Healing

American Indian Rights Activist Monica Charles wrote wise words about the deep damage child abuse and domestic abuse causes in our souls and communities. I've pasted her writing below.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/167/406261631_6c842f8762.jpg?v=0

"Drinking Daddy" by Charleen Touchette. oil.canvas, 2000.

I was especially moved by what Monica Charles wrote about the importance of believing children who are abused. When I wrote my book IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANNUCK GIRL, I was called a liar, my book was challenged and banned in my hometown library, and my college president Leon Botstein wrote that my book "does not deserve First Amendment Protection." The book ban was a reminder that society protects the perpertrators of violence against women and children and ostracizes those who speak up and tell the truth. Telling my story came with a great price including the loss of my relationships with my sisters and parents. But it also brought gifts from those women and children throughout our communities who have gained strength from my words to tell their own stories and work to heal from their own abuse. Telling our stories is only the first step. It is difficult and painful to remember those experiences that we have buried, but once we tell our stories, we become powerful beyond our expectations. And we give inspiration by our example to those who just need to know that their stories matter and that they have the right to tell what happened to them and demand that women and children are protected, loved and believed. The wounds in our families and communities go deep and way back generations. We can choose to continue to bury our pain and continue the cycle of hurt and secrecy, or we can choose to say, "It stops with me" and insist that our children will have a better legacy to hand down to our grandchildren to the Seventh Generation. It is not easy, but, we owe it to future generations to heal from the past and give them the knowledge and security to reject the past of abuse, anger, hate and depression and choose a path of love, family, respect and sharing.
Charleen Touchette
New Mexico Coordinator for Martin Luther King III's Realizing the Dream Poverty in America Initiative
www.oneearthblog.blogspot.com

__________________________________
Message from Monica Charles

Sunday, August 10, 2008
HEALING IS HARD
HEALING IS HARD



Healing may be like lancing a boil. We have to clear out the poison so that the flesh and skin can heal. It is a very painful process.

Healing sexual abuse can be like that. If the abusers are respected people in our communities, it hurts as if they are a part of our own family.

We have been praying for the healing of women and girls that have been sexually abused. Statistics say that 3 out of 4 Native women have been abused as women or girls.

That means out of every four Native women you know three have been abused.

When the abusers are respected members of our communities and families our first impulse will be to protect them. We may even say the child is lying.

What if he or she is not lying? What happens to the body, mind and soul of the child if we cover up the situation?

We have told them that they are not worth protecting. They will think that they have no sovereignty over their own bodies. They will have no healthy boundaries to protect themselves.

A child may begin to think of themselves as dirty or ugly. They may assume that something is wrong with them. Their life has been ruined.

We may have protected the accused one. We have done so at the price of a child.

The horror of child sexual abuse cuts across every political, economic and cultural line in our communities. We find ministers, medicine people, political leaders, parents, family members etc that are child molesters.

When a child makes an accusation of sexual abuse, they are usually telling the truth. If the accusation is false it is still an indicator that something is wrong.

Our communities are out of balance. We can trace the introduction of child sexual abuse back to residential schools and boarding schools. We can place blame directly into the hands of the Catholic Church.

Healing will come from us. We are the ones that must say “This sickness stops here and now.” No one will do that for us. No one can do that for us.

It will be like an amputation to lose a respected community member and family member if they are found guilty of child sexual abuse.
If we are to survive as a healthy People once again we must allow this part of the healing process. We can only love the perpetrator and allow him or her to go through his healing.

That may mean that he or she will go to prison. They won’t be allowed around young children. That will hurt them and us. It is necessary for the healing of our community.

For a long time we have turned a blind eye to this issue. If knowledge surfaces that someone has molested a child we say, “That’s the way he is.” We have allowed our future to be abused.

The introduction of child sexual abuse was a part of genocide as much as small pox and alcohol. It has been the longest reaching and created the most turmoil in our lives.

We must send out the message that child sexual abuse will no longer be tolerated in our communities. We will no longer allow the beating and rape of our future. Our children are our future.

The amputation of a loved one from our communities is a sacrifice we must make to stop this atrocity. It is a process we must go through for our healing.

Alcohol and drugs have been a balm for sexual abuse. Many prostitutes were abused. Many abusers were abused.

We have carried this secret far too long. It has festered for generations. The only way to begin the healing is to acknowledge its existence.

Our children are worth protecting. Our future deserves a chance. We must allow the process to run its course.

