Specifically, the National Museum of the American Indian. Fascinating, maddening, enlightening, racist and anti-racist, historical and anti-historical discussion among the Comments, too!
Speaking as a controverted Nanticoke (who doesn’t qualify for Indian Assn. membership at this time AFAIK) who also likes his Irish background too, the U.S. Metis Identity movement looks more and more appealing….
Actually former Ralph Nader/Green Party running mate Winona LaDuke reports GW is ALREADY impacting many Reservations, being rural and poorer than most of the U.S.
I guess I have to add that yes, “they’re gathering firewood like crazy” — nothing like Winter in September! 
Why do MSM use an expression, Muslim-American (with or without hyphen), as if it’s an ethnic background or something? We don’t hear about Protestant-Americans or Catholic-Americans or even Orthodox-Americans or Mormon-Americans (though arguably many Mormons, like most Jews, are an ethnic group, not just — or even necessarily — religious).
I think maybe they’re trying to be sensitive, if unknowledgeable. Remember when NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey came out of the closet as “a gay American”? I dunno….
The fact is, American Muslims may be immigrants, or born here. They may be Arab-Americans, Iranian/Persian-Americans, Afghan-Americans, Pakistani-Americans, Turkish-Americans, Kosovar-Americans, Albanian-Americans, Indo-Americans, Bangladeshi-Americans, Indonesian-Americans, Malaysian-Americans, even African-Americans … again, born here, or immigrants. And lots more.
The plot thickens. Arab-Americans may be Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Protestant, atheist, Syriac Christian, Sufi, etc. (listed only in the order they occurred to me, without any prejudice … except in favor of the Orthodox!).
It’s like a-whole-nother world!!! And most of us are clueless….
I’ve previously advocated for a religious order of lawyers and inspiring Orthodox Christians to similar kinds of social service/philanthropia. (Of course, a religion doesn’t have to be Catholic or Orthodox to do these kinds of things. Do they?)
Well, as I’ve pointed out, one of Catholicism’s great works in its Third World missions and service commitments has been medical. Yes, the Medical Mission Sisters sang (and apparently still do!), but they and/or their coworkers also did/do alot of stuff we in this country ourselves now go poor paying others to do. I won’t call most U.S. medical professionals “mercenary” … but among the most-loved Orthodox Saints are the Holy UNmercenary Physicians and Healers — anargyroi in Greek, “without silver/money” literally. Well, not literally, because somebody had to help them pay the farmer, the baker, and the candlestick maker; but it often wasn’t their impoverished, sick patients. And the Catholics just declared the sainthood of the famous and much-loved Fr. Damien de Veuster of Molokai, who (apparently coincidentally) bore the name of one of the greatest Orthodox Unmercenaries, and went there from his native Belgium to serve the leper colony even without a medical qualification, only to die of the disease himself there years later. More pointedly, perhaps the other best-known Unmercenary (besides Cosmas and Damian), Panteleimon, was martyred for undercutting his fellow physicians, pagans, on account of his Christianity! (Talk about a patron saint of Healthcare Reform!)
There are still Catholic Sisters and Brothers doing medical service here, but I’d guess far fewer than in former generations, amid the plummeting numbers of Catholic Religious and priestly vocations in general, and the aging of those who remain. Today they may have secular lay (in the religious sense) coworkers and collaborators, and lay boards of trustees running Catholic hospitals and such, but as I’ve said previously, you can’t beat Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, for “cost-cutting” measures, and in any case Catholic medical institutions without a doubt, just like Catholic schools, are part of the skyrocketing cost of healthcare (or education, respectively) in this country. We’re not exactly Third World (mostly, though visit Southern Appalachia, the Deep South, and some key Indian Reservations), but as has been said, we’re not getting our money’s worth either, especially compared to the rest of the so-called Developed World, and even some countries not first thought of under that label.
Obviously the Latin Church’s traditional 3 “Evangelical Counsels,” the vows most members of religious orders take, are of less appeal today than in former times, especially to American Protestants and non-Christians. But if Third World service doesn’t appeal to some, maybe service closer to home will. And as I suggested in both previous articles, even halfway measures approaching “the vows” – for a few years if not for life, maybe married or marrying, in (prudent) shared housing or at home, more-organized and “religified” associates and collaborators, even fundraising to support those who serve – would help economically.
Maybe even spiritually!
([BLEEP!] We Orthodox better do it before the Latins think of it and stage a comeback!!! )
But think of it: 1/3 of a billion people, fully 5 percent of humanity, being bled dry by the structural evils* of their healthcare system … the world’s leading economy, whose ups and downs influence the economic downs of the rest of humanity as we see today…. What good, what caritas, what philanthropia could be done for the world even here….
(*–Scroll down to the mention of the Brian Wren lyric … including the warning about how to observe the unquoted rest of that hymn.)
OK, this time it’s personal. The Service Employees International Union is one of my labor unions, and they came to my aid when I was being targeted by management on the job apparently because I wasn’t enthusiastic enough about … well, that’d go off-topic.
As tonight’s Rachel jag continues(!), she’s revealed that, thinking prematurely that they’ve run ACORN into the ground ["Unless a seed falls to the ground...!"], the Right Wing Conspiracy — Big Business, Big Lobbyists, astroturf, AM radio, the Republican Party – may target SEIU (video) next for teaming up with ACORN to try to make poor people’s and workers’ lives a little less awful. How does this hurt them? Business has to pay slightly higher wages, sharing their massive profits (often already subsidized by one or more levels of government one way or another) with THOSE WHO ACTUALLY DO THE WORK THAT CEOs AND OWNERS GET THE CREDIT FOR.
And these guys attack US for “class warfare”?!! or “revenge”?!!
And if her guest’s idea that soon they’ll attack the National Council of Churches too, sounds exaggerated… Conservative Evangelical leaders have long considered this Mainline Protestant ecumenical organization Communist. (The Catholic bishops’ conference, too, though that group has swung Hard Right as they smell a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade, and in reaction against same-sex marriage.) Furthermore, they’ve been dancing on the grave of the Mainline for about a generation now, even though it’s not really going away (even though many of the Mainline think it is too), and recent research suggests that the relatively slight gains of Evangelicals vs. Mainline proportionately, are only because Evangelical women/couples are adopting artificial contraception more slowly than Mainline women/couples. The Evangelical ‘bulge’ (no pun intended) is already slowing, but will continue growing for about another generation before ISTM the numbers start returning to their classical proportions. (This is research sociologist Andrew Greeley has been involved in, but where I read it I can’t recall now. [Many Years, Father!])
Two other things: What they’re now calling living wage has sometimes been called family wage. So much for “family values”!
And another Greeley truism is that Democratic bigwigs, candidates, campaigns, either take their Catholic voters for granted, or don’t care about/are embarrassed about them … risking losing them to the Reagans and Bushes of this world. Are workers and unions in the same fix? Just like Official Dems, natural allies of/advocates for ”bitter” small town and rural residents, don’t give them reason to switch their generation-long Republican voting habits? Folks, I don’t see WASP “Limo Libs” reproducing fast enough anymore to warrant such a cavalier attitude towards our Party’s traditional coalition, the “Patchwork Quilt Majority”!!! And many People of Color who get richer go Republican….
…as Rachel Maddow (video) documents.
BTW, re-fund ACORN via their website!
(Type carefully, or like I almost did, you might end up at the shiny new website of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese — force of habit!!)
An adviser is not a czar, at least not as the term was used when the nation’s first Secretary of Energy had grouped under his authority numerous formerly-independent executive agencies, or the first Secretary of Education similarly, or the first “Director of National Intelligence,” or “Secretary of Homeland Security” (didn’t they used to call that “defense”?!?!?!).
An adviser has no direct power; a “czar” has LOTS of power. If you have LOTS of “czars,” that’s a contradiction, because their power is diluted.
Go back to the dictionary, fascists. “Are advisers unamerican?” Only if an “American” President is required to be an expert in every area of government or administration! I used to think they were electing a National Pastor, but now it seems they want to elect a god!!! Now that’s “godless”!
