The Try-Works

As anyone who’s turned on a television or radio in the past week knows, there’s a huge brouhaha boiling over jazz singer, Rene Marie’s choice to sing the so-called Black National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” instead of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Denver Mayor’s address to the city last week.  Ms. Marie has since enjoyed the kind of racial invective usually reserved for American Indians in our fair cowtown, prompting moral morons Mayor Hickenlooper and Governor Ritter to publicly condemn her.

After a day of measured responses, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper on Wednesday issued a sharply worded rebuke of a singer who replaced the words of the national anthem with lyrics from another song before a Hickenlooper speech.

Reading from a prepared statement beneath gathering afternoon clouds on the steps of the City and County Building, a visibly angry Hickenlooper said the singer’s actions overshadowed what he wanted to convey in his Tuesday morning speech.

The annual state of the city address is the mayor’s biggest speech of the year and sets the agenda for the course of city government in the coming year.

“No one paid attention to that speech,” said Hickenlooper, who said that he had spent at least 72 hours preparing
the speech and that his staff had spent weeks preparing for the event.

Instead, the mayor said, his office had been deluged with angry telephone calls and e-mails. At least 80 people had expressed displeasure Wednesday with Rene Marie’s song choice Tuesday.

The local jazz singer and actress, who had been invited to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner,” instead sang a song recalling the life-threatening conditions slaves were forced to endure in the 19th century called “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The song, which Marie sang to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” is also called the “black national anthem.”

. . .

Other politicians also were weighing in. Speaking during his monthly appearance on the “Mike Rosen Show” on 850 KOA on Wednesday, Gov. Bill Ritter said the performance had been “inappropriate.”

“If you invite someone to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at an event, you invite them to do just that,” Ritter said.

“The problem here is she was invited to do one thing, and she chose to do another thing,” Ritter said.

“It’s a fair interpretation to say it’s disrespectful.”

The mayor had used much milder language the day of his speech. He said then that Marie had apologized and told him she meant no disrespect.

On Wednesday, he said he had grown angrier after watching televised interviews of the singer. It became clear, he said, that she “was making a political statement.”

He said that while he thinks the lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing” are beautiful, it wasn’t appropriate to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” during an official city function.

“‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is sacred, one of our most beloved traditions,” the mayor said.

Keep reading.

One of our “most beloved traditions” you say?  Well, maybe, but sure as hell not one of mine.  See, unlike the geniuses inhabiting our City and State office buildings, I know something about the history of “The Star Spangled Banner’s” adoption as the national anthem.  After all, the key proponents were none other than two of my favorite exterminationist confidence men, Buffalo Bill Cody and Theodore Roosevelt.

Cody, the most dedicated mover, played the tune for some thirty years to kick off his Wild West, an outdoor drama which began as a series of corny New York plays about himself, based on dime novel fantasies penned by the likes of Prentiss Ingraham, and grew into a global phenomenon.

Buffalo Bill never let his Wild West be called the Wild West Show, insisting the that what was being presented was no mere representation of the Wild West, but the Wild West itself.  And, in at least one regard, Cody was correct to insist on its authenticity: the show presented the march of Manifest Destiny as the historical inevitability which has formed the core of American Indian-Hating and Empire-Building ever since.  The spectacle opened with the forest primeval, complete with savages skulking through the underbrush, and led the viewer through the so-called civilization of America, depicting, as Richard Slotkin put it in Gunfighter Nation, “the struggle between Red Man and White on the American frontier [as] the archetype and precedent for the world-wide struggle between ‘progressive’ and ‘savage’ or ‘regressive’ races that shaped the modern world.”

Or, as Cody put it in the Wild West’s handbill:

The central figure in these pictures is that of THE HON. W.F. CODY (Buffalo Bill), to whose sagacity, skill, energy, and courage . . . the settlers of the West owe so much for the reclamation of the prairie from the savage Indian and wild animals, who so long opposed the march of civilization.

Although one has to wonder at the logical contortions inherent to any claim of an Anglo-American right to “reclaim” the prairie from its original inhabitants, the handbill couldn’t be clearer about the racist assumptions of this particular confidence game.  Unlike the later softening of the winning of the American West that has come with more politically correct sensibilities, Cody’s Wild West wasn’t a place of cultural exchange, where Indians simply vanished before the oncoming civilization; it was unabashed in its worship of the cult of extermination.

Not that, for all his insistence on historical accuracy, Cody was particularly vested in the principle.  He was a confidence man.  My favorite example of Cody’s chicanery comes with George Armstrong Custer’s etiquette lesson at Greasy Grass.  At the time, Buffalo Bill was nominally employed as a scout for the 5th Cavalry, taking a break from his career of play-acting himself in an attempt to bolster his authenticity.  Hence, a few weeks after Custer’s defeat, the 5th Cavalry scouts, led by Cody, hunted down a party of Cheyenne who had nothing to do with Custer’s defeat, and butchered them.  Cody then scalped one of the corpses and proclaimed it the “first scalp for Custer.”

As Richard Slotkin notes, again in Gunfighter Nation, this incident became “the core of the Buffalo Bill legend, and the basis for his national celebrity.  Before the year was over he would be hailed as the man who took the first scalp for Custer,” and in only a few months time, Cody had already translated the skirmish into a play entitled The Red Right Hand; Or, The First Scalp for Custer.  In the play, Cody’s battle with the Cheyenne warrior, Yellow Hand, mutated into a hand-to-hand duel, with Cody holding the scalp above his head and shouting the line, “The First Scalp for Custer!”  Yellow Hand himself was transformed into a prominent Cheyenne war-chief, who had been present at the Little Big Horn.

Even better, it seems that Buffalo Bill anticipated the massacre by donning a black and scarlet velvet Vaquero outfit on the morning of the murder in lieu of his usual buckskins, allowing him to later stand on stage in the East, declaring truthfully that he stood before the audience in the very garb he was wearing when he took the first scalp for Custer.