We must make sure that our children know we still love them. That what happened wasn’t their fault. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. Counseling is a good idea for the child and perpetrator. We need to change our thinking.

Cecelia Fire Thunder of Pine Ridge says that incidents of domestic violence, rape, and child sexual abuse fell once arrests and convictions were instated. Men realized that there would be consequences for their transgressions of women and children.

Violence, rape, and abuse of children are signs that our world is way out of balance. No one will right it but us.

May we bring healing to our communities with love, kindness, understanding and the Creator’s help. All of our people deserve healing. We are one people.

Democracy Now! | July 10, 2008 Streampage

Democracy Now! | July 10, 2008 Streampage

Watched A.I.M. co-founder Dennis Banks interviewed on Democracy Now about the Second Longest Walk that has arrived in Washington, D.C. Wish I was there with them.
You can see the interview Amy Goodman did with Dennis at this link.

Hope Americans heard Dennis Banks talk about the serious struggles across Indian Country and realize that the current way of living is not working and it's costing people's lives and health.

I was glad Dennis mentioned the Dine (Navajo) struggle to enforce their uranium mining ban, so Americans understand that nuclear energy is not clean nor safe.

What if people contacted their Congressional representatives and tell them you want them to listen to the Indians who've walked across America to bring a message to honor the earth?

http://www.house.gov/
Map to Find your Congress person
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml

http://www.senate.gov/
List of Senators
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Wishing you all, as, Coretta Scott King wrote, "a life
of purposeful fulfillment."
When you think about it, purposeful fulfillment is what
brings joy.
Peace, Pax, Shalom, Salaam, Skenon,
Charleen
Charleen Touchette
www.Touchart.net
TouchArt@aol.com
www.OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com

War Sucks

War Sucks
Originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette

Artist Autho Charleen Touchette talks about war and its costs.
With visual aids and apologies and respect to Bob Dylan and Bob Marley.

Love

Teaching the impartial practice of compassion is central to work for reconciliation to achieve peace with justice worldwide. CHANGE OF HEART - THE BODHISATTVA PEACE TRAINING of CHAGDUD TULKU is an excellent teaching about the essential practice of compassion, not only for the victims of injustice, but also for the perpertrators whose choice to do violence creates karma for which they must atone through many lifetimes. After I wrote and published my memoir IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANNUCK GIRL, whose concluding chapters include "Pardon" a prayer of forgiveness to my father and relations, a good friend gave me CHANGE OF HEART. Reading this book broadened my understanding of the path my own wounding and healing had set me upon. As a child growing up amid anger and violence, two people, my maternal grandmother and my paternal grandfather, loved me unconditionally. Their love made me know I was worth something and propelled me to struggle to survive and build a better life. Every child needs at least one person who loves them unconditionally. Children are resilient and can overcome almost any adversity if they know the experience of unconditional love from another human being. Give unconditional love freely to people you encounter and especially children. Your love could make all the difference in the world to a child. The core to compassion is unconditional love. One Earth. One Heart. One Love. It sounds trite. But it is the universal truth. God is Love. God is One. Once we realize, we are all related, as the Lakotah pray, we see the practice of loving compassion is the most powerful force for peace with justice. John Lennon, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Karuna Mayi, Rev. Desmond Tutu, Amma all told us to love.

Let's Get Dean Kamen's Clean Electricity Producing Water Purifying Engine to Communities Living in Poverty Worldwide

Picuris Pueblo Women Watch Dancers at Feast for Martin Luther King III, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Dean Kamen is a genius.
Kamen's inventions show how much good one person can do when they put their words into actions and create products that contribute to human dignity and worldwide peace with justice.
My dream is to see Segway's Stirling Engine producing clean electricity and purifiying water in homes on Indian reservations across the American West, rural HIspanic and Anglo homes in Northern New Mexico, and communities living in poverty with clean water issues across the world.
____________________
Follow this link http://current.com/items/88877511_the_next_big_thing_a_way_to_produce_cheap_clean_water

for article on Dean Kamen's engine that produces clean electricity and purifies water.
____________________
Photo "Four Generations", Picuris Pueblo Indian Woman Watch Dancers at Martin Luther King III Honoring Feast in June 2007.

