To the Editor:

Columbus, OH has once again distinguished itself. After walking more than 2,400 miles from San Francisco since February, a group of men, women and children experienced their first police problem on their journey in Columbus. The Longest Walk is a group of about forty mostly Native American people who are walking to Washington DC for the Seventh Generation for youth, peace, justice, the healing of Mother Earth, heart conditions, alcoholism, drug addiction and other diseases. It is a spiritual walk, a historical walk, and a walk for educational awareness for the American and world communities about the concerns of the American Indian People. And, as they go, they are picking up trash.

On Monday, June 2, as this peaceful group walked in the parking lane and on the sidewalk on the west side of Columbus on Main Street, eight police cars zoomed up, one blocking their way. A police officer came up to a van that follows the walkers and reached into the window and grabbed and yanked the steering wheel. He yelled at the young woman who was driving a carload of young children and threatened Your children would be taken away and given to Childrens Services! As the children began to cry, their mothers who were walking came to see what was wrong and to comfort them. A walker charged with security came up and was grabbed, kneed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed. A police officer pointed a taser gun at the head of a walker who was also an attorney as he spoke to the police. A grandmother spoke softly to an officer asking what the concern was and trying to calm a situation that was becoming increasingly frightening. She pointed out We are like your mothers, your sisters, your children. Ultimately the walkers were allowed to continue, but were badly shaken by this unprovoked and frightening experience.

The walkers have walked though the snow, extreme rain, and the blazing sun. They are often tired, hungry, thirsty and sore. They will continue through Ohio on Route 40 to their destination of Washington DC, expecting to arrive next month.

I hope our leaders will ask questions about our Columbus Welcome to these peaceful people who were picking up our trash as they walked for health, justice and the environment.

If you are embarrassed for our city by our polices harassment, as I am, consider sending a message of support and a donation if you are able, to the Longest Walk at their website at www. longestwalk. org.

Lynn Crevling
822 South Roosevelt
Columbus, OH 43209

(614) 291-0192 (W)

Deanna Rae StandingCloud-Green

612-998-7565 (Cell)

612-824-4060 (Home)

www.myspace.com/d_rae1979

Heres the link for the story about my nephew who needs prayers

http://wcco.com/video/?id=42076@wcco.dayport.com

Han Mitakuyapi.

I gave a radio interview with a radio station in Ontario with a program called Healing the Earth on the topic of the Sesquicentennial and the recent protests.  You can listen or download the interview through this link:

http://www.resistanceisfertile.ca/
They do a great job of covering Indigenous topics and allow for far more depth than mainstream stations here…

Waziyatawin
–
Waziyatawin, Ph.D.

Han Mitakuyapi!

I just wanted to let you all know that I was asked to be on Public Television’s Almanac this Friday evening.  Apparently this month they are bringing an historian on each week to talk about the Sesquicentennial.  It’s a live show from 7-8 pm.  I will be glad to have this forum to share information about the Dakota struggle for truth telling and justice.