As for “dictatorial style,” look to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney; as for “secrecy,” look to Cheney’s secret energy policy meetings we’re still trying to get to the bottom of.
I doubt it. Why was a camera trained on him at just the right moment to capture him pointing and yelling? Members of Congress received advance copies of President Obama’s address to last week’s Joint Session. Wilson probably tipped-off someone in the media about his planned “outburst.” Such cynicism and manipulation rules us today….
A fascinating discussion here! I’m not sure I buy it all, whether as an Irishman, an Indigenous person (whether of North America or of Ireland/Europe), or a half-baked Red Tory … even an Orthodox Christian … but intriguing reading and thinking. I may have to re-read it.
A way to insult both the Irish Catholic in me and the Native American in me would be to call me an Anglo! I don’t care if my first language is English or my skin and hair are relatively light!
Ironically, I found out a couple years ago that I am 1/4 English by ancestry. But I wasn’t raised with it, and although I’ve learned alot about America, Canada, law, history, literature, etc., via British stuff, I grew up too Irish Catholic to be comfortable with that. What happened, I presume, is that my Episcopalian grandmother married my Irish Catholic grandfather, but was apparently not very religious, and of course their kids were required to be raised Catholic. Plus, I think in those days “the mother’s side” was degraded in family-culture or identity alot. Therefore, I only learned it recently as a factoid that doesn’t fit well with the rest of me, and doesn’t do anything for me.
Even funnier is that I think we actually talked more about Indian stuff than Irish stuff, when *I* was growing up — my mother and I, anyway … she’s the part-Indian. The Irish stuff was there enough to influence me culturally, though not much because ‘we couldn’t afford any culture’!! For that matter, we didn’t talk too much about Indian stuff either. (My family … don’t ask!!) Mom’s grandmom also said her dad was Welsh, but we didn’t have much grasp of Welshness in the ’70s, or I guess not even the ’40s. I didn’t really become aware of Welshness until the nationalist movement started getting U.S. media attention in the ’70s-80s, though that wasn’t much either!
Just don’t call Michael J. Fox “chicken” … and don’t call me Anglo. Yo soy ingles un poco … pero no soy “anglo”!
…is against parliamentary procedure. As wild as even the UK House of Commons gets, outright accusing somebody of lying gets you censured and harangued.
Especially when you’re wrong in so saying!
Censure Joe Wilson.
I’m just sayin’!
Sounds like somebody had his bed short-sheeted or something!
If memory serves, it’s even Christian!
The opening line of the U.S. unilateral Declaration of Independence of 1776, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” ISN’T! If they’re self-evident, you don’t have to say you hold them to be so: they simply are so. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks!” Certainly they went on to deprive myriads of their fellow Colonial residents, Native Americans, and Africans of their “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”….
That’s right. One has the right to disagree with healthcare reform, though it seems irrational to me to do so. But to fundamentally question Obama’s Presidency is to seek to overturn the 2008 Election just because they disagree with the outcome. That’s sour grapes, breaking the rules of majoritarian democracy. Has he succeeded in doing anything he didn’t “promise” to do in getting elected? Arguably he has gone back on several promises already. In any case, it’s too soon, 8 months into a new Administration, lacking High Crimes and Misdeeds (not that they ever get prosecuted anyway … only sex). These attacks are driven by something less political than anti-constitutional, anti-democratic, racist, deceptive (fake “grassroots” incited, recruited, planned, and bankrolled by Big Business, Big Lobbyists, etc.), libelous (probably actionable), etc. Unlike 2000 and 2004, there are no serious accusations that Barack Obama was not the choice of both a majority of the voters or intended voters last Election Day, and of the Electoral College. Attacking his very being President, then, without grounds as I have said, is attacking America, democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law, the voting majorities of Nov. 4.
Just like they did with President Clinton.
That’s right: They now believe no Democratic Party member can ever ‘legitimately’ be President. They persecuted Clinton, they kept out elected Presidents Gore and Kerry, and it seems they will persecute Obama.
Just so we’re clear what’s going on here.
And when they openly bring guns to political rallies and public meetings, they mean to threaten democracy itself.
THAT is Fascism.
Yup, Yup, they really covered themselves with glory…. More fun photos and video here.
The kinds of minds we’re dealing with here are hinted at by the LA Times, as well as the conflicting accusations that our first democratically-elected President in 8 years is a socialist AND a fascist! Unless he suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder?!?!?!
Nevermind that if WE’D pulled stuff like this astroturf “Tea Party/Secession” movement during the previous 8 years, we’d have been labeled traitors! (Oh, that’s right, we WERE. “You collect the punishment but you can’t commit the sin….”) Have they forgotten there’s 2 wars on? Talk about “aid and comfort to the enemy”!!!
I wonder if any of them brought their machine guns, like in Arizona? If that ain’t a catastrophe waiting to happen … or an assassination … I don’t know what is. It also reminded me of armed KKK or SS thugs trying to put down or intimidate public demonstrations.
One sign I saw noted 80-some percent of Americans are satisfied with their health coverage. They’re deluding themselves, but anyway, healthcare reform isn’t about the 80 percent, but the 20, OK? Somehow they missed that….
But when I saw that poster of Obama in whiteface with a big red smile drawn on way too big for his face and the word “Fascism,” just like the Abu Ghraib sex-torture photos, I realized the “Culture War” is now over and civilization has won. It’s all over but the screaming. I refuse to continue in a Culture War with an unarmed opponent!
Near as I can tell from the NY Times’ unusually dense syntax, self-righteous Canadian theocon minority Prime Minister Stephen Harper received, and an archbishop administered to him, Roman Catholic communion, a no-no since Harper’s Evangelical Protestant, specifically the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination.
The fact that it was at the funeral for former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc July 3 just magnifies the technical scandal — theologically speaking — of this joint action by Harper and the unnamed “archbishop,” identified by Canada’s Catholic Register (a weekly newspaper owned by the Archdiocese of Toronto) as Moncton, New Brunswick, Archbishop Andre Richard, who ISTM (they don’t say) may have been chief celebrant of the Mass, since it took place in his archdiocese.
I don’t know why they’re “covering the controversy” rather than the main story; maybe I just missed that. ISTM that putting the consecrated host in his pocket might have been the least-worst thing Harper could’ve done, especially if afterward he or a flunkie returned it respectfully to the Church, which regards it as truly though mystically (and not symbolically) Jesus Christ’s Body and Blood. After all, it’s not exactly a State secret that, with very few exceptions applying mostly to certain Eastern Christian Churches,* NON-CATHOLICS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO RECEIVE CATHOLIC COMMUNION!!!!! In the U.S. an announcement to this effect is commonly made at mass vocally or in print, especially if a significant number of non-Catholics are known to be in attendance, such as would have been the case at His Excellency’s State funeral (presumably in Both Official Languages … and I don’t mean Latin!).
As the Register tells us:
During the Mass, Moncton Archbishop Andre Richard approached the front row where Harper and other VIPs were standing and distributed Communion to everyone, including the Protestant Harper. Though video shows Harper receiving Communion, it does not show him consuming it. Harper insists he did and told CCN in a July 11 interview he made a decision when entering public life not to seek Communion in Catholic churches but to accept it if offered.
Having served in my Catholic days as an altar boy or music minister at many “big Masses,” and also as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist, I can easily imagine Abp. Richard being preoccupied with many things that day. In addition, Latin Rite clergy aren’t commonly tasked with “guarding the chalice” in quite the same way Eastern clergy are (unless Democrats in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania are concerned! [scroll down]); it’s just a different approach or attitude toward administering communion, though the fundamental principles are outwardly similar. Nevertheless, IT’S THE FRIGGING PRIME MINISTER, NATIONAL TV, A “STATE” FUNERAL, WITH AN ARCHBISHOP, not some summer cottage chapel in the woods with some anonymous guests of uncertain affiliations wearing cutoffs and flipflops! A deacon or “master of ceremonies” could have taken some of the worry out of the occasion for the Archbishop and helped guide him discreetly around ‘landmines’ such as prominent non-Catholics in the VIP pew.