Russell Means Speaks at Oppressionist Artists Exhibition

Russell Means Speaks at Oppressionist Artists Exhibition, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Russell Means explains Oppressionism at the Oppressionist Artists exhibition opening at the Shaman's Gallery in Hot Springs, South Dakota on August 5th, 2006. Artists exhibited - Russell Means, Francis Yellow, James Starkey, Charleen Touchette, Sage Paisner and Raoul Paisner. The gallery screened Starkey's film "Riding with Ghosts" on August 6, 2006.

From TouchArt.net

Fake Cannuck Letter Destroyed Ed Muskie's 1972 Run for President

Pepere's Lake, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

A bit of interesting democratic primary history with Ed Muskie doing the crying at this link above - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canuck_Letter

fyi amies,
"Cannucks" - French Canadians, mostly descendants of the French Voyageurs and Northeast Indian women - Metis, Quebecois, and Bois Brulle and/or Acadians, the offspring of communally living French men from Brittany and Normandy in the early 1600s and Mik'mak women, were persecuted from Maine up through Canada on the eastern seaboard for over 200 years. When America was born, the border crossed over them from coast to coast. One contentious border was Maine, with Acadians having family on both sides and longing to be reunited. My Memere Louisia Aucoin Touchette was born in the late 1890s, but she yearned to return to Acadia and talked about the dispersal in 1755 as if it were yesterday.

Our people were major players in the French and Indian Wars, War of 1812 and others when we usually took the side of our Indian relatives, not usually the winning side. The Grand Derangement in September of 1755 of Acadians, when families were separated, their property confiscated and herded on ships and dispersed to the British colonies, is the first modern example of genocide in the West. Seeing Mormon children torn from their mothers reignites that tragic ancestral memory.

What most people don't know is that the Ku Klux Klan had it's biggest activity against "Cannucks" in Maine in the late 1800s and early 1900s with a membership in Maine of over a 150,000. Read this description of the times from "Performing family stories, forming cultural identity: Franco American mémère stories" by Kristin M. Langellier
First published in Communication Studies, 53(1) Spring 2002, 56-73.

"Arguably, the Roman Catholic church both held French Canada together culturally at the same time that it hindered the social progress of its people. In the U.S., the devotion to French language and Catholic faith made Franco Americans the targets of religious hostility and racist attacks. The Anglo imagination attacked the French refusal to assimilate by challenging their whiteness. The French were characterized in an 1880 Massachusetts labor report as "the Chinese of the Eastern States" (les chinois de Pest) (Doty, 1995, p. 87), a comparison not to other white groups but to another race. Using French Canadians to argue against a ten-hour work day, the report concludes, "Now, it is not strange that so sordid and low a people should awaken corresponding feelings in the managers, and that these should feel that, the longer hours for such people, the better, and that to work them to the uttermost is about the only good use they can be put to" (Wright, 1881). Class, linguistic, and religious conflict submitted Franco Americans to two hundred years of discrimination, oppression, and poverty. In the mid and late 1880's and again in the 1920s, French Catholics were the target of cross-burnings by the Ku Klux Klan. In Maine, for example, an active and flourishing Klan in Maine, numbering 150,141, waged campaigns against the Catholic Church and foreign-language schools (Doty, 1995). Anti-French and anti-Catholic attacks suggest how larger historical forces shaped language and religion within the specific cultural formation of Franco American identity. "

Unfortunately, the Muskie "Canuck Letter" didn't increase awareness about the history and unequal status of some of America's first inhabitants.

From TouchArt.net and One Earth Blog.
P.S. Our Mik'maq ancestors arrived on the northeast shores of the Atlantic 20,000 years ago.

Mission, South Dakota

Mission-SD-Muriel-Antoines-front yard, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Good Morning,
Brenda Norrell long time indigenous rights activist writes in her Censored News blog news of the Lakotah protest of a corporate hog farm breaking ground on tribal land.

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/04/yankton-police-officer-quits-job.html

Illegal South Dakota state police occupation continues on Yankton Indian Land

Incoming messages from Yankton protest:

"I am Oitancan Zephier, a former police officer of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, combat veteran of Afghanistan and a father. Last week I quit my job when the protests started over the building of a hog farm by a corporation on private land surrounded by tribal lands. I quit because the Bureau of Indian Affairs will not help us. They stand and watch us get tossed in jail. The filth of the pigs will effect every part of our Indian people here.
There is a headstart school 2 miles away from the hog farm. There is a kindergarten through 12th grade school 4 miles away. There is a day care a couple miles away from the site. It is a prejudice act granted by the state of South Dakota to these pig farm owners. We need your help. If this is completed they will assume jurisdiction of all that surrounds them. The already began taking our tribal road, which we have intensely fought for 2 weeks now.
I have been thrown in jail while on our Indian land by a state officer. That is wrong!
I am begging you for your help. If you can, please publish the cry for help below in any way you can.
Contact me if you can help; or please forward this on to anyone who can help us."

