Free Republic

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

Boulder, CO, January 28, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Bauu Institute and Press, a leading research institute and publisher of books, news, and information on indigenous peoples around the world is pleased to announce the publication of Mormons, Indians, and the Ghost Dance Religion of 1890, Second Edition. On the occasion Director Peter N. Jones, Ph.D. explained the importance of the publication: “With this book, Dr. Barney has presented an informative historical analysis of both the Ghost Dance Religion and Mormonism, two phenomena that arose in the American West during the 19th century. Until now these two phenomena – which have played large...

(CHICAGO ) - The Paiutes, a Native-American tribe indigenous to parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona, told early white settlers about their ancestors' battles with a ferocious race of white, red-haired giants. According to the Paiutes, the giants were already living in the area. Roaming, man-eating giants The Paiutes named the giants Si-Te-Cah that literally means “tule-eaters.” The tule is a fibrous water plant the giants wove into rafts to escape the Paiutes continuous attacks. They used the rafts to navigate across what remained of Lake Lahontan. Giants roamed the Earth According to the Paiutes, the red-haired giants stood as...

I met a Native American school teacher in Oklahoma last month, and we had a fascinating discussion about religion. He told me that many Native Americans are abandoning Christianity, and are turning to the religions of their ancestors. In fact, Native American religions have become quite fashionable among many whites in the New Age movement. He also noted that many Indians consider white Christians to be worse than Muslims. He feels that American Indians were treated much worse, than Muslim nations have historically treated their Dhimmi minorities. He was angered by the fact that the US government had historically forced...

Many critics argue that Christopher Columbus gave us a devil's bargain. In October 1492 that Italian explorer, working for Spain, opened America to his fellow Europeans. The result: we got a prosperous New World by impoverishing, enslaving and murdering the natives who were already here. But this view fails to distinguish between two types of exploitation—one over other humans and the other over nature: the former which should be expunged from our moral codes and civilized society, the latter which is the essence of morality and civilization. The former form of exploitation was suffered especially by the tens of millions...

Brett Bucktooth, a member of the Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse team that cannot fly to England because the U.S. government won't allow them to re-enter the country on Iroquois nation passports. A team of Iroquois lacrosse players was stuck in the city yesterday, barred from flying to a tournament in England because the U.S. does not recognize its special passports.

With the leaders of five tribes in attendance, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas read a congressional resolution Wednesday apologizing for "ill-conceived policies" and acts of violence against American Indians by the U.S. government.

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) -- Former Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller is being remembered as a patriot who was remarkable for both her strength and humility. Hundreds of members of the Cherokee Nation and 170 tribal, state and federal officials gathered Saturday at a memorial service for Mankiller in Tahlequah (TAL'-ih-kwah), about 70 miles east of Tulsa. Mankiller led the Cherokee Nation from December 1985 until 1995. She died Tuesday at age 64 after a bout with pancreatic cancer......

Since the 1970s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has quietly collected, processed and distributed dead eagles via the repository in an effort to balance conservation efforts with helping Native American tribes continue traditional practices.

Wilma Mankiller, the once dirt-poor Oklahoma farm girl who grew up to become an American Indian and women’s rights activist, author and the first woman to hold the Cherokee Nation’s highest office, died Tuesday. She was 64.

Whatever you call any person born within the United States, that live birth results is an American citizen by right of birth. Time has come to declare all tribal nations void. Best, R.

SALAMANCA - Sen. Catharine Young presented local World War II veteran George Heron with the New York State Medal For Merit on Thursday alongside his friends, family and members of the Seneca Nation and local American Legion posts. “As a member of the U.S. Navy, George Heron gave several years of his life in service to our country,” Sen. Young said. “Like all veterans, he is deserving of our respect and gratitude. I am pleased to congratulate George on earning this honor and thank him for his dedicated and distinguished service.” The Medal For Merit is awarded to New York...

By Jerry Zremski NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF WASHINGTON — The Senate late Thursday unanimously passed a bill that could devastate the Seneca Nation's mail-order cigarette business, voting to ban the U.S. Postal Service from mailing tobacco products. The Senate's sudden and bipartisan passage of the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act thrilled anti-smoking advocates while infuriating the Senecas, who say the bill could threaten as many as 1,000 jobs in Western New York. The Senate passed the bill as part of its routine legislative work at the end of Thursday's session. The House in May passed a slightly different version...