Waziyatawin

ALL,
Tonight, around 8:15 PM, one of our attorneys (in the 1805 Treaty litigation), Barb Nimis, called and said that my younger daughter, Waziyata Win (Dr. Angela Cavender Wilson) had been arrested, again.  Waziyata Win told the officers that she is a Dakota person, that Minnesota is Dakota land, and that she was only telling the truth.  In addition, two other Anishinabe persons had been arrested, Steve Blake, and a woman called Flower.
These people were peacefully protesting, with signs, posters, banners, drums, and a gallows with 38 nooses hanging from it.  Angela was arrested for Disorderly Conduct and let go.  Steve Blake, with a hand drum, was singing a honor song for the 38 Dakota (hence, the 38 nooses) men who were hanged at Mankato, MN on December 26, 1862 in what was and is the largest mass execution in the history of the United States.  Four officers descended upon Steve and attacked him, who is a sickly man and had just gotten out of the hospital.  The woman named Flower rushed to help and, apparently, hit an officer.  Steve, now, is in the hospital and Flower is in Ramsey hospital.
It seems that these officers have instructions to harass, intimidate, and arrest Dakota People, with the apparent blessing of the Sesquicentennial Commission, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the other white supremacists and racists who do not want to hear the TRUTH about bounties, concentration camps, forced marches, forced removals/ethnic cleansing;  warfare,  massive land theft,  broken treaties,  genocide, etc.
I urge all of our friends, supporters, and allies to be there with us when we peacefully demonstrate, show our posters, carry our banners, and hand out our pamphlets and flyers to tell the TRUTH.  We need all of our allies – white, black, Mexican, other Indigenous Peoples – to stand there in support and solidarity, to be there with their cameras, the video cameras, to observe what happens to the Dakota People and their supporters when they tell the TRUTH.
We need white people to march with us.  The cops will think twice before bashing our heads with their batons, before arresting us, before saying some of the racist and intimidating things they are fond of saying, if some white people are there with us.  The cops know that if it is an “Indian’s” word agasint the word of a white cop that there will be NO credence given to the Native person.  However, if a white person sees what is happening, the cop will fear, or at least think twice before he does what he wants to do to Native Peoples.  That is to hit them, beat them.  One cop, at Ft. Snelling, on Sat. 5/10 was heard to say that he was looking forward to do a little “thumping”, meaning beating the crap out of the Dakota People.
It seems that the arrests are increasing and the violence is intensifying against our Dakota People and their Anishinabe supporters and other allies.  I see this trend continuing as we implement and execute our other planned and peaceful activities.  As Dakota People, who comprise about 5 10-thousandths of a percent of the total population of approximately 5-and-a-half million people in the state of Minnesota.  We are struggling against overwhelming odds – “they” have the troops and cops, the horses (like at Ft. Snelling), the guns, the tanks, the tasers, and their law, especially their law which is their legal ideology which is used to enforce the exploitation of the Indigenous Peoples and their continued oppression.
However, many of us Dakota feel we have TRUTH and our spirituality to fight against these overwhelming odds, and we are optimistically believing that TRUTH will prevail.
I wish to thank all the allies and supporters out there who have supported our efforts and activities to highlight the Dakota voice, to get the Dakota perspective out there.  We thank you for being at our EVENT ONE activities:  1A – the posters and banners on the Mendota bridge during rush hour, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, on Fri. 5/09;  1B – the greeting of the wagon train at Ft. Snelling, on Sat. 5/10, at which seven people, including me, were arrested;  1C – the public rally at the State Capitol, on Sun. 5/11.
We are going to need all of you at the remaining four (4) activities that we have planned for the Sesquicentennial year of 2008 in our efforts to get the TRUTH out there, the TRUTH of what really happened in this state between the stealers/settlers and the Dakota People:  EVENT TWO – the exercising of our original and traditional fishing rights in one of the lakes in the ceded area, 155,000+ acres, of the Treaty of 1805;  EVENT THREE – the trial of Ramsey and Sibley for Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity;  EVENT FOUR – which we will mention later;  and EVENT FIVE – a legislative activity.
Thank you for listening to me.

Chris Mato Nunpa
320.981-0206 (cell)
” matonunpa@earthlink.net “

Support from Italy for Native Protest against Minnesota celebration

Hi, my name is Alessandro Profeti, I live in Italy, I
published, in my italian Blog www.nativiamericani.it,  an
article on your legitimate protest by inserting the Youtube
video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ait0L50yA “May 10,
2008 – ‘Wagon Train” at Fort Snelling”. We support your
actions, we believe that it is necessary to stop the silence
about your true history. We ask for a long time recognition
of the Genocide of Peoples Native Americans, please see my
video “Genocide is true”,
http://www.nativiamericani.it/?p=342 in italian and english
language. Please send news, updates, and also indications on
how we can help. Your people arrested by the police is free
now?
Respectfully
Alessandro Profeti, Italy
Nativi Americani.it
http://www.nativiamericani.it

