Since
its inception the institute
has examined the despair faced by native Americans. One study
tells of Karankawa Tribal people who roamed the
prairies near Palacios & Bay City off the Gulf of Mexico. By 1860
nearly all were killed. Historical
accounts reveal pirates,
settlers, particularly religious zealots
fiercely pursued tribe members alleged
to be cannibalistic or threats to settlers pursuing new
homes. Hate crime committed during the heavy
traffic by foreign intruders, the native people were maimed and killed
across the
frontier. Entire burial grounds, habitats and sacred beliefs, customs,
practices and ceremonies
were
destroyed. Similar stories reveal the horror faced throughout the
USA
and in Taiwan where Hans settlers from mainland China and Japan wiped
out
21 tribes of Aborigines.
Spain deeded Lipan Apaches tribal people, including Eloisa Tamez's heirs acres granted in 1763 just 14 miles north of Brownsville, Texas. In 2009, a US-Mexico Border Wall splits Spanish Land Grant tribal grounds.PBS TV reporters Dan Broncachio & Maria Hinojosa NOW interview Lipan Apache & UT-Brownsville Professor Eloisa Tamez who shows the 18-foot fence in her back yard.Worldwide few stories now trace the deep cultural history and contributions of the indigenous.
These grave losses lie as a core thrust of this Institute. So let's consider the:
Spain deeded Lipan Apaches tribal people, including Eloisa Tamez's heirs acres granted in 1763 just 14 miles north of Brownsville, Texas. In 2009, a US-Mexico Border Wall splits Spanish Land Grant tribal grounds.PBS TV reporters Dan Broncachio & Maria Hinojosa NOW interview Lipan Apache & UT-Brownsville Professor Eloisa Tamez who shows the 18-foot fence in her back yard.Worldwide few stories now trace the deep cultural history and contributions of the indigenous.
These grave losses lie as a core thrust of this Institute. So let's consider the:
- High-level exploitation of
American Tribes in the Second and Third Millennium,
which led to
- Criminal interference with Tribal practices and income sources, i.e., the massacre of 21 million natives through 1930, internment of families in the 1940s and post 911 Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other ill will instigators;
- Clandestine placement of foreign indigenous artifacts in US Museums, Libraries & other holding centers;
- Flip flops in Tribal College funding - An Examination of Reversals in Executive Orders;
- PAC funds went to politicians but few dollars provided solutions to felt indigenous needs;
- Failure to coach entrepreneurs, create jobs or let the free enterprise system evolve.
- Acknowledgment of a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States government regarding Indian tribes and an apology offered to all Native Peoples. Introduced in House 1/4/05 as House Joint Resolution 3.IH and Introduced in Senate on 4/19/05 as Senate Joint Resolution 15.IS.
- An Indigenous
People Border Summit held November 6-10, 2007 under the auspices of the
Americas II San Xavier, Tohono O’odham
Nation - at the San Xavier Community Center, 2018 W. San Xavier
Rd, Tohono O’odham Nation, State of Arizona. Then
view the summit broadcast [click on] broadcast live [or copy and
paste http://www.earthcycles.net in your URL]. The
Indigenous
Peoples’ Border Summit of the Americas II provided an
opportunity for Indigenous peoples of the border regions to
exchange experiences and information about how the international
borders impacts their communities. It united indigenous peoples who
addressed and tried to resolve mutual concerns that affect traditional
homelands, cultural and
ceremonial practices, sacred sites, treaty rights, health and ways of
life. Conference contacts: Kim Garcia @ 520.573.4000
kgarcia@wakenet.org and Mike Flores @ 520.235.2406,
MichaelFlores@hotmail.com
Mike Flores,
Tohono O'odham summit organizer, receives a flag from Mohawk Mark
Maracle, representing the Mohawk Women Title Holders at the summit in
2006/Photo Brenda Norrell
- AMIU human rights advocates
seek anecdotal accounts, survivors
testimony and incidentals confirming Cree Nation and
other Tribe members were interned under Franklin Roosevelt's Executive
Order
9066 during World
War II. Survivors were told this was done to prevent one or more Indian
Nations from signing an accord
with Japan.
- According to survivors both children and adults possessing Indian blood were imprisoned from 1942-1947 in a prison then situated in Blythe, California, much like 120,000 US born Japanese were kept. But was it necessary to intern American Indians of the Cree Nation "to prevent alleged espionage and sabotage in an area threatened by Japanese attack in 1942"? Under similar circumstances during the intrusive US led War against Iraq, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor held in the 2004 Hamdi case: "A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." Regardless, If you know a Native American who was interned as a child or adult during the second World War, let us Institute confirm their stories by contacting AMIU investigators.
- No Native
People held from February 12, 1942 to late 1947 were among those
receiving apologies from President William Clinton October 1, 1993
(when US born Japanese received apologies). According to highly
ranked US
Dept of Treasury executive acting on direct knowledge gained from
native People held in one of the ten World War II US
prisons, no archives confirm the live testimony from Indians children
or adults held, though official Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests
were made.
