brendanorrell@gmail.com 09 Dec, 2013
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| Bill Means |
(Click arrow to watch video) Bill Means, Lakota founder of the International Indian Treaty Council and longtime member of the American Indian Movement, speaking at the AIM West sixth annual conference in San Francisco 2013. Recorded by Censored News. Part I of IV
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
SAN FRANCISCO -- The attacks on Indigenous Peoples, from the tarsands to Indian child welfare, were topics at the start of the second day of the sixth annual AIM West Conference here today, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013.
brendanorrell@gmail.com 08 Dec, 2013
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| Robert Free's teepee Occupation of Alcatraz |
At a breakfast with Nelson Mandela in the 90s at Seattle University, with 600 community activists, I held up a sign to 'Free Peltier' as Mandela talked. While attacked and packed off immediately by state department security, I turned and yelled to Mandela, "Madiba! Help me!"
Heading off to jail, the organizers came running to the cops and said Nelson Mandela would not continue speaking until I was returned and allowed to hold my banner to 'Free Peltier.' When I was returned he looked to me and the crowd and said, "There is the gentleman with the banner! I am not afraid of freedom fighters. I am one myself!" and with that he left the stage.
I had remembered his tribal elder name was Madiba -- a great honor -- to have him call me a freedom fighter. Mandela showed the world how to move with love in his heart and not hate!
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| Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel at Seattle University, December 1999 Courtesy Seattle University |
I knew they would not have an idea, so I was asked to put them together: Had a Talking stick carved by Chief Charles Elliott and offered to Mandela by Chief Cecile Hansen's grandson, Duwamish and Alaskan dancers welcome him on arrival. That gave me an invitation and access to his events. Also had the organizers pay for it all, and had Free Peltier carved on the talking stick.
Mandela would not leave to other events. He stated at the arrival at the airport, "I can not leave until I had shaken the hand of every dancer and welcoming natives!"
So he came by and shook the hand of each of us and especially the children and in slow Indian time smiled and spoke and hugged the people saying repeatably, from him and his wife Graca Machel, "Thank you so much! you have made us so very happy!"
brendanorrell@gmail.com 08 Dec, 2013
Article at Censored News:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/12/umatilla-and-activists-block-tar-sands.html
Video: December 3 2013: Members of the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation and friends gathered tonight in Pendleton, Oregon to hold ceremony at the site where the Omega Morgan "mega load" remains.
The end destination for this load is approximately 20 kilometers southwest of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, the site of Athabaska Oil Corp's Hangingstone tar sands project.
Omega Morgan, the shipping company, is attempting to move equipment along a rural highway in Oregon, in hopes to avoid the recent controversy they faced in Nez Perce territory.
Government to government consolation has not taken place with Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation or Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs of Oregon, as required by law, to grant a permit to Omega Morgan.
The ceremony and resistance will continue as Omega Morgan attempts to make it through snow and ice within our homelands.
-Kayla Godowa-Tufti, Member of Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
brendanorrell@gmail.com 07 Dec, 2013