Subject: [oceti_sakowin] VISIT/Ihantunwan Dakota/Resistance/Hog Farm

Hau Mitakuyapi, “Hello my relatives”
Owasin cantewasteya nape ciyuzapi do!  “With a good heart, I greet all of you with a handshake.”
I just returned from a visit to the Ihanktunwan Dakota Reservation, May 01-03, 2008.  The purpose of the visit was to stand in support and solidarity with the Ihanktunwan against the hog farm that will soon start operations.  However, it rained on Fri 5/02 so there was no standing and watching the invaders build their pig farm.  I wish to share some thoughts, observations, and reactions…

Read the rest of this entry »

Subject: [oceti_sakowin] VISIT/Ihantunwan Dakota/Resistance/Hog FarmHau Mitakuyapi, “Hello my relatives”
Owasin cantewasteya nape ciyuzapi do!  “With a good heart, I greet all of you with a handshake.”
I just returned from a visit to the Ihanktunwan Dakota Reservation, May 01-03, 2008.  The purpose of the visit was to stand in support and solidarity with the Ihanktunwan against the hog farm that will soon start operations.  However, it rained on Fri 5/02 so there was no standing and watching the invaders build their pig farm.  I wish to share some thoughts, observations, and reactions.

1.)  As I approached the Ft. Randall Casino Hotel on Th. 5/01 I wondered what I should do first, who I should call, and who could tell me exactly where the site of the hog farm is.  I was registering at the hotel desk and there comes Faith Spotted Eagle.  We exchanged greetings and she said she would show me around.
I mention this because I have noticed that as I have been following, learning, and practicing our ancient spiritual ways, that things seem to fall into place.  And this happens when I have prayed about what I am going to do.  Faith came along and answered all my questions.  This has happened many times for me.

2.)  I met some young people from Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas.  These young people were very intelligent and talented. It was they who created the videos about the Resistance to the hog farm.
The names and email addresses of these young people are:
Carlos Cariaga

primitivesun@yahoo.com
Diane Sampson sun_shyne25@yahoo.com
Jon Ray jonra505@yahoo.com
Chris Ross native_prophecy@yahoo.com
It was a pleasure to eat the evening meal with them.    3.)  That evening, Th. 5/01, the Longest Walk Talk Radio show hosts – Govinda Dalton and Brenda Norrell – interviewed Faith Spotted Eagle and her son, Glen.  The interview was very fascinating and informative.
Both Faith and Glen stressed that it was the Ihanktunwan Dakota who were in charge and had jurisdiction over the road BIA #29. Glen talked about the “animal nations” who would be impacted negatively by the hog farm.  He talked of the false arrests and how the police and the state troopers were the trespassers.  Faith stressed that these young men were not “protestors” but “protectors” of the People and of the Ihanktunwan land.  She also mentioned that the governor of South Dakota had NOT communicated with the Ihanktunwan Dakota People.  She talked about the passing of the guard from the older activists, like herself, to the younger activists, like her sons Glen and Kip, and John Zephier.

4.)  It was my pleasure to have breakfast with Brenda Norrell.  She was a writer for “Indian Country Today“.  They told her not to write of grass-roots movements and genocide.  She did, and was fired.  she has 25 years of experience.  She was, then, blackballed.  She couldn’t get a job.  No one would pay her for her expertise and skills.  Now she is working for the Longest Walk.
She told me that the Colorado legislature had passed a resolution about genocide and holocaust of the Indigenous Peoples of the U.S.  That this action had created much controversy.

5.)  That Friday morning, 5/02, I was interviewed by Govinda and Brenda re: the Sesquicentennial, the 150th birthday of Minnesota as a state.  This interview can be found at:

http://www.earthcycles.net under “Genocide. 6.)  That afternoon, Fri. 5/02, I was invited to participate in a talk show with Govinda and Brenda.  This also can be found at

