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It's the Fourth of July... err, was (#CPT) and it has us over at Code Switch thinking a lot about flags. More specifically, on this week's episode of the podcast, we've been thinking about people of color and their relationship to the United States flag - a relationship that can be really complicated for a lot of reasons.

Who is the American flag for? And what does it mean when people of color choose to wave it - or not wave it? In thinking about what the flag has represented symbolically, and whose freedoms it did - and didn't - fly for, those questions seem to be messy ones.

Gene and Adrian talked to some folks of color who both choose to and choose not to wave the American flag. That includes American Indians, who proportionately have more people in the U.S. military than any other racial group - there were over 22,000 on active duty in 2012, with over 150,000 veterans - but who also, of course, have a long complicated history in the United States. American Indian tribes sing to the American flag, and these aren't just throw away songs. Flag songs open tribal ceremonies, and are directed at both tribal flags and the stars and stripes. But they commemorate not so much the nation, but their people.

This episode, we spoke with:

Adrian also takes us to a rally for Donald Trump where Gil Sanchez was protesting the candidate while waving a Mexican flag. Sanchez participated in the historic immigrant rights rallies in 2006.

"It doesn't matter what happens. If they hate Mexicans, they're going to hate Mexicans, whether you're carrying an American flag or a Mexican flag," says Sanchez. "That's my feeling. They already hate us, the ones that hate us."

For the people who historically have not been part of the promise the flag represents, pledging allegiance or waving the flag becomes a complicated act. So join us for this episode as we unpack what the American flag means - and doesn't mean - for people of color.

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The Code Switch Podcast, Episode 7: You're A Grand Old Flag

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It's the Fourth of July... err, was (#CPT) and it has us over at Code Switch thinking a lot about flags. More specifically, on this week's episode of the podcast, we've been thinking about people of color and their relationship to the United States flag - a relationship that can be really complicated for a lot of reasons.

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This is the story of a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girlwas a legal battle that entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American children taken from their families.

When producer Tim Howard first read about this case, it struck him as a sad, but seemingly straightforward custody dispute. But as he started talking to lawyers, historians, and the families involved in the case, it became clear that it was much more than that. Because Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girlchallenges parts of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, this case puts one little girl at the center of a storm of legal intricacies, Native American tribal culture, and heart-wrenching personal stakes.
A note from Jad:
"As you guys may know, our new podcast More Perfect is Radiolab's first ever spin-off show. But I want to share something special with you: THE Radiolab episode that inspired us to launch this whole series about the Supreme Court. After we put out this episode we got hooked on the court and the kinds of stories we could tell about it. So we made More Perfect.

We reported this Radiolab story about three years ago. It's about a little girl...but really it's about so much more than that, too. Stay tuned to the end for an update about what has happened since."
The key links:
- An op-ed by Veronica's birth mom, Christy Maldonado, in the Washington Post
- Marcia Zug's article for Slate on the original case that went to the South Carolina Supreme Court
- Marcia Zug's article for Slate criticizing the Supreme Court ruling
- An op-ed by the New York Times Editorial Board urging action from the Supreme Court
- The official site for ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act

The key voices:
- Matt and Melanie Capobianco, Veronica's adoptive parents
- Dusten Brown, Veronica's biological father
- Christy Maldonado, Veronica's biological mother
- Mark Fiddler, attorney for the Capobiancos
- Marcia Zug, associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law
- Bert Hirsch, attorney formerly of the Association on American Indian Affairs
- Chrissi Nimmo, Assistant Attorney General for Cherokee Nation
- Terry Cross, executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association
- Lori Alvino McGill, attorney for Christy Maldonado

The key cases:

- 2013: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

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More Perfect presents: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

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This is the story of a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girlwas a legal battle that entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American children taken from their families.

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A Tribe Called Geek is on Mixcloud. Join to listen to great radio shows, DJ mix sets and Podcasts

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By Nola Daves Moses

The House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act by four votes last week. The legislation now moves to the United States Senate for consideration. This bill would dramatically reshape the healthcare system, including Indian health.

This is Trahant Reports.

House Republicans propose doing three things: Cutting taxes (significantly); spending less on Medicaid; and reducing the federal role so that states can experiment more with health care programs.

As I have reported before: The most important idea for Indian Country is that the legislation would end Medicaid as we know it. Medicaid insures more than half of all children in the Indian Health system and it accounts for 13 percent of the Indian Health Service budget.

At least four Republican Senators say Medicaid is a critical safety net that ought to be preserved. A bloc of four senators has the power to say "no" to any legislation. This is the Medicaid Protection Bloc and they will have a say in rewriting the bill.

And no matter what comes out of the Senate (unless it's the House bill exactly) the House will have to vote again.

Indian Country should be included in this debate. And we're not. Our right to health care is simple, it's based on treaties, history, and thus a pre-payment for whatever insurance mechanism the country comes up with. The Affordable Care Act at least opened an avenue to fully fund the Indian Health system, something that's never been accomplished before.

So this is also the ideal moment for Indian Country to have more of a say.

Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican in leadership, and a member of the Chickasaw Nation, told National Public Radio: "This thing is going to go to the United States Senate. It's going to change, in my view ... Then we have to have a Congress - a conference to work out the differences. If we can do that, then it has to still pass the House and the Senate again before it ever gets to the president."

Cole is often a champion for Indian health programs, especially when it comes to the budget. He's usually the only Native American at the table when budgets are written.

Cole has also been against Medicaid Expansion, saying his state, Oklahoma, did not go that route. But this House measure is not just about Medicaid Expansion; it's a radical restructuring of Medicaid designed to cap costs. Even in Oklahoma Medicaid serves more than 800,000 people. And, remember that Medicaid is 13 percent of the IHS budget, more than $800 million now and growing.

Plus this is the best kind of money because it stays at local clinics and hospitals.

This is what Tom Cole and Republicans in the House voted to take away from Indian Country. And you can be sure: This is what will be on the ballot next year.

I am Mark Trahant.

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House bill would dramatically reshape Indian health programs

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By Nola Daves Moses The House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act by four votes last week. The legislation now moves to the United States Senate for consideration. This bill would dramatically reshape the healthcare system, including Indian health. This is Trahant Reports.

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'We Live to Survive': One Week with Lakota (Part 1)

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Part 2: http://youtu.be/DDTHDYb1CVM "We live to survive." That is what many of them say. In the 19th century, the Lakota people were among the most successful fighters for freedom in the USA. But their land was eventually stolen, their language for years was forbidden to be taught in schools, and their freedom existed only on paper.

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Native Voice TV The significance of hair in Native American Culture

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Cihuapilli Rose Amador interviews Pegge Lemke and grandson Adam Cervantes. They discuss a situation where hair was cut on the school playground. Pegge has a six year old grandson whose hair was cut on the school playground, by an older girl student.

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9 Questions Native Americans Have For White People

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"How are you enjoying our land?" Check out more awesome BuzzFeedYellow videos! http://bit.ly/YTbuzzfeedyellow MUSIC Ecstatic Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. SFX provided by Audioblocks. (https://www.Audioblocks.com) Made by BFMP www.buzzfeed.com/videoteam + Adrienne Keene - Cherokee http://nativeappropriations.com/ Sheila Chalakee - Muscogee Creek http://www.youtube.com/SheilaChalakee Jenny Marlowe - Algonquin http://www.jenny-marlowe.com Rainy Fields - Muscogee Creek/Cherokee http://www.imdb.me/rainyfields Cara Jade Myers - Kiowa/Wichita http://www.carajademyers.com STILLS Two girls in Identical Indian headdresses.

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Native Americans Try On "Indian" Halloween Costumes

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Native Americans Review Thanksgiving Storybooks

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On Monday, a 5-year-old Native American boy was sent home on his first day of school and ordered to cut his hair short because it allegedly violated district policy, the boy's mother said.

The child, Malachi Wilson, an enrolled citizen of the Navajo Nation, had been looking forward to his first day of kindergarten at F.J. Young Elementary in Seminole, Texas.

"After we had enrolled him he was excited. He was ready to go. Everyday it was-the question, 'Mom, [am I] going to school?'" his mother, April Wilson, told CBS-affiliate Channel 7.

But that notable day in a child's life would not happen for Malachi. He was turned away by school officials and sent home.

School administrators required that April bring documentation from the Navajo Nation proving Malachi's indigenous parentage. April immediately contacted the Navajo Nation and the document was delivered to school officials. Malachi was enrolled after the school approved of the document's authenticity.

April also contacted the American Indian Movement.

"[The] American Indian Movement contacted the superintendent; they had told them that they were going to accept Malachi into school," she said.

The school defended its actions by citing procedure and school policy. According to the school's handbook, "certain recognized religious or spiritual beliefs may qualify from an exemption from provisions of the dress code. ... Any exceptions to the dress code must receive prior approval by the campus administrator."

"It's kind of heartbreaking because how do you explain to a 5-year-old that he's being turned away because of what he believes in? Because of his religion-because of what's part of him," April said. "Our hair is sacred to us."

Social media was ablaze once the incident was made public.

"That story gets so much worse when you find out it happened in Seminole, TX, where students are called 'Indians and Maidens,'" Twitter user Emily Lakdawalla wrote. The school's mascot is an Indian and the school's logo is of an Indian with feathers on his head.

Twitter user Aaron Yazzie, Navajo, wrote: "1st dress code rule states 'clothing with offensive emblems' prohibited. Shouldn't that include Indian mascots?"