Nor was that the end of it.  Yellow Hand’s scalp was displayed on advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West for the entirety of its run, and Buffalo Bill himself played Custer in the culmination to his show for decades.

In fact, besides “The Star Spangled Banner”, the murdered Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hand’s scalp was the most consistent feature of the Wild West.

There’s a continuity there that one really needn’t bother remark on.

So how’s about Roosevelt?  Well, Roosevelt is widely understood as having inaugurated the movement which led to “The Star Spangled Banner’s” becoming the national anthem.  And he fell in love with it at Cody’s Wild West.  He was generally impressed with the historical lesson Cody provided, but was particularly moved by the swell of feeling given him and the audience by the playing of the song.  So moved, that he had his volunteer cavalry regiment, the Rough Riders — who took their name from a portion of Cody’s Wild West entitled “The Congress of the Rough Riders of the World” — play the tune when they hoisted the first American flag in Cuba.

And it gets better.  See, when Roosevelt returned, Cody replaced the closing act of his Wild West, wherein he played a courageous General George Armstrong Custer, with a reenactment of the Battle of San Juan Hill, wherein he played a courageous Teddy Roosevelt, leading his Rough Riders in their famous charge.  (A famous charge which, it’s worth remembering, was essentially a mop-up operation, as a black cavalry regiment had already taken care of most of the combat.)

Cody understood what Roosevelt understood, and that was that the invasion of Cuba was US Indian policy on the road.  It was, and is, the kind of militaristic racial expansionism which they both recognized in “The Star Spangled Banner”.

Am I being too hard on Roosevelt, calling him an exterminationist and a racial expansionist?

Well, don’t take my word for it.  Following are some quotes from his four-volume Indian-killing, expansionist epic, The Winning of the West (which was plagiarized by no less a racial expansionist than Adolf Hitler):

During the past three centuries the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world’s waste spaces has been not only the most striking feature in the world’s history, but also the event of all others most far-reaching in its effects and its importance . . . There have been many other races that at one time or another had their great periods of race expansion — as distinguished from mere conquest, — but there has never been another whose expansion has been either so broad or so rapid.

. . .

Unless we were willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghanies should remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting-ground of savages, war was inevitable; and even had we been willing, and had we refrained from encroaching on the Indians’ lands, the war would have come nevertheless, for then the Indians themselves would have encroached on ours.

. . .

The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.

. . .

Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conquest, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is indeed a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they held joint ownership.

. . .

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, — in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles for territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison. Looked at from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; but it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.

. . .

Yet the very causes which render this struggle between savagery and the rough front rank of civilization so vast and elemental in its consequence to the future of the world, also tend to render it in certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous. It is primeval warfare, and it is waged as war was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron. All the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two thousand years is lost. It is a warfare where no pity is shown to non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity. A sad and evil feature of such warfare is that the whites, the representatives of civilization, speedily sink almost to the level of their barbarous foes, in point of hideous brutality. The armies are neither led by trained officers nor made up of regular troops–they are composed of armed settlers, fierce and wayward men, whose ungovernable passions are unrestrained by discipline, who have many grievous wrongs to redress, and who look on their enemies with a mixture of contempt and loathing, of dread and intense hatred. When the clash comes between these men and their somber foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous, of incredible, of indescribable horror. It is impossible to dwell without a shudder on the monstrous woe and misery of such a contest.

. . .

Yet in its results, and viewed from the standpoint of applied ethics, the conquest and settlement by the whites of the Indian lands was necessary to the greatness of the race and to the well-being of civilized mankind. It was as ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable. Huge tomes might be filled with arguments as to the morality or immorality of such conquests. But these arguments appeal chiefly to the cultivated men in highly civilized communities who have neither the wish nor the power to lead warlike expeditions into savage lands. Such conquests are commonly undertaken by those reckless and daring adventurers who shape and guide each race’s territorial growth. They are sure to come when a masterful people, still in its raw barbarian prime, finds itself face to face with a weaker and wholly alien race which holds a coveted prize in its feeble grasp.

Many good persons seem prone to speak of all wars of conquest as necessarily evil. This is, of course, a shortsighted view. In its after effects a conquest may be fraught either with evil or with good for mankind, according to the comparative worth of the conquering and conquered peoples. It is useless to try to generalize about conquests simply as such in the abstract; each case or set of cases must be judged by itself. The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests in alien lands; but the victories of Moslem over Christian have always proved a curse in the end. Nothing but sheer evil has come from the victories of Turk and Tartar. This is true generally of the victories of barbarians of low racial characteristics over gentler, more moral, and more refined peoples, even though these people have, to their shame and discredit, lost the vigorous fighting virtues. Yet it remains no less true that the world would probably have gone forward very little, indeed would probably not have gone forward at all, had it not been for the displacement or submersion of savage and barbaric peoples as a consequence of the armed settlement in strange lands of the races who hold in their hands the fate of the years. Every such submersion or displacement of an inferior race, every such armed settlement or conquest by a superior race, means the infliction and suffering of hideous woe and misery. It is a sad and dreadful thing that there should of necessity be such throes of agony; and yet they are the birth-pangs of a new and vigorous people. That they are in truth birth-pangs does not lessen the grim and hopeless woe of the race supplanted; of the race outworn or overthrown. The wrongs done and suffered cannot be blinked. Neither can they be allowed to hide the results to mankind of what has been achieved.

Sigh, nothing like reading Teddy to get that old Teutonic blood flowing.  Gee, wonder why people of color might feel a tad bit, shall we say, alienated by that kind of horseshit?

Anyway, to be honest, my opposition to “The Star Spangled Banner” has very little to do with Cody or Roosevelt.  It has to do with it being a monstrously stupid piece of hammer-rhyme hackwork.