Saturday, January 23, 2010Legislation aims to rid American-Indian image from sports Mascot under new wave of scrutiny By Nate Miller nmiller@greeleytribune.comDepictions of American Indians in school mascots like the one for the Reds at Eaton High School could become a thing of the past if an Aurora lawmaker has her way. Sen. Suzanne Williams, D-Aurora, introduced Senate Bill 107 at the start of this legislative session that would bar public and charter high schools in Colorado from using American Indian-themed mascots unless they received permission from the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs. The bill, which was assigned to the Health...

apology to native peoples of the united statesSec. 8113. (a) Acknowledgment and Apology- The United States, acting through Congress-- (1) recognizes the special legal and political relationship Indian tribes have with the United States and the solemn covenant with the land we share; (2) commends and honors Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have stewarded and protected this land; (3) recognizes that there have been years of official depredations, ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes; (4) apologizes on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native...

The language of the Comanche people, a lifeline of its culture, is fading fast. Its muted vowels and sapient cadence once echoed throughout the fenceless grasslands of the South Plains, but today it can muster barely a whisper... With a recent $215,000 two-year grant from the Administration for Native Americans, they'll shoulder the task on modern technology and a new generation of Comanche students eager to learn their ancestral tongue. "Its important for any language to have its say, to be documented," Williams said. "It's interesting for Comanche because it rose to dominance on the South Plains so quickly, then...

BROWNING — An official says the Blackfeet Tribe in northwestern Montana has signed the largest oil exploration agreement in the tribe’s history. Oil and Gas Manager Grinnell Day Chief says the tribe on Thursday signed an agreement with Houston-based Newfield Production Co. to allow test wells in the middle of the reservation. Day Chief says the company will be drilling horizontal wells into the Bakken Formation and other formations. New drilling technology has made the Bakken Formation one of the nation’s hottest oil exploration areas in recent years. Day Chief declined to give the dollar amount of the agreement. But...

US tax officials have sold off thousands of acres of an impoverished Indian reservation in what the tribe claims is a "shameful" and unprecedented breach of laws protecting Native Americans. The 7,112 acres - or 11 square miles - of Crow Creek Sioux ancestral land in central South Dakota was auctioned off on Thursday by the US Internal Revenue Service to help pay off more than $3.1 million (£1.9 million) in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest. The land, part of the tribe's original reservation established in an 1868 treaty, was originally held by the federal government in a trust for...

"We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture," the Rev. Robert Chase, a minister in the Collegiate Church, told representatives of the Lenape tribe at a "healing" ceremony at Bowling Green. "I had to dig deep in my heart and ask, can I truly forgive?" said Lenape elder Carmen McKosato Ketcher, her voice shaking. "Yes, we forgive you," she added. "But don't forget, we are alive and well." Friday, the two sides played music and exchanged wampum, or shell beads, once used by North American Indians as a medium of exchange.

NEW YORK — Members of one of America's oldest Protestant churches officially apologized Friday — for the first time — for massacring and displacing Native Americans 400 years ago. "We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land," the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. "With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events." The minister spoke on Native American Heritage Day at a reconciliation ceremony of the Lenape tribe with the Collegiate Church, started in 1628 in then-New Amsterdam as the...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United States Mint today announced the new design that Americans will see on the reverse (tails side) of Native American $1 Coins next year. The design, based on the theme "Government - The Great Tree of Peace," depicts the Hiawatha Belt with five arrows bound together, with the inscriptions UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, $1, Haudenosaunee and Great Law of Peace. The United States Mint will commence issuing these coins in January 2010, and they will be available throughout 2010.

VIRGINIA, Va. -- It's probably the last time that Timothy M. Kaine will step outside his house in the morning to find two dead deer and a turkey on his doorstep. But yesterday, the outgoing Virginia governor and his wife, first lady Anne Holton, stood outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond to preside over a Thanksgiving tradition that dates to the late 1600s -- Virginia's Indian tribes paying tribute to the governor. On a damp and gray but mild morning, Kaine welcomed about 200 people, including members of several generations of Indians in traditional garb, as well as Capitol Square...

<p>PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) - Willard Varnell Oliver, a member of the Navajo Code Talkers who confounded the Japanese during World War II by transmitting messages in their native language, died Wednesday. He was 88.</p> <p>Lawrence Oliver said his father died at the Northern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System Hospital in Prescott, Ariz. He had been declining health for the past two years.</p>

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama will host a Tribal Nations Conference discussing issues of importance to Native Americans on November 5, the White House announced Monday. Representatives from each the country's 564...

Many critics argue that Christopher Columbus gave us a devil's bargain. In October 1492 that Italian explorer, working for Spain, opened America to his fellow Europeans. The result: we got a prosperous New World by impoverishing, enslaving and murdering the natives who were already here. But this view fails to distinguish between two types of exploitation—one over other humans and the other over nature: the former which should be expunged from our moral codes and civilized society, the latter which is the essence of morality and civilization. The former form of exploitation was suffered especially by the tens of millions...