www.earthcycles.net
However, I am not sure which topic it is under.    7.)  That evening, Fri. 5/02, Govinda and Brenda interviewed Faith Spotted Eagle, her son, Kip Spotted Eagle, John Zephier, John’s wife, and Joan Olive, who described herself as “the token white woman.”
This was when I found out about all 45 state trooper cars in the state of South Dakota were there at Marty, South Dakota, along with the local police, the county sheriff and his deputies, 2 SWAT teams, and 2 snipers.  In my opinion, these supposed “law enforcement” officers were there to shoot and kill “Indians.”  I have always viewed South Dakota as an extremely racist state, a state where there is so much racial hatred.
John talked about the bullying,” and intimidating behavior of the officers.  There was a front-loader that knocked over a Dakota youth.
Then, there was the incident in which John’s 24-year-old son was “chain-sawed” in the back of his legs and left bleeding alone in the field.  The son is alive but can’t walk right now.  The sheriff says it was “an accident.”  John mentioned that the BIA police “would not protect us.”  As I listened to Kip and John, I wanted to cheer, to cry, and was so damn angry at these hate-filled racists.
John said, “we have alwaysd been in a fight with South Dakota.  We stood our ground.  We’re still standing our ground.”
The “token white woman” was very knowledgeable about the toxic substances that come from a hog farm and how these poisons harm the children, the people, the water, and the earth.
One ironic incident, and absurdly humorous, clean water from the Yankton reservation area was piped down to Hull, Iowa, where this pig farm corporation came from.  Apparently, the water in Hull, Iowa was to dirty to use with the pigs.
8.)  As I was driving home today, I called Faith Spotted Eagle to thank her.  She told me that Erin Brockovich was going to defend those arrested, was going to represent the Ihanktunwan Dakota in a class action law suit, and was going to defend the young man who was “chain-sawed” by the Chain-saw Madman.  What wonderful news!

However, the Ihanktunwan Dakota People need our help, finances, encouragement, etc.  Those of you who follow the ancient traditional ways.  Pray for the Ihanktunwan People when you’re at your personal alters.  Pray for them when you go into the Inipi.  Pray for them when you load your pipe.
That’s something all of us can do, pray for them no matter what our religious/spiritual persuasion is.

Hau, henana epe kte.  “Yes, this is all I have to say”
Toksta, ake owas waciyakapi kte.  “I will see all of you again, soon.”

Mato Nunpa de miye do!  “I am Two Bear!”

Indian Uprising is a one hour public and cultural affairs program concerned with sober and meaningful issues by, for and about Indigenous people.

(Indian Uprising on Sunday 7-8pm)

Program producer, Chris Spotted Eagle, is a long-time resident and activist in Minneapolis. He was a TV producer at Twin Cities Public Television. Spotted Eagle said, “regular programming about Indian issues on any radio station here in the Twin Cities was nonexistent. Indian Uprising is filling that historical gap.”

About fifty-five thousand Indian people live in Minnesota with over half living in the Twin Cities. Ojibwe people are the largest group in the state with Dakotah being second. Other Native people from Nations throughout the U.S., including Alaska live here too.

http://www.kfai.org/node/125

History of Maple Sugar and Maple Syrup

Once a staple of American life, the sweet products of the maple tree are now specialty items. Over the years, the price of cane sugar fell dramatically, and now cane sugar is the variety most Americans use every day. The popularity of maple syrup keeps Vermont sugarhouses going. As anyone who has ever tasted it knows, genuine maple syrup has a taste and texture that the imitations just cannot match. (In Quebec, cheap imitation maple syrup is called "sirop de poteau" or "pole syrup", suggesting that it was made by tapping telephone poles. We couldn’t agree more.)

Here is an interesting article on the making "Zeezibahkwat" or Maple Syrup

also called "Ziinzibaakwad" and "Sinzibukwud"

Please click the photos below to enlarge

 

Master Sgt.Woodrow Wilson Keeble receives award posthumously
WASHINGTON – A Sioux warrior received overdue recognition from the president of the United States.

