INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AMERICAS DAY NEWSLETTER 2013

OMNI INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AMERICAS DAY (IPAD) (formerly Columbus Day) NEWSLETTER.  Monday, October 14, 2013.  Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace. 

EMERALD HAMES (EHAMES@UARK.EDU) IS THE NEW COORDINATOR OF IPAD.

 OMNI'S NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT

Dick’s blog:   War Department/Peace Department

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/ 

My Newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

(see: Genocide, Interdependence, Internationalism, US Westward Continental Movement and Occupation, us Pacific/East Asia Westward Movment, etc.see Index)

Index:

http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/ 

Visit OMNI’s Library.

Contents 2012

2012 UA Program

Cultural Survival

Citizens for Global Solutions

OMNI’s International Days Project

Contents Oct. 14, 2013

2013 UA IPAD Program

United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People

McCoy and Scarano, Colonial Crucible
LaFebre, The Extra-Continental, Imperial, Economic Context

Ancient (pre-conquest) American Poetry

Films About Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF THE AMERICAS DAY

Instead of celebrating Columbus Day (Columbus one of the initiators of Native American genocide), the University of Arkansas Native American Committee commemorates the indigenous people, their sufferings and almost extermination, but also their achievements despite the European occupation.   On October 14 readings by and about Native Americans were held in the International Bridge Room in the Student Union, followed by a walk to the Trail of Tears Monument on Martin Luther King, Blvd. south of the campus, where the Mayor of Fayetteville, Lioneld Jordan, read the City’s Proclamation in remembrance of the Trail of Tears and in thanks to the UofA’s committee.   Gloria Young, long-time anthropologist at the UofA, recounted some salient events of the Trail of Tears. The event was organized by Emerald Hames of the Diversity Office. Present was Prof. Frank Scheide, chair of the NA committee, founder of the NA Symposium (silent film and orchestra program two evenings later), and steadfast energy sustaining the committee.  Three members of the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology attended—Dick Bennett, John Rule, Carl Barnwell. OMNI helped to initiate IPAD at the UA.   And a new faculty member this year in the English Dept., who has NA ancestry and will teach a course in NA literature, was present.  He was interviewed for the event, as follows. 

Arkansas Newswire

University to Hold Events Celebrating Indigenous People's Day

Programs scheduled for Today, Oct. 14, and Wednesday, Oct. 16

Monday, October 14, 2013

Sean Kicummah Teuton, University of Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Native American Student Association and the Native American Symposium will celebrate Indigenous People’s Day with events scheduled for Monday, Oct. 14, and Wednesday, Oct. 16.

“When we observe Indigenous People’s Day, we recognize the truth about the European conquest and colonization of the Americas and its devastating effects on indigenous lives still today,” said Sean Kicummah Teuton, associate professor of English and indigenous studies at the University of Arkansas. “But Indigenous Peoples’ Day is also a day of celebration. Focusing only on the colonial past can deny indigenous people their right to the present.”

Two events will be held on Oct. 14 to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day. The first, a public reading of indigenous testimony and literature, will be held from 1-2 p.m. in the Arkansas Union Lounge. From 2-3 p.m., there will be a walk on the Arkansas Union Mall to commemorate the Trail of Tears.

“Centuries of conquest, genocide and forced removals of indigenous peoples led to the Trail of Tears in 1838,” Teuton said. “At least one route on this Trail of Tears passes through Fayetteville.”

On Oct. 16, the 20th annual Native American Symposium will be held at 8 p.m. in Giffels Auditorium in Old Main. It will consist of a screening and discussion of the film The Last of the Mohicans. The Native American Symposium is a forum for addressing current issues affecting Native Americans, along with recognizing their history and appreciating their culture.

Teuton says that recognizing injustices done to indigenous people of our past is important, but we must also acknowledge that indigenous people are creating a future for themselves.

“Many indigenous communities are thriving today,” he said. “They have robust economies, are buying back their land and are revitalizing their languages. Indigenous people hold U.S. government offices, study, create, and invent; play professional sports and act in movies. They live traditional lives all the while seeking to enjoy modern life like all of us.”

Teuton is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, which is headquartered in Tahlequah, Okla., 70 miles southeast of Tulsa.