Another censored news item from Brenda Norrell.
Brought to you from TouchArt.net and One Earth Blog because it's always been Earth Day every day in indigenous America.

Here are more links about the hog farm protest by Lakotahs.
Great pics of the excavation for hog farm and Lakotah protesters at this link - http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/04/16/18493231.php

More here - http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/17270/Yankton_Lakota_under_armed_siege_for_protesting_hog_farm
And here -
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080415/UPDATES/80415043/1052/OPINION01

Note how this protest relates to global warming and green house gases, since corporate meat production results in the biggest contribution of methane gas to the atmosphere.

Have a great Earth Day every day and consider eating organic farm raised pork if you have to eat meat.
Peace, Pax, Shalom, Salaam, Skenon,
Charleen
Charleen Touchette
www.Touchart.net
www.oneearthblog.blogspot.com
TouchArt@aol.com

Big Mountain Sign c. 1985

Big Mountain Sign c. 1985, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

This picture is from around 1985 when we lived in Tuba City and Barry worked for Navajo Hopi Legal Aid representing over 14,000 Dine affected by the genocide of relocation.
The sign reads - Entering Sovereign Dine Nation.
Read the article below about the suffering the Navajo people endured and continue to endure from being wrenched from their ancestral homelands where their umbilical cords are buried.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2329/2448580036_95ddcc3183.jpg?v=0

This is the hogan of a Shima (grandmother) in the Joint Use Area near Tec Ya Toh who dried her grandchildren's shoes on the roof of her simple but beautiful hogan.
This is an ongoing struggle for the Dine in the Hopi Navajo Joint Use Area. Keep checking One Earth Blog for more history, news and updates on this and the Bennett Freeze Area, another land dispute between the Navajo and Hopi and for other info on indigenous arts and politics across the Americas.
Charleen Touchette at TouchArt.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
April 28, 2008

Genocide at Big Mountain: The Extermination of the Traditional Dineh Sheepherders

by John Steinbach (703) 369-7427 - jsteinbach@igc.org

They hold the earth with their feet and keep it with their hands. The earth feeds them. On Black Mesa, she is thirsty, and thin. Her heart beats black with coal, her heart is laid open but the people hold her. They sing her to live-- their hands would heal her still. (Carol Snyder Halberstadt)

From South America to Canada, the campaign of oppression against the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, begun over 500 years ago, continues unabated. Indian People are under attack on many fronts: "sportsmans rights" clubs; multinational corporations; federal, state and local governments; a dying nuclear industry- the list is long. The rights of Indian People, such as economic and cultural rights, land rights, hunting and fishing rights, and sovereignty rights are being destroyed by a corporate system which represents the antithesis of land-based peoples' values. The example of the traditional Dineh (Navajo) sheepherders of Black Mesa/Big Mountain is emblematic of the numerous threats facing indigenous peoples worldwide.

Traditional Dineh and Hopi Indians living in the Navajo/Hopi Joint Use Area( JUA) are resisting Public Law 93-531, which orders the forced removal of over 12,000 traditional Dineh(and over 100 Hopi) from their ancestral lands, and Public Law 104-301, written by Senator John McCain(R. AZ), which authorizes their final expulsion by February 1, 2000. According to anthropologists, such relocations of indigenous peoples have never succeeded and are tantamount to cultural and physical genocide. Dr. Thayer Scudder, internationally respected authority on indigenous people, says: "Such removals are literally life threatening, with drastically increased rates of alcoholism and mental illness.... Indeed this forced removal of over 12,000 Native Americans is one of the worst cases of involuntary community resettlement that I have studied throughout the world over the past forty years." Leon Berger, former Executive Director of the Navajo-Hopi Resettlement Commission resigned in protest saying: "The forcible relocation of over 10,000 Navajo people is a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations." Expulsion of the Dineh from their ancestral lands, the nation's largest relocation of indigenous people since the 1800s, is being carried out to pave the way for the expropriation of vast deposits of low sulfur coal(estimated in excess of 18 billion tons), oil and natural gas, ground water and other valuable resources buried beneath Black Mesa.