Ironically, although many of today’s “conservative Catholics” attack the Latin Rite’s modern option of communion-in-the-hand, receiving it in his hand instead of right on his tongue left Harper with the option of saving the Archbishop’s face as I’ve suggested above, even voluntarily taking some temporary heat himself from attack-dog media and politicians, coming up roses in the end if he returned the host respectfully at an opportune moment, even a “teachable moment.” IOW, Major Brownie Points with Catholic voters!
Of course, more points if Harper had been able to say not that he made himself a unilateral theological decision to receive forbidden Catholic communion if mistakenly (or improperly!) offered, but that he’d consulted his local Latin Rite bishop in Calgary “when entering public life,” and even gotten a second opinion when he became a national figure from, as the kosher hot dog ad used to say, “an even higher authority.” Don’t they have Protocol people in Ottawa anymore?!!! In any event, Catholic authorities would have kindly and gently explained the impropriety to him, ways to politely decline or step aside when approached by a priest or EM, even thanked him for his concern to inquire … and probably gossipped about it, increasing his “cred” in their midst! (Not that I want to help the man politically or anything!)
Now, I’m not a Latin canon lawyer or approved theological ethicist, though I have plenty of background and training. But ISTM holding the host for later respectful return would have been at worst a mild sacrilege in Catholic eyes, with good intentions. Eating it is pure scandal, the worse because of how publicly it was done (even if not shown on TV, but hyped in the media for days afterward). And there are really considered to be no other options: Even dissolving it in water would require disposing of the now-sacred water in a sacrarium, a special sink in a Latin church’s sacristy that empties directly into the ground by sacral arrangement, rather than the sewage system or septic tank. (‘Can’t dump Jesus in the sewer, dawg!’) While water may be more easily portable, as in an empty bottle, if it had to be returned in another city … bottles of water are too easily discarded or otherwise mishandled. An undissolved host is unmistakable, and can be carried reverently in any suitable container.
Of course, Catholic Church sanctions are useless against non-Catholics, unless they want to try to physically lock Steve-o out of their churches and ceremonies. From his perspective, it should be about respect for Catholic faith, just like you take your shoes off when visiting a mosque and wear a yarmulke when visiting a synagogue, and if the Orthodox parish you’re visiting stands males on one side and females on the other, going along without protest.
This piece, seemingly drawing from wire copy, suggests there was indeed protocol confusion of an uninformed variety on the part of both the Prime Minister and the Archbishop, who I’m certain doesn’t have such high-level guests in his archdiocese every day!:
Richard said a protocol officer told him before the ceremony that anyone who wanted to take part in communion would signal their willingness to do so. “I’m sure he (Harper) didn’t mean any desecration or nothing of the sort,” the Archbishop said. “Somehow, the gesture was misunderstood. I think he should have been briefed by the protocol of what has to be done in a Catholic ceremony.”
OK, I have a guess about what’s going on here now. If there was a huge crowd — and it’s just a parish church, not a large cathedral — and VIPs were seated in the front pew, it was probably arranged, by government staffers, for the Archbishop to serve them in-place, while everybody else who wished and was able to receive, would leave their pews farther back, get in line, and receive from him and/or other ministers in the building. Rather than have the GG, the PM, etc., standing in line when the missiles come over the North Pole (or the foreign navies intrude in Nunavut). It’s not a question of special treatment, merely reasonable logistics given the 24/7 responsibilities of these specific attendees, halfway across the country from the National Capital. Similar accommodations are often made with communicants with mobility challenges.
An added issue would be the presence of M. LeBlanc’s coffin near the front of the church, probably where communion is often administered to people standing in line on normal Sundays and weekdays, etc. … as well as the unfamiliarity of many if not most of the attendees with how to receive communion in this particular building with its architecture, internal furnishings, etc., since it’s not their own parish.
For their part, the VIPs were probably briefed generically by a government (not Church) staffer, without regard for their denominations or (if Catholic) specific communion intentions (which ISTM Canadians more than even Yanks would consider intensely private matters, perhaps not to be “signaled” in advance through a flunkie: a cultural thing). I could see this adding to the confusion of a ‘principled’ Evangelical Protestant Canadian like the PM who at least once in his life considered just such a scenario … hence his perceived hesitation, a kind of sacramental ”decisijig” owing to miscommunication, or what tabloids might style a “miscue.”
This doesn’t appear to have been the only such, if my friends at the Monarchist League of Canada are right.
Last word: While it’s common for Protestants to use the verb take in connection with communion, for Catholics it’s receive – though the actions commonly involved are outwardly the same. The would-be communicant approaches or in special cases like this is approached by the minister, and the minister gives him or her the communion. (Unless your denomination does the trays and little cups served from pew to pew like on an airline — no disrespect meant. Also, sometimes there’s more ’self-help,’ like the bread and/or wine left on the altar for folks to administer to themselves as invited by the minister.) If you find yourself about to be given communion when you believe you should not, for whatever reasons, you are permitted, hoped, and/or expected to “signal” your intention not to receive without making a big fuss, yelling, gesticulating grandly, turning your back, running away, or anything of the sort. Like they say in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, DON’T PANIC. Remain calm. “No thanks,” a small but clear hand gesture, fingers over the lips, something like that. Remember that when you’re in that situation, it’s just you and him (or her), two fallible human beings, face to face. Most Latin Rite clergy these days are less anal about the flow of the almighty ritual than in former days perhaps, and will be understanding; the Vatican II Mass / in English (I can’t say for sure about French! ) is less pompous than its Tridentine / Latin predecessor — relatively more laid-back, as its critics will tell you(!). I received in an Episcopalian cathedral once (while Protestant, on a normal Sunday, even with a “priestess” presiding — a cute one too!), and I’d guess the same there. Most other situations, even more so.
Even a State funeral on national TV.
This extended meditation on the pitfalls and pratfalls of public life has been sponsored by the letter Q, the number 69, and the word Sniglet!
(*–Without having consulted Eastern Christian bishops or councils! Orthodoxy, my Church, forbids receiving non-Orthodox Mysteries ["sacraments"], and administering them to non-Orthodox, for reasons familiar to most Catholics my age or older.)
PS: For the record, Catholicism excludes non-Catholics from communion because they believe the sacrament properly reflects the “communion” of the main participants in the church service itself, to wit, Catholics. It’s not a question of hospitality or inhospitality, “ecumenism,” “liberalism” or “conservatism,” “niceness” or “meanness.” Catholics consider themselves the Body of Christ “mystically,” and communion as I said, also, though in a different way. And non-Catholics, in varying degrees of “communion” or out of communion with them, especially with the Pope of Rome at their head. This is all Catholic theology, not church politics per se. They take the same attitude towards us Orthodox — as we do them and all non-Orthodox — although Rome permits us in extremis, as well as permitting their own people to receive our Mysteries in extremis, though they did that unilaterally.
PPS: Then again, given that LeBlanc was formerly a Liberal MP and Senator, and/or that Maritime Tories — even Catholics? — are likely to be Red Tories vs. Harper’s Blues (aka “American [GOP] Republicans”), maybe it WAS a conspiracy against Harper!!! (Just kidding; I know nothing.)
PPPS: Communion-in-the-hand is not an option in Orthodoxy, for the simple reason that Communion is served thusly: The priest has previously sunk a large piece of the Bread into the chalice and poured the Wine and water over it, filling the chalice. As each communicant approaches, they tip their head back (or their baby’s head!) and open their mouth. Father takes a long-handled spoon with a tiny bowl at the end, obtains a tiny piece of this mixed Bread and Wine, and tips the spoon’s contents into the person’s mouth. So if Harper was at LeBlanc predecessor Ray Hnatyshyn’s funeral in ‘02 … well, it wouldn’t have been an issue, because Orthodox funerals don’t include Communion! I’ve seen Orthodox priests serve communicants in wheelchairs by approaching them, but most of the time we line-up for Communion, so you can’t get in line by accident, so it’s no problem either.
