Tag: native americans

Not Satire: Newsom Took Money That Could Have Helped Stop Palisades Fires and Spent It Teaching American Indians to Start Fires

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California continues to light his constituents’ tax dollars on fire.

Moreover, he has done it in the name of cultural pandering and with dubious constitutionality.

According to the urban policy-focused City Journal, the state’s “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program, overseen by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CAL FIRE, has distributed $24 million to “tribal groups and other nonprofits” to teach American Indians, identified as “cultural fire practitioners,” how to clear brush from forests in ways their ancestors would have found familiar.

Meanwhile, taxpayers have seen no appreciable return on that expenditure. How much brush have the tribes cleared? California has released no data.

Of course, this is not meant as an attack on the tribes — far from it. After all, one could probably find $24 million between the couch cushions at the Pentagon.

What makes this expenditure maddening is that it, like most things in California, is dripping with wokeness.

For instance, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, who effectively oversees the program, justified it not on fire management grounds but as a remedy for historical injustices. California, he said, originated in a “state-sanctioned policy of genocide.” Thus, Crowfoot made it sound as if the governor had a plan to return the land to the “leadership of California Native American tribes.”

Newsom, of course, has no such plan. But saying that he has one sounds good in upscale places like the French Laundry.

Worse yet, the “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program engages in discrimination by allocating resources based on race.

“As part of this commitment to ‘cultural burning,’” the City Journal wrote, “California has created separate fire-certification processes for nontribal and tribal populations. White, black, Latino, and Asian fire bosses must receive technical certifications, including a 40-hour burn-boss course and, in some cases, a federal certificate. ‘Cultural fire practitioners,’ by contrast, are certified through simple tribal recognition that a person has ‘substantial experience’ burning for cultural purposes.”

Should anyone ever make a case of it, the U.S. Supreme Court almost certainly would find those race-based provisions unconstitutional.

Again, none of this reflects in any way on the tribes themselves. Perhaps some “cultural fire practitioners” really do have “substantial experience” in clearing brush via controlled fires. After all, early American history is filled with stories of Indians skilled in that practice.

In that case, however, why do they require public funding? Why must the privileged Newsom, one of the whitest of white men who ever lived, teach them traditional cultural techniques?

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Five years after the ‘unmarked graves’ claim, Canada still has no bodies — but plenty of demands for silence

The fifth anniversary of the claim that the remains of 215 Indian residential school students had been discovered at Kamloops, BC, has come and gone. Despite the fact that millions of dollars have been spent, and not one body has been found, there have been no apologies from those who made the claim. Quite the contrary, Canada’s Indian chiefs are now demanding the criminal prosecution of anyone who even questions the claim. As they see it, anyone disputing their claim — or even claiming that former residential school students had positive experiences at the schools — should be found guilty of “residential school denialism,” and severely sanctioned — even jailed.

Ottawa appears to be ready to oblige. Bill C-413 would make me a criminal for writing this article — and perhaps you for reading it and passing it on.

But if they get their way, they had better build a very big jail. And they will have to be prepared to throw many former residential school students in that jail. Because it is not hard to find positive residential school experiences described by former students.

Here is an example of a man heaping praise on his residential school and the dedicated people there who gave him a first-class education. According to him, if not for the years he spent at his residential school, he would have died as a drunk on skid row, like so many of his reserve friends. Instead, he went on to become a successful lawyer. He credited the 14 years he spent at a residential school for making that success possible. 

That fellow is Wilton Littlechild, who happens to be one of the three Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Commissioners. He certainly changed his tune later, but for most of his life, he and his family considered themselves very fortunate for his education at the school. Every year, the family and community held a picnic at their rural home, with the chiefs in attendance, to honour the teachers and staff who gave their son and friends the education so many Indians didn’t receive.

Littleton shared this revelation during a 2011 interview with University of New Brunswick students and at a TRC hearing. You can read the full interview at Speak Truth to Power Canada. 