The Seminole Independent School district's dress code rules, acquired by Colorlines.com, states "hairstyles or designs that are disruptive or distractive to the school environment are prohibited (i.e. Mohawks, rattails, dreadlocks, patterns or shavings in the hair, or spikes).

"I trim it. It grows back," Malachi said.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, a Rastafarian teenager was indefinitely suspended from a school there for having dreadlocks. The boy is now represented by the American Civil Liberties Union who argues that it's Rastafarian mandate to keep one's hair long and that the school, South Plaquemines School, is in violation of his religious freedom.

"We would object if the school were to tell a Christian student they could not wear a cross or if it were to permit the wearing of religious icons of one faith and prohibited those of another faith," the ACLU said.

The Navajo Nation did not respond to ICTMN's request for comment.

Here's the CBS 7 report:

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Navajo Kindergartner Sent Home from School, Ordered to Cut His Hair - Indian Country Media Network

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On Monday, a 5-year-old Native American boy was sent home on his first day of school and ordered to cut his hair short because it allegedly violated district policy, the boy's mother said. The child, Malachi Wilson, an enrolled citizen of the Navajo Nation, had been looking forward to his first day of kindergarten at F.J.

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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first Indian boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by well-intentioned, eastern reformers Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast, who also helped establish organizations such as the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Boston Indian Citizenship Association and the Women's National Indian Association.

The goal of these reformers was to use education as a tool to "assimilate" Indian tribes into the mainstream of the "American way of life," a Protestant ideology of the mid-19th century. Indian people would be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The reformers assumed that it was necessary to "civilize" Indian people, make them accept white men's beliefs and value systems.

Boarding schools were the ideal instrument for absorbing people and ideologies that stood in the way of manifest destiny. Schools would quickly be able to assimilate Indian youth. The first priority of the boarding schools would be to provide the rudiments of academic education: reading, writing and speaking of the English language. Arithmetic, science, history and the arts would be added to open the possibility of discovering the "self-directing power of thought." Indian youth would be individualized. Religious training in Christianity would be taught. The principles of democratic society, institutions and the political structure would give the students citizenship training. The end goal was to eradicate all vestiges of Indian culture.

By the 1880s, the U.S. operated 60 schools for 6,200 Indian students, including reservation day schools and reservation boarding schools. The reservation day school had the advantage of being relatively inexpensive and caused the least opposition from parents. The reservation boarding school spent half a day teaching English and academics and half a day on industrial training. Regimentation was the order of the day and students spent endless hours marching to and from classes, meals and dormitories. Order, discipline and self-restraint were all prized values of white society.

The boarding schools hoped to produce students that were economically self-sufficient by teaching work skills and instilling values and beliefs of possessive individualism, meaning you care about yourself and what you as a person own. This opposed the basic Indian belief of communal ownership, which held that the land was for all people.
"Kill the Indian, Save the Man"
At this juncture, it was felt that reservation schools were not sufficiently removed from the influences of tribal life. In the eyes of assimilationists, off-reservation boarding schools would be the best hope of changing Indian children into members of the white society. For Col. Richard Henry Pratt, the goal was complete assimilation. In 1879, he established the most well known of the off-reservation boarding schools, the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As Headmaster of the school for 25 years, he was the single most impacting figure in Indian education during his time.

Pratt's motto was, " Kill the Indian, save the man." Pratt believed that off-reservation schools established in white communities could accomplish this task. By immersing Indians into the mainstream of American life, the "outing" system created by Pratt had students living among white families during the summer. He hoped Indian youths would not return to the reservations but rather become part of the white community. Carlisle was the only off-reservation boarding school built in the East; all others were built in the West.

Carlisle and other off-reservation boarding schools instituted their assault on Native cultural identity by first doing away with all outward signs of tribal life that the children brought with them. The long braids worn by Indian boys were cut off. The children were made to wear standard uniforms. The children were given new "white" names, including surnames, as it was felt this would help when they inherited property. Traditional Native foods were abandoned, forcing students to acquire the food rites of white society, including the use of knives, forks, spoons, napkins and tablecloths. In addition, students were forbidden to speak their Native languages, even to each other. The Carlisle school rewarded those who refrained from speaking their own language; most other boarding schools relied on punishment to achieve this aim.

At the better boarding schools, students could attain a reasonable degree of English literacy in a relatively short period. At other schools, the method of teaching - an object card such as CAT shown to students, then written, pronounced and traced - failed to produce a comprehension of those words that had no equivalent in their Native tongue.

The Indian boarding schools taught history with a definite white bias. Columbus Day was heralded as a banner day in history and a beneficent development in their own race's fortune, as only after discovery did Indians enter the stream of history. Thanksgiving was a holiday to celebrate "good" Indians having aided the brave Pilgrim Fathers. New Year's was a reminder of how white people kept track of time and George Washington's birthday served as a reminder of the Great White Father. On Memorial Day, some students at off-reservation schools were made to decorate the graves of soldiers sent to kill their fathers.

Half of each school day was spent on industrial training. Girls learned to cook, clean, sew, care for poultry and do laundry for the entire institution. Boys learned industrial skills such as blacksmithing, shoemaking or performed manual labor such as farming. Since the schools were required to be as self-sufficient as possible, students did the majority of the work. By 1900, economic practicality became the goal and school curriculum slanted even further toward industrial training while academics languished.

The Carlisle school developed a " placing out system," placing Indian students in the mainstream community for summer or a year at a time where they could learn skills other than farming. While monitored carefully at Carlisle, other outing programs were often exploitive. At the Phoenix Indian School, girls became the major source of domestic labor for white families, boys were placed in seasonal harvest or other jobs unwanted by white or immigrant laborers and the students were unsupervised, learning very little from their outing experiences.

The Carlisle and Phoenix schools also had football teams, and Phoenix had a band that performed at summer parades and festivals. These activities were meant to support the idea that Indian people were capable of competing with whites.

Conversion to Christianity was also deemed essential to the cause. Indian boarding schools were expected to develop a curriculum of religious instruction, placing emphasis on the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and Psalms. Implanting ideas of sin and a sense of guilt were part of Sunday schools. Christianity governed gender relations at the schools and most schools invested their energy in keeping the sexes apart, in some cases endangering the lives of the students by locking girls in their dormitories at night - meaning they could not get out, even in the case of fire. There were, however, ritualized social activities such as dances and promenades.

Discipline within the Indian boarding schools was severe and generally consisted of confinement, deprivation of privileges, threat of corporal punishment or restriction of diet. In addition to coping with the severe discipline, Indian students were ravaged by disease at boarding schools. Tuberculosis and trachoma ("sore eyes") were the greatest threats. In December of 1899, measles broke out at the Phoenix Indian School, reaching epidemic proportions by January. In its wake, 325 cases of measles, 60 cases of pneumonia, and 9 deaths were recorded in a 10-day period.

Naturally, Indian people resisted the schools in various ways. Sometimes entire villages refused to enroll their children in white men's schools. Indian agents on the reservations normally resorted to withholding rations or sending in agency police to enforce the school policy. In some cases, police were sent onto the reservations to seize children from their parents, whether willing or not. The police would continue to take children until the school was filled, so sometimes orphans were offered up or families would negotiate a family quota. Navajo police officers avoided taking "prime" children and would take children assumed to be less intelligent, those not well cared for or those physically impaired.

Indian parents also banded together to withdraw their children en masse, encouraging runaways and undermining the schools' influence during summer and school breaks. An 1893 court ruling increased pressure to keep Indian children in Boarding schools. It was not until 1978 with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act that Native American parents gained the legal right to deny their children's placement in off-reservation schools.

Some Native American parents saw boarding school education for what it was intended to be - the total destruction of Indian culture. Others objected to specific aspects of the education system, the manner of discipline and the drilling. Still others were concerned for their children's health and associated the schools with death. Resentment of the boarding schools was most severe because the schools broke the most sacred and fundamental of all human ties, the parent-child bond.

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Native American History and Culture: Boarding Schools - American Indian Relief Council is now Northern Plains Reservation Aid

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The boarding school experience for Indian children began in 1860 when the Bureau of Indian Affairs established the first boarding school on the Yakima Indian Reservation in the state of Washington. These schools were part of a plan devised by...

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Throughout the history of the Native American boarding schools, the U.S. government has weighed in on the them - from arguing that Indians were savages who should be compelled to send their children to the schools by whatever means necessary to later, recommending increased Indian control over education.

In 1886, the government published the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior. It established the attitudes of Indian Affairs Agents in the early days of federal boarding schools. The report was a compilation of agent reports; the agents largely saw Indians as savages who should be compelled using whatever means necessary to send their children to schools.

EXCERPTS: "If it be admitted that education affords the true solution to the Indian problem, then it must be admitted that the boarding school is the very key to the situation.

"However excellent the day school may be, whatever the qualifications of the teacher, or however superior the facilities for instruction of the few short hours spent in the day school is, to a great extent, offset by the habits, scenes and surroundings at home - if a mere place to eat and live in can be called a home. Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated, and the extra expense attendant thereon is more than compensated by the thoroughness of the work. "

- John B. Riley, Indian School Superintendent

"It was deemed necessary to establish during the year a stricter system of discupline than heretofore prevailed. A cadet battalion organization of five companies broke up the tribal associations."

- Arthur Grabowski, Superintendent, Haskell Institute.

