Posted on 09/13/2013 7:52:27 AM PDT by raccoonradio
UPDATE (9/12/13): Here is part of a statement written by Amanda Lickers, the woman Shireman-Grabowski claimed to assist in removing the flags. Lickers says she is a member of the Onondowa’ga Nation, which is a part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The statement was posted in an article on the website Climate Connections:
yesterday i went to occupied abenaki territory. i was invited to middlebury college to facilitate a workshop on settler responsibility and decolonization. i walked across this campus whose stone wall structures weigh heavy on the landscape. the history of eugenics, genocide and colonial violence permeate that space so fully like a ghost everywhere descending. it was my understanding that this site is occupying an abenaki burial ground; a sacred site.
walking through the campus i saw thousands of small american flags. tho my natural disdain for the occupying colonial state came to surface, in the quickest moment of decision making, in my heart, i understood that lands where our dead lay must not be desecrated. in my community, we do not pierce the earth. it disturbs the spirits there, it is important for me to respect their presence, their want for rest.
my heart swelled and i knew in my core that thousands of american flags should not penetrate the earth where my abenaki brothers and sisters sleep. we have all survived so much – and as a visitor on their territories i took action to respect them and began pulling up all of the flags.
i was with 4 non-natives who supported me in this action. there were so many flags staking the earth and their hands helped make this work faster. this act of support by my friends, as settlers, tho small was healing and inspiring. we put them away in black garbage bags and i was confronted by a nationalistic-settler, a young white boy who attends the college demanding i relinquish the flags to him. i held my ground and confiscated them. i did not want to cave to his support of the occupying, settler-colonial, imperalist state, and the endorsing of the genocide of indigenous peoples across the world.
UPDATE (9/12/13): Everyone from HuffPo to India Country Media Network has covered the action. It has seriously gone viral.
UPDATE (9/12/13 11:51AM): Business Insider also posted about it on their website.
UPDATE (9/12/13 11:16AM): Fox Nation’s website has posted an excerpt of Campus editor Kyle Fink ’14‘s story.
UPDATE (9/12/13 10:50AM): President Ronald D. Liebowitz has addressed the matter in an all-school email. He says he was ”deeply disturbed by the insensitivity” of “this selfish act of protest” and that “[t]he College has begun a disciplinary investigation of this incident.”
UPDATE (9/11/13 11:44PM): Anna Shireman-Grabowski ’15.5 has come forward to confirm her involvement in disposing of the American flags and that she is the person kneeling in the picture. She also said that the other individuals were “non-Middlebury students.” In a written statement she wrote:
“Today I chose to act in solidarity with my friend, an Indigenous woman and a citizen of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who was appalled to see the burial grounds of another Indigenous nation desecrated by piercing the ground that their remains lay beneath.”
We’ve posted the entirety of her statement below the jump.
UPDATE: The flags have been replaced by Harris and a group of students (see comments below post).
ORIGINAL: At around 2:45PM this afternoon a group of people took down the American flags placed in front of Mead Chapel by the College Republicans and Democrats (Updated 8:45PM) to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11. Four women and one man piled them into garbage bags and took them away.
Julia Madden ’14 and College Republican member Ben Kinney Harris ’15 confronted the group as they disposed of the flags. According to Madden, the group only identified themselves by saying they were there on behalf of the Abenaki people. middbeat does not yet know who the individuals are and if any of them are Middlebury students.
When Madden and Kinney asked about what they were doing they replied that it was disrespectful to the Abenaki people to put the Abenaki’s colonizers’ flags on their land. When Kinney asked if he could have the flags back since his organization purchased them, they refused and left with them.
“I was dumbfounded that someone could be that disrespectful about something that affected everyone in this country and that everyone should recognize,” said Madden in a phone interview.
If you have any more information about this or thoughts about it, please send it in to middbeat@gmail.com or comment below.
Shireman-Grabowski’s Statement:
Today I, along with a group of non-Middlebury students, helped remove around 3,000 American flags from the grass by Mead Chapel. While I was not the only one engaged in this action and the decision was not solely mine, I am the one who will see you in the dining halls and in the classroom, and I want to take accountability for the hurt you may be feeling while clarifying the motivations for this action.
