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Sunday, September 18, 2011

The history of the "Indians"


When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People. Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that, it was beyond their conceptual reality. They didn’t see us. They couldn’t see who we were. Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. It’s five hundred years later and they still can’t see us. we are still invisible. They don’t see us as human beings, but we’ve been saying to them all along that’s what we are. We are invisible to them because we are still the Human Beings, we’re still the People, but they will never call us that. They taught us to call ourselves Indians, now they’re teaching us to call ourselves Native Americans. It’s not who we are. We’re the People. They can’t see us as human beings. But they can’t see themselves as human beings. The invisibility is at every level, it’s not just that we’re tucked away out of sight. We’re the evidence of the crime. They can’t deal with the reality of who we are because then they have to deal with the reality of what they have done. If they deal with the reality of who we are, they have to deal with the reality of who they aren’t. So they have to fear us, not recognize us, not like us. The very fact of calling us Indians creates a new identity for us, an identity that began with their arrival. Changing identity, creating a new perceptual reality, is another form of genocide. It’s like severing a spiritual umbilical cord that reaches into the ancestral past. The history of the Indians begins with the arrival of the Europeans. The history of the People begins with the beginning of the history of the People. The history of the People is one of cooperation, collectivity, and living in balance. The history of the Indians is one of being attacked and genocide, rather than a history of peace and balance. The history of the People under attack, the Indians, in an evolutionary context, is not very long, it’s only five hundred years. The objective of civilizing us is to make Indian history become our permanent reality. The necessary objective of Native people is to outlast this attack, however long it takes, to keep our identity alive.
John Trudell (Santee Sioux)

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

18 Signs That Life In U.S. Public Schools Is Now Essentially Equivalent To Life In U.S. Prisons


#1 Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has announced that school officials can search the cell phones and laptops of public school students if there are “reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”
#2 It came out in court that one school district in Pennsylvania secretly recorded more than 66,000 images of students using webcams that were embedded in school-issued laptops that the students were using at home.
#3 If you can believe it, a “certified TSA official” was recently brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom.
#4 A few years ago a class of 3rd grade students at one Kentucky elementary school were searched by a group of teachers after 5 dollars went missing.  During the search the students were actually required to remove their shoes and their socks.
#5 At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home.  Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves.
#6 The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.
#7 A teenager in suburban Dallas was recently forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using bad language in one high school classroom.  The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
#8 It is not just high school kids that are being ticketed by police.  In Texas the crackdown extends all the way down to elementary school students.  In fact, it has been reported that Texas police gave “1,000 tickets” to elementary school kids over a recent six year period.
#9 A few months ago, a 17 year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school.  It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples.  So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this?  The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
#10 A little over a year ago, a 6 year old girl in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
#11 In early 2010, a 12 year old girl in New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly wrote on her desk.
#12 There are actually some public schools in the United States that are so paranoid that they have actually installed cameras in student bathrooms.
#13 Down in Florida, students have actually been arrested by policefor bringing a plastic butter knife to school, for throwing an eraser, and for drawing a picture of a gun.
#14 The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place “potential offenders” in specific prevention and education programs.
#15 A group of high school students made national headlines a while back when they revealed that they were ordered by a security guardto stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.
#16 In some U.S. schools, armed cops accompanied by police dogs actually conduct surprise raids with their guns drawn.  In this video, you can actually see police officers aiming their guns at school children as the students are lined up facing the wall.
#17 Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
#18 This year, 13 parents in Duncan, South Carolina were actually ticketed for cheering during a high school graduation.