“The Cherokee Nation bustles with growth,” he said. “The Cherokee Nation is one of the largest employers in Oklahoma and is at the forefront of indigenous language revitalization. Like other Indigenous nations, the Cherokee Nation seeks to govern itself as it always has, long before Columbus found his way to these shores.”

The Native American Student Association is part of the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education in the university’s office of diversity affairs. The Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education provides academic, cultural and social programs intended to promote inclusiveness, foster achievement and assist in the development and advancement of a diverse student body.

Six Years of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples    

Today marks six years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted theUN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). 

In a historic vote on September 13, 2007, 144 countries voted for the Declaration. It is the outcome of 25 years of hard negotiations. The rights spelled out in the document "constitute the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the Indigenous Peoples of the world."  The Declaration protects collective rights and individual rights of Indigenous Peoples in relation to self-government, land, education, employment, health and other areas.

Several countries have made steps towards aligning their policies with the standards enshrined in the Declaration, however, an implementation gap remains. There has been an increased international focus on Indigenous Peoples' right to participate in decision-making processes, especially on the states' duty to consult Indigenous Peoples to seek their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in regards to issues that will affect their lands, lives, and livelihoods. 

As one UN Permanent Forum delegate stated, "The most important element of Indigenous Peoples' ability to claim the right of Free, Prior and Informed Consent is to have informed and organized communities." Access to information about the Declaration and FPIC is crucial.

Cultural Survival's FPIC Initiative is strengthening Indigenous Peoples' capacity to implement FPIC by increasing awareness and understanding of this right through community media and community exchanges.  

GET INVOLVED!  

 1. Listen to FPIC radio programs here (en espanol aqui). Help translate into Indigenous languages and distribute to Indigenous radio stations, contact us:consent@cs.org. 

   

2. Read Cultural Survival Quarterly featuring articles on FPIC. 

3. Listen and watch a webinar on FPIC organized with First Peoples Worldwide and International Indian Treaty Council. 

4. Be social! Share all this content on facebook and twitter.  

  

5. Invest in Indigenous rights today. Please support our work! Thank you. 

As always, we welcome your comments. Please send your feedback and suggestions to agnes@cs.org.  

Cultural Survival is a global leader in the fight to protect Indigenous lands, languages, and cultures around the world. In partnership with Indigenous Peoples, we advocate for Indigenous communities whose rights, cultures, and dignity are under threat. For more information go to www.cs.org

  

        

Colonial Crucible:   Empire in the Making of the Modern American State, Edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano

“The superb essays in this volume admirably provide a broad approach to understanding the centuries-long growth of American power.”—Walter LaFeber, author of The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898

At the end of the nineteenth century the United States swiftly occupied a string of small islands dotting the Caribbean and Western Pacific, from Puerto Rico and Cuba to Hawaii and the Philippines. Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State reveals how this experiment in direct territorial rule subtly but profoundly shaped U.S. policy and practice—both abroad and, crucially, at home. Edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano, the essays in this volume show how the challenge of ruling such far-flung territories strained the U.S. state to its limits, creating both the need and the opportunity for bold social experiments not yet possible within the United States itself. Plunging Washington’s rudimentary bureaucracy into the white heat of nationalist revolution and imperial rivalry, colonialism was a crucible of change in American statecraft. From an expansion of the federal government to the creation of agile public-private networks for more effective global governance, U.S. empire produced far-reaching innovations.

            
Moving well beyond theory, this volume takes the next step, adding a fine-grained, empirical texture to the study of U.S. imperialism by analyzing its specific consequences. Across a broad range of institutions—policing and prisons, education, race relations, public health, law, the military, and environmental management—this formative experience left a lasting institutional imprint. With each essay distilling years, sometimes decades, of scholarship into a concise argument, Colonial Crucible reveals the roots of a legacy evident, most recently, in Washington’s misadventures in the Middle East.

“Brilliantly illustrates the myriad ways in which the costs of empire-building are borne, although neither equally nor obviously, by both colonizers and the colonized.” —Franklin W. Knight, Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University

Alfred W. McCoy is the J. R. W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of A Question of Torture and The Politics of Heroin. 


Francisco A. Scarano is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of Puerto Rico: Cinco siglos de historia.

