Tag: native americans

‘Native American Guardians Association’ Petition To Restore Washington Redskins Name Goes Viral

A Change.org petition in support of changing the Washington football team’s name BACK to the Redskins has gone viral and is racking up tens of thousands of signatures in real time.

At the time of publication, the petition was nearing its goal of 75,000 people.

The petition was launched by an organization called the Native American Guardians Association whose stated goal is to end the “cancel culture” of Native Americans. 

NAGA spox Healy Baumgardner joined Newsmax’s Carl Higbie to discuss the groups efforts, quipping that the Washington Commanders must be getting advised by Megan Rapinoe.

Keep reading

NEW DOCS LINK CIA TO MEDICAL TORTURE OF INDIGENOUS CHILDREN AND BLACK PRISONERS

The documentary record of “mind control” experiments conducted by the United States and other governments during the Cold War is just the tip of the iceberg, and our collective ignorance is by design. In early 1973, as the fallout from the Watergate scandal exposed the need for greater congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ordered the destruction of all documents related to MK Ultra.

Launched in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials, which exposed the extent of Nazi atrocities carried out in the name of science, MK Ultra involved a range of grotesque experiments on unwitting test subjects within and beyond U.S. borders. Newly revealed evidence exposes previously hidden links between MK Ultra experiments on Indigenous children in Canada and imprisoned Black people in the U.S.

On April 20, 2023, a group of Indigenous women known as the Kanien’kehà:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) achieved a milestone in their ongoing lawsuit against several entities, including McGill University, the Canadian government and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Quebec. The parties reached an agreement whereby archeologists and cultural monitors would begin the process of searching for unmarked graves, which the Mohawk Mothers believe are buried on the grounds of the hospital.

Over the preceding two years, approximately 1,300 unmarked graves, most of them containing the remains of Indigenous children, have been discovered on the grounds of five of Canada’s former residential schools. Throughout the 20th century, the residential school system — like the Indian Boarding School system, its U.S. counterpart — separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families, stripped them of their language and subjected them to various forms of abuse amounting to what a truth and reconciliation commission called “cultural genocide.” But as these horrific revelations demonstrate, the harm wasn’t only cultural — a 1907 investigation found that nearly one-fourth of school attendees did not survive graduation.

In October of 2021, new evidence surfaced linking disappeared Indigenous children to MK Ultra experiments conducted by CIA-sponsored researchers. A white Winnipeg resident named Lana Ponting testified in Quebec’s Superior Court that in 1958, when she was 16 years old, doctors from the Allan Memorial Institute, a former psychiatric hospital affiliated with McGill and the Royal Victoria Hospital, held her against her will, drugged her with LSD and other substances, subjected her to electroshock treatments, and exposed her to auditory indoctrination: playing a recording telling Ponting over and over again, that she was either “a bad girl” or “a good girl.”

Keep reading

DNA Analysis Reveals Interesting Information About the Origins of Native Americans

Using DNA analysis, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have made some surprising discoveries about the ancestry of Native Americans. They looked at mitochondrial DNA passed down in females to follow the trail of an ancestral lineage that might link East Asian Paleolithic-age populations to founding populations in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and California. What they ended up discovering is that during the Ice Age, humans migrated from northern China to Japan and the Americas.

“The Asian ancestry of Native Americans is more complicated than previously indicated,” explains lead author Yu-Chun Li, a molecular anthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “In addition to previously described ancestral sources in Siberia, Australo-Melanesia, and Southeast Asia, we show that northern coastal China also contributed to the gene pool of Native Americans.”

It’s commonly accepted that Native Americans are descendants of Siberians who crossed the temporary Bering Strait land bridge. However, new findings published in Cell, show that these ancestors most likely landed on the Pacific coast. The researchers determined this by analyzing over 100,000 contemporary and 15,000 ancient DNA samples from across Eurasia to eventually identify 216 contemporary and 39 ancient individuals belonging to this rare lineage.

Through genetic mutations, geographic locations, and carbon dating, it appears that these travelers would have landed in America prior to the land bridge being open. In fact, they believe that these intrepid individuals came over in two different waves. The first migration—or radiation—would have occurred between 19,500 and 26,000 years ago. At this time, the ice sheets in northern China would have made conditions inhospitable and forced people to seek out a better climate.

The second radiation would have happened between 11,500 and 19,000 years ago, when the melting of these ice sheets led to a population boom. This fact, coupled with the better climate, may have pushed people to explore new locations.