My intention was not to cause pain but to visibilize the necessity of honoring all human life and to help a friend heal from the violence of genocide that she carries with her on a daily basis as an indigenous person. While the American flags on the Middlebury hillside symbolize to some the loss of innocent lives in New York, to others they represent centuries of bloody conquest and mass murder. As a settler on stolen land, I do not have the luxury of grieving without an eye to power. Three thousand flags is a lot, but the campus is not big enough to hold a marker for every life sacrificed in the history of American conquest and colonialism.
The emails filling my inbox indicate that this was not a productive way to start a dialogue about American imperialism. Nor did I imagine that it would be. Please understand that I am grappling with my complicity in the overwhelming legacy of settler colonialism. Part of this process for me is honoring the feelings and wishes of people who find themselves on the other side of this history.
I wish to further clarify that members of the local Abenaki community should in no way be implicated in today’s events. Nor can I pretend to speak to their feelings about flags, burial sites, or 9/11.
etc
Have the thieves been punished in any way?
Anna Shireman-Grabowski, a Middlebury Collegesophomore, presents a petition to Patrick Norton, chief financial officer
>>Anna Shireman-Grabowski, a sophomore at Middlebury College, who led the charge Tuesday said they have had a lot of trouble reaching college officials regarding the issue. She said they tried to approach the college in March to start a dialogue, but efforts have been thwarted at every turn.
What kind of pussies just stand around and watch this shit happen? Today's Vermonters, I guess.
The Abenaki tribute fought along with King Philip and were a bunch of serial killing savages. No possible act of desecration could go far enough for these savages in my opinion. A permanent memorial should go up on that campus to honor the settlers who were viciously murdered by this tribe and the Wampanoags. The settlers did NOT start that war.
>>More than 200 colleges and high schools across the nation participated in Young America's Foundation's 9/11: Never Forget Project. Students came together to establish an American flag memorial on campus consisting of 2,977 flags representing each person murdered in the terrorist attacks.
Unfortunately, five student protesters at Middlebury College ripped the flags out of the ground before 3:00 pm. The 9/11: Never Forget Project has been an annual nonpartisan event at Middlebury College for the past ten years. By participating in the 9/11: Never Forget Project, students honor the victims of the attacks, as well as honor the American principles for which they died. Middlebury student groups spent nearly two hours setting up the flag display yesterday morning. The protesters told Ben Kinney, president of the conservative club on campus, they were "confiscating" the flags in protest of "America's imperialism."
The protesters refused to compromise with the students because the flags were supposedly located on an "Indian burial ground and you can't have anything penetrating the Earth."
[YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING--me]
By removing the display of 2,977 flags, not only did the five protesters disrespect their fellow students who worked hard on setting up the display, but they also took away the chance for other students to remember the victims of the horrific attacks 12 years ago. These five student protesters should be immediately sent to diversity training regarding respect for others' freedom of speech. What they did was neither noble nor righteous, it was irrational and disrespectful. Each of them should apologize for dismantling a beautiful display honoring American heroes.
UPDATE: The vandals were quick to reference their heritage, but in an email to the Huffington Post the school's director of public affairs, Sarah Ray, admitted it has "never before been suggested that this is a Native American burial ground." We have grown tactlessly familiar with leftists, such as Elizabeth Warren and Ward Churchill, hiding behind made-up Native American backgrounds to cover their own prejudice toward others. Two of the vandals have published statements on Climate-Connections.com only proving their intolerance.
What about grass & tree roots? Earthworms? Grubs? are those okay? Sheesh!
BTW -- I am an American Indian (Pamunkey) and I still think this is stupid plus!
I don’t see the address for her tee pee, did I miss that?
Middlebury College has been long known as a liberal/communist cesspool. It’s amazing a few token Republicans survive there.
This idiot needs to be institutionalized.
I guess using capital letters and not making up words would be “acting white”....
1. Each of these mutants should be charged with vandalism and tresspassing.
2. If students they should be expelled.
3. If faculty they should be fired.
4. All should be required to take sensitivity traing and pay a large fine.
The term “settler colonist” is used by several of these disrespectful intolerant goons which suggests it is something they learned in some minority studies course. IYAM all these courses do is promote anti-americanism and hatred. If I were king they would all be shut down.
Then HOW did the Indians get buried, if you can't have anything penetating the earth? My God, the stupidity!
I always though it was the Plains Indians and adjoining tribes who did burials in the sky, not the ones in East.
...Indian burial ground and you can’t have anything penetrating the Earth.”
Like a building that’s steel was erected by Mohawk Indians? The WTC was one of their proudest accomplishments and it’s now gone due to terrorists.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/comment/6241
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.