“We don’t have any issues with people sitting down with their family and giving thanks,” Kisha James—who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and is also Oglala Lakota—told BBC. “What we do object to is the Thanksgiving mythology.”
Source: Indigenous People Push Back Against US ‘Thanksgiving Mythology’
Members of the Coeur d’Alene, or Schitsu’umsh, Tribe on the Desmet Reservation in Idaho circa 1907. (Wikimedia Commons)
This knowledge seems rudimentary, and yet it’s not: The same ships that transported the “American dream” from 15th century Europe likewise delivered a nightmare to indigenous lands now known as America—a nightmare that would persist for centuries for millions of indigenous people, African slaves and their many descendants. But it was far beyond a nightmare. It all was callously and painfully real.
This knowledge also seems rudimentary, and yet it’s not: Indigenous communities today bear the stubborn scars and residual societal ills stemming directly from colonization: being dehumanized, disenfranchised and imprisoned in our own lands, confined to desolate reservations, and brutally ripped from the lifeways and teachings that sustained us for millennia.
via Trump Says Settlers ‘Tamed a Continent.’ Now for the Other Side.
Aboriginal health advocates are calling for better access to mental health professionals in remote communities to combat child suicide, following the death of a 10-year-old girl who is suspected to have taken her own life.
Source: ‘More mental health services needed’ to prevent child suicides
ANALYSIS: There’s a few simple reasons why yet another Close the Gap report chronicles endemic government failure. Amy McQuire explains why governments still don’t get it. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull may not have the arrogance of the man he dethroned – he didn’t, for example, appoint himself ‘Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs’ despite failing toMore
Source: White Lies And Black Lives: Malcolm Turnbull Just Widened The Credibility Gap – New Matilda
Journalist and Author Stan Grant addresses the National Press Club on the topic Talking To My Country.
Aboriginal leaders are calling for a new compact with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull amid warnings that the Government’s signature Closing the Gap has slipped seriously off track.
Leonardo DiCaprio has raised the issue of indigenous representation in film at the time that local Indigenous talent has come into its own
Professor of Economics and Geography over 35 years, levels from high school to post doctorate, in the U.S. Canada, Europe, India, China, Puerto Rico. I have lived and worked in six languages other than English and am learning Mandarin Chinese. Citizenship: Blackfoot Nation; U.S. and Canadian. Licensed FAA Commercial and Instrument Pilot, Ground Instructor, Advanced and Instrument; pilot over 40 years.
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