But, that aside, there’s something particularly fucking repellent about all those talk-show clones on the local channels getting worked up about Rene Marie’s statement that she never felt “The Star Spangled Banner” applied to her.

I don’t think the song in itself is racist — just fucking awful — but, in the same way that there are survivors of Nazi concentration camps who’d rather not listen to Wagner, one can certainly understand Ms. Marie’s desire to sing something else.

A great article poached from the Colorado AIM blog.

In his May 15 speech before the Israeli Knesset, President George W. Bush invoked the Old Testament story of the chosen people and the Promised Land. Bush said that the establishment of Israel in 1948 ‘’was the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham, Moses and David - a homeland for the chosen people in Eretz Yisrael.'’

Bush also spoke explicitly of an alliance and a friendship between Israel and the United States rooted in the Bible. The source of the link between the two countries, he said, ‘’is grounded in the shared spirit of our people, the bonds of the Book, the ties of the soul.'’ Then, weaving a bit of American history into the mix, Bush told his audience: ‘’When William Bradford stepped off the Mayflower in 1620, he quoted the words of [the Hebrew prophet] Jeremiah 51:10: ‘Come let us declare in Zion the word of God.”’

According to Bush, ‘’The founders of my country saw a new promised land and bestowed upon their towns names like Bethlehem and New Canaan. And in time, many Americans became passionate advocates for a Jewish state.'’ American Indian lands, in other words, were viewed by the founders of the United States as a new Land of Canaan, a promised inheritance and everlasting possession.

Although there may be those orthodox Jews who would not concur with Bush’s characterization of the Old Testament, his speech illustrates the kind of thinking that has played such a prominent role in the historic mistreatment of American Indians by the United States, and in the callous and often brutal mistreatment of Palestinian people by the state of Israel. The mental model of a chosen people and a promised land provides a convenient rationalization whereby one people feels entitled and justified, by divine right, to take over, possess, and profit from the lands of other peoples.

The rest.

Italy has recognized the indigenous Hawaiian Kingdom Government.  From the Free Hawai`I blog.

A letter addressed to Hawai`i Kingdom Government and stamped “Italian Consulate” reads -

“This office on behalf of the Italian Government in Hawai`i acknowledges that there was a prior treaty that was not between the United States nor the State of Hawai`i but between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the Italian government.

“We acknowledge and recognize that the Hawaiian Kingdom exists and is operating at 210 `Iolani Avenue in Honolulu, Hawai`i 96783.

We appreciate your visits to our office and appreciate the relationship that Italy has with the Hawaiian Kingdom and its currently operating government.”

As Hilda has pointed out, Snapple is claiming that FBI shitheel Joseph Trimbach has just headed out on a book tour to pimp his barely literate cavalcade of horseshit about the American Indian Movement. A claim which, considering the fucking thing is a vanity press offering, and hasn’t had a single review in a single reputable book publication of any sort, I find rather dubious.

In fact, the book hasn’t been mentioned in any news source whatsoever that I can find, except as name-dropped by FBI shill, Tim Giago. Not that that’s surprising, of course. As I noted awhile ago, book reviewers don’t review vanity press dribblings. Ever. Nor do the fucking wingnuts who publish in vanity presses do book tours. Ever. (Usually they’re too busy writing their next book on the basement walls, using the neighbor’s cat’s blood for ink.)

And, also echoing Hilda, if you haven’t yet, make sure you head over to Trimbach’s book site to check out the styling’ Web 2.0 graphics. Three bullet holes, and the silliest dribble of blood yet seen this side of Tales from the Crypt. I’ve watched it about 200 times today, and I still ain’t stopped laughing.

Update:  Feel free to weigh in with an itinerary, Snapple.  I’ll happily repost it as an update.

Stolen from the WCSN. For more on the Longest Walk, see the incomparable Brenda Norrell.

The profane, prolific and profoundly pulchritudinous folks at RAIMD (aka the Hole in the Wall Gang) have been up in Montana, kicking up a little dust.  It seems the traditional leaders of the Northern Cheyenne have decided to follow the example of the Republic of Lakotah, and they’ve been helping out.

Stay tuned to the new website, Cheyenne Freedom, for updates.

Seems the Senate is pissing down your neck and telling you it’s raining again.  Seems there was an apology to American Indians that sorta kinda happened a couple of days ago.  Or weeks ago.  Hell, who gives a shit?  The following is an excellent article by columnist Susan Greene, who just recently took over for Diane Carman at the Denver Post.

Shannon Francis never sought an apology from a country that yanked her mom and grandma off their reservations, forced them into white foster families and barred them from speaking their native Hopi and Navajo languages.

So the Denver resident was unaware Tuesday that her government had decided to say, “Sorry.”

“I had no clue it was coming,” the 38-year-old mother of six said with a shrug. “So much for making history.”

Like Francis, you probably missed it when the U.S. Senate quietly apologized for centuries of “violence, maltreatment and neglect inflicted on Native Peoples.”

The unprecedented resolution acknowledges that the government forced indigenous people off their land, stole their assets and was responsible for “official depredations, ill-conceived policies and the breaking of covenants” with tribes.

When Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized two weeks ago for policies that degraded that country’s Aborigines, he blared his pronouncement live on giant screens throughout Australia.

U.S. senators instead buried their “Oops, our bad” in an amendment to a bill for American Indian health care.

Well, that certainly makes up for the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded Knee.

So much for healing generations.

“White America can’t afford to apologize too seriously because it would threaten their ownership of Indian land,” said Iliff School of Theology Indian cultures professor Tink Tinker.

Tuesday’s resolution came at the urging of Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who reports a “deep resentment” among Native Americans in his state.

His colleagues aren’t so big on apologies. Congress hadn’t formally said “sorry” since apologizing to Native Hawaiians in 1993 for overthrowing their kingdom a century earlier. In 1988, lawmakers apologized and compensated Japanese-Americans interned in World War II detention camps.

