Save the Date! Dr. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” will be in town Sept. 27 to talk on her new book: “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.” The event will start at 7 p.m. at First Unitarian Society, 900 Mount Curve Ave., Minneapolis. (Flyer for Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz lecture.)
Book Reivew
Book Release: The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became US Property
Henry Sibley, the state’s first Governor, did deplorable things. At the top of the list, he developed trust with the Dakota people then betrayed them. He strong armed the Dakota people into signing treaties from which Sibley profited and the Dakota people suffered.
The Minnesota Historical Society’s new interpretive plaque next to Sibley’s Capitol portrait explains:
He [Sibley] used his influence with the Dakota to force through the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 which stripped them of more than 24 million acres of land and diverted a significant portion of the payments to cover alleged debts to fur traders, including Sibley himself.”
According to the NPR piece Little War on the Prairie, because of the duplicitous treaty language, Sibley got $66,000 from the initial treaty payment while all Dakota people combined got $60,000, Sibley was now out of debt; in seven years, he would be Governor.
The tragic thing is, Sibley wasn’t the exception, he was the rule. Treaty making was a money maker for white colonial businessmen and politicians.
If you want to learn more of these stories, check out the new book: The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became US Property, written by Martin Case. It will be released by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in June.
The book launch is Thursday, June 7, at 7 pm, at the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis,
According to the early publicity:
Case provides a comprehensive study of the treaty signers, exposing their business ties and multigenerational interrelationships through birth and marriage. Taking Minnesota as a case study, he describes the groups that shaped US treaty making to further their own interests: interpreters, traders, land speculators, bureaucrats, officeholders, missionaries, and mining, timber, and transportation companies.
A Lame Apology and Poems with a Punch
Mark Charles (Navajo) told me a while back about the lamest apology ever made, the one Congress made to Native Americans, the one buried in the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill.
Until recently I hadn’t heard about the poem that apology inspired.
Before getting to the poem, let’s take a couple of steps back to the beginning of the story: Senate Joint Resolution 14, proposed in the 111th Congress (2009). The resolution starts by acknowledging: “a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States.” Continue reading
White Community Silence in the Theft of Land, Oil from Native Peoples
People in power have a history of taking advantage of Native Americans to profit from their land and natural resources, including oil. It is not just the rich and powerful, however. In order for these things to happen, the majority community has to give its approval, even if it is just through its silence.
Today, large energy companies are pushing for crude oil pipeline projects that affect Native peoples, and do so without their consent. The pipelines cross sacred lands, sacred waters, and/or areas where Native peoples have reserved hunting and fishing rights. Two current examples are the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota and Enbridge Line 3, a proposal to expand and reroute a tar sands oil pipeline through northern Minnesota.
Native American peoples are small in number and do not have a strong political voice. Standing up to large companies, powerful interests, and unsympathetic communities is an uphill battle, with an ugly history.
The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America
The following first appeared in the blog News Day, written by Mary Turck, the former editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet (and a friend of mine). I recommend her blog. This post is reprinted with permission.
Sarah Deer’s powerful new book, The Beginning and End of Rape focuses on sexual violence in Native America. The beginning goes back to the European invasion, with rape used as a tool of genocide and conquest. Now, as then, when European American men rape Native women, U.S. legal systems help them escape punishment. In an eminently readable book, law professor and MacArthur genius grant winner Sarah Deer describes the historical trajectory of rape and rape laws, beginning with the historical connection between rape and conquest / genocide / white patriarchy and legal systems.
“[R]ape in the lives of Native women is not an epidemic of recent mysterious origin. Instead, rape is a fundamental result of colonialism, a history of violence reaching back centuries. An epidemic is a contagious disease; rape is a crime against humanity” (Introduction, x).
A series of U.S. laws made rape of Native American women easier and less likely to be prosecuted. Tribal courts have jurisdiction over Native Americans on tribal lands— but not jurisdiction over non-Native criminals. That means European Americans who rape women on tribal lands cannot be prosecuted in tribal courts. They could be arrested and prosecuted in federal courts, but that has not been a priority for federal prosecutors and courts. So they get a free pass. That’s part of the reason that Native American women suffer the highest rate of rape of any group in the country.
Beginning with her volunteer work as a rape crisis counselor during her undergraduate days, Deer hears and respects and re-tells the stories of women who have survived rape. Without minimizing the importance of each woman’s experience, she insists:
“Indigenous people across the world share a common experience—namely, intrusion on their lands and culture by an exterior, hostile outsider. Rape victims experience the same dynamic, but it is played out on their bodies and souls, rather than on the land. …
“All other challenges faced by tribal nations are linked to the history and trauma of rape” (Introduction.)
Deer traces the history of rape from colonial times to the man camps of North Dakota’s fracking fields.
As a lawyer, Deer traces the historical and legal complexity of “a patchwork of various federal and tribal laws that work in tandem to utterly obfuscate justice” (Chapter 3, p. 31). She traces the advances made by the Tribal Law and Order Act (2010) and the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, while recognizing their shortcomings.
As a Native American woman, Deer points out hopeful possibilities of restoration of tribal jurisdiction and writing tribal laws on rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse. She suggests theoretical approaches that could avoid the traditional patriarchal definitions of rape and move forward to “conceiving of rape as an unlawful ‘invasion’ of body, mind, and spirit” (Chapter 8, p. 114). That invasion is a crime against the individual woman and also against the community. While outlining possibilities for an indigenous jurisprudence of rape, Deer also warns against temptations to romanticize the possibility of “peacemaking” and restorative justice approaches.
While grounded in consideration of Native American issues and jurisprudence, The Beginning and End of Rape also has relevance and application in non-Native communities and an analysis that reaches beyond the legal framework.
Often books by lawyers and academics are hard for non-lawyers and non-academics to read. This one is not. Sarah Deer’s writing style is accessible and eloquent, as well as scholarly. I highly recommend this book to anyone concerned in the connections between sexual violence and political life.
Sarah Deer is the co-director of the Indian Law Program at the Mitchell/Hamline School of Law.
MPR Builds on the Idea of an Indigenous Book Club Month
Carolyn Bennett, Canada’s Minister for Indigenous and Northern Affairs, came up with the idea of having June be a month where Book Clubs across the country read Indigenous authors (and allies).
Minnesota Public Radio picked up the idea and developed an initial reading list for local Book Clubs to choose from. MPR New Host Tom Weber asked three avid readers to make recommendations: Patina Park, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Woman’s Resource Center; Rhiana Yazzie, a playwright and artistic director of New Native Theatre; and Odia Wood-Krueger, a teacher in the office of Indian Education for Minneapolis Public Schools.
Check out the story to find out their recommendations.
healingmnstories.wordpress.com 