So … Go Orthodox, sir!
I haven’t made it to one of these infamous “town hall” sessions yet, but I hear the anti mobs are carrying professional-looking signs. Is Big Insurance stealthily backing these uncivil crowds? Big Pharma? corporate talk radio? (I know, that’s redundant!)
If it’s bought and paid for, is it really “free speech”?!! As someone opined at another time, is it real grassroots, or AstroTurf?!!!
Anyway, they claim “socialism” like that’s a BAD thing!!!
While we’re talking about it, I really have hated these last 25 years like ONE PARTY owns MY PUBLIC AIRWAVES!
And why do the MSM keep paying attention to a ten-week losing Vice-Presidential candidate? Just because she’s hot? MILF appeal?!! Palin obviously can’t take the hint!
At its recent Church convention, the Episcopal Church of the United States, traditionally America’s branch of the Anglican Communion, denounced the late-medieval “Discovery Doctrine” which encouraged / justified (Western) Christian nations’ annexation and exploitation of newly-discovered non-Christian lands, nations, peoples, and persons. This appears to be at this time an unofficial or ’semifinal’ version of the adopted resolution, minus the strikeouts. They also call on the Successor of one royal perpetrator of this legal doctrine, in her capacity as “Supreme Governor” of their Sister Church, the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth II, to also repudiate it … for their government lobbyists to press overturning this legal basis for a kind of suzerainty over Native American Tribes with the U.S. Government … and for their member dioceses and adherents to support Tribes’ struggles for their God-given rights as Indigenous Nations.
As Wikipedia relates, this “doctrine” backed-up Western European overlordship of Indigenous Peoples not previously Christianized. Commonly it was considered for the “heathens’ ” own good, as well as providing cover for all the depredations Indigenous have suffered at their hands and those of their “legal successors,” including the United States, down to the present. More to the point, also for the seizure of their lands and resources, especially all the gold that was rumored to be here. I don’t know enough about the claimed legalities beyond this, for Spanish- and Portuguese-claimed territories … but for English, “the rule of law,” i.e., the English Common Law, eventually developed at least a legal fiction of respect for existing inhabitants of lands they were interested in acquiring, as having actual legal rights to or in those lands, as long as they lived in them — rights to which ambitious English rulers and explorers needed to at least pay lip-service. (Remember, this is the system wherein the lawyer asks his client, “What do you WANT the law to say?”!) This was an evolving thing, as I’ve said previously here.
American relevance was nailed down (supposedly) by Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1823 case. He stated that on the plot of land at issue, in Illinois, England/Great Britain had “discovered” and taken precedence over the Natives, whether directly or by treaty(!) from France, and the United States succeeded to British “rights” therein. Therefore, Native Nations had limited rights to their own lands and resources, Britain/America having ultimate determining legal authority, at least vis a vis other European powers. The idea included reducing the Europeans’ habit of going to war with each other; Indigenous didn’t matter! (Though England came preferring to acquire their rights by “treating with them,” i.e., treaties — even if these, too, often became “legal fictions”!)
Here’s Marshall’s language I want to focus on (emphasis added by me):
The states of Holland also made acquisitions in America and sustained their right on the common principle adopted by all Europe. They allege, as we are told by Smith in his History of New York, that Henry Hudson, who sailed, as they say, under the orders of their East India Company, discovered the country from the Delaware to the Hudson, up which he sailed to the 43d degree of north latitude, and this country they claimed under the title acquired by this voyage.
Their first object was commercial, as appears by a grant made to a company of merchants in 1614, but in 1621 the States General made, as we are told by Mr. Smith, a grant of the country to the West India Company by the name of New Netherlands.
The claim of the Dutch was always contested by the English — not because they questioned the title given by discovery, but because they insisted on being themselves the rightful claimants under that title. Their pretensions were finally decided by the sword.
No one of the powers of Europe gave its full assent to this principle more unequivocally than England. The documents upon this subject are ample and complete. So early as the year 1496, her monarch granted a commission to the Cabots to discover countries then unknown to Christian people and to take possession of them in the name of the King of England. Two years afterwards, Cabot proceeded on this voyage and discovered the continent of North America, along which he sailed as far south as Virginia. To this discovery the English trace their title.
In this first effort made by the English government to acquire territory on this continent we perceive a complete recognition of the principle which has been mentioned. The right of discovery given by this commission is confined to countries “then unknown to all Christian people,” and of these countries Cabot was empowered to take possession in the name of the King of England. Thus asserting a right to take possession notwithstanding the occupancy of the natives, who were heathens, and at the same time admitting the prior title of any Christian people who may have made a previous discovery.
Here’s the problem: Since around the Millennium, North America* had been “known to the Christian people” of Norway, as mentioned here. The Norse main settlements were in Greenland. But knowledge of the lands to Greenland’s west is undeniable from approximately then, which was about the same time those colonists became Christians. Even if you give no credence whatsoever to my foster-kinsman St. Brendan, Carthaginian Early Christian monks in Connecticut, the alleged succession of Catholic Titular (absentee) Bishops of the village of Gardar, Greenland and Vinland, and as-yet-undiscovered Icelandic Sagas, etc etc etc, living knowledge came down to the first Lutheran bishop of Greenland before he attained to that title by venturing there in 1721 in hopes of rescuing the many-centuries-old and long-isolated colony from Catholicism(!–or Orthodoxy!!) or apostasy … not finding them (as far as he knew!) … and setting out to evangelize the Native Inuit (Eskimos) instead(!).
But Britain did not treat with Norway or Norway’s sometime sovereign Denmark for any of its North American rights (under European law), nor did it acquire them “by the sword.” Now, it is not currently known that any Norse (or their Mixed-Blood descendants) survived here until 1492 or ‘96. However, the Cabots’ charter did not say, as later English ones, “not actually possessed by any Christian prince,” merely “unknown to all Christian people.” Christian Norway’s “knowledge” of this northern landmass may have been obscure at that time, but it was knowledge: Norway “discovered” North America before England did!
So what? As one commentator to the story at the website of the newspaper Indian Country Today reminds us all,
Just better be careful that you don’t also overturn our sovereignty while overturning Johnson v. M’Intosh. Too many times, an unideal but working scenario gets scrapped when ‘reformers’ come in and start changing things. I present as evidence term limits, ‘independent’ legislative redistricting and other such ‘reform’ scenarios that have contributed mightily to the current state of ideological gridlock that grips both federal and state governing bodies.
I know enough about law and history, and more about courts, judges, lawyers, and politicians, to take this counsel seriously! Also, although today Norway is a rather politically correct place, who knows about the future? Is it a case of The Devil You Know over The Devil You Don’t Know?! Though it might be interesting to see Washington and Ottawa have to re-negotiate their independence with PC Oslo!
One might say that Norway has never pressed its claim, challenging Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, or anybody else. But with the discovery of the Sagas and their settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, in a possibly-improving climate of International Law and politics, especially Norway being a NATO ally of both the U.S. and Canada (and let’s remember the last bits of New France), Norway itself may have a “Native Claim” needing respect and recompense! Even the US Supreme Court awarded huge money to the Lakota for the Black Hills!
No one ever said the ‘Piskies don’t know how to make life interesting sometimes!!!
(*–Presuming Marshall is associating Spanish and Portuguese “discoveries” with OFF North America.)
But a dense Federal Appeals Court ruling doesn’t seem to get it!
What if it was the NAACP discriminating against a light-skinned Black employee? In recent years they had one in charge, so maybe they don’t, but one other member of the Court panel might have been swayed by substituting Black for Indian ISTM. Indians’ and Mixed-Bloods’ issues aren’t taken seriously in America; actually they’re only starting to be taken more seriously in Canada.