Brownback’s resolution does not authorize or settle any claim against the United States.

“We have a government that took our land and our children and physically and emotionally abused them and forced them to assimilate into something that they’re not,” said Francis, an accounting consultant by trade and a longtime activist for American Indian causes. “We — I — live with the pain of that every day. And for this they issue a bunch of words, empty like their treaties, that mean nothing and nobody hears.”

Who is the apology really for, Francis wonders?

Is it for her mother, grandmother and aunties who spent lifetimes trying to forget the federal boarding schools that sought to strip away their culture?

For her brother, plagued like their father and grandfather by poverty and alcoholism?

For her son, who failed a 7th-grade history test when he refused to check the box saying Christopher Columbus discovered America?

Or for Francis herself, who overcame years of shame about her dark skin and accent to learn the ways of her ancestors that her own family had failed to pass on: to honor her kids, hug them and root them deeply in their heritage?

“If our people had been left alone, maybe things would have been different,” she said.

As Francis sees it, Tuesday’s resolution does little to fix a sad sequence of abuses that still is far from over.

“We don’t need any more hollow words,” she says. “What I want is for the country to be honest, really honest, about what it has done and what it continues doing to our people.”

Here’s a concept: how’s about instead of empty apologies these pinheads push the government to actually obey their own fucking laws?

Yeah, novel concept, I know.

Anyway, if this article’s indicative of the sort of work we can expect from Susan Greene, I might have to start reading the Post again.

Jessica Corry, who you’ll remember from my reaction to a spectacularly fucking dumb article in the Rocky Mountain News, has a new spectacularly dumb fucking article over at New West. I’m used to columnists from the Independence Institute not being the brightest of the bright, but in Ms. Corry’s case, I have to wonder that her brains don’t dribble out her ears with every keystroke.

This is my favorite:

To make their extremely debatable point that Christopher Columbus was a murderer, rapist and slave trader, they splashed fake blood peppered with doll heads onto the streets. They then blocked the street, at which point 80 people were arrested.

The rest.

What the fuck’s debatable about that? Have you done any research that didn’t take place at your keyboard in your fucking jammies, Ms. Corry?

The historical record’s pretty clear on Columbus. He traded slaves, you need read no further than his own writings to verify that. He also raped Indians — or at least kidnapped woman and gave them to his underlings to beat and rape — we’ve got diaries to that effect written by the motherfuckers sailing with him who were doing the raping. As to whether or not he was a murderer, again you don’t have to dig too deep to find evidence of it. No deeper than Bartolome de Las Casas, who sailed with Columbus.

That’s one source for each of the points you consider “debatable”. There are plenty more. You can argue that what Columbus did was worth the human cost because of the ensuing colonization of the Americas — it puts you on the same moral plane as Hitler, but you can argue it — but you can’t fucking argue that Columbus was not a murderer, a rapist and a slave trader. That train’s left the station, dear. At least amongst those of us who visit, like, libraries for our historical information.

Really, where the fuck does the Independence Institute come up with the mudheaded idiots?

Anyway, as much fun as it is to poke fun at Ms. Corry’s monolithic ignorance, I should be kind. After all, she did provide me with the heartiest belly laugh I’ve had in some time.

By continuing on, Lane and his radical clients have done nothing to help their cause, especially in my household, where my two-year-old daughter is now deeply afraid of American Indians.

Her fear is not the result of some bigoted Hollywood movie production. Rather, it’s because of the radical activists themselves. On a morning walk with my husband not far from our home in downtown Denver on the day of the last parade, my daughter heard the sound of drums and wanted a closer look. As she leaned forward in her stroller, protestors jumped out in front of her, splashing their “blood” onto the street.

Nearly four months later, she still talks about the event. Every time she hears the sound of a drum, she says “boom, boom, boom. Indians scare me, Mommy.”

I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be some kind of hamhanded attempt at irony, but, hell, I can’t help but take it as an imperative to action.

See, I’ve always been a little ambivalent about the fake blood, but now I plan on demanding it for each and every protest I attend.

Anything that scares the shit out of yuppie spawn has its fucking place.

And, gosh, just imagine how scary it must’ve been for those real flesh and blood brown babies getting fucking butchered by Columbus.

Or, for that matter, those flesh and blood brown babies being butchered in Iraq.

With the open encouragement of the Independence Institute.

Update: Interesting, by the way, how variable Ms. Corry’s tender sensibilities are. Fake blood on the street has her torturing prose into purple, yeah?

But being married to a fucking convicted rapist doesn’t seem to phase her in the least. (Scroll down to the comments.)

Russell Means recently gave an interview with The Final Call about the Republic of Lakotah’s secession from US treaties.  (Thanks to my favorite BLM Whore Who Just Can’t Wean Himself Off The Public Tit.)

The Final Call (FC): Specifically, what does the Lakotah sovereignty declaration mean and what is it based on?

Russell Means (RM): We unilaterally withdrew from our treaties and agreement with the United States of America. That is backed by Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution along with other amendments and also backed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which the entire international community including the United States of America signed into effect in 1980. So legally, we have returned to the position we held prior to the signing of the treaties which makes us free and independent. According to national and international law, we are legally within our rights to be independent and free. Also, in the acts from Congress that enabled those five states to become states, those states expressly said they would not interfere with our affairs. Representatives of the freedom seeking Lakotah Nation signed and delivered the documents. We do not represent the tribal governments. The tribal governments are representatives of the United States and the colonial apartheid system of America. In order to save our people, our nation our language, our ways of life, our value systems, we have to withdraw.

FC: Geographically, how much land is covered by the Republic of Lakotah and how many people currently live in that territory?

RM: The area covers, two-thirds of northern Nebraska, one-half of South Dakota, about one-forth of North Dakota, twenty percent of Montana and twenty percent of Wyoming. Indians and non-Indians, about 1.5 million people live there.