- Neither testimony received by AMIU forensic scientists nor public records reveal that titles to properties owned by above mentioned survivors were returned to the interned indigenous people. This follows a precedence set down by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 573 (1823). [We contrast the US Hate Crimes Act of 2007, which declares racism is criminal, with Lumbee Law Professor Robert Williams Jr.'s quote saying Johnson "has to be considered one of the most thoroughly racist ... decisions ever issued by the Supreme Court,,, [as Johnson's] " ... legalized presumption of Indian racial inferiority, [or] its incorporation into U.S. law [the] legal doctrine of conquest and colonization."] Moreover, it's fairly certain the Blythe internment camp was not part of the Tule or Manzanar prisons where Japanese were imprisoned in California from 1942 to 1947. In 2005, a "Chowchilla Unit for women in the Chuckawala State Prison" was being operated a few miles outside Blythe. But, no public record explains who ordered the physical remnants of the Blythe prison to be crushed and paved over with the building of Route IH 66 freeway system cerca 1964.
- Comments are solicited as we believe the 1823 Supreme Court opinion led President Andrew Jackson's thinking. As President Jackson led the ugliest of turmoil faced by the indigenous in those ugly days. Today the Border Wall, hagard Homeland Security and ugly immigration reform talk and denial of Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty rights for the indigenous serve as extensions of the brutality faced then and now.
- Even
2009 findings by the US Supreme Court have not found behalf indigenous
rights.
- But the Hate Crimes Act is a powerful tool that can be used to effectively curb angers being pushed on the indigenous by Minutemen, right wing Christian and similar hate groups who profess superiority over others.
- A 35-year occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indians from all Tribes, changed courses for US and American Indian history. Today an award winning video/exhibit, "We Hold the Rock," is cited here courtesy of the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. It shows daily life on Alcatraz Island. The following links take one to additional sites related to Alcatraz and its 1969 occupation by Indians of All Tribes.
- Special credits go to Professor Troy Johnson renown for displaying work at American Indian studies, including an extensive collection of photographs by Ilka Harman taken during the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island. Dr. Johnson has written extensively on the Occupation of Alcatraz Island. The complete text of "The Alcatraz Proclamation to the Great White Father and his People" by Indians of All Tribes is on line as part of the Fourth World Documentation Project.
- Other credits are extended to Hopi Tribe Cultural Preservation Office which reports, in 1895 nineteen Hopi were incarcerated on Alcatraz Island by the US Army for their resistance to government policies designed to destroy their religion and language. The National Park Service - Alcatraz Island, co-hosts a website with the Hopi Tribe Cultural Preservation Office with several articles and photographs of this event in Hopi and Alcatraz history. Their email address is goga_alcatraz@nps.gov.
- Take time to review works found at A
Maya Artifacts
Museum Exchange Program and Documentary. A limited display is
given. Do not miss Nobel Prize Winner Rigoberta Menchu Tum's call
for language classes
in one of 23 Maya dialects; up to date 2009 arrangements cannot be
made. Forthcoming forensic research
results discuss
traumas and torture survived by five million tribal people who live in
Guatemala. It tells how 180,000 indigenous were killed or disappeared
during the 36-year US instigated Civil War and how that dribbles out
currently. The United Nations
negotiated a Peace Accord signed in 1996. But an immense forensic
investigatory need exists to determine the grave harm
forced
upon the survivors. Each needs reporting. Research for a book titled: Surviving
Trauma in Guatemala: Peace Accords Challenges
&
Entrepreneurial Promisesdelves
into ugly outcome that repugnant Cristo Fascist US foreign
policies brought into existence. President William Clinton's apology
was a first step in forgiveness but the harm inflicted will continues
for many decades. An on-line video entitled "The Experience of Samuel"
shows a quasi lynching of a US citizen living very close to the horrors
faced as of November 7, 2001.
- An eyewitness audio of Mayan torture in Guatemala and supportive research in Spanish and English.
- Insights from African-based tribes, which reveal knowledge
reaching to the earliest history of humankind.
- Research on East Asian
aborigines as found on the ROC Taiwan
reveals interest in historical incites about the Pre-1600 islanders.
That
work is reported in an about to be released book entitled: Taiwan: Growing
Entrepreneurs,
Trade & Tourism.
Forensic investigations show major
cleavages exist within Taiwan because the 21 aborigine tribes were
overrun by Dutch, Portuguese, British, mainland Hans settlers and a
stronghold of Japanese colonizers who controlled the Island from
1895 to 1948. Deep level resentments, toward the Japanese and mainland
Chinese communists, exists among the original Taiwanese and the influx
arriving thereafter. Koym's
research suggests solutions for some of these conflicts; this help
is needed so East Asian populations coexist. Moreover the failure of
the
United States to support a democratic free Taiwan is a notable
failure of the US government in this millennium.
- Rich insights with regard to interactions Brazilian Indians had with US Peace Corps Volunteers from the 1960s to the present await being pulled from the dust; given funds the insights could be reported.
- Certainly
we acknowledge the National Museum of the American Indian holdings
found in Maryland, New York and Washington DC, the latter which opened
in 2004. See http://www.nmai.si.edu.