"The parents of these Indian children are ignorant, and know nothing of the value of education, and there are no elevating circumstances in the home circle to arouse the ambition of the children. Parental authority is hardly known or exercised among the Indians in this agency. The agent should be endowed with some kind of authority to enforce attendance. The agent here has found that a threat to depose a captain if he does not make the children attend school has had a good effect."

- John S. Ward, United States Indian Agent, Mission Agency, California.

"Compulsion through the police is often necessary, and should this be required during the coming year, it will be heroically resorted to, regardless of results. The treaty with the Indians gives the children to the Government, for school purposes, nine months in the year, but the punishment therein provided in case they fail to comply is hardly humane or just. If taking ration tickets only metered out merited punishment to the heads of families, who are alone guilty, it would be a wise provision, but the children have togo hungry and suffer the disobedience of the parents. It is better, in my opinion, to compel attendance through the police than taking up ration tickets for non-attendance."

- John P Williamson, Dakota Agency

In the 1920s, the federal government commissioned a groundbreaking investigation into the outcome of government policies toward American Indians, including boarding schools. The report that followed in 1928, The Problem of Indian Administration (also called the Meriam Report after Lewis Meriam, who supervised the study), found that children at federal boarding schools were malnourished, overworked, harshly punished and poorly educated.
EXCERPTS:
"The survey staff finds itself obliged to say frankly and unequivocally that the provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding schools are grossly inadequate.

"The diet is deficient in quantity, quality, and variety.

"At a few, very few, schools, the farm and the dairy are sufficiently productive to be a highly important factor in raising the standard of the diet, but even at the best schools these sources do not fully meet the requirements for the health and development of the children. At the worst schools, the situation is serious in the extreme.

"The boarding schools are crowded materially beyond their capacities.

"The toilet facilities have in many cases not been increased proportionately to the increase in pupils, and they are fairly frequently not properly maintained or conveniently located. The supply of soap and towels has been inadequate.

"In nearly every boarding school one will find children of 10, 11, and 12 spending four hours a day in more or less heavy industrial work-dairy, kitchen work, laundry, shop. The work is bad for children of this age, especially children not physically well-nourished; most of it is in no sense educational since the operations are large-scale and bear little relation to either home or industrial life outside; and it is admittedly unsatisfactory even from the point of view of getting the work done. At present the half-day plan is felt to be necessary, not because it can be defended on health or educational grounds, for it cannot, but because the small amount of money allowed for food and clothes makes it necessary to use child labor.

"The term "child labor" is used advisedly. The labor of children as carried on in Indian boarding schools would, it is believed, constitute a violation of child labor laws in most states.

"The discipline in the boarding schools is restrictive rather than developmental. Routine institutionalism is almost the invariable characteristic of the Indian boarding school.

"Nearly every boarding school visited furnished disquieting illustrations of failure to understand the underlying principles of human behavior. Punishments of the most harmful sort are bestowed in sheer ignorance, often in a sincere attempt to be of help. Routinization is the one method used for everything; though all that we know indicates its weakness as a method in education. If there were any real knowledge of how human beings are developed through their behavior, we should not have in the Indian boarding schools the mass movements from dormitory to dining room, from dining room to classroom, from classroom back again, all completely controlled by external authority; we should hardly have children from the smallest to the largest of both sexes lined up in military formation; and we would certainly find a better way of handling boys and girls than to lock the door to the fire-escape of the girls' dormitory.

"The result is that Indian schools for the most part have as the only system of physical training applicable to all pupils a scheme of military drilling that is largely obsolete even in Army training camps. Whatever the advantages of military drill for boys of high school age (and this is a controverted matter even among military experts), few advocates of military training would find any value for girls and little children in the formal type of drill insisted upon in most Indian boarding schools.

"Almost without exception Indian boarding schools are "institutional" to an extreme degree. This is especially true of those non-reservation boarding schools that have upwards of a thousand students, where the numbers and general stiffness of the organization create problems that would be bad in any school but are especially serious in Indian schools."

More than 40 years after the Meriam Report criticized government boarding schools, a report known as the Kennedy Report declared Indian education a national tragedy.

EXCERPTS:

"The BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] education budget was found to be greatly inadequate: Since most Indian children begin school with the environmental handicaps of rural poverty, cultural isolation, low level of parent education, and in many cases a non-English native language, equality of educational inputs requires greatly superior inschool resources of teachers, curriculum, facilities, and equipment to balance the inadequate preschool preparation of most Indian children. Such superior education has not been and cannot be supplied by the BIA on its current budget of some $1,000 per student year, which must also pay for the boarding expense of nealy half its students. It has been pointed out that the Job Corps spent from $7,000 to $9,000 per student year for its resident high-school level education program.

"When asked to name the most important things the schools should do for their students, only about one-tenth of the teachers mentioned academic achievement as an important goal. Apparently, many of the teachers still see their role as that of "civilizing the native." BIA administrators believe that Indians can choose only between total "Indianness" -whatever that is - and complete assimilation into the dominant society. Thus, the goal of BIA education appears to direct students toward migration into a city while at the same time it fails to "prepare students academically, socially, physchologically, or vocationally for urban life. As a result, many return to the reservation disillusioned, to spend the rest of their lives in economic and intellectual stagnation."

"School environment was sterile, impersonal and rigid, with a major emphasis on discipline and punishment, which is deeply resented by the students.

"Dormitory discipline is often unnecessarily strict and confining.

"Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that even as custodial institutions, the Bureau's off-reservation boarding schools are not satisfactory. Several reports point to examples of overcrowding in dormitories or classrooms, of lack of privacy for the students, of inadequate areas for study and recreation, of unappealing meals, of rules which irritate older students by their rigid enforcement and inappropriateness to the student's age, and of punitive discipline."

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American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many

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The U.S. government operated 100 boarding schools for American Indians on and off reservations. One expert says the schools were part of a strategy to conquer Indians. Students who attended them were required to talk and dress as mainstream Americans.

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Hi all,

I was trying to delete an old post from 2010 and it inadvertently sent it to all subscribers. It showcases the work of someone I no longer support. Please delete and disregard the last email.

Someday I'll get this blog back under control, I promise!

AK

"The Gods of the Taino People," Perkins Street (behind former Hi-Lo Foods), Jamaica Plain. By Rafael Rivera Garcia with Jose Ramos, Jose Alicea, John Montero.

Welcome to "Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times," an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I'm donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.
by Rosa Blumenfeld

Rosa Blumenfeld is Muisca raised Colombian and Jewish. Rosa is a writer, water follower, and mikveh guides who lives on Massachusett land in Boston, MA, USA. Website: www.rosablumenfeld.com IG: @spiritual_rosa FB: www.facebook.com/spiritualrosa

I live in a neighborhood of Boston that has been transformed over the last 40 years from Jamaica Spain, the city's barrio, to Jamaica Plain (JP), a haven for white young urban professionals. They have taken over this neighborhood for the same reasons that I wanted to live here: it has good public transit access, the Jamaica Pond and the Arnold Arboretum. It is also Boston's most walkable neighborhood, with small stores along Centre Street, very active neighborhood listservs and Facebook groups that emphasize caring for each other and social justice, and is very family friendly.

Although I have lived in the Boston area since 2006, I have always avoided living in Jamaica Plain. As a fellow Native/Indigenous woman raised Latinx, the gentrification and the entitlement that goes along with the white people who have slowly but surely taken over here has always enraged me, and I didn't even grow up here. (Don't know what I mean by saying I am Native Raised Latinx? Read my post about it here.) When I separated from my soon to be ex-husband, I lived in a friend's guest room, then rented a room in a former trap house with 22 year olds who didn't clean and stole from me. I finally couldn't take it anymore and asked if anyone knew of housing in Boston on Facebook. The first listing I got was of a beautiful 2 bedroom that was below market rate because the landlord was a white JP progressive who wanted socially justice minded people in the house and could afford to do so. After a year of not feeling at home anywhere, I eagerly clicked on the photos and was delighted with what I saw. Plants everywhere, beautiful light, and artfully arranged furniture. I could tell right away that the white queer artist and social worker who lived there cared about not just having a place to live, but making it a real home. So despite my reservations about the Whole Foods and all the white yuppies in the neighborhood, including my new roommate, I moved in. I was tired and needed to feel like a whole person with a real home again.

Now that COVID 19 has hit, I wouldn't say that I regret my decision, but the underlying tensions in my neighborhood are rising to the surface in big ways, just like they are in the rest of this country. Stopping the spread of the Coronavirus isn't just about washing our hands or staying home. It is also about consistently and quickly out thinking the virus. We now need to prioritize the health of the whole by stopping our instincts to be physically close to our fellow human beings and starting again when we make unconscious mistakes like touching our faces or a door knob. Every. Singe. Time. The delivery guy who stood right in my doorstep to collect a package from my landlord upstairs a month ago wasn't intentionally trying to invade my space. He was just standing where he normally stood, with a natural inclination to want to be close to another human being. He didn't remember in that moment that times have changed and that he should ring the bell and then step back. In the absence of national leadership and agreed upon rules of engagement, people are left to figure out what social distancing means on their own, and it is pretty clear that we all have different definitions of what that means.