FC: In your writings and speeches, you have drawn many parallels between the experiences of the indigenous people, the apartheid government in South Africa, and the occupied Palestinian territories. It appears that you are saying that wherever unjust land appropriation policies are found, they all have the same origins.

RM: Exactly! Hitler wrote that the American policy of creating reservations for the unclean and the unwanted was the perfect solution for race, and (using) that example he created the concentration camps for the gypsies, Jewish people and homosexuals. The Bantu Development Act of 1964 which institutionalized apartheid in South Africa is a copy of the Indian Reorganization Act of America which was passed thirty years before. What happened to us was the genesis and example for all land appropriations the world over—that includes Palestine. Our people are being exterminated, much like the African slaves were exterminated from their homeland and separated from their way of life. The apartheid system is the most lethal colonial policy ever created, and you have to hand it to the United States of America. They are very good at eradicating human beings in all ways physically, spiritually and economically.

FC: Are you expecting either mass migration into or out of the Lakotah territories as a result of this declaration?

RM: We know that there will not be a mass migration out of our territory. We’ve offered citizenship to anyone who wants to become Lakotah, provided they renounce their U.S. citizenship and apply for citizenship with our Nation. We know that all of those Americans and many of the Indian people in those states are not going to renounce their citizenship. We have no illusions about that, however, our nation will not have taxes and we will have individual liberty through community control.

FC: What will happen to those who live in the area but do not want to leave the land or their property they have purchased?

RM: The power we have is based on U.S. law. The negotiation tool that we will use with the city, county and state governments is the power to put a lien on any and all real estate transactions in that five-state region. What that does is that it puts the burden of proof on the seller of the real estate. They have to prove that the lien is invalid. Well, based on the U.S. Constitution, we own the land. Therefore, if we choose to do that, the real estate market in those five state areas will absolutely totally collapse. That is the power that we possess. They have a problem with their government because their government defrauded them. They bought property believing that the property was free and clear. It isn’t. We own it.

The rest.

Also, the website for Mr. Means’ total immersion school is up, and well worth a look.  (Thanks again to the Ballerina Welfare Queen.)

After nigh 20 fucking years of flexing its prosecutorial muscle — not to mention drafting a law specifically to target Columbus Day protestors — the city finally garnered a victory in court.

Managing to level about $500 in fines at a combined three defendants.

Yeah, I can’t stop chuckling either.

Holocaust hucksters and racist shitheels who make their living by defrauding the poorest people in the nation.  Sounds just like Joseph Trimbach’s kind of people, don’t it?

Eight decades after the massacre, the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation was known mainly by its trading post.  The post was a descendant of one of the many franchises the Indian Bureau had granted white businessmen to keep Indians in food (usually rotten), clothing (usually thin), and hardware (usually frail).  General William Tecumseh Sherman had observed in the nineteenth century, “A reservation is a parces of land inhabited by Indians and surrounded by thieves,” but the trading post franchises brought the thieves onto the reservations.  The Wounded Knee Trading Post was a superior specimen.  Its owners, the Gildersleeve and Czywczynski families, had strewn billboards for seventy-five miles that announced, SEE THE WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE SITE, VISIT THE MASS GRAVE.  POSTCARDS, CURIOUS, DON’T MISS IT!  The postcards showed slaughtered Indians, including Chief Big Foot, frozen in the 1890 snow.  The traders enlivened their commerce with beadwork, quilts and other cuious bought low from Oglalas and sold high.  A Catholic priest once watched Mrs. Czywczynski barter a beader to a stingy $3.50 for an exquisite work, then turn around and sell it for $12.00.

The traders doubled as creditors, lending their Indian patrons $10 at humble interest of $2.25 a week.  As village postmasters, they also offered a rudimentary auot-payment–opening the mail of customers who had run tabs, cashing their checks without asking, paying their bills at the post, and calling other shopkeepers across the reservation to see if debts were owed them too.  There had been calls to boycot the post, but none had worked.  The post was the only story for a dozen miles, and the many carless Oglalas of Wounded Knee had no choice but to buy groceries and other wares at its inflated prices.

Steve Hendricks — The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country.

Court Reporter gives us another example of FBI thug Joseph Trimbach’s many lies, in the comments here.

Anybody else reminded of the inspirational tale of Andrew Myrick?

Joseph Trimbach, amplified by Snapple, has made a lot noise lately about the “hostages” supposedly held by “AIM terrorists” during the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee.

Among other things left unmention in such depictions is the fact that the “hostages”—residents of the village, actually—were afforded an opportunity to leave Wounded Knee in the company of Senators James Abourezk and George McGovern very early in the confrontation. All declined, expressly to try and protect their property from damage by federal forces (Voices From Wounded Knee, 1973 [1973] pages 38-39).

In other words, having elected to remain at Wounded Knee, the “hostages” weren’t really hostages at all.

The idea that they were, and Trimbach’s/Snapple’s harping on it, is plainly designed to conjure the image of vicious “AIM terrorists” abusing a group “innocents” at Wounded Knee.

It would thus be well to consider the example of James Czywczynski, owner of the Wounded Knee Trading Post and focus of myriad complaints over the years—none of them acted upon by the FBI—of illegal business practices undertaken at the direct expense of the impoverished Indians on Pine Ridge.

Called as a federal witness during the Wounded Knee trials, “Czywczynski asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination ninety-five times to inquiries from defense attorneys regarding the financial arrangements of his business” (John William Sayer, Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials [1997] page 128; citing trial transcript, U.S. v. Gilbert et al. [1974], vol. 22, pages 2488-2643).

One wonders whether, had Trimbach and his agents ever bothered to enforce against predators like Czywczynski, the actions of AIM at Wounded Knee would have been necessary.

