Indians legitimize gaming

'The tables have turned'

Some give tribal casinos credit for easing stigma of gamblingNuñez thinks it is Indian gaming, more than anything else, that's neutralizing the social stigma of gambling, in large part because of tribes' support for organizations such as his Community Youth Athletic Center.

“Before, everybody saw gambling as negative, as addicting, and the gambling enterprises just took care of their own,” he said. “Now the tables have turned and (tribes) have gotten a piece of the pie. They have not just kept it to themselves; they're out there sharing.”

Wal-Mart supports Indians

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Continues Support of the American Indian College FundWal-Mart Stores, (Nachrichten/Aktienkurs) Inc. announced a $66,000 grant to the American Indian College Fund (AICF) in support of the Wal-Mart Tribal College Scholarship Program. The grant, announced at the American Indian College Fund Flame of Hope Gala in New York last night, will provide $66,000 to the nation's 32 tribal colleges and universities.

As a long time partner of the AICF, this latest donation demonstrates Wal-Mart's continued commitment to diversity, education and the American Indian community. Through its Associate Giving Campaign, Wal-Mart will also match any monies raised for the AICF up to $1 million. The partnership between Wal-Mart and the AICF began in 1999 and works to benefit American Indians throughout the country.

From Turok to Peace Party

List of Native American superheroes

Critic befuddled by sovereignty

Sovereign nations are just Indians organized into organizations

Black Condor takes off

The recent UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #3 comic introduced a third version of the minor superhero Black Condor. For more on the story, see Black Condor Takes Off.

Webcast explores Virginia history

Student helps make history in Jamestown webcastAdkins, a member of the Chickahominy Indian tribe who is a gifted public speaker, gave a smiling, relaxed performance from the anchor desk and from spots in the audience where she fielded questions from fellow students.

She confessed afterward that she was unexpectedly nervous in the countdown to the webcast, but quickly relaxed as the program got rolling.

The webcast, aimed at fourth-through-eighth graders, was designed to be a fast-paced exploration of Jamestown history and its legacies of democracy, cultural diversity and the spirit of exploration. It contained interviews with historians, a tall-ship captain, an archaeologist, a Virginia Indian chief and even a former astronaut.

Are Indians Taiwanese?

An American Indian-East Asian Connection?

Superstitious Maya obey scary plant

The Ruins:  Armed Maya hold Americans captive for evil vine

Bye-bye Ojibwe?

County memo claims Mille Lacs reservation no longer exists

SCOUT is out

Dynamite Entertainment, publishers of the new LONE RANGER comic, has released Tim Truman's SCOUT in trade paperback. For those who don't know it, SCOUT features "a Native American protagonist fighting an oppressive U.S. government in a post-Apocalyptic world." Here's an interview on the subject:

Tim Truman: Remembering SCOUTNRAMA: You received accolades from Native Americans and educators alike for Scout's portrayal of Native Americans. Did the portrayal come naturally to you, or did you have to take on an immense amount of research to achieve it?

TT: Well, a little of both, I guess. Mainly from research, though. My main approach was not to take a patronizing view of Native American culture or history. My great grandmother, Belle Truman, was a full-blooded Cherokee, but except for some things that I remember my grandfather doing with my sisters, cousins, and me when we were kids we had no real upbringing in Cherokee culture. As strange as it might sound, I think the approach that I took with Scout stems from 1.) I'm a hillbilly kid from the Appalachians; and 2.) my family were southern Baptists.

Growing up, I got real sensitive to the way that movies and television would portray both Appalachian people and their culture and religions. It was never right. It was always some New Yorker or Californian's view uninformed, generalized, stereotyped view of my culture. So when I decided to write about Apache culture I remembered how offended I'd been by most portrayals of the culture that I'd come from and took the task quite seriously.Comment:  I reviewed SCOUT back in Indian Comics Irregular #42. The short version is that it started well with genuine bits of Apache lore, but quickly degernated into a Rambo-style shoot-'em-up.

Perhaps the most interesting touch was Scout's sexual relationship with Israeli soldier Rosa Winter. As noted recently, Indian characters rarely if ever get love scenes.

What happens with Democrats in charge

An interview with Senate Committee on Indian Affairs staff member Patricia ZellOnce upon a time, under similar circumstances, the Native-specific answer turned out to be ... more than anyone would have imagined at the outset. Enough to still impress and resonate, 20 years later. Enough to make even hard-nosed Washington politicos believe in the magic dust of empowerment. Beginning in 1986, when Democrats won a majority of congressional seats going into the final two years of the Ronald Reagan presidency, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs became the central player in a period of storied accomplishment on Native issues that hasn't been equaled since. Reauthorization of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act; passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act; initiation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and, growing out of it, the National Museum of the American Indian; and a host of legislation not up to those landmark standards, but still of the first importance, all became law or got their start in the 100th Congress.

“To get just one of them done would be an accomplishment,” said Patricia Zell, then the committee's general counsel for the majority Democrats. “And there were just scores and scores.”

Teaching kids about Turkey Day

Children's books about ThanksgivingJean Craighead George is another of my favorite authors. But her book, The First Thanksgiving is full of historical inaccuracies, many of which whitewash the situation. But her last sentence of the book is the killer, to me. She refers to Plymouth Rock and then says, “It is the rock on which our nation began.”

