Abenaki

First Nations of America Flags

http://web.archive.org/web/20071209193251/ http://www.northern.edu/hastingw/baumedts.htm#sitting

A. Waller Hastings Northern State University Aberdeen, SD 57401

L. Frank Baum’s Editorials on the Sioux Nation

The Sitting Bull editorial (Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, December 20, 1890) The Wounded Knee editorial (Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, January 3, 1891)

Ten years before he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

published an obscure weekly newspaper, the Saturday Pioneer, in Aberdeen, S.D. The Saturday Pioneer was a mix of boilerplate features and news stories, local society news, humor and arts columns, and editorials about the issues of the day. During Baum’s tenure at the paper (from January 1890 to March 1891), the chief issues about which he editorialized were the 1890 elections and the question of which city, Pierre or Huron, would be made the capital of the new state of South Dakota.

1890 was also the year of one of the darkest passages in the troubled history of relations between Native Americans and the expanding white population. On the afternoon of December 28, 1890, units of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry captured a group off Minneconjou Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The next day, as the Indians surrendered their weapons, a shot rang out and the cavalry opened fire. At least 153 of the Sioux were killed (some estimate nearly 300, out of a band of about 350) — most of them women, children, and unarmed men. (These figures reflect the account of the massacre given in Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Henry Holt, 1970, pp. 439-45.)

In his newspaper, Baum responded to the news of the Wounded Knee massacre, and to word of the murder of Hunkpapa Sioux leader Sitting Bull two weeks earlier (December 15, 1890), with editorials calling for the total destruction of the Sioux people. The originals of these editorials are difficult to obtain; the only relatively complete run of the Saturday Pioneer is held by the Alexander Mitchell Library in Aberdeen, where it can be viewed on microfilm.

Baum’s Wounded Knee editorials have previously been published elsewhere on the World Wide Web. However, at least one paragraph was inadvertently omitted from that version of the editorials. While the missing paragraph does not exonerate Baum of charges of genocidal racism, it seemed advisable to offer a complete transcription of the editorials as they appeared in the newspaper, so that scholars and other interested parties might base their understanding of this incident in our history on the complete version of what Baum wrote. The editorials are given below.

It is the second paragraph of the above editorial that is missing from the previously published on-line version of Baum’s writing.

The Sitting Bull Editorial

Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.  He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.  He was an Indian with a white man’s spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites.   And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery.  What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.  The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.  We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.

(Saturday Pioneer, December 20, 1890)

An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that “when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre.”

(Saturday Pioneer, January 3, 1891)

I’m glad this little fellow stopped in for a bite to eat.  I haven’t been taking a lot of photographs of much of anything here lately.  My drive to do so, flows like the tides.  One day I’m just itching to take photographs, the others I could care less.  Everyone knows that I’m on a IRC community on Geekshed.net.  Chris Pirillo wrote a piece the other day on community.  It brought up the question in my mind, just what is my community.  How do I affect those around me.  I have friends and family that look at what I post, and I’m sure some wonder just why I do such a thing.  I’m not really sure myself at times.  Most of my posting relay no real message, most are for just fun and giggles.  I do every now on then touch on a serious subject.  Today on Facebook I posted a subject that I think very serious.

I have some native heritage in my blood as many of you already know in my Community .  Although my blood line is thin and if I got a nose bleed I would lose it all very quickly.  Nonetheless, I’m very proud of that heritage and over the years I have involved myself in several Native American Powwows and events.  When I was younger I never told many folks of my heritage, it didn’t seem to matter to me, but as I’ve grown older things have changed.  The more I learned the more I tried to follow a certain path in my life.  A mixture of beliefs that walk between the modern and the old.

Now in this mixture of old and new, the one thing that I’ve learned is the first people of this land have a special way of honoring those who went before us.  Native American Nations have a relationship with our government that is like nothing else in the world.  We are nations within a nation, but nonetheless these first nations have a right to believe and govern themselves within this legal framework of the US Constitution and laws,  In fact we have the right to believe and act in certain ways spelled out by those very laws.

Still, after all these years, we are constantly being told that our sacred places and beliefs are not valid.  All the Native Americans who have given their lives to protect the very thing we hold sacred is looked down upon.  Even in modern times, with many of our young men and women who  have given their lives to protect this country by joining the Armed Services of the United States of America.  We still haven’t won the respect or the honor that should rightfully be theirs.

The below story is a reprint from the MediaMatters for America.

Glenn Beck and his radio sidekicks attacked a Nevada student for singing a Native American song that she dedicated to American troops during a recent rally for Sen. Harry Reid. Her offense?  Not singing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Picking up on a story first reported by radio host Barbara Simpson and carried on Gateway Pundit, The Blaze, and Fox Nation, Beck asked, “When somebody says, ‘Please rise for the national anthem,’ what song are you expecting?” He then ridiculed Christina Thomas for not singing the national anthem at a recent Reid rally.

But audio makes clear, however, that Thomas told the audience that she was not singing the national anthem as the event’s emcee announced, but rather a tribal flag song. Thomas told the audience, “I sing this in honor of all our veterans” and “those who are still fighting for our freedoms overseas.”

After talking over Thomas’ explanation that she was not going to be singing the national anthem and that she was dedicating another song to “all our veterans” and “those who are still fighting for our freedoms overseas, Beck said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the national anthem.” While playing audio of Thomas singing, Beck said, “not really our national anthem, maybe her national anthem.”

From the November 1 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program:

Earlier this year, Nevada’s senators Reid and John Ensign welcomed Thomas to Washington, D.C., as an American Indian ambassador.

After attacking Thomas for insufficient patriotism, Beck tied her song choice to an incident at Denver’s “State of the City” ceremony in 2008, when Rene Marie was introduced to sing the national anthem and then instead sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song often called the black national anthem.  Beck said that this was “the same thing … with the Democrats in Denver.”

According to the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Democratic officials were caught off guard by the singer’s decision to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” instead.

Beck rounded out the segment by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for our national anthem,” and playing a parody of the Soviet national anthem with the lyrics, “All hail the messiah, Obama.”

He dedicated it to “our savior, Barack Obama.”

So to all you right wingers and tea baggers who think all the Native Americans and Black  African Americans who have fought and died for this country are not real Americans.  I hope you rot in hell.  I hope my community reads this and understands my ire.  Bigots are bigots and Glen Beck is a bigot.

I think this is a grand idea and I wish Larry a great deal of luck to succeed with this project.  If you could help with a small donation it would be much appreciated.  Here is the web page link for the project:  www.theprogressivecenter.com

FESTIVAL

http://www.themuscogeecreeknation.com/

The Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo

Last night Debbie & I were honored to be able to sit and drum with a local Drum Group here in Corpus Christi, Texas led by Larry Running Turtle Salazar, a local leader of the South Texas Alliance of Indigenous People.  He’s working in conjunction with Dr. Fred M. McGhee, Ray McMurray, and Dave McGary to build a bronze sculpted monument to be erected at the site of a historic Indian burial ground.  The proposed site is known as 41NU2 by the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory.  This location is the second largest Indian burial ground in the state of Texas according to evidence found in the 1930′s.  For more information please contact Larry at lrunningturtles@aol.com or www.ccbirding.com

To help and to donate please go to this site for further information www.theprogressivecenter.com

This old squirrel called Native America Calling one day as a fellow Muscogee Creek citizen was being interviewed.  In return for being on the air and able to say Hensci, Estonko and telling her how big a fan this old squirrel is.  She sent me a CD of her latest…   Thanks Joy, from all us squirrels here on the Permafrost Ranch.  I love the Rabbit story.