Will Mr. Littlechild be jailed for making these comments about his overwhelmingly positive experience at his residential school?

And while we are on the subject of TRC commissioners, here is what the late Commissioner Murray Sinclair had to say about residential schools.

“While the TRC heard many experiences of unspeakable abuse, we have been heartened by testimonies which affirm the dedication and compassion of committed educators who sought to nurture the children in their care. These experiences must also be heard.”

Would Sinclair have been prosecuted for that?

Sinclair’s grandmother — the grandmother who raised him, and who Sinclair credited for his success — received her education at a residential school. Would the chiefs have her jailed for repeatedly declaring how lucky she had been to have had a residential school education?

Then there is the famous Indian playwright and musician, Tomson Highway, who wrote a book about his experiences at the Guy Hill Residential School near The Pas, Manitoba. He described his experience there as overwhelmingly positive.

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Inside Canada’s hidden dog cruelty crisis on First Nations reserves

Canada has a worldwide reputation as a ‘progressive’ nation that champions not only human rights, but also animal rights, which is reflected in provincial and federal laws as well as our cultural attitudes. So usually, when we think of rampant animal cruelty, we think of other societies — not our own. Because surely, if that were occurring on Canadian soil, citizens would hear about it regularly, right?

Sadly, there IS a rampant animal cruelty crisis in Canada; a dirty little secret, happening right under our noses. There is a disproportionate amount of neglect, starvation and abuse of dogs going on in First Nations reservations nationwide, including frequent ‘culls’. This is well known among the dog rescue community, so why is this issue not being urgently addressed by most law enforcement officials, politicians or mainstream media?

While animal abuse occurs at the hands of people from all races, there is a glaring disparity in accountability and transparency when it is done by Canada’s First Nations population; conversations are generally shut down quickly with excuses or accusations of racism, a common pattern when discussing sensitive societal issues in modern, liberal Canada.

A few bold, compassionate Canadian dog rescuers are sounding the alarm about this prevalent issue, perhaps none so loudly as Reed Salmon, an Albertan musician and outspoken, controversial animal rights activist who refuses to be silenced when raising awareness for suffering rez dogs.

Reed is the founder of the Reed Salmon Foundation and is also working on a new, nationwide organization to carry out this work.

With his blunt posts about the tragedies occurring on reserves, Reed has made serious waves online. He’s been accused of every label in the book, but he refuses to be silenced and aims to be a voice for the voiceless dogs who cannot speak up for — or defend — themselves. He also does on-the-ground rescue work, including delivering straw bales and dog food to reserves, emancipating dogs who are emaciated or freezing while tied up on short chains, and fundraising for rescues in the prairie provinces.

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Ottawa spent more than $1 million on Yukon ‘Indigenous food systems’ project

A federal agency handed more than $1 million to a small Yukon school board to promote “Indigenous food systems,” according to records tabled before the Senate agriculture committee.

According to a story broken by Blacklock’s, the funding came through the federal government’s Northern Isolated Community Initiatives Fund, a program that costs taxpayers roughly $6 million annually and is set to run until 2027.

According to the records, the Yukon First Nation Education Directorate received a total of $1,015,646 from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.

The largest portion of the funding, $845,000, went toward planning a “traditional processing kitchen” in Whitehorse.

“This one-year project focused on completing architectural and detailed design plans for a centralized traditional and local foods commercial kitchen,” the agency told senators.

According to the agency, the proposed facility would support the processing and storage of wild game in an urban setting and help promote traditional food-processing knowledge in First Nations curriculum.

Another $170,646 was spent on the Directorate’s urban nutrition program, including the purchase of a temperature-controlled delivery van.

Federal officials defended the spending as part of Ottawa’s broader push to address food security in remote northern communities.

“The fund plays a targeted role in advancing food initiatives that build local capacity,” agency managers wrote.

The Northern Isolated Community Initiatives Fund was launched in 2019 and bankrolls projects ranging from greenhouse operations and farming initiatives to traditional harvesting, food distribution systems and “food innovation” programs.