On March 3, Army Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson ”Woody” Keeble, who passed away nearly 26 years ago, became one of a select few to receive the Medal of Honor during an overflowing White House ceremony packed with tribal dignitaries, military leaders and proud family members. Keeble is believed to be the first Native person of full Sisseton-Wahpeton ancestry to be given the award.
While American Indians as a group have long been recognized as having an above-average commitment to serving in the American armed services, fewer than 10 individual Indians have received the Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor bestowed by the American government for action against an enemy force.
A pride-filled Russell Hawkins, Keeble’s stepson who is also of Sisseton-Wahpeton descent, was in attendance in the East Room to accept the medal from an apologetic President George W. Bush. Also in attendance were Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as well as South Dakota Sens. Tim Johnson and John Thune, Democrat and Republican, respectively; Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D.; and former South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow, a Republican.
Bush admitted openly that the recognition of Keeble’s courageous acts during the Korean War should have been bestowed many years ago – long before Keeble’s death in 1982. However, due to a series of bureaucratic blunders, and perhaps racism, the president said the honor did not come until this year.
”On behalf of our grateful nation, I deeply regret that this tribute comes decades too late,” Bush said at the ceremony. ”Woody will never hold this medal in his hands or wear it on his uniform. He will never hear a president thank him for his heroism. He will never stand here to see the pride of his friends and loved ones, as I see in their eyes now.”
Bush described the long time it took the military man to be recognized as a ”terrible injustice,” but added that Keeble ”believed America was the greatest nation on Earth, even when it made mistakes.”
Keeble’s family and friends explained after the ceremony that tribal members and politicians from the Dakota region had long been pushing for Keeble’s strategic military efforts during the Korean War to be properly recognized.
In October 1951, Keeble saved the lives of fellow American soldiers by fending off several Chinese enemies on a steep hill, while he himself was wounded as a result of two rifle shots to the arm and a grenade exploding near his face.
”Soldiers watched in awe as Woody single-handedly took out one machine gun nest, and then another,” Bush recalled during the ceremony. ”When Woody was through, all 16 enemy soldiers were dead, the hill was taken, and the Allies won the day.”
Keeble, who was known by his fellow soldiers as ”Chief,” first saw intense combat during World War II, for which he earned his first Bronze Star and the first of his four Purple Hearts. An athletic man, Keeble was being recruited by the Chicago White Sox before he was first called to duty. Later, with Keeble’s opportunity to play professional baseball having passed, he returned to service as a master sergeant.
”There were terrible moments that encompassed a lifetime, an endlessness, when terror was so strong in me, that I could feel idiocy replace reason,” Keeble once said of his service, according to the Army. ”Yet, I have never left my position, nor have I shirked hazardous duty. Fear did not make a coward out of me.”
Army men twice recommended that Keeble receive the Medal of Honor in the 1950s, but their applications were apparently lost by the military both times. When family members tried to renew the effort to get Keeble his award in the 1970s, they were told by Pentagon officials that the legal deadline had passed. He was instead given the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest commendation.
Later, family members renewed their attempts, but were told that it would take an act of Congress for Keeble to receive the award. After many pleas from tribal members, the four current U.S. senators from North Dakota and South Dakota introduced legislation to award Keeble the medal. President Bush ultimately signed the legislation in 2007, which paved the way for the Department of Defense to recognize Keeble’s bravery.
”Master Sgt. Keeble’s family first contacted me in 2002 and I have been fighting ever since to get him the recognition he deserves,” Johnson said in a statement. ”The Keeble family, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, and all the people of the Dakotas today have reason to celebrate and remember his service and valor.”
Kurt Bluedog, a great-nephew to Keeble, said after the ceremony that he’d like to believe that racism wasn’t involved in his uncle’s slow-to-come recognition, adding, ”I think this kind of thing happens more often than we think.”
Hawkins also discounted racism, saying that he didn’t think Keeble would have said the missing papers were a case of discrimination. ”He didn’t see racial colors,” Hawkins said. ”He didn’t see racial barriers.”
Family members now plan to display the Medal of Honor in a public place, such as a museum or the North Dakota National Guard armory. They hope it will be viewed as a symbol of pride for the Sisseton-Wahpeton people, as well as all American Indians.
Hawkins said he accepted Bush’s word that the ceremony was an attempt to ”set things right” and that his stepfather knew that he had ”done right.”
After his service in Korea, Keeble returned to North Dakota, where he worked as a counselor until suffering a series of strokes. Living in poverty in his later years, he was forced to pawn all of his military medals. He died in 1982 at age 65 and is buried in Sisseton, S.D.
During the White House ceremony, a chair decorated with an Army uniform once worn by Keeble was displayed prominently beside a chair bestowing the red shawl of his late wife, Blossom Iris Crawford-Hawkins.