Excuse me? America did not begin until the ‘Pilgrims’ arrived? America had no cultures, societies, nothing until the ‘Pilgrims’ arrived and there was supposedly a Thanksgiving feast with the Indians? This is an obvious example of Eurocentric writing discounting any view but that of Europeans. It is highly offensive to those of us who are Indian or part Indian. It should be highly offensive to everyone since incorrect information has been passed along to all readers.For more on the myth vs. the reality of Thanksgiving, see Ten Little Pilgrims and Indians.

Utility sorry about desecration

Historic apology over sacred site

PG&E will remove a treatment plant on desert land Indians see as a path to the afterlife.The top executive of California's biggest utility Thursday apologized to an Arizona Indian tribe, promising to atone for the company's desecration of a sacred site the tribe considers a portal to the afterlife.

Chief Executive Thomas King said Pacific Gas & Electric Co. "regrets the spiritual consequences to the tribe" when it built a $15-million water treatment plant in the Mojave Desert, west of the California-Arizona border.

A Simpsons moment

The "Treehouse VIII" episode (1997) of The Simpsons tells the alleged origin of Halloween. It ends with Lisa dressed as an Indian maiden and everyone else dressed as their Puritan forefathers. Because she makes a smart comment, Homer calls her a witch and everyone chases after her. I wonder if this is an "innocent" scene or a subtle comment on colonial Anglo-Indian relations.

Political correctness defined

The Greatest Cliché:  The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness"The phrase "politically correct" can be used in two distinct ways: either with its original literal meaning, or with the mocking sarcasm that's common these days. I'll get to the former in a moment, but I'll begin with the latter. As it's commonly used, "PC" is a deliberately imprecise expression (just try finding or writing a terse, precise definition) because its objective isn't to communicate a substantive idea, but simply to sneer and snivel about the linguistic and cultural burdens of treating all people with the respect and sensitivity with which they wish to be treated. Thus, the Herculean effort required to call me "Asian American" rather than "chink" is seen as a concession to "the PC police", an unsettling infringement on the free-wheeling conversation of, I suppose, "non-chinks". Having to refer to black folks as "African Americans" rather than various historically-prevalent epithets surely strikes some red-blooded blue-balled white-men as a form of cultural oppression. Having to refer to "women" rather than "bitches" lays a violent buzzkill on the bar-room banter of men preoccupied with beating on their chests and off other body parts.

Obviously these examples fall on the simplistic side of things, but I think they illustrate the shaky philosophical foundation of today's usage. Underlying every complaint of "PC" is the absurd notion that members of dominant mainstream society have been victimized by an arbitrarily hypersensitive prohibition against linguistic and cultural constructions that are considered historical manifestations of bigotry. It's no coincidence that "PC"-snivelers are for the most part white men who are essentially saying, "Who the hell do these marginalized groups think they are to tell me how I should or shouldn't portray them? I'm not going to say 'mentally challenged' when it's my right to say 'retard', goshdarnit there's only so much abuse I'll take!"

Raven Tales: Bald Eagle

Last month I introduced Raven Tales. Now here's a sample of it:



This is a clever retelling of the legend of how the bald eagle became "bald." The CGI is primitive compared to that in feature films, but sophisticated compared to that in most animated Indian adventures. The best part is probably the informal speaking style, the jokes, and the attitudes, which fits my conception of Indian cultures.

Note:  This is only an excerpt, so it ends in the middle of the story. For more on Raven Tales, visit its website.

English = genocide?

Navajo Says English Equals GenocideThe president of the Navajo Nation says making English the official language of an American state is the same as committing genocide. With nearly 300,000 members the Navajos live on 27,000 miles that span across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. By treaty, they are a sovereign nation with their own government and laws but their schools and social programs are mainly funded by the United States Government.

Yet speaking English is offensive and, according to Navajo President Joe Shirley, it could wipe out his tribe. He actually said: "If that's not genocide, I don't know what is. We have our language, we have our color, we have our culture, our way of life, and we need help to preserve and protect that."

Another Indian slams "Brocket 99"

“Brocket 99:  Rockin’ the Country”:  Native Filmmaker Speaks OutBack in the mid-80's--a couple University students in Lethbridge, AB. got hold of a tape entitled "AIDS Radio," which was an attack on the gay community. They became inspired and decided to create a new tape that attack's the small native community of Brocket, which is located on the Piikani reserve in Southern Alberta--my home. In the Fall of 1986, a tape depicting a fake radio station on the Piikani, entitled Brocket 99 was born.

Brocket 99 defenders claim the tape is a "parody." According to my friends at Wikipedia, a parody is "a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke affectionate fun at the work itself,"--Brocket 99 does not poke any affectionate fun at the Piikani Nation, it is simply a work of pure hate and racism. It plays on stereotypes of Native people and makes light of substance abuse problems found throughout native communities. The main DJ Ernie Scar is presented as an elder native man, who is an alcoholic, misogynist, racist, sexist beast, that has a ridiculous Aboriginal affectation in his voice. I thought he was funny, but I didn't know any better and have since changed my opinion.

New reality show: Tribal Wife Swap

BBC2 infiltrates foreign tribesA group of British women is being given the opportunity to experience life in a native tribe, in a new documentary series commissioned by BBC2.

In Woman of the Tribe (working title), six British women will spend a month living with some of the world's remotest tribes, in Greenland, Papua New Guinea, Africa and Northern Mongolia.

The women will act as 'second wives' by shadowing the tribesmen's real wives in their daily duties, working, eating and sleeping exactly as the other tribal women do.

Democrats win!

Happy days are here again. It's the end of rubber-stamping, one-party rule in America.

I won't say too much about this, since it's not Indian-related, but visit News from a Multicultural Perspective for more on the subject.