Records show taxpayers also funded:

  • $800,000 for an egg farmer in Hay River;
  • $600,000 for a grocery store in Wekweeti, Northwest Territories, population roughly 130;
  • $250,000 for a grocer in Arctic Bay;
  • $710,000 for fish freezers in Cumberland Sound.

“These examples show how the Agency supports food security, infrastructure and economic growth across the North in line with community needs and regional priorities,” managers wrote.

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Pickering councillor facing backlash for questioning Kamloops residential school narrative

City of Pickering Councillor Lisa Robinson is learning — the hard way — that in uber-woke Canada, one is forbidden from questioning certain official narratives. Or even speaking the truth if that truth might be uncomfortable or offensive when it comes to the sensibilities of certain people.

Recently, Robinson dared to venture near that political third rail that is the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C. This is the site of a mass grave of 215 bodies.

Or is it?

To date, not a scintilla of forensic evidence has been provided to prove that that there is a single body buried there.

And this fact was the crux of the matter when Robinson recently posted a four-minute video entitled: “215 ‘Mass Graves’ at Kamloops: Zero Bodies Found After 5 Years — The Lie Exposed.”

Cue the outrage from the usual suspects.

This included Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe who is now formally lodging a complaint against Robinson with the city’s integrity commissioner.

Mayor Ashe wants to see Robinson stripped of three months’ salary. Astonishingly, Robinson has already been docked a whopping 21 months’ salary. Not for uttering death threats or racial epithets, but rather, for “wrong-thought”.

And with her commentary regarding Kamloops, this over-the-top vendetta shamefully continues.

And as far as we can tell, Robinson spoke the truth.

We ventured out to Pickering just east of Toronto to interview Robinson, who feels she is yet again being unfairly maligned for no valid reason. She had plenty to say about this latest attack on her for embracing free speech, which seems to be increasingly under fire in Canada these days.

Rebel News also extended an opportunity for Mayor Ashe to come on camera. That offer was declined, although his office did provide the following statement:

“I want to acknowledge the harm caused by recent comments made by a member of Pickering City Council regarding the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation’s investigations at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site.

“I offer my sincere apology to Indigenous community members, Survivors, families, and all those affected by these remarks. Comments that dismiss, distort, or cast doubt on the truths shared by Survivors and Indigenous communities are deeply hurtful. They undermine reconciliation, re-traumatize those carrying the legacy of residential schools, and have no place in respectful public discourse.

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada gathered testimony from more than 6,500 Survivors and witnesses and reviewed millions of federal records to support our education on the systemic harms, cultural genocide, and intergenerational traumas caused by residential schools. These are not matters for political speculation or denial.

“The legacy of residential schools persists in our everyday institutions, and we must hold public servants accountable to our responsibility to acknowledge our shared history, honour Survivors, and advance meaningful efforts in Truth and Reconciliation.

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School Board Strikes Veterans Day Which Is Outrageous, But the ‘Holiday’ They Kept Is Even More Infuriating

Fairfax County, Virginia, decided students should no longer get Veterans Day as a holiday.

However, Indigenous Peoples’ Day is one “holiday” they’ll gladly keep.

FFX Now reported on Monday that the county school board has arrived at their calendar for the next academic year, which reduced the number of early release days and omitted Veterans Day as a holiday.

Both Veterans Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day were up for omission as holidays, but only the former passed.

Ostensibly, the decision came in response to parents’ concerns about disruptions to the school year.

Fairfax County’s board has not been a shining example for an educational body when looking at its history.

A Virginia mother, Stacey Langton, spoke out three years ago when Fairfax County included lewd LGBT-themed books in its libraries, exposing children to sexual content.

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Far-Left Canadian MP Introduces Insane 15-Letter Acronym in Tirade at PM Mark Carney

A Canadian Member of Parliament (MP) has debuted an insane new acronym.