When I go outside to walk my dog in Jamaica Plain, it is like playing the old video game Frogger. I am constantly crossing the street, slowing my pace to maintain a 6 foot distance from someone and checking my surroundings so that people stay away from me. The white people who I see on the street still think that they are entitled to all the space, even during a global health pandemic. I no longer walk around Jamaica Pond because people seem to think that this is a vacation and on a nice day are walking on the path or sitting on the benches much less than 6 feet from each other. The runners sometimes do and sometimes don't wear face masks. They definitely do not slow down or move around others to maintain their distance because apparently keeping their pace is more important than making sure their sweat or their spit doesn't get someone sick. (Yes I still see runners spitting in the street even while Massachusetts is in lock down and has not hit its peak yet.) This is what it is like when I go outside, where there is plenty of space. I can't even imagine what these people are like in the tiny Whole Foods that sits where the Hi-Lo supermarket used to be. I don't even go in.

As we are seeing on the national stage, there is a way that white people think that their lives, convenience, and wealth are more important than anyone else's. This is why there are protests to end quarantine in some states, why the Navajo Nation has more COVID 19 cases than 8 states, and quite frankly, why the virus has spread so quickly and so far in this country in the first place. I have been watching this play out from the safety of my own home where it's been just me and my dog Penelope since the restaurant where I used to work as a server shut down right before Saint Patrick's day. But now this entitlement has come home to roost. My roommate went to quarantine with her girlfriend at the beginning of the pandemic, and the heaviness of it all is starting to get to her. She wants to come home.

Growing up in an alcoholic home, I was taught to focus all of my attention out on another person and severely punished when I tried to think about myself. The way this manifests in my adult life is by me taking care of everyone else in my life at my own expense. It is really hard for me to figure out what I actually want when faced with a request for something from someone else. My first thought is to figure out how to give them what they want, even if it doesn't make sense for my life or would even be bad for me. It also makes me hesitate to tell my story as a Native Raised Latinx person for fear of how it will be read and received by others. It is no accident that during a Trump presidency, the Washington Post's motto is "Democracy dies in the darkness." I agree with this principle, so despite my fear and not wanting to upset my roommate, here we are. Just as I would never silence another Native/Indigenous person or person of color, I cannot silence myself. Sometimes the best cure for white entitlement is the truth in broad daylight.

When my roommate first called me saying she wanted to come home, my first thought was to say yes. An interesting conversation ensued where she told me all about the ways that she had and had not been social distancing. How she went to her Mom's house and waved at her from the sidewalk. How she needed to pee when she was there but it was too dangerous to go inside, so her mom threw her a roll of toilet paper and she went in the backyard. How she had done better in the house with just her and her girlfriend, and that it was tense when the roommate was home, especially with her boyfriend. She talked about how all four of them were still working and that it was hard to find a place to take zoom calls when they were all there. But luckily, since quarantine had started, it had only been all four of them in the apartment twice, for a week at a time, with a couple of weeks in between because the boyfriend lives alone. How she thinks that we will all end up in pods, but that our landlord probably won't want to be in a pod with her.

A couple of things strike me now as I replay the conversation in my mind. I never told her how hard it has been on me to be living here alone. I chose to live with a roommate for a reason. I have struggled with anxiety, depression and disordered eating my whole life. Having the energy of other people in my own home helps me cope and do simple things that I struggle with: getting out of bed, eating, and going outside. Because she isn't here I've had to dig deep and come up with other supports. I am spending lots of time on video chat with friends and family. I started this blog. I am turning to God, the universe, a higher power (I am still searching for a word that resonates most with me) and inviting them into an active relationship with me in my home. I am making friends with the plants in the apartment. I am cherishing my relationship with my dog more than I ever have. When the quarantine was first imposed and I was faced with an unknown amount of time alone, I couldn't stand the silence of the apartment. It was very triggering. But now I notice the bird song outside my window as I write and I can tell I am not alone. Noticing all of these connections and being grateful for all of these relationships is huge progress for me.

As I reflected on this situation, I started to think about what I wanted and needed. With some help I realized that my top priority couldn't be what my roommate wanted, but rather about my own needs. That I have a right to be safe and healthy both physically and mentally. And that during a global health pandemic, we both had a communal responsibility to each other to maintain our safety and health as well. Hers AND mine. In the ensuing conversation and email exchange, I told her that I wasn't comfortable with her coming home. That the virus now considered us to be separate households. In my mind, this was pretty straight forward. No one likes the pandemic. We all want to escape from it. But the chess pieces fell where they did when this started and now we have to take responsibility for them. Make the best out of what we have. She had just told me how she hadn't entered the homes of any of her friends or family, and neither had I. For most of the pandemic she has actually been having a pretty good time living with her girlfriend. They are getting along really well and making the most of it. They are baking bread, going on walks, and playing board games after dinner. They are both still employed. We were all in quarantine. All in this together, or so I thought.

Her reaction to the idea that she had to stay away for longer and do her part in the responsibility we all have to bear during the pandemic was to turn me into the evil roommate who was depriving her of her home and her 'right' to it. I was shocked at how quickly she shifted the responsibility of the pandemic completely onto me and refused to accept her part in it in any way. She had just told me she was obeying the rules of quarantine and not going to any one's home. She had just told me that she was struggling like everyone but that she basically had a 2 bedroom apartment for herself and her girlfriend and they were having a great time. Where did this urgent 'need' to be in our house come from? She just ran through all these people in her life who she was social distancing from to keep them safe. I assumed that she would put me in that category too. I forgot to account for the fact that all those other people are white.

There is a long history in the Americas of white people treating Native/Indigenous people as less than human in order to get their way. When the colonizers came here and fought to dominate this land, the way that they fought each other and the way that they fought us is very telling. When European colonizers fought each other, there were rules. Face to face combat, everybody has a gun in their hand, an agreement on time and place. When the colonizers wanted something from the Native peoples of this land, they just took it. By giving out smallpox blankets for example. No rules. No warnings. Just murder and then land theft.

The City of Boston posted an infographic that I saw on the mayor's Facebook page urging Boston residents to Be Polite, and wear face masks out in public. The mayor's personal blurb used stronger language saying that it is unacceptable to be outside and not have a mask on. What I know is that this isn't an issue of being polite. It is an issue of the entitlement that is built into the white people who live here. They don't need to be more polite, they need to stop thinking that their lives are worth more and act accordingly.

As I develop this relationship with something greater than myself, navigate this pandemic as best I can, and struggle in my relationship with my white roommate, I am learning a lot about judgement and forgiveness. I am very angry about all the entitlement that I see, how many people have died, and all the ugliness that has always been there but is now more visible because of the virus. But I know that if I engage with that anger and let it harden into judgement, the only person that I am really hurting is myself. Bitterness does not lead to a peaceful and loving heart. It does not change the actions or hearts and minds of other people. It only leads me away from a spiritual center. I am not entitled to judge my roommate, or any other person on this earth. Whether they are wearing a mask or not, social distancing according to my version of the 'right' way, or handing out smallpox blankets. The Creator is the only one who can judge. It is also not my place to forgive my roommate or anyone else for their actions because again, that means that I felt entitled to judge them in the first place. The only place for forgiveness in my life is for myself. I get to forgive myself when I slip into the temptation to judge another person so that I give myself the opportunity to refrain next time. Given my story and the story of my peoples, this is a difficult road to walk. But if I expect others to give up their entitlement, I must give up mine too. In order to keep my own spirituality, my heart, and my sanity, I have to surrender it and give it away. God doesn't want me to have an angry life and a bitter heart. Their purpose for me is much larger. I just have to keep listening, learning, and living for it to be revealed, one day at a time.

Donation for Rosa's post will go to The NDN Collective's COVID-19 Response Project, "designed to provide immediate relief to some of the most underserved communities in the country. NDN's intent is to quickly distribute resources to frontline organizations, Tribes and individuals to provide gap services during this health crisis, and to artists and entrepreneurs who have suffered the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic," as well as an additional donation to ActBlue's split fund, which splits donations between 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organizers.

Photo Alan Stark

Welcome to "Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times," an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I'm donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.
By Vincent Barnargas, Jr.

Vincent Barnargas Jr, an Akimel O'odham from the Gila River Indian Community, is an unpublished novel and short story writer living in Chandler, Arizona. You can find him on Twitter @Windjammah.

They say there's comfort in familiarity, but there's horror there too. I find myself considering this as I watch my people suffer across the country, each and every story about tribes hit hard by the Pandemic bringing me closer to tears with every word no matter how many times they flow.

It's an old story and a song I'm so sick of hearing. How many times does it bear repeating and how long until it's played for no one at all?

I remember reading Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse and finding so much pleasure in her version of the post-apocalypse where the Diné people survived because they, "had already suffered their apocalypse over a century before." Pragmatism is a tool of the marginalized and down-trodden, a necessity to bear the burden of survival as a question, as a goal rather than a given. But if pragmatism could save a tribe of people like mine, then at least they wouldn't have to suffer again.

And though I won't call this an apocalypse, instead of avoiding suffering I'm seeing tragedies written into our history once again.

I've been struggling to get through each day. My tribe has managed to get by with few losses compared to the state, but it's hard to find comfort in that when one of those was my grandmother. I choose to believe she passed unrelated, having been in the hospital for a month prior to all of this happening. But it's little comfort when nothing is the same, when on top of abbreviated funerary rites and an inability to touch one another I've lost someone dear to me and I will not be getting her back when all of this is over. For her, the stories have stopped.

I have been doing my best to lift my chin and push forward. This marks the most words I've written since all of this began, despite writing being my biggest outlet, my tool for pushing back against the darker times and celebrating the brighter ones. But I will keep trying because I think we need stories in times like these. We need to remember that we can win and not everything will be a tragedy. That, despite history and the present being familiar melodies, we can create new songs and sing them together. And I think that's the biggest thing keeping me going: trying to do some good.