Even in the pages of Indian Country Today it seems open season on Mixed-Bloods. In America you always must be either/or … maybe, like Fr. Andrew Greeley and David Tracy say, it’s that [sectarian] Protestant “dialectical imagination” rather than the Catholic “analogical imagination” for both/and. The constant questioning and attacking and innuendoes and doubts are a real plague for us, and divide an Indigenous community that really can’t afford it. U.S. Mixed-Bloods need a place where they can safely be who they are and know themselves to be and faithful to what’s been handed down to them by their forebears. Yes, I know I look like the oppressor, but I am not, I never have been, and neither have any of my ancestors, and in fact once you go back about a thousand years if not sooner, we all have the same number of individual Indian ancestors, so the (unconstitutional, racist) “Blood Quantum” is a wash, if you really want to go that way!
I note the dissenting Appellate Judge was a woman, the majority two men. (One with the CV of an Irish Catholic, which only goes to show you that’s not always a guarantee of social justice! She’s a Clinton appointee; the men were appointed by Bush I and II respectively.) Is it possible a woman brings necessary extra “experiences,” sensitivities, “biases,” to questions of “hostile workplaces”? [You GO, Justice Sotomayor!!!]
This isn’t to say “Get over it,” at all. (This is personal now, obviously.) I grew up lower-working-class, without much known Irish OR Native culture or connections. I would like more now, especially the Native because it’s HERE, in North America, where I have spent every moment of my life, and to which I have a special attachment since I’ve been learning more about my Native background. If I ever am able-bodied again, I’d like to do more, too, even help. But folks like me, “the 7th generation” perhaps?, need your help, humbly seek your help. Why can’t it be a mutual give-and-take? I didn’t grow up “On The Rez;” I grew up urban Poor Overextended “White” Trash, OK? Sure, I won’t get called lazy by White South Dakota farmer-settlers at first glance, and I’m not proud for not speaking up when I heard that; but they were hosting me for the night, free of charge, and I had no other options at that time in my life … and it was July … you know what I’m talking about there, July in Dakota…. Anyway, “WANNABE” STANDS FOR WHITE AND NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN BY EXOGAMY! (I wanna claim the rights to that expression, but I don’t want to restrict its dissemination, so if you ever meet me, keep that in mind, ’cause I could really use the money….)
In any case, was that poor woman counseling at that clinic because it pays so well?!! That’s not what I hear. Probably she could’ve gotten much better pay and benefits elsewhere, even Passing For White, or not: Some Whites have more regard for someone being “part-Indian” than some Indians it seems. But she stayed there 11 years, helping kids, the next generation, while enduring that racist crap from her own people. She herself seems to be an elder — Worse yet! This is the Appeals verdict, including Dissent (PDF). I wish her lawyers had demanded proof/testimony of the faxing of a copy of her original EEOC complaint by and from the EEOC to the Clinic, supposedly within minutes of her filing it; then if the Clinic couldn’t produce it, nor reasonable cause why not, there might’ve been a question of withheld or destroyed evidence in discovery — very nasty for them, and helpful for her case. One would wish Ms. Nettle had taken notes of the harrassment she received — names, dates, verbiage used; but good-faith employees aren’t always looking to build a case against someone until it’s too late — management has the built-in advantage: they can fire you, you can’t fire them. But the male judges don’t see that in questioning her very Indianness they were directly attacking her employment there, because of the legal preference for “Indian” hires; these aren’t run-of-the-mill skin-color disparagement insults, so to speak. They DO “alter her conditions of employment,” in a very technical sense of the term: presumably her skin color didn’t change much between 1993 and 2004! It was OK enough to hire her, but not OK to make her feel welcome when she first arrived at least, and for her last 5 years there. Because her employment was under what I must refer to as a racio/legal preference system, these insults struck directly at her continuing employment there, as well as any future employment anywhere else where they’d ask, What happened at the Clinic? Maybe their job descriptions should state clearly, Must look like a Hollywood Injun! “Hostile work environment”?: How about one where you might be fired because of how you look? Isn’t that what EEOC and civil rights laws are all about?!!! If not, My God, what! Even “jokes” pile up after 11 years, especially “race” jokes! And I’m not even a lawyer, though I was a Shop Steward. The male judges, Republican appointees, just don’t get it, and as usual, analyze a complaint to pieces unjustly. (What the Dissent goes on to call disparagingly, “divide-and-conquer analysis”!)
It is interesting to see “light-skinned Native Americans … in a protected legal class” though, even from the GOP! Though only they would consider loss of some pay or benefits NOT “an adverse action”: She wasn’t a volunteer!!! What I really wish is that she had a union in there, with a Shop Steward and a collective bargaining agreement — They’re present in many nonprofit workplaces. When I was a Steward (in admittedly very different circumstances), I spent most of my time having complaints from my members bounced off me; most of the time management was allowed to do what was complained of (I inherited a lousy contract), but we at least cultivated a Shop where these things were talked up, evidence gathered for when Grievances were eventually filed in other cases.
I have to question the competence of her counsel also, though her only appeal from here, within the U.S. system, would be to the still-GOP-dominated Supreme Court; although it’s possible even they would feel the need to send the case back to District Court for a full trial (This was only “summary judgment”), since there are so many holes in the Appellate Majority’s reasoning (if it can even be called that).
…considered in the New York City statehood discussion of 1971. Time then concluded on something like my Autonomy idea, or even a semi-federalization ala the Tennessee Valley Authority or the MTA.
More on-point is a Harper’s 1999 piece on discussing — just discussing! – whether the 1787 Constitution is obsolete, inspired by Columbine and the 2nd Amendment rants of recent decades, and its virtual unamendability. The older Time article concludes,
The new consideration of national cities and city-states is a refreshing move to examine the rationale of the nation’s long-accepted governmental divisions. One of the most important national problems throughout the next 20 years, predicts Bell, will be to decide the most effective social unit to handle each social problem. “What is best left to the neighborhoods?” he asks. “What to townships? What to municipalities? What to metropolitan areas? What to regions and what to the Federal Government?” The questions are simple, the answers elusive—but an imaginative quest for them is essential to the future of the nation.
It’s questionable whether we really looked at those things seriously as a Federation — or whatever — during the predicted ’70s and ’80s. Maybe now it’s time.
BTW, I know a bit more about the background than the Harper’s writer, and the reality about English village and town “militias” and posses and whether they were “volunteerism” or compulsory. Also, how even these supposed bulwarks of local freedom could be used to enforce local conformity, oppress next-door neighbors, “different” people, dissenters, gays, immigrants, Catholics, Quakers, church reformers, “liberals” — which would cover both today’s U.S. “liberals” AND “conservatives”! — etc etc etc. Plus, the main body of our Constitution empowers — Guess who? — CONGRESS!!! — to “regulate” the State’s Militias. Simply reading the text will sometimes work wonders itself.
On the lighter side, it’s entirely possible that the 2nd Amendment isn’t about guns at all, but heraldry: “Bearing arms” also means, and meant, publicly presenting yourself as validly possessing a coat of arms, i.e., as armigerous. “Well-regulated militia”?: Heraldry was invented in order to distinguish fighters on and near a field of battle, i.e., to tell them apart. It’s still used today by modern armed forces in those logos and patches that distinguish military units and countries’ forces … even countries themselves, hence national flags like the Stars and Stripes, the Royal Colours (aka Union Jack), the Tricolour, etc etc etc. So it’s possible the Framers weren’t thinking about guns OR militias, but shields and crests, ribbons and supporters! But AFAIK the USA has never granted individual arms of this kind, leaving that to WWW bucketshop frauds seducing you with “mists of antiquity” and “ancient seats” and hints of … royalty and nobility!!!
Maybe some scribe even switched the two words around, and it’s about arming bears … knowing how crazy we’d always be arguing about guns and militias, coats of arms and “crests” and “mists of antiquity,” etc.! Maybe we’re not even supposed to bear arms at all, just sic armed bears on our enemies!!!
You saw it on the front of Monday’s USA Today.
Not just licenses, but permits to carry concealed! This was a followup to an Election Week story.