Leah Gazan, who is an MP for the far-left New Democratic Party, used the phrase “MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+” during a speech attacking Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Her specific gripe with Carney is over his cuts to various indigenous funding programs to make way for increased military spending, as President Trump demands NATO do more to shoulder the burden of international defense.

She ranted:

When the budget was released, I was shocked to find out that Prime Minister Carney is cutting $7 billion between Indigenous Services Canada and Crown Indigenous Relations. They provided zero dollars to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.

This is abhorrent. This is callous. This is callous because the very Liberal government that has stripped organizations of life-sustaining funding has now promised, committed $13 billion, $13 billion on military spending.

Who is paying for it? Indigenous women across this country, Indigenous women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+, are not safe. In fact, rates of violence are increasing. And what is the Prime Minister doing? He is turning a blind eye on this violence.

You know, the Prime Minister talks a lot about projects of national interest. What is in the national interest are the lives, safety, security, and dignity, not in the national interest, of Indigenous women and girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+. Is the Prime Minister okay having Indigenous women, 2SLGBTQQIA+ family members and organizations coming to Parliament begging time and time again to see our humanity?

Is he okay with that? Well, clearly, with his behavior the other day, laughing at a woman from Grassy Narrows who is suffering from mercury poisoning, having her even having to beg for an apology, is an example of how this Prime Minister has turned his back on Indigenous peoples, particularly Indigenous women and girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+. And what does that look like? It looks like rates of violence increasing.

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Native Americans invented dice and games of chance more than 12,000 years ago, archaeological study reveals

Indigenous people in the western United States invented dice more than 12,000 years ago, offering archaeologists the world’s oldest evidence of gambling and possibly the oldest use of probability, a new study reveals. But the purpose of these games of chance was very different from modern-day gambling, as the games helped people — mostly women, evidence hints — interact with new acquaintances and redistribute goods and wealth.

“There is a deep history of dice, games of chance and gambling in Native America,” Robert Madden, an archaeologist at Colorado State University, told Live Science. “This precedes any evidence we have of dice in the Old World by 6,000 years.”

In a study published Thursday (April 2) in the journal American Antiquity, Madden looked at more than 600 sets of Native American dice from 45 prehistoric archaeological sites in the western U.S. from 13,000 to 450 years ago. He discovered that dice were present at Indigenous sites on both sides of the Rocky Mountains throughout this lengthy period.

“This is the first evidence we have of structured human engagement with the concepts of chance and randomness,” Madden said. “We’re seeing really complex practices and an intellectual accomplishment here.”

To identify the prehistoric dice, Madden first turned to a century-old book called “Games of the North American Indians” by Stewart Culin, an anthropologist who gathered historic accounts of Native American games. Culin described the dice as “binary lots” where one side of the flat or curved object was marked with a specific pattern or color and the other side was blank. Tossing a binary lot and allowing it to fall at random is similar to flipping a coin, and Indigenous people would often toss multiple lots to produce mathematically complicated outcomes.

Using Culin’s descriptions, Madden searched archaeological archives for artifacts that could be dice. He found 565 “diagnostic” examples of dice and 94 “probable” examples across 58 archaeological sites in the Great Plains and the Rockies. But there were no dice in the eastern half of the U.S. until after the arrival of Europeans.

“The dice tend to show up in liminal spaces where you have a lot of high mobility,” Madden explained. “It might have something to do with how separated these people are and the need to relate to people you don’t see very often.” That is, dice games may have been invented as a “social technology of integration,” he said, or an icebreaker for strangers who wanted to exchange goods, information or mates.

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The Tyranny Of Compelled Speech

While censorship is often the main focus of discussions about free speech, there’s a related phenomenon that can do just as much damage to a free society. Not by preventing people from saying things they believe in, but by forcing them to say things they do not.

Compelled speech requires people to use certain words or phrases, or to partake in upholding certain ideological beliefs. It is just as dangerous to free expression as overt censorship.