For those of you excited to some interest about FBI thug Joseph H. Trimbach’s lies by Court Reporter’s excellent work, and who would like to continue reading, Peter Mattheisson’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse is completely searchable on Amazon.

My favorite tidbits:

• Wherein Joseph Trimbach begs an army colonel to lead an assault on Wounded Knee. A request the colonel refuses, of course (72).
• Wherein said colonel, after speaking to Mr. Trimbach, recommends the murderous, trigger-happy motherfuckers in the FBI revoke their shoot-to-kill orders (72).
• Wherein Judge Nichol, from the Wounded Knee trials, flat-out calls Trimbach a liar (121).
• Wherein Trimbach tells yet another lie: that he had no idea AIM was even on Jumping Bull land (541).

And for those of you who have no fucking idea what the last couple of posts are about, see here:

And here:

As noted last month, the always gullible anti-Churchill bloc has been spending its collective free time slobbering over the pages of the vanity press offering American Indian Mafia, penned by Joseph H. Trimbach. Mr. Trimbach is a former FBI Special Agent in Charge responsible in part for the carnage visited upon the Pine Ridge Indian reservation during the 1970s.

Now, I haven’t read the book — it’s a quirk of mine, I tend to eschew the vanity press dribblings of drooling lunatics — but our own Court Reporter has been providing a little backstory on Mr. Trimbach, here. Turns out that Mr. Trimbach’s got a well-deserved reputation for lying like Bill Clinton on Viagra night.

Court Reporter’s posts as follows, in full. (The Laurie who he’s addressing is one of the aforementioned anti-Churchill bloc. A remarkably — though not atypically — ditch-water dumb example thereof.)

I came across this while doing a little bedtime reading last night, Laurie. Since you profess such concern with lies and the lying liars who tell them, I thought you’d be interested. It’s based on the trial transcript for U.S. v. Dennis Banks and Russell Means (374 F. Supp. 321, 331 (S.D., Feb 12-Sept. 16, 1974), and will be found in Rex Wyler, Blood of the Land (1982) at pages 114-115. I’ve added emphasis at certain points, for what will be obvious reasons.

“The first government lie was not discovered until a year after the trial, but was suspected throughout: because of apparent government knowledge of supposedly secret defense strategy, the defense began to suspect that one or more of the volunteer defense aides was an FBI informer. On March 24, 1974 lawyer Mark Lane asked witness JOSEPH TRIMBACH, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI for Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, if…FBI…informers had infiltrated the defense camp, TRIMBACH said: ‘The answer is no.’ Judge Nichol ordered that prosecutor [Richard] Hurd check FBI informer files against a list of defense team personnel, and to report any material that might indicate government infiltration of the Banks/Means defense. On March 28, Hurd met with Attorney General William, Saxbe and FBI Director Clarence Kelley, and then submitted an affidavit to the court claiming that FBI files contained no material ‘which would arguably be considered as evidence of an invasion of the Legal Defense Camp.’ Both TRIMBACH and Hurd had lied to the court, although the truth was concealed behind FBI ‘top secret’ status, not to be revealed until [February 1975].”

What was the lie, you ask? That the FBI had not infiltrated the Banks/Means defense team, when in fact Trimbach’s office was paying Douglass Durham—Dennis’s Banks’s personal bodyguard and AIM’s nominal “Security Director”—$1,000 per month as a “key informant.” Durham attended every defense strategy meeting before and during the Banks/Means trial, and met regularly with Trimbach’s agents to report what he’d heard.

It’s marginally possible that Hurd was not deliberately providing false to Judge Nichol in his affidavit, but this would be true only if Trimbach had lied to him as well as the court about Durham.

Either way, Trimbach himself unquestionably lied under oath.

Okay, Laurie, that’s one very well-documented example of Trimbach’s dishonesty. There’s more, but I find it appropriate to follow your lead and dribble the examples out, one post at a time.

. . .

Round 2, Laurie, using the same citations and with the same emphasis as last time.

“Other lies…were discovered by the defense. On March 12, [1974] TRIMBACH assured Judge Nichol that there had been no illegal FBI wiretaps during the Wounded Knee occupation or investigation. On March 20 he testified on the stand that no such wiretap interceptions had taken place. But on March 29 the defense obtained from FBI agents Gerald Bertinot and Susan Rolley-Malone an affidavit signed by TRIMBACH which outlined conversations illegally monitored by Bertinot and Rolley-Malone. It was further discovered that prosecutor Hurd’s secretary had notarized a wiretap affidavit signed by TRIMBACH…”

There’s a legal term for this sort of lie, Laurie. It’s called perjury.

. . .

Round 3, Laurie, again relying on the same sources.

“Following TRIMBACK’s lies…the court learned that the FBI had worded a teletype to its agents warning them to tailor responses to court questions so as not to provide a basis for a motion to dismiss. Nichol considered this a green light to the agents to shade the truth. The court also discovered that the prosecution and the FBI had mislead the court by earlier denials that there were paid informers assigned to AIM prior to the Wounded Knee seige, and that there was a general FBI Wounded Knee File” (facts which TRIMBACH, for one, had denied under oath—although, once again, at least some of the paid informants reported to Trimbach’s Minneapolis Field Office).

Having fun yet, Laurie?

. . . .

Hi, Laurie, ready for Round 4?

Bearing in mind that there’s more than one way of lying, consider the fact that the FBI, as the Justice Department’s investigative arm, is responsible for locating and vetting the credibility of witnesses whose sworn testimony is then elicited by federal prosecutors before a jury. Remember as well that, in the Wounded Knee cases, the FBI’s responsibilities were carried out under the direct authority of Joseph Trimbach.