You don’t need Concealed Carry to protect your home from break-in … unless you don’t even want your own family to know about it?!?!?! And getting more guns when you think rational gun control is coming? Only if you plan on murdering cops, sheriffs, ATF agents … you remember, “jackbooted thugs”? (See Time magazine’s expose of ‘the new NRA’ – radical, militant, rebellious - around then, 1995.) And just recently we were faced with the possibility of NRA/nationally-imposed least-common-denominator Concealed Carry rules?!! (So much for “States’ Rights”!!!)
No, at a time when GOP leaders, (formerly-)mainstream public figures like Chuck Norris, traitor Rush ‘I hope America fails’ Limbaugh, (let’s not forget their godfather G. Gordon Liddy,) and more than a few followers, are talking publicly about Secession and a New Civil War, it’s clear who these new guns, more and more guns, are being pointed at right now: the rest of us, our elected officials, our duly-appointed government officials, government employees just doing their legal jobs as apolitically as they can (Remember harrassment and threats against County Clerks in the Midwest based on 18th-century spelling and capitalization rules, not to mention a Day One of Law School grasp of Common Law?), anyone they consider “traitors” or “godless” or a “threat to civilization” or “persecuting” … THEM!
USA probably should’ve clarified that that gun seller claimed an elderly couple came in afraid Pres. Obama was going to personally ’invade their home’ and take their guns, since presumably the USA reporter didn’t meet the couple in question. The seller could’ve just made them up, like the fake couple — actors — who torpedoed healthcare reform the last time, Fred and Ethel or whatever their names were. And as for those Richmond, Virginia, suburbanites living on wild game shot by pre-adolescents in the cul-de-sacs – Rats? Squirrels? Raccoons? Possums? My Native ancestors ate groundhog stew, but didn’t “rely on it,” except maybe in lean years, or when English colonists penned them up in Reservations! — I’m just glad I don’t live next-door to them! (Raising growing boys on rodents? I guess they’d better learn how to shoot!) The Associated Press (that time) again should’ve said that that family claims to rely on game for food, even though Midlothian and vicinity seems to have no shortage of Food Lions, Krogers, and even a chain called Ukrops. In journalism it’s called attribution.
As KCBS-AM Radio News in San Francisco reported in November, this spike also happened when Democrats last came into the White House (or last succeeded in coming into the White House), with Bill Clinton’s election in ‘92. [Coincidence, or marketing ploy?!!!] But now is not then, and with all due respect to mainstream poli-sci academics, the other side has sounded a whole lot scarier since ‘92. At the time of the First Civil War, “paranoia” was stoked by “extremists” on both sides of the Slavery and other arguments, tearing the rest of the Federation apart. The only difference this time is that our side isn’t too fond of violence; that could be good, or bad, relative to history … I’m not sure. Does that mean no war, or a onesided rebellion … or a coup d’etat?
I’ve been wondering if it isn’t time to tamp down the rhetoric by giving our urban and suburban and other such areas, their own states, letting each not have to follow the other in areas so fundamentally (no pun intended) offensive to it: e.g., same-sex marriage for them, Wild West for us. Or even some kind of extra layer of Sovereignty or Autonomy within their current States: e.g., on their side, even though marriage is often presented in religious terms, its cultural ramifications are undeniable, so let them have their culture; on ours, city/suburb-appropriate gun control. Creative thinking, please, at least; Civil War is not creative. Then again, there’s the idea of a voluntary, amicable parting of the ways between “Jesusland” and “the United States of Canada” — only, not by Red State/Blue State, but more as discussed in this paragraph!
In the meantime, go with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
On the sneakier side, can’t someone provoke a schism within the NRA, deprive them of some of their vaunted numbers and monies? A sort of Rational Rifle Association?!!* ‘Cause right now, between them and Big Business and the (so-called) Religious Right, this country and this planet are being run into the ground. What about revoking their home-state Corporate Charter by the people’s Sovereign Prerogative…? Make it an issue in the next legislative, attorney general, secretary of state, or gubernatorial election!
More esoterically, it’s real certain that the guys who put together the Constitution of 1787 had no intention of subjecting their power and that of their “heirs and successors” to the kind of revolution they had just forced upon 80 percent of their neighbors, their constitutional parliamentary Monarch, and his lawful officials and forces. If Tom Jefferson opined otherwise, he was obviously being facetious, and if not, he certainly didn’t feel strongly enough to do anything about it: “Every 20 years”? Let’s see, he missed 1796, 1816…. OTOH, “a free state’s well-regulated militia” would’ve been the first line of defense against such nonsense, as Shays and the Whiskey Rebels found out real early on. Arguably their more-or-less-permanent federalization, and dispatch to multiple long intensive wars and adventures overseas (not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but Central America in the ’80s, foreign drug interdiction since the ’90s, etc.), as opposed to Congress using its power to raise sufficient armies and navies, subjects us to the risk of just such nonsense here at home. Although considering the infection of our military and paramilitary ranks with these folks, we may be safer this way, here at home at least…. Unless a draft were to draw from all walks of life, ideologies, demographics, etc…..
(*–14 years ago Time seemed to think it was possible to bring out the voice of those 40 percent who turnover every year, kind of like a fitness club:
Such talk leaves little space for people like Dave Richards, 37, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a target shooter who joined the N.R.A. to support the rights of sportsmen. Two years ago, Richards quit after concluding that the N.R.A. had become “more about lobbying for extremes than the mainstream people who just want to go hunting.” A large number of those mainstream folks are now ex-members. Currently, four of every 10 members drop out when it comes time to renew their $35 annual membership. “All the smaller voices like mine,” says hunter Ray Guzman, “aren’t being heard.” Speaking with a louder, shriller voice clearly works within the n.r.a. [sic] The question is whether America’s other citizens, including responsible gun owners, will make themselves heard as well.
Yes, the time may have come for The Rational Rifle Association … or at least a simple, mainstream, anti-ideological Sport Rifle Association, to fight the NRA who give a bad name to target-shooting enthusiasts and recreational hunters everywhere. Or even just a pissed “ex-nra.org“ outfit to go tit for rat-a-tat-tat with them! Or compete with them and re-focus gun enthusiasts’ attention on something more wholesome.
[Even though this post retains my inherent copyright, I hereby grant permission to anyone with aims consonant with what I've expressed here to use the URL "ex-nra.org," "x-nra.org," "exnra.org," "xnra.org," .net, .com, .us, .ws, .info, .biz, and such. You'll be doing a real public service. OTOH, if you just commandeer it against these aims, I reserve the right to litigate for violation of my copyright!])
Not even under Demi Moore’s ample bosom. ‘Nuf said.
…politically, despite every national-media stunt in the world, even a tell-all book about her ten weeks in the dimming Arctic sun(?), unless she gets some of what the kids call “game.” Have we already forgotten that her relative inexperience is why so many McCain backers and other Republicans (and others, even racists and disappointed Hilary-backers) couldn’t bring themselves to vote for that ticket in the end? Resigning early from her one term as governor of one of the least-populous and remotest states in the Union [Federation, actually], even so long before she could run for Congress next November, is a major miscalculation if she still wants “in” with national politics in the near or mid-term future. Especially going out under a cloud of more than a dozen-and-a-half ethics charges. It’s chutzpah, really. Leaving office shouldn’t absolve her of any impropriety she might be responsible for anyway … unless Alaska is more lawless or politically inbred than I realized.
BTW, after she shamelessly subjected her eldest daughter to national exposure for her “youthful indiscretion” as a political stunt, she’s one to upbraid Dave Letterman for, yes, a tasteless joke, as it turned out unknowingly against her middle daughter. But blood is thicker than water, and I don’t know that Willow, an innocent minor, is truly what we journalists call a public figure, so Dave stepped on a rake and got whacked in the face. Shrug.