The constant recitation of indigenous “land acknowledgements” illustrates Canada’s shift towards enforced mass-compliance on complicated social issues. These statements have become ubiquitous in Canadian public life: at schools, workplaces, government functions, ceremonies, and sporting events. Institutions display them on websites, documents, email signatures, and social media. A busy person in Canada may come across dozens of land acknowledgements per day in various contexts.

Although framed as optional gestures of respect, many organizations now have policies mandating land acknowledgements; in other circumstances, social pressure can make them seem obligatory even if they’re not.

Land acknowledgements have morphed well beyond a simple sharing of history into something much more problematic: they have become a sort of sacred ritual with near-spiritual implications, tying certain ethnic groups to ownership over nature itself. When unpacked, there is a lot being said between the lines.

Stepping out of line on land acknowledgements can set off a variety of hostile reactions, ranging from social condemnation to significant legal consequences. Geoffrey Horsman is a biochemistry professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. As a parent of three children in the local school system and a member of his local school’s parent council, he noted the growing politicization of the regional school system. Of particular concern was the practice of opening every meeting with a land acknowledgement, which took up valuable time and reinforced what he considers a divisive premise.

“I don’t think there is anything good that can come out of the idea that a certain ethnic group are the true inheritors of this land,” Horsman said in an interview. But when he raised his objections about the practice, he encountered immediate resistance. In a series of meetings with Waterloo Region District School Board staff, he was told that even discussing the issue was off the table. He has since brought a legal case against the board.

Catherine Kronas, the mother of a student attending Ancaster High Secondary School in Hamilton, Ont., actually lost her position as an elected member of her school council last year after she politely disagreed with land statements being read out loud before meetings. “School councils should decide what gets said in their meetings, and we shouldn’t have to recite something mandated by the government,” she told me. Kronas was reinstated only after threatening legal action.

Horsman’s and Kronas’s cases are both about indigenous land acknowledgements, but the issues they raise run deeper. They could have been challenging any form of imposed ideological speech. In fact, many Canadian governments and institutions are developing a worrying track record of legally enforcing ideological language on a number of topics

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O’Keefe Media Group Releases Undercover Video of Chenega & Cherokee Federal Executive Admitting “Native-Owned” Firms Cheat Government Contracts

The O’Keefe Media Group on Tuesday released undercover video of a Chenega & Cherokee federal executive admitting that “Native-owned” firms cheat US government contracts and outsource the work while they collect millions.

Ricky Longhurst, Senior Account Executive at Cherokee Federal, told the undercover OMG journalist that companies are claiming ‘Native’ ownership to “cheat” the government.

Mike Montgomery, a Chenega Architecture and Design President, disclosed the revenue split: “We give 37% back to the tribe for infrastructure… 63% goes back to the business.”

“So, how do you do that because you don’t look Native?” the OMG journalist asked Mike Montgomery.

“I’m not Native, no. No, they hire business executives, that understand the federal marketspace – but the board members are all Alaskans in the Chenega Tribe,” he said.

Per the O’Keefe Media Group:

In OMG’s previous undercover footage, ATI Government Solutions Contract Manager Melayne Cromwell admitted, “We only do 20%… the rest goes to subs.”

New undercover footage involving executives connected to Chenega Architecture and Design and Cherokee Federal describes similar arrangements and admits they are cheating.

Ricky Longhurst, Senior Account Executive at Cherokee Federal, summed up the system bluntly: “It’s cheating really.”

These companies are claiming Native ownership on paper to access and secure 8(a) government contracts worth $100+ million.

Mike Montgomery of Chenega Architecture and Design described how the revenue is split: “We give 37% back to the tribe for infrastructure… 63% goes back to the business.”

He also stated, “We have an incentive because of the Alaskan Native ownership.”

Following our first report, Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler announced major enforcement action.

Loeffler stated that the “SBA suspended 1,091 firms from the 8(a) Program,” and the agency took “immediate action” against companies taking advantage of the program.

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