By Greg Flakus, VoA News

They have been called the Greatest Generation for what they did to stop the Nazis in Europe and the Imperialist Japanese army in Asia and the Pacific. Veterans of World War II are said to be dying at the rate of 1,000 a day. Among those still with us are a few members of Native American Indian tribes, whose unique languages played a crucial role in the war effort. VOA correspondent Greg Flakus sought out one of them in Pine Ridge, South Dakota recently and filed this report about the last of the Lakota Code Talkers

Navajo Code Talkers

September 27, 2007 – Pine Ridge, South Dakota – The language is Lakota, one of three dialects of the people collectively called Sioux, a tribe of hunters and warriors that once roamed all over the northern plains. The language is divided into three dialects – Dakota, Nakota and Lakota – but any person who speaks one dialect can understand the others.

Clarence Wolf Guts is an 83-year-old Lakota warrior whose ability to speak his native language played a role in defeating the Japanese in World War II.

“I helped win the war, I helped, me and my buddies,” he said.

With a surname that many non-Indians in the US military found amusing, Clarence Wolf Guts took his fair share of teasing, but he soon found himself assigned with other Lakota speakers to a special unit. The so-called code talkers would send and receive messages in their language. Similar programs were operated by the U.S. Marines using mainly Navajo speakers. The Japanese were never able to understand the messages.

Clarence Wolf Guts

It was dangerous work, often carried out near the front lines, where Clarence says he saw plenty of combat.

“We got shot at and we did some shooting ourselves. You know it is not easy shooting at another human being,” he said.

Until a couple of years ago most people who knew Clarence Wolf Guts on the Pine Ridge reservation had no idea that he had been a code talker because he seldom spoke about it. Former Pine Ridge neighbor Charles Trimble now directs the Institute of American Indian Studies at the University of South Dakota.

Charles Trimble

“We did not know it,” he said. “I did not know until a couple of years ago when I was reading something. He never talked about it. A lot of times veterans would come home, especially during World War II and you would very seldom, except when two or three got together, hear them talk about that-about the horrible things that happened around them or anything else.”

It would be difficult to form a Lakota code-talker unit today because most of the estimated 8,000 speakers are elderly people and few young Lakotas can speak the language fluently. But the university offers classes in Lakota for both Indian and non-Indian students and Trimble says this helps keep the language alive.

“I think it is important,” he said. “I think it is beautiful and I think it helps a person and, certainly, it keeps the tribe alive, as a tribe.”

Trimble says the story of the Lakota code talkers is an important part of the heritage that binds tribal members together.

“There are benefits to knowing you are an Indian and accepting it, being an Indian and being proud of it and understanding it,” he said.

Clarence Wolf Guts now lives in a retirement home in Pine Ridge. He says seeing the people of his country healthy and happy is the greatest reward he gained from his service in the war.

“When I see people laughing and having a good time I realize why we were over there,” he said. “We done it for the people and if they are happy, then I am the happiest person alive.”

For many years after the war the code talkers were largely forgotten. But after military documents were declassified in the 1990s and a book came out about the Navajo code talkers, historians and news reporters sought out the surviving code talkers. There had been over a 100 of them from 17 tribes. Most of them have passed on now, but a few like Clarence Wolf Guts remain to tell the story of how they used their native tongue to help win a war.

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Letter from Leonard Peltier
25th Year Reunion of Incident At Oglala
June 26, 2000

Greetings Friends and Supporters,

But please don’t understand my frustation for a lack of sympathy about the loss of the agents’ lives.  I do feel for the families of the agents because I know first hand what it is like to lose a loved one. I have lost many loved ones through the years due to senseless violent acts. If I had known what was going on that day, and I could have stopped it, I would have.