And for saying she wants to campaign for “conservative” Democrats, ie, against rational Republicans [if there are any left in America], the GOP that made her such a sensation so recently should break her, just like we ditched Joe Lieberman for the same reason. Freedom of speech and expression are one thing, but if you take the Party’s coin (or wardrobe!!) you have to sing its tune at least a little while. It’s not like the Repugs have gotten reason yet after their big blowout, if Rush ‘I Hope America Fails’ Limbaugh and Co. are any indication … so that Sarah would feel betrayed by them. Near as I can tell they’re still in goose-step together, the Party of Racism, Recession, Corruption, Illegal Spying, Arab Oil, Global-Warming Devastation, Nuking Iran, “Liberal”-Conspiracy Theories, Stolen Elections, Government-Supported “Conservative” Religion, and Anti-Latina.
Cui bono, guys and girl? Certainly not your voters!
…USUFRUCT. (Sorry, I grew up too Catholic to pronounce it that way! )
This is the Common Law principle on which is based the occasional English and successor Settler States (USA, Canada, Australia, I know for certain, maybe others) practice of deigning, that is to say condescending, to let Aboriginal Peoples in “their” countries retain (I say retain) certain rights with regard to their “former” territories and their tribesmembers. It’s the theoretical basis of Reservations, remnant fishing / trapping / hunting / subsistence rights, regard for Tribes’ Sovereignty (to attempt to put it into European terms), Native Treaties, Lands Held in Trust (including royalties [at 18th-century rates]…if only Uncle Sam can remember where he put them!), etc.
The alternative might well have had to be full military defeat, actually wiping out all our ancestors … genocide in its simplest, bloodiest sense — I’ll say it — ala Hitler. And I deduce that conundrum is where the idea came from, IOW, Settler convenience, politics, occasional conscience. The earliest case I know of — though I’m no professional historian — where English courts upheld native legal status is only The Case of Tanistry in the early 1600s. Here the Irish lost by winning (300 years before they won by losing!): the court employed traditional Irish Brehon Law to cheat a rightful traditional clan chief of his chiefly lands in favor of English-Law inheritance previously unknown among traditional Irish … four-and-a-half centuries after first invading. My current point being, the English certainly have become experts at riding roughshod over Irish culture (which is why 1998’s Good Friday Northern Ireland Peace Agreement was such a monumental reversal for them). I guess they didn’t always enjoy how hard it was, and so decided to take a (slightly) less harsh approach in Quebec and North America beyond (to the frustration of the greedy and anti-Catholic eastern seaboard “Founding Fathers”), and Down Under. (In New Zealand, the Treaty of Waitangi is even considered technically part of the national constitution!)
Anyway, as Merriam Webster reminds us, a usufruct is Europeanly-considered technically only temporary — in our case, until the “death” of each Native Nation, envisaged by (unconstitutional) Blood Quantum laws, mandatory dispersion and exogamy, ethnic/racial cleansing, culturecide, divide-and-conquer, even leaving Tribes with the worst-quality land around on which to survive, as well as what I compare to illegal and unjust “constructive eviction” in attempting to claim a Native Community “abandoned” a temporarily-disused right or plot of land.* Conveniently, the U.S. has never recognized Mixed-Bloods as such, as Canada has in its Métis since just 1982, otherwise Native Nations might never die!
(*–The Settlers of Maryland Colony did this to my Nanticoke people. Once they interpreted an Abandonment Clause in a colonial treaty to mean temporarily going up the Susquehanna River for their traditional annual hunt relinquished one of their Reservations: But when they arrived to find one elderly man guarding the otherwise-empty village, they burned him alive in his home.)
Whenever most of us questioned de facto GW Bush’s foreign policy abortions, partisan Republicans accused of us “undermining the Commander-in-Chief [of the Armed Forces],” treason, appeasement, “hating America,” blah blah blah. But now it’s OK for them to do the same with President Obama?* Excuse me, but someone who lived in the Muslim World some years — as a civilian — and even has Muslim relatives, might have a little more insight into the matter than Red State farmboys on The Hill … or even Blue State politically-correct cosmopolitans for that matter. (Awful stereotypes, both, of course…) Even someone driven out of the church of his choice by the GOP! (So much for “No Religious Test for holding any office under this Constitution”!) This from the folks who seriously talked about nuking Iran … or having Israel do it?! So much for the Myth of Republican Foreign Policy Expertise….
(*–Some MSM still feel the need to call him “President Barack Obama,” like he’s some foreign leader we’ve never heard of or something!!)
You read it here first 7 months ago.
As for those who think it’ll benefit foreign manufacturers more than domestic, well, that’s OK too, since we all live on the same planet, breathe the same air, yada yada yada! Though, sure, we’d prefer to benefit our own assemblyline workers and chartered / originated corporations — so let’s keep this up long enough for them to build (more) cars that qualify!
There’s a fair bit about this online, but I’ll just highlight the following:
Canada’s National Post newspaper recently did a multimedia series including the Delaware Indian language Munsee, called Lunaape (ie, Lenape)* at the Moraviantown Reserve in southern Ontario. Behind the scenes of that story is that First Nation’s Bruce Stonefish, profiled in the Newark Star-Ledger a few years ago. He’s behind a weeklong Language Immersion summer camp at Moraviantown (PDF) that at least went on as late as 2007, maybe last summer too, I’m not sure. Various ‘official’ and other Lenape and other groups got together with Philadelphia’s University of Pennsylvania a year ago to rap Indigenous Language preservation. “Unofficial” is that article’s “Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania,” but they seem to be kicking butt in promoting the language at least! (See here, and this curriculum intended for parents to catch on to and share with children. I’m not sure if their Lenape language is Munsee or Unami [see "Language Links" below the lessons on that page].)
As you may have seen, Stonefish has taught some lessons to some of my kin, the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape in New Jersey, and visited the State of Delaware, where my Nanticoke ancestors lived after 1742 or so. But the Nanticoke Indian Association a couple years ago started to resurrect the Nanticoke language with the help of an Anishnabay (or Ojibwe or Chippewa) dialect from Manitoba, since it’s a sister Algonquian language. Maybe you heard how Hollywood did something similar for a Virginia tribe descended from Jamestown’s neighbors (WaPo link may break).
Why? In my reading, the folks at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, say Native Language Immersion is the best if not the only way to treat some of Natives’ social problems both on the Reservation and in larger Settler society, from problems with school grades and academic learning in general, to cultural preservation, to self-destructive behavior, a/k/a internalized oppression/repression/genocide. Bicultural competence is something many people in Canada know something about. We’re literally talking about saving lives in many cases. As Stonefish’s Immersion Camp brochure states: “In order for the Lunaape Language to survive, it needs to once again become an instrumental part of our lives, our everyday conversations and everyday view of the world. Within our language we will find our original Lunaape worldview. It is within our language where we will find the concepts of how we related to all that is around us. It is within our language where the Lunaape people will find keys to understanding our true original identities, gifts and responsibilities to ourselves as well as those around us.”
(*–Both words are correctly pronounced “luh-NAH-pay,” more or less. The vowel in the first syllable is closest to an American English schwa, that upside down ‘e’ thingie, or more technically, a vowel in an unaccented syllable.)
Too funny!: Last night I saw a promo for The Unit, and I thought it was an insurance commercial!
With Justice David Souter retiring, we could use a real “liberal” in his place. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo may be one of the greatest unsung legal and moral-philosophical minds alive in America — and God Himself knows we could use more morality on that High Court these days, nevermind law-abiding!
As if somebody knew something was coming, we have this piece on Cuomo’s visit to the Court last month. I actually didn’t know Clinton almost nominated him in ‘93, maybe because I was otherwise occupied. But it seems Gov. Cuomo still considers a need for him in other fora:
“You have 100 cases a year at the Court, and five or six of them are really significant, maybe.” When the Clinton offer came, Cuomo says, the deciding factor in saying no was the prospect of “never being able to speak out again” on issues like the death penalty or poverty. “Even now, nobody is talking about poor people,” Cuomo laments. After serving as New York governor for three terms, he said that virtual vow of silence seemed impossible.* He’s been happy doing other things that help people in recent years, Cuomo says. “One does what one can.” He counts his mediation in the asbestos case as one of his endeavors that has benefited those who need help. Through the mediation, a new $500 million fund was created to compensate thousands more victims of asbestos-related disease who could not have received anything from the depleted Johns-Manville fund.