Roberta Blackgoat, a Black Mesa Clan Mother in her 80s, lives in a traditional way taught by her mother and grandmothers. Like her ancestors she is a sheepherder- shearing , cleaning, carding and spinning the wool, and collecting herbs to create natural dyes. She hand weaves the best Navajo rugs in the world, her only means of subsistence. The trees, animals, springs and mountains are sacred to her. Her umbilical cord, like those of her grandparents and grandchildren, is buried on the land. Her way of life is being systematically destroyed.

If they come and drag us all away from the land, it will destroy our way of life. That is genocide. If they leave me here, but take away my community, it is still genocide. If they wait until I die and then mine the land, the land will still be destroyed. If there is no land and no community, I have nothing to leave my grandchildren. If I accept this, there will be no Dineh, there will be no land. That is why I will never accept it ... I can never accept it. I will die fighting this law." (Roberta Blackgoat, elder matriarch).

A History of Genocide

For hundreds of years, the Dineh and Hopi have been oppressed by European colonizers, first by Spaniards seeking gold and silver, and later by American settlers seeking land. As more and more land was stolen from the Indians, tensions mounted and the U.S. Calvary was instructed to put down the resistance. In 1864, following a three year "war" reminiscent of the scorched earth campaigns carried out against the people of Central America, Colonel Kit Carson crushed the Dineh. After destroying all livestock, crops and structures, Carson cornered the approximately 8,000 starving survivors and forced them 400 miles eastward, across the New Mexico desert in the dead of winter, on 'The Longest Walk.' The Dineh were confined under deplorable conditions for four long years in a Fort Sumner concentration camp, and in 1868, were driven back west and assigned a Navajo Reservation that included only a small fraction of their former lands.

In 1882, the Hopi Reservation was created just east of the Navajo Reservation. Artificial boundaries having little meaning to traditional peoples, the Hopi and Dineh continued to live peacefully side by side, just as they had for hundreds of years. Soon Mormon settlers became a ubiquitous presence on and near the reservation, expropriating the best land for their settlements and literally kidnapping Indian children in order to 'civilize' them. "From 1949 to 1976 over 20,000 Indian children were taken into white families to live during the school year, going back to their reservation homes during the summer, and often returning to the same "foster" families each year." (From Paul Bloom's Sundance Report -- July 30, 1999) This process of cultural genocide, in slightly different form, continues to this day.

Resource Exploitation of Native Lands

When oil was discovered on the Navajo Reservation in 1921, the federal government attempted unsuccessfully to 'negotiate' oil leases through its puppet 'chiefs,' but the Dineh refused to permit what they considered desecration of Mother Earth. The BIA was then instructed to form a Navajo Tribal Council that would agree "to vote broad authority to lease the land" for oil drilling. After several years of futile search, a small group of Navajo men were found who agreed to permit oil drilling. The federal government immediately recognized the new Navajo Tribal Council, whose first official action was to delegate all mineral leasing authority to the BIA. Despite overwhelming opposition from the Dineh people, this power grab became the model for the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act(IRA), which mandated the creation of Tribal Councils for all federally recognized tribes. Most of these new Tribal Councils were(and still are) dominated by 'assimilated' individuals, themselves often the victims of BIA and Mormon schools, who, in the opinion of many traditional Indian leaders, have more in common with their oppressors than with the people. Despite high sounding rhetoric about 'democracy' and 'tribal independence,' the IRA institutionalized federal control and signaled a new era in the exploitation and expropriation of Indian Lands.

The newly formed Navajo Tribal Council wasted little time throwing open the the doors to resource exploitation. Under the BIA's thumb, the Council negotiated petroleum leases, followed by coal, water and uranium leases. The Hopi Tribal Council was less successful because of resistance by the traditional Hopi, and soon ceased to function. In the early 1950s, coal was discovered on Hopi lands and John Boyden, a lawyer for Peabody Coal and Archbishop in the Mormon Church(a major Peabody shareholder), reconstituted the Hopi Tribal Council, which immediately proceeded to sign leases for strip mining and high tension rights of way. Boyden handled all the Hopi Tribal Council's coal lease negotiations through the 1970s, raking in millions of dollars while working simultaneously for Peabody Coal. Foreseeing the impending environmental disaster, traditional Dineh and Hopi opposed their Tribal Councils' energy policies.