But in order for us to bring reconciliation to what was a very difficult time we first must have justice. We must continue to ask when the lives of our people will be given the same respect and value as others.  When will they stop carelessly locking up our people without applying the scrutiny and care the judicial system is supposed to guarantee?  When will guilty beyond a reasonable doubt become a standard that applies to us?  When will our guilt have to be proven, rather than assumed?  We suffer equally, but we are not treated equally.  There is hope for a better future and for peace.  But in order for us to live in peace, we must be able to live in dignity and without fear.

In closing, I want to say that your voices are important and your involvement in the effort to gain my freedom is crucial.  You know the truth and only you can express the reality of those brutal times.  It is also important that you explain to the youth what we stood for and why, because they are our hope for the future.  They can carry out our dream for our people to have pride in their culture, good schools, food, and health care, and most importantly, justice.  Please know that I continue to be here for you too, although I am limited in what I can do from behind these walls.  However, I will continue to help in whatever I can from here.  The one thing my situation has brought me at least, is a voice, and my voice is your voice.  So please do not hesitate to write me or contact the LPDC to inform me of what is going on.

I am growing older now and my body is beginning to deteriorate.  I sometimes wonder just how much longer I will be with you all on Mother Earth.  I hope that it’ll be a while longer because I long to be with you, my family and friends, to share some time together.  If not, and I don’t make it home to you, I will always be with you in spirit, at every Sun Dance and Inipi Ceremony, remembering both the happy and the painful times we shared.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

NYM press release March 2007

unceded Coast Salish Territory
nymchapter604(at)hotmail.com

March 30, 2007

Harriet Nahanee, a 73 year old Pacheedaht Grandmother, Elder, and Warrior passed away on February 24, 2007, in the manner that she lived her life. Standing strong defending Our Land and Our People. She died from pneumonia and undiagnosed lung cancer after serving 2 weeks in prison for her part in the 2006 blockade to defend Eagle Bluff, from the expansion of the Sea to Sky Highway, on her husband’s Skwxwu7mesh territory. The highway expansion is a key development project for the corrupt Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Winter Olympics.

In her lifetime, Harriet Nahanee was a loyal, supporter of AIM Warrior, Leonard Peltier, who was extradited from Vancouver in 1976, and convicted of the murder of 2 FBI agents. AIM had been actively supportive in the Lakota struggle to defend their communities in Pine Ridge from the FBI instigated war for the uranium in the Sacred Black Hills. The 2 FBI agents died in 1975 in a gunfight they started against an AIM family style camp. Since Leonard Peltier’s conviction, the truth has come out that the FBI fabricated testimony and evidence to extradite and convict Leonard Peltier of these murders.

Today, the FBI is attempting to pin Anna Mae’s murder on her trusted friend and comrade, former AIM member and Warrior John Graham. When Anna Mae’s body was found, the FBI attempted to cover-up her murder, but failed when a 2nd independent autopsy made the discovery of a bullet lodged in her head. Since that time, the FBI has worked hard over the years to pin Anna Mae’s murder on her own organization, AIM.

Since John Graham’s arrest in Vancouver in December 2003, for the 1st degree murder of Anna Mae, Harriet Nahanee, has stood by John through his 4 years of living under house arrest, and through his 2005 Extradition hearing that was approved. During Harriet’s last days in the hospital before she passed away, her close friend Jennifer Wade of Amnesty International visited her. Her last words to Jennifer were about her biggest concerns. First she brought up her 78 year old Eagle Bluff Comrade Betty Krawczyk, who is currently serving a 9-15 month sentence for her part in the blockade. Then Harriet brought up John Graham and his May 17, 2007 extradition appeal. Jennifer Wade reassured her that John’s loved ones, his supporters, and his lawyers would work hard to fight John’s extradition.

On behalf of Harriet Nahanee, a strong Pacheedaht Elder, who has passed away standing up for Our People, we ask that people look at the facts in this murder case, and to stand strong beside John Graham. This murder case has nothing to do with delivering justice for Anna Mae, and is only a part of the FBI smear campaign that is set out to destroy any pride Natives may have about the contributions made to Our People by the American Indian Movement.