One day this will all be over. One day I'll stop seeing the death counts rise. My hope is that one day the news will play a smaller part in my daily anxiety, but until that day comes and forever after it, my heart is with my people. It's with everyone who has lost loved ones like I have and who also fears every day that they will lose more. But more than anything I wish for this to be the last time that I have to brace myself every time I read "native" and "tribe" in a headline. I fear that learning my history has narrowed that hope for me, but I will hope all the same.

It's important to imagine a better world.

~~In loving memory of Ann Barnargas~~

The donation for Vincent's post will go to the Navajo Nation Department of Health COVID Response, as well as an additional donation to ActBlue's split fund, which splits donations between 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organizers.

Vogue to the West by P. Don'Té Cuauhtémoc

Welcome to "Indigenous Stories of Uncertain Times," an ongoing open call series to share perspectives and reflections on the pandemic from Indigenous people and communities. For each post I'm donating to a cause supporting COVID relief in Indian Country. For more information on the series, submission instructions, or if you would like to contribute to author honorariums and donations, please see this post.
By P. Don'Té Cuauhtémoc, M.F.A.

Cuauhtémoc (Mescalero Apache, Mexika-Chichimeca/Cano, Cihuaiyolo Butch Queen) is a Critical Dance Studies Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Their research and writing focuses on how queer, trans* and two-spirit black, and blackened indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere have deployed the dance form of vogue (voguing/Performance) as a praxis of decolonization, resisting capitalism, transformational resilience, and radical indigenous knowledge reclamation. You can follow their work on Instagram @donte_omelauren and Facebook.

1) When dancing becomes easy, I get bored and unmotivated, but 'ease in grace' is a necessary aspect of dance performance.

2) I enjoy the rigor of dance class, training and practice, because of the growth I experience and see in myself, but always pushing limits can become unsustainable.

3) I was taught to dance in service of the people around me, and to the spirits and the Creator of this world. All of my dancing has become sacred because of this.

4) I want my dancing to be delicious. I want to be delicious. And that takes a lot of work. Every day, one moment at a time. I had wished there was some sort of end, or achievement, so that I could relish in all that I am and have created- but that's only possible through privilege, which is an exploitation of labor through generational insidious means.

5) So long as we stand on stolen land that is "America," our dancing is imperfect, and like everything we make, it is made with theft. I had once wanted to be a strong and balanced dancer, but the Queens taught me that's an illusion made and sold, entrapping us to the reservations of our mind. They taught me to focus on acceptance, refusal, resistance, survival, and reciprocity. They taught me to enjoy the adventure, because my birth was prayed for, and I am a gift from the ancestors to do the warriors' work.

6) I was born into a body that colonization had tried to destroy through genocide. The biopolitical warfare continues today on my black and brown, and blackened families. Because of this, the joy of dance, and my freedom to express anything I feel, is a blessing, a gift, that was fought for, through deadly wars and battles. My grandfather's dream was for us to have our sacred freedom to dance.

7) What makes an incredible dancer, is not their technique, or their passion, but the fortification of their Spirit. Anyone can be beautiful when they are young, but to be beautiful and delicious in old age, is earned, and deserved.

8) Dancers lie. Hips lie. Eyes lie. Hearts lie... Like everything else, imperfection of truth, is the only real lived experience we will ever have. So, I'm not too interested in the illusion of moral consistency, or greatness in integrity... I am much more interested in how we recover when we fall: ...how our completion of a dip always includes recovery...

9) Failure is our greatest teacher. She's a hard-ass, but she knows how to get you to where you need to go.

10) I have seen, felt, heard, tasted, experienced my full truth only once in my life. But, I know the formula now, and I know how to recreate it. But recitationality is never enough, innovations through inclusivity is required for sustainability.

11) Elitism, ownership, and exclusivity are colonial terms, illusions for commodifications of materials, services, and experiences into commodities. With this, because of the meta logics of colonialism, those with power always benefit. Statements of truth, such as "dance is for everyone," are strange and terrifying, because with simplicity, it disrupts colonial order.

12) We all want to predict the future, avoid mistakes, and say "aha!" Or "I told you so!" - but how we dance in the present moment is honestly much more important.

13) Why we dance comes before what we dance, always.
The donation for Cuauhtémoc's post will go to the First Peoples Fund Resilience Fund, which "provides emergency relief to grassroots artists and culture bearers within our network so that they can cover urgent personal needs: food, housing, caretaking, and/or healthcare expenses."

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Hi all, I was trying to delete an old post from 2010 and it inadvertently sent it to all subscribers. It showcases the work of someone I no longer support. Please delete and disregard the last email. Someday I'll get this blog back under control, I promise!

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Episode 72: Water Protectors and Fear Allerton | Another Round on acast

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Heben talks with Dr. Adrienne Keene about Standing Rock and the #NoDAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) movement in North Dakota. We hear stories from people on the ground about preparing for winter, police violence, and healing. Plus: Heben's names quiz is back with Name That Colonizer! And we get a special word from Melissa Harris-Perry.

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The fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline, explained

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Nearly two years before she opened her land to the first resistance camp, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, one of the women who forged the indigenous-led movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, introduced herself to some of the company representatives behind the $3.8 billion project, which would transport 570,000 barrels of oil a day across four states, through lands sacred to the tribe, and underneath the Missouri River, the source of drinking water for 17 million Americans. "Remember me," Allard told them, "because I'm going to be standing here throughout this whole process."

Allard's daughter, Prairie McLaughlin, organized for months, while raising five children; she moved her life to camp, too. "I decided to give it my all," she said. Joye Braun of the Indigenous Environmental Network and Jasilyn Charger, a cofounder of the International Indigenous Youth Council, arrived on the first day. Charger, with Bobbi Jean Three Legs and other youth runners, carried word of the pipeline all the way from North Dakota to the White House. Tara Houska moved her work for Honor the Earth to the camps; in October, executive director Winona LaDuke, a longtime fighter against big oil, and her sister Lorna Hanes were saddling their horses to lead a multiday spirit ride to raise awareness.

At its heart, the No DAPL resistance has been led and sustained by women. The water protectors of Standing Rock-those who endured violent arrests and strip searches, attacks by mace and tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures; who led ceremonies in prayer and song and dance; who worked as camp leaders and medics, organizers, builders and cooks, lawyers and security patrol, supply runners and teachers; those who gave rides and gave speeches-all trace their lineage all the way back to Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. "I want all the women all across this country to know that our people are a matriarchal society," said Oglala Lakota elder Regina Brave, a veteran of the Wounded Knee occupation, the night before she was arrested for refusing an Army Corps of Engineers order to evict what she says is treaty land.

They came to Standing Rock to stop a pipeline. But they got the world to pay attention, and in doing so, they planted the seeds of a movement that has galvanized the country. "Our ancestors prepared me for this," said Ta'sina Sapa Win, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the IIYC, who was wounded by security forces on the front lines in September. She stayed for months afterward, and she fights with even stronger conviction now. "I'm doing this for my son, for his water, for his future."

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The Water Protectors at Standing Rock: "Our People Are a Matriarchal Society."

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Nearly two years before she opened her land to the first resistance camp, LaDonna Brave Bull Allard of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, one of the women who forged the indigenous-led movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, introduced herself to some of the company representatives behind the $3.8 billion project, which would transport 570,000 barrels of oil a day across four states, through lands sacred to the tribe, and underneath the Missouri River, the source of drinking water for 17 million Americans.

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OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this piece, Cherokee Nation citizen, scholar, and writer Adrienne Keene talks about how history, and Donald Trump, have been too kind to Andrew Jackson.
On March 15, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted: "Hoping @POTUS tells Hawaii judge what Andrew Jackson told overreaching court-'I'll ignore it and let the court enforce their order.'"

This evocation of Andrew Jackson was in response to U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii ruling against Trump's revised travel ban. There were several things embedded in the subtext of this tweet that stirred a lot of emotions for me - but the glaring fact is that this statement (though the actual quote is a little different, and it is contested if Jackson actually said it or not), led to Jackson ignoring the Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, resulting in forced removal of my Cherokee ancestors from our homelands. These marches at gunpoint over thousands of miles brought the death of thousands of tribal citizens. This is not a moment in United States political history that one should want to emulate. But for some reason, under a Trump presidency, Andrew Jackson has been resurrected, and continues to be held up as someone to idolize. I can't even tell you how awful that feels as a Native woman each time his legacy is manipulated and polished, and each time the atrocities he orchestrated are ignored and pushed aside.

Sources close to the Trump campaign say it was most likely Steve Bannon who first told Donald Trump that he possessed striking similarities to our seventh president. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Trump himself who figured it out because he recently confessed that even though he "loves" to read, he can't seem to ever find the time to get started (at the time of the interview he was "looking at" a book about Jackson).

Native folks recognized the similarities right away, such as scholar Cutcha Risling Baldy (from the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk nations) who started cataloguing the emergence of "Zombie Andrew Jackson" on her blog before Trump even took office.