A Review of Walter LeFeber’s “The New Empire” : An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 (New York, Cornell University Press, 1963).

Walter LaFeber’s “The New Empire” proposes that American foreign policy from 1860-1898 was framed by extra-continental expansion based upon an economic need to find foreign markets in which to sell American surpluses. By examining the early theorizing of this economic cause of expansion, its formulation through intellectual, strategic, and economic channels, and the reaction of policymakers to changing economic situations through the use of expansion from 1893-1898, LaFeber claims that the “New Empire” established by 1899 was the culmination of an American foreign policy whereby policymakers such as Seward, Blaine, Mahan, and Cleveland used American expansion to establish an economic chain of markets beneficial to the growth of the United States.   LaFeber begins with the origin of the idea and the policymakers, such as William Seward and James Blaine, who he claims set the economic driven expansion in motion. He uses quotes from Seward such as, “The Nation that draws most materials and provisions from the earth, and fabricates the most, and sells the most of productions and fabrics to foreign nations, must be, and will be, the greatest power of the earth,”

to showcase early calls for economic expansion. He presents Blaine’s ability to take the idea to a broader level when he quotes him as saying, “wherever a foothold is found for American enterprise, it is quickly occupied, and this spirit of adventure,which seeks its outlet in the mines of South America and the railroads of Mexico, would not be slow to avail itself of openings for assured and profitable enterprise.”   He claims the formulation of the idea of economic driven expansion occurred on an intellectual, a strategic, and an economic level through the work of men such as Mahan, Blaine, and Patterson. LaFeber uses Mahan to show the intellectual realization that too much surplus lowered prices in the U.S. and would create farmer turmoil, “Americans must now begin to look outward. The growing production of the country demands it.”   LaFeber uses James Blaine to point out the strategic need to protect American access to foreign markets when he quotes him as saying, “You know I am not much of an annexationist; though I do feel that in some directions, as to naval stations and points of influence, we must look forward to a departure from the too conservative opinions which have been held hithertofore..”   He points out the economic formulation during the debate in the House over tariffs in1894 of the call for lower tariffs and trade expansion in order to pull the country out of a depression by men like Josiah Patterson of Tennessee who said that “free trade points the way to achieve the manifest destiny of the American people.”   LaFeber supports his economic driven expansion thesis by describing direct manifestations of expansion caused by this idea, including the Venezuelan  Border Crisis of 1895-96 and the Spanish-American War of 1898.

LaFeber quotes a State Department official who claims that after theVenezuelan Border Crisis of 1895 it was clear that “when our manufacturersmust help to swell the volume of our export trade…It has been the task of Mr. Cleveland’s foreign policy to prepare the way for them, to insure ahospitable reception for them.”

6

He then uses an excerpt from the Banker’sMagazine to show the economic push toward war with Spain over Cuba,citing that “so many of our citizens are so involved in the commerce andproduction of the island, that to protect these interests…the U.S. will haveeventually to force the establishment of fair and reasonable government.”

     The problems with LaFeber’s thesis begin in his presentation of how economic driven expansion was developed by men like Seward and Blaine in the 1850s and 60s. While Seward and Blaine were expansionists, Sewardwas distracted by the Civil War and out of a position of power by 1869 andBlaine would not become Secretary of State in a full capacity until 1889 and thus both were incapable of putting into action any sort of concrete foreign policy initiative from 1860 leading up to 1889. There is also the question of what else could be driving expansion such as religion, as men like Josiah Strong proclaimed that Anglo-Saxon America was the pure race of Christianity and that “this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America…And can anyone doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the “survival of the fittest.”

INDIGENOUS POETRY OF THE AMERICAS

ANCIENT AMERICAN POETS

translations from Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya, and Quechua
with biographies of the poets

A survey of ancient indigenous poetry focused on three pre-conquest American Indian poets. 

The Flower Songs 
by Nezahualcoyotl (Nahuatl)
The Songs of Dzitbalche 
by Ah Bam (Yucatec Maya)
The Sacred Hymns of the Situa 
by Pachacuti (Quechua)

With commentaries on the lives and times of the poets. Each poem is presented in its original language and in translation.

Bilingual Review Press  ISBN: 1-931010-21-8

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END INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AMERICAS DAY 2013