An exchange Sunday with my eldest son got me to thinking (a rare feat, indeed). He asked if tomorrow was a holiday. I responded that it’s Columbus Day. Sensitive and bright guy that he is, he came back – half joking -- with “Don’t you mean Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Day?” He and I have debated the matter of the government’s treatment of the American Indian many times. He takes the position that we badly mistreated these original and mostly warrior inhabitants of what we now call America. I agree with him that, sadly, by violating treaties, marching them off...

Who heard it? A player on the Giants offense gave his college as "University of Chief Illini" in the pre-recorded intros.

WASHINGTON -- A group of American Indians who find the Washington Redskins' name offensive wants the Supreme Court to take up the matter. The group late Monday asked the justices to review a lower court decision that favored the NFL team on a legal technicality.

American Indians look to high court Associated Press WASHINGTON -- A group of American Indians who find the Washington Redskins' name offensive wants the Supreme Court to take up the matter. The group late Monday asked the justices to review a lower court decision that favored the NFL team on a legal technicality. The seven Native Americans have been working through the court system since 1992 to have the Redskins trademarks declared invalid. A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office panel ruled in their favor in 1999, but they've since suffered a series of defeats from judges who ruled that the...

Europeans named the southern mountains after the Apalchen or Apalachen tribe of natives. How did the name progress from "Apalchen" to "Appalachia" and "Appalachian Mountains?" By the whims of cartographers and geographers, it seems. The steps from "Apalchen" to "Appalachian" can be traced by referring to vintage maps which provide names for the mountains of the East.

ON the road through the tree-studded high desert toward the small town of Chinle, Ariz., the car radio was bringing in the local Navajo station, with a playlist heavy in Top 40 hits, peppered with Navajo-language station breaks and car commercials. The sky was a cloudless blue, and I was on my way, with my childhood friend Esther Chak, to Canyon de Chelly, a geologic maze of towering red cliffs and deep-cut gorges dotted with pictographs and ruins of ancient cliffside villages. Lying in the heart of the 21st-century Navajo Nation, it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places...

A “Broken” Health Care System for Native Americans On paper, the situation sounds good: Based on a 1787 agreement between tribes and the United States government, the U.S. has an obligation to provide American Indians with free health care on reservations. But that’s not how it works, reports the Associated Press. Roughly one-third more is spent per capita on health care for felons in federal prison, according to 2005 data referenced by the AP. The system’s ineffectiveness has yielded a common refrain on reservations of “don’t get sick after June,” because that‘s when federal funds run out.

Judge Napolitano in for Beck about Indian Reservation health care.

The FReeper Canteen Presents….. ~ National Navajo Code Talkers Day! ~ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Peter Pace (left), US Marine Corps, talks with Navajo Code Talkers after they presented him with a Navajo blanket in the Pentagon on Aug 10, 2007. Code Talkers were Native American Marines who served in World War II and developed a communications code based on their native language. DoD photo by Staff Sgt D Myles Cullen, US Air Force. (Released) Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies’ militaryand family members of the above.Honoring...

COLLINSVILLE -- Human sacrifice! Victims buried alive! Read all about it in "Cahokia -- Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi." According to this new book by University of Illinois archaeologist and professor of anthropology Tim Pauketat, the mound builders were not always the idyllic, corn-growing, pottery-making, fishing-hunting gentle villagers depicted in various dioramas at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville. Pauketat said these long-vanished people practiced human sacrifice of women and men on a mass scale and weren't always careful to bury only the dead. Based on years of study of artifacts including many from the extensive...

If you’re a young Lakota woman with a big heart, an even bigger smile, but an immune system compromised to its brink by lupus—you know who the enemy is. If you’re a tribal chairman receiving a phone call in the middle of the night that another one of your tribal members has taken their own life—you know who the enemy is....

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - The College of William & Mary in Virginia is looking for a mascot and ideas have ranged from a feathered horse to an asparagus stalk. The school said Monday more than 400 nominations have been submitted. William & Mary for decades was known as the Indians, but the school changed its nickname to Tribe in the 1980s. The NCAA ruled in 2006 that the college could keep the Tribe nickname but its feathered logo was demeaning to Native Americans and had to go. The school's athletic teams will still be called the Tribe, but the college wants...

Out of Deference to Tribes, State Outlaws It in Names of Public Places, Prompting a Squall STOCKTON SPRINGS, Maine -- For nearly a decade, locals here have been fighting American Indians over the name of a dead-end dirt road.The lane in question, on a woodsy bluff overlooking the ocean, was once called Squaw Point Road. Maine banned the word "squaw" from place names in 2000, in deference to Indians who consider it racist. Names such as Squaw's Bosom Mountain and Little Squaw Brook quietly receded into history. But residents here played Scrabble with the spelling instead. They renamed the road...