Trump embraced the comparison to Jackson, and once in the Oval Office, he chose a portrait of Jackson to hang in a place of honor. More recently, the same day as Huckabee's tweet, Trump spent the night at Jackson's Tennessee plantation, the Hermitage, and laid a wreath on his tomb. He gave a speech at the site, stating that America will "build on [his] legacy." He called Jackson a "military hero and genius and a beloved president," but noted he was "also a flawed and imperfect man, a product of his time." He ended his speech, "Andrew Jackson, we thank you for your service. We honor you for your memory. We build on your legacy, and we thank God for the United States of America."

These statements and comparisons terrify me. Jackson's legacy is nothing short of Native genocide. History has strangely been kind to him, painting him as a populist president, a "common man," a political outsider who came to shake up the establishment and break the rules to serve the people. But the reality was far from it.

Prior to his presidency, Jackson had been deeply involved in battles with southeastern tribes. From 1813 to 1814 he led troops against the Creek Nation in the Creek War, and in 1818 he waged campaigns against the Seminole in Florida. In these battles, he and his men wiped out entire villages, physically slaughtering Native men, women, and children, and gained millions of acres of Native lands for the U.S. through treaties signed, often under duress, afterward. He used this military experience to gain political trust and influence, and vowed that once elected president he would begin the process of moving Native peoples west - freeing land for the development by and use of white settlers.

The Southeast - the traditional homeland of my people as well as the other (maddeningly and cringe-worthily named) "Five Civilized Tribes" of Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw - is rich, fertile, and beautiful land. It is the land that supported our communities for thousands of years, and also the land that holds our history and our knowledge. It is where we come from, spiritually and physically. It is also land that white settlers desperately wanted, and felt entitled to, during the 1800s.

So Jackson promised white folks the land, and the gold recently discovered underneath it, and in exchange they elected him president in 1828. Early in his presidency he passed the Indian Removal Act. Jackson justified this removal in an address to Congress, clearly laying out his deeply racist views:

"What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization and religion?"

The subsequent years were filled with court cases, protests, and appeals from those "savages" in the region. It was meant to be a peaceful, "voluntary" removal. Instead, it was one full of lies, deceit, armed troops, and death. It wasn't just the Cherokees who were removed; it was thousands of members of the other tribes as well. Numbers estimate 70,000 Native peoples, enslaved Africans, and even some white residents were forced from their lands in the southeast and marched to "Indian Territory" in present-day Oklahoma during that time period, with death estimates in the tens of thousands.

One of the Cherokee methods of resistance during the time of Indian Removal was through assimilation - adopting white settler practices of farming, clothing, homes, and education, while also maintaining Cherokee language (including a tribal newspaper printed in the Cherokee syllabary, meaning the literacy rate of the Cherokee Nation was much higher than the local white population) and promoting self-governance and self-determination. (It's important to note that during this time the Cherokee Nation also had some citizens who owned slaves, which is decidedly not a form of resistance - and is worthy of a whole other post and examination.) Our tribal government fought tooth and nail through the colonial system to prevent removal, only to be thwarted by a sham treaty and an overreaching executive branch. (Hear that Huckabee? Wasn't an overreaching court.) Jackson sent 7,000 armed troops to round up Cherokee citizens, removing them from their homes, not allowing them to gather belongings, and placing them in stockades, like cattle. They then endured freezing months of marching without enough wagons, clothing, or food. In our language, the translation for this march is "The trail where we cried" - the Trail of Tears.

I think about my ancestors on that march. I think about how that's actually not that long ago, and my great-grandma grew up hearing stories from her grandparents about their experiences on the trail. I think about how I am only here because they somehow survived.

And now, I think about how it is unfathomable that we are being told by a sitting president to think of this genocide orchestrated by Jackson as a "product of his time," and that we should "build on [his] legacy."

But I also think about the resistance that runs through my Cherokee lineage. I can look to my ancestors and know, even at great cost, that we resisted. We fought through a system not meant for us, we fought once we arrived in Indian Territory to survive and maintain our culture and language, and we continue to fight today. To understand resistance, we need to look to Native peoples. We are still here, despite every attempt to eradicate us - and we have the warning signs and lessons of how to survive a populist demagogue. We already did it once.
A line about Cherokee methods of resistance has been clarified.
Related: Native American Girls Describe the REAL History Behind Thanksgiving
Check this out:

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Your History Class Lied: Andrew Jackson Was Actually Genocidal and Racist

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OG History is a Teen Vogue series where we unearth history not told through a white, cisheteropatriarchal lens. In this piece, Cherokee Nation citizen, scholar, and writer Adrienne Keene talks about how history, and Donald Trump, have been too kind to Andrew Jackson. On March 15, former Arkansas Gov.

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6 Misconceptions About Native American People | Teen Vogue

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Native American / American Indian Blog by Partnership With Native Americans

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A blog about Native American culture, challenges and hope on remote and isolated reservations with the highest need in the U.S. 16415 Addison Rd, Suite 200, Addison, TX 75001-3210 Phone: 800-416-8102 © 2015 PARTNERSHIP WITH NATIVE AMERICANS Privacy Statement

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Native American facts, Indian news and American Indian service, plus Native history, culture entertainment, sports, recipes, travel and more.

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Listen to the current season of the Red Man Laughing podcast here! We deliver comedy, music, interviews & more every episode of the show! Subscribe to our show & never miss an episode!

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Contemporary North American Indigenous Artists

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Welcome to the Contemporary North American Indigenous Artist Blog. I suggested to William LePore, the Chair of the Department of Art at Portland State University, that I would like to teach classes...

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About Native American fashion, clothing, and jewelry.

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I've had a number of folks who can't afford a subscription, request that I share my short story that is published in On Spec (#107 vol 28 no4, pages 25-28).

Before I do, I'd like to suggest that if you enjoy speculative fiction and CAN afford the subscription, you should. I've been subscribing now for about 10 years. 4 issues is $24, 8 issues costs $40, and you can get 12 issues for $54. On Spec comes out four times a year. I particularly appreciate that it is a local (Edmonton) based publication. You can also get single print issues while they last for $6.95 +$3 shipping, by emailing onspecmag(at)gmail.com. I love short stories, and I love having this publication show up in my mailbox!

Alright, so now that you've all gone out and purchased a subscription for yourself and all your friends and relations, supporting a local "Magazine of the Fantastic", here is my story.

They are a bit grey around the puckered leather seams that attach the vamps to the soles, ôhi maskasina, these moccasins. I don't remember seeing them before, but they fit my feet in the way only well-used moccasins can. nimaskisina cî ôhi?

I usually wear slipper moccasins in the Dene style, trimmed with beaver fur, with fully beaded vamps. Works of art for everyday use. My last few moccasins were made by Tłı̨chǫ women, glittering flowers on white backgrounds and golden, smoked moose hide that overpowered the nostrils; filled the entire house with the smell of the bush for weeks until I broke them in.

I had to pay a fine in a hotel room once after a rainy urban powwow. nimaskisina made it smell like we'd set up camp on the two king size beds, an indoor/outdoor reclamation of a place built without free, prior, and informed consent on Odawa lands. I had the windows open all night and the four of us shivered in the cold, but the wet moose hide permeated every molecule of air, infused itself into our skin and hair, into the walls even. I slept poorly, imagining the smell was visible, golden light pouring out the windows, and every neechie who looked up would know exactly what it was. I love the smell, but even I grew tired of tasting it.

During check out they made us wait until someone could look at the room; the hotel was full of Indians and I guess they were worried we drank up the mini bar. I remember the look of confusion on the concierge's face when housekeeping called him back, trying in vain to describe a smell that seemed foreign, but belonged more than the damn hotel did. He caught a whiff off me a moment later, and his face twisted. They charged me the way they'd charge someone who smoked in the non-smoking rooms.

I've been waiting years for nikâwiy to make me moccasins; you're not supposed to buy them, that's what môniyâwak do. But no one taught nikâwiy, and every couple of years her and my aunties would try a new pattern, something from a book or described to them by a friend, giving up before finishing the pair. She's got a bunch of left foot moccasins in different styles crammed into her craft drawers. None of them "felt right", she'd laugh when I pulled them out and asked why she didn't finish them.

So I bought my moccasins, and felt a little ashamed about it because they didn't say anything about me or nikâwiy or nikâwisa or nohkom. And I bought my kids some because I'm better with words than with sewing needles; I guess I will speak when omaskisina cannot.

These ones on my feet, where did they come from? Feel like moosehide, but there's no smell and the reinforced soles are worn, stretched to fit me perfectly. Instead of heavy duty felt vamps, it's more leather with a boring geometric design, like something you'd see on factory made-in-China moccasins, but these were clearly hand-made. Short leather wrap-arounds too, like a high-top sneaker, just barely above the ankle, what's the point? The leather moccasin strings were gone, replaced by black nylon combat boot laces.

I'm sitting on a couch in a common living/kitchen area. Four kookums are on high stools around the kitchen island, resting their rubber boots on a metal bar attached to the island. They wear thin windbreakers and long skirts. They're drinking tea and patting their floral kerchiefs, talking about food. I pull off my moccasins and start spreading mashed avocado inside them with my fingers. It's time consuming work, I have to do it right.

I'm living in an Indigenous dorm at the University of amiskwaciwâskahikan. I'm in a program with a small cohort and the kookums are talking about the young men. We only have a certain amount of money each month for food, and the Elders decided to give it to the men. The kookums are laughing about what aniki nâpêwak have been buying with that money, fancy breads from artisanal bakeries, and aged cold cuts. They laugh uproariously about the spring water in glass bottles in the fridge.