Interestingly, the genetic research also showed a link between the Native Americans and the Japanese. The researchers hypothesize that during the deicing period, part of the population from northern China migrated to Japan, while others set off for the Americas. This theory is backed up by archeology, as these regions of China, Japan, and the Americas show similarities in how arrowheads and spears were crafted.

Keep reading

Tohono O’odham man shot and killed by border patrol

A well respected member of the Tohono O’odham community has been gunned down by Border Patrol agents.

The man’s family is outraged and wants answers.

According to Customs and Border Protection U.S. Border Patrol agents from the Ajo Station were involved in a shooting that resulted in the death of a man.

A family member says the man was respected and loved.

One family who asked not to be identified, fought back tears as she told News 4 Tucson,

“I keep hearing the gunshots and I can’t get over it…Its very sad just to know who they were shooting at you know.”

She told News 4 Tucson she wanted people to know what happened to their loved one, Raymond Mattia.

According to another family member who also asked not to be identified, Mattia was shot and killed by Border patrol agents Thursday night. She said Mattia had called Border Patrol.

“He called to request for assistance because there were multiple illegal immigrants who had trespassed into his yard and he wanted assistance getting them out of his property.”

Keep reading

Why so many Canadians pretend to be indigenous

‘Pretendians’ must be among the fastest growing cultural groups in Canada. A Pretendian is someone with little or no indigenous background who pretends to be indigenous. The latest to be uncovered is Vianne Timmons, president of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Last week, Timmons was forced to apologise for misrepresenting her background and is now taking a leave of absence.

Timmons claimed in CVs and elsewhere that she was descended from Mi’kmaq First Nations peoples. A recent CBC News report questioned whether or not Timmons actually had any First Nations ancestry at all. Looking at her family tree, the report found that she is probably only one-1024th to one-2048th indigenous.

Timmons’ story is noteworthy because she is a high-profile academic. She is director on the board of Universities Canada. She was named as one of Canada’s Top 100 most-powerful women in 2008 and was the 2013 winner of the Saskatchewan Humanitarian Award from the Red Cross. In 2017, she was even named an Officer of the Order of Canada for her lifetime contributions to inclusive education, family literacy, indigenous post-secondary education and women’s leadership.

Timmons even accepted an Indspire trophy – ‘the highest honour the indigenous community bestows upon its own people’ – while holding an eagle feather. At that ceremony, she claimed that her father once told her: ‘We’re Mi’kmaq, but I was raised to be ashamed of it so I hid it, all my life.’ In 2021, Timmons spoke about ‘discovering’ her indigenous roots: ‘It’s like trying to find your story that somebody hid from you, not just hid from you, but changed for you.’

Timmons is far from the only high-profile academic to have claimed minority status on dubious grounds. In 2016, author Joseph Boyden, an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction about First Nations Canadians, faced doubts about his claims to indigenous ancestry. A 2020 CBC investigation raised similar concerns about filmmaker Michelle Latimer, whose film, Inconvenient Indian, won the People’s Choice Award for Documentaries and the award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2021, the CBC revealed that Carrie Bourassa, Canada’s leading indigenous health scientist, appeared to be of entirely European ancestry. She had to resign her position at the University of Saskatchewan. Last year, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond – a former judge, scholar and another recipient of the Order of Canada – was also found to have made inconsistent claims about her heritage.

Keep reading

Secret COINTELPRO Plot to Infiltrate and Destroy the American Indian Movement: “We Wanted Them to Kill Each Other”—FBI Agent Admits After Five Decades of Silence

February 27 through May 8 marks the 50th anniversary of the occupation by the American Indian Movement (AIM) of Wounded Knee on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, the site of the last great massacre of the Indian Wars in December 1890.

In a 2019 documentary that aired on PBS, From Wounded Knee to Standing Rock: A Reporter’s Journey, filmmaker Kevin McKiernan interviewed Tom Parker, an FBI agent working for the FBI’s counter-intelligence operation (COINTELPRO), who admitted that the FBI had helped to fracture and disrupt AIM during its 1973 Wounded Knee occupation.

“[W]e wanted them to kill each other, as we were in a war against AIM,” Parker said.

According to Parker, a main goal of COINTELPRO was to infiltrate informers into AIM and to publicly identify AIM activists with the FBI so that others in AIM would turn against them.