RAPID CITY, S.D. - Custer rides again, although he's atop a plastic motorcycle and in a McDonald's Happy Meal box. And that doesn't sit well with some in the Native American community. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was killed in 1876 along the Little Big Horn River by Native Americans he aimed to destroy. But Hollywood brought him back to life as a character in the Ben Stiller comedy “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” which opened in theaters May 22. McDonald's included characters from the movie as toys in its kid-sized Happy Meals. The fast food chain's...

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary __________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 15, 2009 President Obama Announces Kimberly Teehee as Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs WASHINGTON – Today, in taped remarks to the 2009 National Congress of American Indians Mid-Year Conference, President Barack Obama announced the appointment of Kimberly Teehee as Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs. As a member of the Domestic Policy Council, Teehee will advise the President on issues impacting Indian Country. President Obama also announced that the White House will hold a Tribal Nations Conference later this fall. "Kim Teehee will be...

Spitting in the eye of mainstream education Dave Getzschman Students sit in detention at American Indian Public Charter school in Oakland for offenses ranging from getting up during class or skipping a problem on a homework assignment. Students who misbehave in the slightest must stay an hour after school; if they misbehave again in the same week, they get more detention and four hours of Saturday detention. Three no-frills charter schools in Oakland mock liberal orthodoxy, teach strictly to the test -- and produce some of the state's top scores. By Mitchell Landsberg May 30, 2009 Reporting from Oakland --...

Navajo Code Talker dies Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., offers condolences to family WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., today conveyed his condolences to the family of the late Navajo Code Talker and Navajo Tribal Councilman John Brown, Jr., of Crystal, N.M., who died this morning at home. He was 88. “Today, with sadness, we heard of the passing of Mr. John Brown, Jr., one of the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers and one of the Navajo Nation’s great warriors,” President Shirley said. “For so long, these brave men were the true unsung heroes of...

Written by . Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., offers condolences to family WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. – Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., today conveyed his condolences to the family of the late Navajo Code Talker and Navajo Tribal Councilman John Brown, Jr., of Crystal, N.M., who died this morning at home. He was 88. “Today, with sadness, we heard of the passing of Mr. John Brown, Jr., one of the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers and one of the Navajo Nation’s great warriors,” President Shirley said. “For so long, these brave men were the true unsung heroes of World...

WASHINGTON – The Washington Redskins won another legal victory Friday in a 17-year fight with a group of American Indians who argue the football team's trademark is racially offensive. The decision issued Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington doesn't address the main question of racism at the center of the case. Instead, it upholds the lower court's decision in favor of the football team on a legal technicality. The court agreed that the seven Native Americans waited too long to challenge the trademark first issued in 1967. They initially won — the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office...

For two decades, researchers have been using a growing volume of genetic data to debate whether ancestors of Native Americans emigrated to the New World in one wave or successive waves, or from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations. Now, after painstakingly comparing DNA samples from people in dozens of modern-day Native American and Eurasian groups, an international team of scientists thinks it can put the matter to rest: Virtually without exception the new evidence supports the single ancestral population theory. “Our work provides strong evidence that, in general, Native Americans are more closely related to...

Last Monday began the PBS Series, "WE SHALL REMAIN" with their first Episode "After The Mayflower". The ones that will get my attention begin next week, Monday April 20th, 2009, and especially the April 27th "Trail of Tears" episode which will feature "The Ridge", the Cherokee leader and his clan who I wrote about in "Jesus Wept" An American Story. It will be VERY interesting to see how PBS deals with this situation or if they will be overtaken with the usual political correctness and historical rumor. My story is taken from documented records as well as family letters saved...

Court rules for state in American Indian land case I. – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday limited the federal government's authority to hold land in trust for Indian tribes, a victory for Rhode Island and other states seeking to impose local laws and control over development on Indian lands. The court's ruling applies to tribes recognized by the federal government after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. The U.S. government argued that the law allows it to take land into trust for tribes regardless of when they were recognized, but Justice Clarence Thomas said in his majority opinion that the...

I am watching McLauglin group and I think I just heard all American Indians to each get $1,000. Can anyone confirm this?

It’s happened again. My most quoted article, “What’s Up With White Women?” has been cited in another new book: Michael Medved’s The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation (Crown, 2008). I was tipped off by a friend who was reading the book. Here is what Medved wrote: An American Indian academic and musician named David A. Yeagley (an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation) tells a sobering story about one of his students at Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City. A “tall and pretty” girl with amber hair and brown eyes, she spoke out in a class...

WINNIPEG - Canada's polar bears are not teetering on the brink of extinction and don't need the alarmist rhetoric coming from some of the world's biologists, an Inuit expert said Friday at a one-day summit to discuss the fate of the arctic mammals. While scientists warned vanishing sea ice and over-hunting means two-thirds of the iconic predators could be gone within 50 years, the people who have shared "a personal relationship" with polar bears for thousands of years say the threat is exaggerated. "The current population is stable. It is not constructive to exaggerate the situation," said Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director...