I wonder why we don't just eat ramen noodles like every other student. I know how to stretch it out, making 'soup bombs' you can throw when the noodles are cooked, pieces of meat and lots of vegetables you freeze in small batches for when you need them, it's basically a full meal. I can teach them, I think to myself. We can sew soup bombs into cleaned buffalo intestines.

My fingers stay busy. The kookums are pulling on their short pipes now, little puffs of tobacco drifting like cotton candy, sticking to the ceiling, becoming clouds. The men will be out of money soon, far too soon into the month, and that means we'll all go hungry. I'm not hungry yet, but the suggestion makes my stomach clench. Lasting lessons are hard on everyone.

The men are back, braids but no faces, laying loaves of bread on the kitchen island, proud of themselves. They kiss the hands of the kookums and I'm not angry anymore. It will be okay. I slide the moccasins back on, tie them tight.

We are sitting in a circle outside in the quad. The sun is so bright and so high, we are sitting on our own shadows. A môniyâw, a white man, stands outside our circle and when his mouth moves I hear wings flapping. Not eagle wings mind you, not even raven wings. Dirty pigeon wings and I feel ashamed I don't honour the pigeon. It didn't build the cities, it just adapted. Maybe even better than we did.

Or maybe exactly how we did.

We are pulling spruce root up through the grass, laying it in front of us in coils. Dirty wings, dirty wings. Somehow I understand he is mocking us, saying our program is just "underwater basketweaving". We don't do that, but I think it might be fun. That one, môniyâw ana, in his 19th century hipster beard, he just wants us to know he thinks what we do is useless. Arts and crafts at best. I bet he studies poli sci.

The four kookums wrestle themselves to their feet, it's hard for them, knees creaking like abandoned gates blowing in the wind. They stretch out their arms in front of them, then bend them so their hands are touching their own shoulders. Their elbows are sharp and I'm confused; the kookums aren't blind. They push that one, ana môniyâw, poking him with their elbows when he seems reluctant to move.

We all stand and follow the kookums. We are in a building with a large pool. The water lies in shadows, a shade of green like spruce boughs. There are cattails obscuring its size and in a few places you can see all the way to the bottom. We usually bring our canoes here but not today.

The kookums elbow that môniyâw into the pool. He falls and drags all the cattails down with him like pulling on a tablecloth, until the pool is clear and blue and you can see him just sitting there on the bottom, looking up in confusion. The kookums throw him coils of spruce root and tell him he can come out when he has woven a basket.

He doesn't even try. He swells up a little, his skin is becoming puffy and flecks of his clothes start floating to the top of the water. We watch his skin come off in patches. Soon the whole surface of the pool is covered in soggy leaves.

The men take their woven spruce root baskets and skim the leaves out of the water. The men are silent but the rest of us are singing. The kookums are sitting, puffing on their pipes again, but these are the longer pipes, the women's pipes.

I gather the waterlogged leaves up in my hands, there are so many, they keep falling and I have to pick them up again. I am outside and it is the dead of winter. I have to take these leaves and spread them under the trees in the University quad. I cannot see the sky, it is getting dark and snow is falling, thick, wet and heavy all around me.

I risk freezing to death, but my feet are warm. I am glad I took the time to spread the avocado inside, my feet are coated as though with bear grease. I find a patch of waskwayak and I remember how once they were whipped by Elder Brother. It is winter, why can't I remember his name? I lay those leaves down, no more flapping wings.

I am ready for the coming fast.

There have been two reviews already of my story and of other stories in this volume of On Spec! You can find all the reviews in Tangent.

The first review is amazing/hilarious, and the second sort of "gets it" a little more, but both tell their own truths, intentional or not.

The protagonist spends much of these four pages, which are not "speculative" as much as "surreal," talking about shoes. The story includes many undefined regional words and untranslated non-English phrases and may be about pre-Europeans struggling with assimilation.

"Dirty Wings" by Chelsea Vowel is a flow of consciousness from a Native American living on the edge of mainstream Canadian society. The author is plainly familiar with this Native culture and uses many native words, although their approximate meaning can usually be deduced from the context.

This is speculative fiction rather than SF. The writing style is idiosyncratic and there is no conventional plot. Instead the reader leaves behind common or garden Western World certainties and is drawn into an alternative way to view our Universe. If you believe that reality is reality is reality and what we see is what we get, then pass this story by. If you are less certain in your metaphysics, then you may wish to enter this alternative way of seeing the world through eyes not automatically attuned to Western Capitalist and Materialist values.

I mean, I'd love to hear your thoughts/opinions as well, feel free to leave them in the comments!

- your favourite "pre-European"

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I've had a number of folks who can't afford a subscription, request that I share my short story that is published in On Spec (#107 vol 28 no4, pages 25-28). Before I do, I'd like to suggest that if you enjoy speculative fiction and CAN afford the subscription, you should.

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Meet A Tribe Called Red: The powwow dubstep DJs whose beats are the soundtrack to an indigenous resurgence.

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Wrestling with History in Whitesboro, NY: The Daily Show

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Jessica Williams learns about the history of the Whitesboro, NY, town seal, which depicts a white man wrestling a Native American. Watch full episodes of The Daily Show now -- no login required: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah/full-episodes The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

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He rose to national attention as a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1970 by directing a band of Indian protesters who seized the Mayflower II ship replica at Plymouth, Mass., on Thanksgiving Day. The boisterous confrontation between Indians and costumed "Pilgrims" attracted network television coverage and made Mr. Means an overnight hero to dissident Indians and sympathetic whites.

Later, he orchestrated an Indian prayer vigil atop the federal monument of sculptured presidential heads at Mount Rushmore, S.D., to dramatize Lakota claims to Black Hills land. In 1972, he organized cross-country caravans converging on Washington to protest a century of broken treaties, and led an occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He also attacked the "Chief Wahoo" mascot of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, a toothy Indian caricature that he called racist and demeaning. It is still used.

And in a 1973 protest covered by the national news media for months, he led hundreds of Indians and white sympathizers in an occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., site of the 1890 massacre of some 350 Lakota men, women and children in the last major conflict of the American Indian wars. The protesters demanded strict federal adherence to old Indian treaties, and an end to what they called corrupt tribal governments.

In the ensuing 71-day standoff with federal agents, thousands of shots were fired, two Indians were killed and an agent was paralyzed. Mr. Means and his fellow protest leader Dennis Banks were charged with assault, larceny and conspiracy. But after a long federal trial in Minnesota in 1974, with the defense raising current and historic Indian grievances, the case was dismissed by a judge for prosecutorial misconduct.

Mr. Means later faced other legal battles. In 1976, he was acquitted in a jury trial in Rapid City, S.D., of abetting a murder in a barroom brawl. Wanted on six warrants in two states, he was convicted of involvement in a 1974 riot during a clash between the police and Indian activists outside a Sioux Falls, S.D., courthouse. He served a year in a state prison, where he was stabbed by another inmate.

Mr. Means also survived several gunshots - one in the abdomen fired during a scuffle with an Indian Affairs police officer in North Dakota in 1975, one that grazed his forehead in what he called a drive-by assassination attempt on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, and one in the chest fired by another would-be assassin on another South Dakota reservation in 1976.

Undeterred, he led a caravan of Sioux and Cheyenne into a gathering of 500 people commemorating the centennial of Gen. George Armstrong Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn in Montana in 1876, the nation's most famous defeat of the Indian wars. To pounding drums, Mr. Means and his followers mounted a speaker's platform, joined hands and did a victory dance, sung in Sioux Lakota, titled "Custer Died for Your Sins."

Russell Charles Means was born on the Pine Ridge reservation on Nov. 10, 1939, the oldest of four sons of Harold and Theodora Feather Means. The Anglo-Saxon surname was that of a great-grandfather. When he was 3, the family moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where his father, a welder and auto mechanic, worked in wartime shipyards.

Russell attended public schools in Vallejo and San Leandro High School, where he faced racial taunts, had poor grades and barely graduated in 1958. He drifted into delinquency, drugs, alcoholism and street fights. He also attended four colleges, including Arizona State at Tempe, but did not earn a degree. For much of the 1960s he rambled about the West, working as a janitor, printer, cowboy and dance instructor.

In 1969, he took a job with the Rosebud Sioux tribal council in South Dakota. Within months he moved to Cleveland and became founding director of a government-financed center helping Indians adapt to urban life. He also met Mr. Banks, who had recently co-founded the American Indian Movement. In 1970, Mr. Means became the movement's national director, and over the next decade his actions made him a household name.

In 1985 and 1986, he went to Nicaragua to support indigenous Miskito Indians whose autonomy was threatened by the leftist Sandinista government. He reported Sandinista atrocities against the Indians and urged the Reagan administration to aid the victims. Millions in aid went to some anti-Sandinista groups, but a leader of the Miskito Indian rebels, Brooklyn Rivera, said his followers had not received any of that aid.

In 1987, Mr. Means ran for president. He sought the Libertarian Party nomination but lost to Ron Paul, a former and future congressman from Texas. In 2002, Mr. Means campaigned independently for the New Mexico governorship but was barred procedurally from the ballot.

Mr. Means retired from the American Indian Movement in 1988, but its leaders, with whom he had feuded for years, scoffed, saying he had "retired" six times previously. They generally disowned him and his work, calling him an opportunist out for political and financial gain. In 1989, he told Congress that there was "rampant graft and corruption" in tribal governments and federal programs assisting American Indians.