Talking about giving up the Court to help people puts me in mind of the line about the college professor: “He’s a doctor, but not the kind that helps people”!! At 76 though, Cuomo is a few years older than Souter, and we may need rather to pull a Clarence Thomas and nominate a 30-something radical prophet who’ll stand up for law and justice and democracy for the next two generations on the Court. Damned shame. If it wasn’t for anti-Italian/anti-Catholic bigotry, he would’ve been President as early as ‘88 instead of George I … or certainly ‘92, when America could’ve done a whole lot better than William Jefferson Clinton.
I just saw a quote of Mario’s I’d never heard before, but which speaks of my own marveling at how decent, respectable, thoughtful moderate Republican politicians of the ’70s and ’80s have become monsters since:
There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.
God grant you Many Years, Governor — Ad Multos Annos!
(*–Tell Scalia, Governor!!)
According to this page (text-search him — no matter what Google’s cache says, he’s there!), the author who in his famous book traced African roots and heritage, also claimed Cherokee ancestry. Cool twice over! Whatever one may say about the book or the man, God be good to him.
That’s the impression one gets from reading recent research about the potential effects of a much smaller nuclear exchange than usually envisioned during the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR … together with the continuing emphasis the Doomsday Clock guys put on nukes vs. GW.
(I have to note the irony that the scientists who GAVE us nukes and dangerous technology are the ones who now demand that THE REST OF US DO SOMETHING to save them, er, the world, from catastrophe! ‘Stop us before we kill again….’ They could stand more self-restraint, less hubris, better ethical training, themselves. But like Republicans with Reaganite financial deregulation, many of these folks seem to think the solution to the problems of technology is MORE TECHNOLOGY. Another funny thing: For most of my life, I thought the expression “mad scientist” indicated anger. It’s only recently that I realized it means they’re crazy, just like in Mad Cow Disease! [No, I didn't just learn that mad can still sometimes mean crazy; just that it did in those two particular uses.])
As per tradition, the University of Notre Dame has slated America’s President (of the Federal Executive Branch, anyway…) to speak at graduation. Right-wingers, conservative/Republican Catholics, and some self-appointed anti-abortion spokespeople are piling-on this great school and American tradition, and even trying to get the local Catholic bishop to apply the (thumb)screws.
The U. is clear they don’t agree with Obama on everything … as I’m sure they haven’t agreed with ANY speaker on EVERYTHING. Sign a semi-official online petition in support of the school, academic freedom, and civil dialogue.
As a great(?) man once said, I ain’t never heard of anything so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about!
I have a journalism background (as opposed to what Fox News Channel serves up), and this fake edit just might be actionable, making VP Biden seem to claim last week that “the fundamentals of the economy are sound,” when the footage is actually from the campaign where he was quoting McCain and vigorously disagreeing with that assessment (as most of us then and now. You’d think nobody would even use that particular expression after this past Election Day!).
Of course, nobody sues for libel or slander anymore, and so public discourse goes down the toilet where Reagan, the Repugs, and the Fundies sent it starting in the ’70s.
Aka, Kalaalit Nunaat. This tourism etc. site is very user friendly, with downright seductive photos! Next plane to Reykjavik!!!
They say after WW2 the people wanted to “modernize,” and so traditional Inuit ways are disappearing. I have mixed feelings about that as someone looking into my own Indigenous heritage/s. Recently I saw a documentary, mostly about Inuit in Nunavut Territory, Canada, but one who often trekked more than a thousand miles over ice to NW Greenland in Spring had to fly one recent year because the ice wasn’t there or thick enough. And subsistence whaling and sealing there was said to be becoming alot harder because they relied on the ice traditionally, just like the polar bears we hear so much about now, with Global Warming.
Indigenous issues aren’t all cut and dried, so to speak….
By the end of this century! (That crashing sound you hear is Northeast Seaboard property values … and not just Jersey and Long Island either….)
WARNING: IMMATURE CONTENT!
Just kidding … sort of.
For those of you allergic to “too much information,” read no further.
I mean it!
OK. As you may remember, I’ve been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome since 1999. (Nope, I didn’t get to party like it was 1999!) Though I’ve had it at least since 1990. Mostly IBS-Diarrhea (IBS-D). But I didn’t get to see a truly helpful gastroenterologist until 2002 or so. He put me on high-fiber therapy, specifically fiber supplements (pills like Fibercon) and any other fiber I could cram into my eating habits.* Since then,
and here’s where it gets graphic,
sometimes when I’m on the toilet, I feel something hanging out of my bunghole, just taking its grand old time passing/dropping. Recently, with greatly increased soluble fiber dosage (Thanks, Heather, the acacia powder really does seem to help! [aka "gum arabic"]), sometimes I see whitish strings in my stools there in the bowl – too long to be worms, an inch or more – and eventually I solved the mystery of the hanging business by getting a fistful of TP and just grabbing what was hanging … and it was a rubbery/plasticky stretch of material that I could feel breaking stiffly just inside my anus, like there was more in there — definitely not a lifeform, Mr. Spock.
Well, I just got around to Googling “string in poop” (without quotes), hoping for some unvarnished, un-PC, honest, forthright discussion. And although Yahoo Answers isn’t necessarily C. Everett Koop, all told, several links seem to have the ring of truth in them, like this one, this one, this one, and this one. Could your gastrointestinal tract really do that to fiber, twist it and pound it into unrecognizability? Think about how long the tract would be all stretched out, like they say, and all the muscles squeezing and twisting, acids, weird and normal fluids and bacteria and other things you’re eating, fermentation, reactions … and I could see it. I may run it by my doc just to make sure, but I feel alot better about it just now, so much that I wanted to spread the word, because apparently I’m not alone! Even beyond Yahoo there was this page (text-search for “string” — quotes not necessary). In its basic nature, fiber is sort of waxy, hence I guess the occasional weird forms it gets metamorphosed into.
WHEW! Thank you, Jesus! Amen!
(*–Dietary fiber, to be clear, in light of what follows! However, he failed to differentiate between soluble and insoluble fiber. Most Americans trying to eat reasonably-healthily — not our traditional steak-and-potatoes — have no shortage of insoluble fiber in their diets: raw vegetables, even some cooked ones like broccoli, carrots, and other ‘yummy’ things like that. This is the kind that goes right through you. When you have IBS-D, you don’t wanna overdo that, though you shouldn’t go without it either, or so I’ve read, and so I do, mostly. [Screw whole grains!!] Soluble fiber isn’t greased lightning [correct spelling!], but goes slow enough to soak up all that excess fluid that otherwise sends you “running.” That’s what IBS-D’s need tons of: beans [they're not just good for your heart], other fibery, mushy stuff like that, and other soluble fiber. Wikipedia is all over fiber.)
What’s the deal with these online weight-loss ads that seem to slip the word “obey” in with hardly any grammatical sense at all? It’s almost like they’re trying to hypnotize you, or make you feel guilty, one or the other (or both?)!
Or is it like “Obey your thirst”?!!
President Obama and Governor General Jean of Canada meet before Harper meeting
I missed this picture in U.S. media from President Obama’s Canadian trip. HE is the elected President of the United States of America, with his finger on The Button, the son of a Black African student with distant kin descended from chattel slaves. SHE is Michaelle Jean, appointed “Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada” by Her Majesty The Queen of Canada and Her Other Realms and Territories, Elizabeth II, on the advice of HM’s Canadian Prime Minister of the day. Mme. Jean is a Haitian immigrant to Quebec, her first language is French (or Haitian Creole), and she is descended from chattel slaves. In the name of The Queen, she holds all constitutional power in Canada, though according to custom, she too governs in Privy Council, acting only on the advice of HM’s Canadian PM of the day … normally. She’s married to a White Frenchman, and they are raising an adopted little Haitian girl.
Some photo op, eh?! Every Black kid on Earth should get a copy free!
Canadian media covered their meeting in greater detail than you’ll find elsewhere: here, for now (link will break).