With those things in mind, it is quite revealing to discover that, “a sixteen-year-old youth, Alexander Richards, was given immunity from prosecution on Wounded Knee charges in exchange for testimony against Banks and Means. Under cross-examination, Richards admitted that he had lied on the stand, and documents surfaced showing that he had been in jail during the time of events which he claimed to have witnessed at Wounded Knee. It was later revealed that Richards had signed three affidavits for the FBI prior to his release from prison,” only one of which was introduced at trial, mainly because the other two directly contradicted it (and each other, for that matter).

This is called subornation of perjury, Laurie, and, like perjury itself, it’s a crime. It is, moreover, hardly the only time Trimbach and his agents resorted to such tactics during the Banks/Means trial.

“By late August, six months into the trial, the prosecution had yet to connect either Banks or Means to any of the alleged crimes. Hurd, however, produced a surprise witness, Louis Moves Camp, who testified that he’d witnessed virtually every crime with which the defendants had been charged… If Moves Camp’s testimony was true, the defendants could be found guilty of every charge contained in the eleven-point indictment presented by the government” (Weyler, Blood of the Land, p. 118).

Rather convenient, wouldn’t you say? Here’s the reason.

“The witness’s mother, Ellen Moves Camp…told the court that her son Louis had left Wounded Knee about March 12, 1973, not on May 1 as he had testified. She said he had traveled to California, had not returned, and could not have witnessed some of the events which he had described to the court. Further investigation revealed that a BIA employee had seen Moves Camp in California from March 17 through the end of June. Records from the Monterey Peninsula Cable Television Company revealed that Moves Camp had appeared on a television show there on April 23 and 26, days that he supposedly witnessed events at Wounded Knee. Other witnesses testified that he had been on the San Jose State College campus in April.” (Weyler, pages 119-119).

Ready for the best part?

“Investigation further revealed that legal aides for the proosecution had suggested that, prior to his court appearance, Moves Camp be given a polygraph (lie detector) test, but that FBI Special Agent TRIMBACH hard ordered that the test not be given.” (Weyler, p. 119).

Getting the picture yet, Laurie?

All right, the “motherfuckers” was all mine. But it added a certain, y’know, je ne sais quoi. (Thanks to Brenda Norrell.)

A month after the Republic of Lakotah reasserted its sovereignty, the United States and its state and municipal governments are still present and operating in the Republic. These foreign governments are being invited to meet with the provisional government of the Republic of Lakotah.

In order to recognize Lakotah sovereignty, the United States might have to admit it breached its treaties with the Lakotah people. While the breaches are numerous and obvious, governments do not like to admit that they ever do anything wrong.

History has shown that colonizers withdraw from their colonized territories and return sovereignty to the indigenous people. Even the United States has done this. The Republic of the Philippines, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau were all colonized by United States but are now all sovereign nations.

The Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau obtained their sovereignty through a Compact of Free Association, The Republic of Lakotah see this Compact as a legitimate model for dialog with the United States.

The Republic of Lakotah is now putting special focus on the Black Hills, The Black Hills are Holy lands of the Lakotah people. In 1980, the United States Supreme Court awarded money damages to the Sioux Nation for the unlawful taking of the Black Hills which now total over $1.2 billion. The Lakotah people refuse to take the money.

Russell Means, Chief Facilitator for the Provisional Government of the Republic of Lakotah said, “Would Catholic people take money and give up the Vatican? Would Muslim people take money and give up Mecca? Lakotah people want our sovereignty of the Black Hills restored and recognized by the world.”

Means made it clear that the focus on the Black Hills does not mean that the Republic is waiving its claims to other traditional Lakotah lands.

For more information about the Republic of Lakotah, visit http://republicoflakotah.com.

You’ve probably heard this elsewhere, but the fucking idjits at the Denver DA’s office have dropped the ball again, failing to produce evidence against key defendants. God love their ample incompetent asses.

Meanwhile, according to a recent press release from the TCD alliance, the consolidated trial of defenders Julie Todd, Koreena Montoya, Glenn Morris and possibly Russell Means begins next Wednesday, January 16, 8:30 AM, in Courtroom 117M at the Denver City and County Building. The first day will be taken up with jury selection and the prosecution’s opening.

And, if Patricia Calhoun can be believed — always a tenuous prospect – Try-Works favorite David Lane’s already been having a ball.

Friday was David Lane’s birthday, and the criminal defense attorney gave himself a present by wreaking some legal havoc. When Claudia Jordan, the Denver County Court judge presiding over a hearing for some of the 83 Columbus Day protesters, announced that potential witnesses should be sequestered, Lane asked which potential witnesses she meant, exactly, since there were some fifty people in the courtroom — including Jared Jacang Maher, the Westword staffer who’d covered the Columbus Day protest (”Taking It to the Streets,” October 25, 2007). If she needed to, Jordan responded, she’d take attendance.

“So I stand up and start the revolution,” Lane says. After arguing that the judge did not have the authority to do that — that recording names would violate the Constitution — he proceeded to exercise more constitutional rights by calling Maher to the stand, throwing the First Amendment into the mix.

“Do you believe that as a reporter you have a constitutional right to sit here in this courtroom and listen to the testimony in this hearing?” Lane asked.

“As a reporter and this being a public hearing, I do.”

“You also understand that as a citizen, you are subject to subpoena just like anyone else?”

“Yes…”

“So you just heard the judge tell everyone in this courtroom that if you are going to be called as a witness at this trial, then you are going to have to get up and leave the proceedings today.”

“I did…”

“Do you think Westword magazine would have a First Amendment interest in getting counsel over here right now to see if their reporter can be constitutionally thrown out of the courtroom or not?”

Prosecution: “Objection, your honor. That calls for legal conclusion.”

Judge: “Sustained.”

“Do you know whether or not Patty Calhoun, who is the editor of Westword…has expressed to you in the past a concern about maintaining Westword’s rights under the First Amendment?”

Prosecution: “Objection. It calls for speculation.”

Judge: “I wasn’t trying to preclude Westword from being in the courtroom. I’m only precluding witnesses.”