Mr. Means began his acting career in 1992 with "The Last of the Mohicans," Michael Mann's adaptation of the James Fenimore Cooper novel, in which he played Chingachgook opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Over two decades he appeared in more than 30 films and television productions, including "Natural Born Killers" (1994) and "Pathfinder" (2007). He also recorded CDs, including "Electric Warrior: The Sound of Indian America" (1993), and wrote a memoir, "Where White Men Fear to Tread" (1995, with Marvin J. Wolf).

He was married and divorced four times and had nine children. He also adopted many others following Lakota tradition. His fifth marriage, to Pearl Daniels, was in 1999, and she survives him.

Mr. Means cut off his braids a few months before receiving his cancer diagnosis. It was, he said in an interview last October, a gesture of mourning for his people. In Lakota lore, he explained, the hair holds memories, and mourners often cut it to release those memories, and the people in them, to the spirit world.

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Russell Means, American Indian Activist, Dies at 72

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He rose to national attention as a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1970 by directing a band of Indian protesters who seized the Mayflower II ship replica at Plymouth, Mass., on Thanksgiving Day. The boisterous confrontation between Indians and costumed "Pilgrims" attracted network television coverage and made Mr. Means an overnight hero to dissident Indians and sympathetic whites.

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American Indian Activist Russell Means Powerful Speech, 1989

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Scroll to page 8. Read the article, "Fine proud of Cherokee heritage."

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Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu's millions of monthly readers.

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Two days before Topps made its decision, a swastika was spotted on a fan in the stands, sparking outrage on social media

The controversial mascot of the Cleveland Indians, Chief Wahoo, is no longer welcome on the trading cards made by Topps, Major League Baseball's sole baseball card manufacturer.

The company, which also makes football and baseballs cards, among other items-and the only company with a contract with the MLB, announced July 24 that it will remove all Chief Wahoo logos from its card designs going forward and will instead print the team's block C. The company will also no longer print the Atlanta Braves " screaming Indian" logo, NBC Sports reported.

Tweets of appreciation directed at Topps by those who oppose Indian sports mascots soon flooded Twitter.

In April, the Cleveland Indians were allegedly in talks with the MLB concerning moving away from the team's controversial mascot. "We have specific steps in an identified process and are making progress," Pat Courtney, a spokesman for the league, told the New York Times. "We are confident that a positive resolution will be reached that will be good for the game and the club."

Amid the alleged talks, several players were seen wearing the Chief Wahoo logo on their jerseys during the 2017 World Series when Cleveland played-and ultimately lost to-the Chicago Cubs.

The Cleveland ballclub does not have a comment on the matter at this time, Cleveland NBC News affiliate WKYC reported. For years, Natives and non-Natives have asked the team to change the name and drop the Chief Wahoo mascot entirely. Clashes have occurred annually outside Progressive Field, the home of the Cleveland Indians, between protesters and fans of the team.

"They need a hobby-like stringing beads," a man said to a group of anti-Indian mascot protesters at Opening Day on April 11. Several others shouted "save the chief!" and "get over it!" cleveland.com reported.

RELATED: Sports Fans Verbally Attack Opponents of Cleveland Indians Name, Mascot on Opening Day

Meanwhile, a father who took his son on July 23 to Progressive Field, the home of the Cleveland Indians, was outraged when the pair were seated behind a man with a tattoo of a Swastika on his neck.

"@indians do my kids and I have to have a swastika, and nazi train staring at us all game today?" Martin Gecovich tweeted, WKYC reported. Discussions soon erupted on social with comparisons to the name of the Cleveland team, Chief Wahoo, and the discrimination of Jewish people.

Neither the Cleveland Indians or Topps responded to Indian Country Media Network's request for comment.

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Topps, Sole Baseball Card Manufacturer For MLB, Says It Will No Longer Print Chief Wahoo Mascot - Indian Country Media Network

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Two days before Topps made its decision, a swastika was spotted on a fan in the stands, sparking outrage on social media The controversial mascot of the Cleveland Indians, Chief Wahoo, is no longer welcome on the trading cards made by Topps, Major League Baseball's sole baseball card manufacturer.

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CARLISLE, Pa. - Nelson White Eagle, gray and stiff at 78, needed time to make his way across the wet grass to the graves of the children, but when he got there, he didn't hesitate:

The Northern Arapaho elder sang - a song of gratitude and honor, of thanks and remembrance and healing.

No answer came from the rows of white headstones in the cemetery on the grounds of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School, now the campus of the Army War College. And none was expected.

"I felt better after I sang the song," White Eagle said. "We need to hang on to one another, love one another."

He arrived on the grounds Monday, joined by about 15 other tribe members, come from Wyoming on a mission both sacred and sorrowful: to reclaim the remains of three Northern Arapaho children who died at the school, and who lie among nearly 200 native students lost in a brutal, turn-of-the-century experiment in forced assimilation.

Shortly after 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, after private native prayers and ceremonies, an Army team put the first shovel to the earth, beginning what's expected to be a five-day process of exhuming the three boys. They're to be reburied next week in their rugged mountain home, the Wind River Reservation.

The aim of the nation's first federal off-reservation boarding school, founded in 1879 by former cavalry officer Richard Henry Pratt, was to rid natives of their "savage nature" by erasing their names, languages, customs, religions, and family ties. Braids were cut off, and boys were put into military-style uniforms.

Beatings were common punishments, and epidemics proved deadly. Even as children succumbed to tuberculosis and flu, Carlisle became the model for dozens of Indian schools that spread across the United States and Canada.

Little Chief, the eldest son of Chief Sharp Nose, arrived at Carlisle on March 11, 1881, a boy of 14 accompanied by two young friends, Horse, 11, and Little Plume, 9.

Within two years, all three were dead.

"It's going to be very emotional for us," said Yufna Soldier Wolf, a great-niece of Little Chief's and leader in the push to return him and his compatriots to their tribe. Family members of Horse and Little Plume were there, too, some stunned to silence by the enormity of a cemetery full of native children.

To them, and to many native peoples, Carlisle is not simply a small town in central Pennsylvania - it's the place where the federal government set out to destroy their way of life, and where their children died in the process.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, the day had turned hot and steamy as sweating Army staff pressed on with their digging - under the watchful gaze of the Northern Arapaho, who rarely strayed far from the cemetery.

The first child had yet to be exhumed, but Army officials said plans remained on schedule. Several tribal elders, some on canes, returned to their hotel for rest, while young people embarked on a tour of the grounds, learning about a place they knew from tribal lore but had never seen in person.

"This is paving the way for everyone else," Loveeda White Eagle, 20, said of the repatriation. "The other tribes can learn from it."

The Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota say they want children returned from Carlisle, and so have native families in Alaska.

The day was historic for all those across Indian Country who want the tragedy of the boarding-school era to at last be aired fully and publicly. Some researchers say the collective damage inflicted on children at boarding schools has contributed to the addictions and dysfunctions that plague many tribes today.

This week, the neat, roadside cemetery has been cut off from public view, hidden behind tall chain-link fences draped with black cloth. Lighted signs on the military base warn, "Cemetery closed, please respect Native American privacy."

Like other students at Carlisle, the three Northern Arapaho boys were forced to accept new English names. Little Chief became Dickens Nor. Horse was renamed Horace Washington, and Little Plume was called Hayes Vanderbilt Friday.

Little Plume, buried under a headstone marked "Hayes, Son of Friday," was to be exhumed first, from his resting place near the center of the cemetery.

Army officials outlined the process for each grave: The 240-pound headstone would be removed. Then the grave would be opened, a job undertaken with shovels, trowels, and hands - no machinery. The dirt from the grave was to be sifted through a series of mesh screens, to capture cloth, shirt buttons, jewelry, coffin pieces, and small bits of bone.

Bones and teeth will be examined by Elizabeth DiGangi, a forensic anthropologist at Binghamton University and an Army consultant, to determine whether the remains are the correct gender and age. DNA testing will not be undertaken.

The remains will be kept in an on-site vault until the disinterment is complete. At that point, control of the children will be transferred to the tribe.

"It's a special mission," said Art Smith, chief of Army National Military Cemeteries. "We're in the process of disinterring children."

On Monday evening, members of a native group called Circle Legacy, who for decades have washed and cleaned the headstones here, put on a potluck dinner for the Northern Arapaho. Elders leaned on the arms of helpers, while children - young, native children - once again roamed the grounds of Carlisle, laughing and chasing one another.

"When you see the graves, it's a heavy heart," said Crawford White Sr., 76, brother of Nelson White Eagle, both of whom were sent to boarding school as children. "Healing, it's a process. I need it to begin, not just for me, but for the families. ... There's a lot of healing to be done."

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Army begins unearthing remains of children who died at Carlisle Indian school

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CARLISLE, Pa. - Nelson White Eagle, gray and stiff at 78, needed time to make his way across the wet grass to the graves of the children, but when he got there, he didn't hesitate: The Northern Arapaho elder sang - a song of gratitude and honor, of thanks and remembrance and healing.

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FRANK BUFFALO HYDE: Ladies and Gentleman, This is the Buffalo Show

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Exclusive: "No DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline)" Stuart James Native American Rapper

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​Stuart James is a Dakota Sioux Native American born and raised on the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota. Stuart is 23 years old and has been sober for 5 years and all credit for a positive lifestyle goes to Hip Hop and prayer.

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Stand Up / Stand N Rock #NoDAPL (Official Video)

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Native Americans Review "Indian" Sports Mascots