Kevin Woster:

Many years ago, the federal courts ruled that the Black Hills of western South Dakota had been taken illegally from the American Indian tribes –

As governor, would you consider transferring Bear Butte State Park land and management to a consortium of American Indian Tribes as a gesture of  reconciliation from the state?

Mike Rounds, Republican candidate in 2006:

“I do not believe that Bear Butte State Park, and it is a state park,
should be transferred to a Native American tribe.

I’m not sure which Native American tribe you might suggest (that) you hold
that they are all sovereign.

SD Governors Discuss Bear Butte

What a convenient point of view.

Source

Department of Justice officials have quietly opposed Native Hawaiian self-determination but the administration didn’t outright come out against the recognition bill until last fall.

– snip –

The anti-Hawaiian campaign has since been extended to urban Indians, lineal Indian descendants and certain Alaska Natives. In testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, a DOJ official said that health care for these groups could violate the U.S. Constitution.

I feel less than optimistic about Native American concerns. The recent year has been very difficult and heartbreaking. Since it’s a long list, I will summarize what I am aware of by saying that vital Native American concerns failing within the courts and within congress are far outweighing Native American concerns succeeding within the courts and within congress. So, I will be direct in what I want.

The President’s “Faith-Based and Community Initiatives” have enabled numerous –

Source

“government-funded social service jobs explicitly (to) refuse to hire Jews, gay people, and other undesirables in the name of religious freedom.”

Michelle Goldberg. “Kingdom Coming.” p. 107.

  I experienced something similar in an interview from a local pastor for a church job. I was asked questions about my beliefs that were none of his business, and was required to participate in religious activities, despite the fact I was only being hired to play music. I lied because I needed the work…

Ann Coulter, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

I am motivated to edit and repost this diary for several reasons.

The first reason is something that I’ve thought about Ann Coulter ever since I became aware of her rhetoric, some of which is outlined in Coulter on Today: Nuking Iran warms Conservatives hearts.

Disco Inferno

And he was left in a room soldiers blithely called The Disco, a place where Western music rang out so loud that his interrogators were, in Qutaji’s words, forced to “talk to me via a loudspeaker that was placed next to my ears.”

I have an idea that everyone, regardless of location or nationality wants one thing more than any other in the world: to love and to be loved. I think there is a moment in everyone’s lives when they understand love, whether it is making love, holding a newborn infant, or having an honest and intimate conversation. The feeling is undeniable in these precious moments. Similarly, there is a breathtaking moment with a song that makes a positive difference in our lives.

Christopher Columbus:

The Christian Crusades had ended in 1291, the Black Death had been deliberately blamed on innocent Jews who said what their Christian torturers forced them to, that they poisoned water wells, causing the Black Death. Of course, the real cause was in the stomachs of fleas, not planetary alignment, earthquakes, or God’s Judgment. Nonetheless, the extermination of European Jews began in 1348 again, along with a key notorious origin of Manifest Destiny.

Source

“…Roman Nose made his record against the whites, in defense of territory embracing the Republican and Arickaree rivers. He was killed on the latter river in 1868, in the celebrated battle with General Forsythe.

Roman Nose always rode an uncommonly fine, spirited horse, and with his war bonnet and other paraphernalia gave a wonderful exhibition. The Indians used to say that the soldiers must gaze at him rather than aim at him, as they so seldom hit him even when running the gantlet before a firing line…”

http://s26.photobuck…

The Legend of the Cherokee Rose.
SOURCE

No better symbol exists of the pain and suffering of the Trail Where They Cried than the Cherokee Rose(pictured at top of page). The mothers of the Cherokee grieved so much that the chiefs prayed for a sign to lift the mother’s spirits and give them strength to care for their children. From that day forward, a beautiful new flower, a rose, grew wherever a mother’s tear fell to the ground. The rose is white, for the mother’s tears. It has a gold center, for the gold taken from the Cherokee lands, and seven leaves on each stem that represent the seven Cherokee clans that made the journey. To this day, the Cherokee Rose prospers along the route of the “Trail of Tears”.

Seventeen lives were lost in the Washita Flood of 1934, that brought about the
  flood prevention system for the surrounding area.Little known is this flood with its impact and death toll. Less known than that is the Cheyenne Arapaho band that escaped that flood and why they survived. Nearly completely unknown is the short conversation my grandfather had with their Chief as he led his people to higher ground…

My old friend, who is an ex-southern Baptist preacher and also who introduced me to Plato’s “Cave Allegory” as an undergraduate, told me of his new found philosophy of hell one day by relating a conversation he had with a woman. She was very upset after he asked her a question and answered it for her. His question to her was “Since Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, where is hell?” “The Bible doesn’t say that,” she objected. He then told her the verse it came from  and answered his own question, “Since the Kingdom of Heaven is within, then hell is within.” She became angry at him in his story, and we both had a good laugh. He relished in telling the story, while I enjoyed it immensely. It speaks of how fundamentalist Christians ignore or care not to discover the very words their Master spoke when and if those liberating words do not suit them – fundamentalist Christians like John Hagee and his blind flock.

A Canadian company has the legal right to condemn land for a crude-oil pipeline through the eastern part of the state (South Dakota in this case) –

Custer’s method of attack was a four front attack at dawn on sleeping villages. It seems an extreme comparison to make, even irresponsible. Is it however, since George W. Bush and the Neoconservative forces in the U.S. and in Canada who de-affirmed the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are going to finish what Custer started in the sacred Black Hills? Custer discovered gold there and that brought the railroad along with cultural destruction in the very least. Today, uranium has been being drilled for, and more cultural destruction will probably tragically come about as the result of the TransCanada Keystone Project. But wait, that’s not the only problem.