Native American Heritage Month


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"Only the most enlightened teachers will explain that this world certainly wasn't new to the millions of indigenous people who already lived here when Columbus arrived.” Wilma Mankiller
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An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We
were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.
It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.
Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We
made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing
so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin
was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We
were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin
chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin
will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We
had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz.
I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,
forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We
know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die
soon.

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"In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us."
Robin Wall Kimmerer

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In celebration of the original American native heritage.
Open thread, so be free with your thoughts.

Beautiful Native American Women.jpg

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
—Chief Seattle, 1854

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Hope all survived "giving Tuesday" OK.
What's cooking?

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Lookout's picture

is a wonderful little book of first nations poetry and writings.

Here's a couple of examples...
“Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round . . . The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls, birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds. And they were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop.”

― Chief Black Elk

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Hope you all have a good day. Thanks for the OT!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout

A very good explanation.
Enjoy your day!

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I created several years ago for the folks at The Evening Blues when it was still at DKos:

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@JtC

Especially like the horse charging up the tracks at the locomotive bearing down.

Thanks!

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enhydra lutris's picture

Native American Heritage Month. Nothing much to add this morning. Tons to do and energy a bit low, but we'll get through it.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

zed2's picture

This video is about SA's Coronation Park squatter camp, an area where homeless white families are living for free. No rent is charged, and the beginnings of a favela enables the homeless to have a place to keep their belongings and sleep relatively undisturbed in a community, that is understanding and protective. .

A Vicious circle of poverty and an economic slump in employment leads to lack of opportunity that has resulted in the many former members of a former privileged class now living in a squatters camp in South Africa.

They claim a binary future which they say is the black majority's fault, but I have to say, thats not so clear to me. Rather I just think that the global economy has passed them by, as they have not kept up their skills to match the requirements of the new economy.

In South Africa, as in so many other places, Poor is the new black.

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