinct peoples.  With a 4 to
1 birth rate among young Latinas, Indigenous-rooted women pose various
threats to those who fear the browning of this country. Their bodies
and the acts of their bodies are challenges to notions of homeland.

What threat could Miriam have posed for the immigration official to
violate the most sacred moments of life?  It is doubtful she would
have attempted escape with a baby crowning.  The officer potentially
risked that child’s life from the duress that Miriam experienced.
Indigenous midwives say that when a pregnant woman experiences fright,
or trauma, what is referred to as susto, it causes susto in both
mother and child. Luckily, her son was born without major
complications, but only with time will the family know what birth
trauma was inflicted upon this small one’s life.  For many

Indigenous
peoples, the body is a land base and a sacred site and how we come
into this world is certainly a right to life and intricately linked to
self determination.Miriam, the mother of three U.S. citizens , originates from an old
Nahua village on the road to Xochicalco, a Mesoamerican university in
900 A.D.  To be Mexican, even if her Indigeneity was not recognized,
is still to be treated like an Indian during various attempts at
Indian removal in this country. For many like Miriam, their brown skin
and Indian faces do not allow for their Indianess to be physically
invisible. Instead, official  narratives surrounding labels such as
“Mexican” and  ”immigrant” deny their aboriginal histories and claims
and silence their original relationships to this continent. While in
labor, Miriam did sign papers agreeing to leave this country.

Around the same time, a grandmother in South Texas took on

Michael
Chertoff and the Department of Homeland Security in yet another
defense by Apache peoples to protect their land base and traditional
territories. Dr. Eloise Tamez and her daughter Margo are engaged in a
historic struggle for refusing to allow the border wall to traverse
the Tamez private property (part of a 1786 Spanish land grant)  and
impede their ancestral Native trails. Professor Tamez has been
described as a Mexican American grandmother, and yet she and her
family assert their Indigeneity as Nde’ (Lipan and Jumano Apache) and
Basque descendants.  El Calaboz Rancheria in the Lower Rio Grande
Valley, wrote Margo in a report to the United Nations, is located in
traditional homelands which were recognized by other Indigenous
peoples as “the place where the Lipan pray.”  The government has  sued
Tamez and she has countersued, while numerous elders have been
harassed by “armed personnel of the government,” according to Margo.
Calaboz, she writes, refers to an earthen dug-out prison: “… the
psychological warfare that the Spanish used against our ancestors to
contain them in little prison holes within the ground when they
resisted oppression and stood firm on dissidence against all power to
destroy a people.”The Tamez women are related to Esequiel Hernandez, the student who was
shot by U.S. Marines while herding his goats along the border in
Redford, Texas , in 1997. He was the first civilian killed by U.S.
military or National Guard since Kent State. A recent documentary
portrays how the marines, though charged with murder by the Texas
Rangers, were never prosecuted after a grand jury declined to indict
them. According to the Tucson-based Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, the
four- man unit, part of Joint Task Force Six, was the first known
joint domestic operation between the Departments of Justice and
Defense, and a precursor to the Department of Homeland Security.
Esequiel was Jumano Apache and doing what his ancestors have always
done, walk their traditional lands. As a local historian noted in The
Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez, they have walked those lands for 12,000
years. But Esequiel wasn’t “crossing the border.”  Its militarization
has extended from the womb of one Indigenous mother to another.   A
2008 report by that human rights coalition documented 128 bodies
recovered in the Arizona-Sonora border, including a miscarried fetus.
That which was life in a woman’s womb, child, tissue, blood, has
become these militarized lands.
(c) 2008 Column of the Americas

Gonzales can be reached at:
Column of the Americas – PO BOX 85476 – Tucson, AZ 85754
or Patzin@gmail.com

http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/
Site/Welcome.html

http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/
Site/Welcome.html