In this way, Parker said, dissension would grow among AIM, and AIM members would become paranoid about FBI infiltration and turn against one another, and there would be violence.

Keep reading

Minnesota Democrat Says She’s ‘Sick of White Christians’ Adopting Native American Babies

A Minnesota state lawmaker allegedly said in an online post that white Christians adopting Native American babies were contributing to “genocide.”

“I’m sick of white Christians adopting our babies and rejoicing,” Minnesota State Rep. Heather Keeler said in a post to Facebook, according to an Alpha News report. “It’s a really sad day when that happens. It means the genocide continues.”

The Democrat lawmaker continued by saying people who care about Native American babies should advocate against “the genocide.” Keeler urged concerned people to solve issues impacting Indigenous parents. She further demanded an end to “stealing our babies and changing their names under the impression you are helping.”

“White saviors are the worst,” Keeler exclaimed. “I said what I said.”

The Minnesota Democrat sponsored legislation to include parts of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act into state law. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected this term to rule on a challenge to the ICWA’s constitutionality.

Keep reading

America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains

As the United States pushed Native Americans from their lands to make way for westward expansion throughout the 1800s, museums and the federal government encouraged the looting of Indigenous remains, funerary objects and cultural items. Many of the institutions continue to hold these today — and in some cases resist their return despite the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

“We never ceded or relinquished our dead. They were stolen,” James Riding In, then an Arizona State University professor who is Pawnee, said of the unreturned remains.

ProPublica this year is investigating the failure of NAGPRA to bring about the expeditious return of human remains by federally funded universities and museums. Our reporting, in partnership with NBC News, has found that a small group of institutions and government bodies has played an outsized role in the law’s failure.

Keep reading

ESPN’s Jalen Rose: Stop Saying Mt. Rushmore, It’s ‘Offensive’

ESPN analyst and former NBA player Jalen Rose has launched a new campaign to cancel Mr. Rushmore because he says the name of “offensive” to all Americans.

Rose posted a video to social media insisting that the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians dumped their Native American names and imagery because it was “offensive.”

He then said he has a new piece of U.S. history he believes should be canceled: Mt. Rushmore.

“I want to continue to challenge myself and to challenge you to do something,” Rose said in his Twitter video. “Can we retire using Mt. Rushmore?”

“That should be offensive to all of us, especially Native Americans,” Rose exclaimed.

“The indigenous people, who were the first people here before Christopher Columbus. Their land was stolen from them when it was discovered that it contained gold,” Rose continued.

“And 25 years later — to add insult to injury — four American presidents were put on what we call Mt Rushmore. On the top of the dead bodies that is buried right underneath,” he added.

“So, I call for you — and for myself, I’m in on this too — let’s stop using the term Mt. Rushmore,” he concluded, “when we talkin’ about our favorite rappers, talkin’ about our favorite movies, we talkin’ about our favorite players.”

“I know you gonna see this video and I know you gonna take action,” he said.

It was unclear if Rose was speaking metaphorically about the faces of the four presidents carved “on top of the dead bodies” of Native Americans. Or if he mistakenly thinks Mt. Rushmore is some sort of burial ground. But no one is buried on the mountain or immediately below the carvings.

Keep reading

University Of California Waives Tuition For Native Americans, Starting Fall 2022

Announced in April, the UC Native American Opportunity Plan allows California residents who are “members of federally recognized Native American, American Indian, and Alaska Native tribes” to get free education on UC campuses. The program applies to undergraduate and graduate students.

“The University of California is committed to recognizing and acknowledging historical wrongs endured by Native Americans,” UC President Michael Drake said in a letter (pdf).

“I am proud of the efforts the University of California has made to support the Native American community, including the creation of the [program].”

The UC system has ten campuses—Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. About 295,000 students were enrolled in the system in fall 2021.

The program is expected to cost $2.4 million and will be funded mainly by both the state’s and UC’s financial aid programs, according to Drake’s office.

The program was developed to expand “student diversity and make the University of California more affordable and accessible,” Drake said in the letter. The approximate annual tuition for a state resident is $13,104, according to the UC Admissions office.

California has 109 federally recognized tribes and has more Native Americans and those of Alaska Native heritage than any other state in the country, according to the Judicial Council of California.

Native Americans make up 1.7 percent of the state’s population while accounting for 0.5 percent of the UC system’s student body in Fall 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the university’s enrollment statistics.

Some universities and lawmakers across the country are following UC’s steps.

Keep reading