And so it went for a few more minutes (you can read the full transcript at blogs.westword.com). After Maher left the stand — and the courtroom, since by now he’d been officially designated as a witness — Lane called Rocky Mountain News reporter Sue Lindsay.

At that point, the judge decided the day’s hearing was done — but the case is far from over. While charges have been dismissed against three of the protesters, including Russell Means, eighty defendants are still awaiting their day in court. One, perpetual protester Glenn Morris, is set for trial on January 16.

The rest.

Means is a witless buffoon; his little cybercoup is taken seriously by no one but moonbats and the DBAB.

So sayeth anti-Churchill bloc leader Jim Paine, who, as Try-Works commenters Metroplex and Rama Lama Fa-Fa-Fa have pointed out, seems to be moonbat numero uno.

Why? Well, because Mr. Paine, in one of his innumerable apoplectic fits, has recently devoted his blog entirely to Russell Means and the Republic of Lakotah’s withdrawal from all treaties made with the US.

Leading some of us to wonder exactly what he’s so fucking frantic about.

Is it that Russell Means takes the US Constitution more seriously than Mr. Paine? After all, Mr. Paine’s stance seems to be that one should be willing to wipe their ass with the venerated document, as long as the only people suffering from said ass-wiping are fucking wogs.

Or is it that Russell Means takes property rights more seriously than Mr. Paine? Since, y’know, for all his rambling about rugged individualism and those who spend their lives at the government teat, it turns out that Mr. Paine’s been doing a bit of his own suckling over there on his semen farm.

And you can take that any way you want it.

A short film about the Columbus Day protests shot by independent filmmakers David Staub and Simon Sedillo.

I rewatched Apocalypto, Mel Gibson’s attempt to do for Indians what he’s so recently done for Jews, over the long weekend. Seeing as how we managed to host a brawl between Rudy Youngblood’s agent and several of his detractors right here on the Try-Works, I figured it’s about time I came up with some comment on the flick.So what do I think of it? Well, you can probably guess. It’s heavy, contrived, pompous horseshit, complete with not one, but two, faux-Shakespearean wraith-like prophets of doom. And, as far as I can tell, it has no relation whatsoever to the Mayan people it purports to portray. Nor, for that matter, to any of the most basic building blocks of what’s widely considered, well, narrative. The characters’ only similarity to living, breathing human beings is that they occasionally manage walk upright. And, of course, the plot’s riddled with more holes than a Falluja hospital after a US precision strike. In other words, it’s colonial porn, with the Mayan represented as a viciously and wholly corrupt people, in desperate need of some Great Paternal Hand to reach out to them across the ocean and guide them out of their barbarity. Which Mr. Gibson is all too happy to provide.

In other words, it’s a Vincent Carroll wet dream. As I pointed out here.

The only reason I wasn’t more appalled is that I also made the mistake of rewatching Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. What little Apocalypto left out from the grand repertoire of Indian-hating, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee made up for. It’s no wonder this bag of shit wasn’t filmed until well after Dee Brown’s death. I consider it absolute proof of the non-existence of an ethereal afterlife that he hasn’t risen from the grave and stabbed the fucking director to death with a dull pencil.

The only thing to say in the movie’s favor is that it has absolutely no bearing on Mr. Brown’s landmark work at all, leaving very little chance that anyone will likely confuse the two. Hell, as far as I can tell, Mr. Brown doesn’t mention Charles Eastman — the purported protagonist of the flick — even once in his book.

However, my favorite fictional moments (And I had to do quite a bit of picking and choosing here, as the movie gets pretty much everything wrong, from the Wounded Knee massacre to the Battle of Greasy Grass, and even the most basic points of Charles Eastman’s biography):

1. Wherein Colonel Nelson Miles justifies his extermination campaign against the Lakota by claiming the Lakota have down the same to the Kiowa, amongst others. Said conversation never happened, but more interesting is that this scene has been a staple of extermination rhetoric for four hundred years. As given here, it’s nearly inseparable from similar horseshit in the likes of James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, John Filson’s The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, and Increase Mathers’ Early history of New England: Being a relation of hostile passages between the Indians and European voyagers and first settlers, to name three of the better known examples.

2. Wherein Sitting Bull forces one of his people to let his daughter die rather than leave their newfound home in Canada. This also never happened. The writer, Daniel Giat, claims to have included it to humanize Sitting Bull.

3. Wherein Sitting Bull whips the shit out of two boys for horse-stealing, and shoots the horse they purportedly stole. Again, never happened, contrary to the director’s idiot claim that some unnamed Osage told him it did. Mr. Giat also claims this was included to humanize Sitting Bull.

Funny how much “humanizing” Sitting Bull needed. Particularly since Mr. Giat seemed to feel no such need to “humanize” Henry Dawes, the architect of one of the most viciously cynical land grabs in the history of humanity. Mr. Dawes is presented throughout as a decent, well-intentioned gentleman who just happens to divest American Indians of more than a hundred million acres of their land, force them into absolute starvation conditions, and, to quote my personal hero Theodore Roosevelt, “pulverize” their “tribal mass.”

A real sweetheart, that Mr. Dawes.

See, I’d have picked him to “humanize.”

With, say, a scene wherein Mr. Dawes locks a Lakota four-year-old in his basement and slowly starves her to death for shits and grins.

Update: For far more and far better on Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, check out Blue Corn Comics.

For the slow posting. Things will continue to be slow for the next few days. In the meantime, if you ain’t already checked out the Republic of Lakotah, do. If this is a harbinger of the new year, then it will be a very good year indeed. Word is on the site that they’ve received a half million hits in one week alone. Meaning, a few hundred times what the Try-Works and all our esteemed enemies have received, combined. Which is as it should be.

While you’re at it, check out Mohawk Nation News, which has some of the best coverage of the Republic of Lakotah — not to mention, pretty much everything else — going.