Environmental Catastrophe

The Four Corners region of the southwest, once a pristine semi-desert high plateau with a great diversity of plants, animals and indigenous cultures, today is one of the most polluted areas in the nation. Located within the region are: a network of high tension lines passing directly over the ancient Hopi villages; the nation's only coal slurry pipeline, operating without a permit and sucking 3 million gallons of irreplaceable aquifer water each day; the Four Corners electrical power complex, spewing 350 tons of sulfur compounds and 250 tons of nitrogen compounds each day; Four gigantic coal strip mines, including the nation's largest; and numerous abandoned uranium mines and mills, leaving millions of tons of radioactive and toxic tailings to blow in desert winds.

The well documented health and environmental consequences of such ecological abuse have been devastating. The birth defect rate among the Navajo is higher than on other reservations, and, despite a low smoking rate, the incidence of lung cancer in Navajo uranium miners is among the world's highest. There have been other serious health problems observed on the Navajo and Hopi reservations including high rates of infant mortality and spontaneous abortions, respiratory, heart, diabetes and other degenerative diseases, and premature aging and death. Environmental effects include vast areas of land permanently denuded of vegetation by strip mining; poisoned water; radioactive contamination of land, air and water; rapidly dropping water tables which especially threaten the Hopi farming villages situated high atop the mesas; and air pollution often worse than major urban areas.

The intensive resource exploitation of arid regions in the west such as Black Mesa, the Black Hills(the sacred Paha Sapa of the Lakota), and the Northern Crow Reservation, has had severe environmental consequences. In 1974, the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) warned of the dangers of strip mining in such environmentally fragile regions. The NAS cautioned that mineral extraction in such areas would cause irreversible environmental damage, resulting in de facto "National Sacrifice Areas," most of them situated on Indian land. The litany of health and environmental effects suffered by the Navajo and Hopi people is repeated for Pine Ridge and many other Indian communities. The mineral resources being carved from Indian lands are not being used for the benefit of Indian People. To the contrary, profits from the exploitation of Four Corners and other Indian lands have accrued to the multinational corporations. The electricity generated at Four Corners supplies cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix, while thousands of Dineh do without electricity, running water and telephones. The land and economic base of Indian People inexorably is being destroyed.

Relocation / Extermination

During the mid-twentieth century, the expropriation of Indian Lands accelerated. The Indian Claims Commission Act declared that stolen Indian lands could never be recovered, and compensated victimized tribes with pennies on the dollar. In 1936, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes established grazing districts on the Hopi and Navajo reservations, expanding the Hopi Reservation and effectively creating the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area(JUA). In the mid-1950s, Boyden persuaded the Hopi Tribal Council to file suit for control of the entire JUA, and, when that strategy failed, successfully pursued a partition strategy through Congress. In 1974, Congress passed the Navajo Hopi Relocation Act, PL 93-531, physically dividing the 1.8 million square acre JUA with a 300 mile barbed wire fence. More than 12,000 traditional Dineh were purged from the Hopi Partition Land (HPL), but over 100 families comprising several thousand individuals continue to resist. In 1996, Congress authorized their final expulsion by February 1, 2000

Relocation has been carried out under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Originally estimated to involve 3,500 people and cost $30 million, relocation estimates have ballooned to over 15,000 people and a cost of $2 billion. According to Big Mountain News; "The result of the relocation has been to convert proud, happy self-sufficent people into bewildered, miserable refugees." Former Relocation Commissioner Roger Lewis resigned in disgust saying, "The Commission is as bad as the people who ran the Nazi concentration camps in World War 2." In March, 1985, the House Appropriations Committee released a scathing indictment of the relocation. Among its findings were:

• Dineh still on the land suffer "intolerable conditions;"

• The Reservation is already "overcrowded and overgrazed," leaving no room for relocatees;

• Relocatees are often defrauded when they sell their new homes;

• Relocatees are often forced off the Reservation into hostile border towns, "no matter the given slim chance of success;"

• Relocation counseling programs have never been implemented

• No amount of counseling can enable traditional Dineh to adapt;

• Relocation Commission reports are often contradictory and misleading;

• Traditional Dineh relocatees "have no logical place to go."

Despite this report, Congress remains woefully ignorant, depending for their information on 'fact sheets' from the BIA.

The forced expulsion over the past quarter century is continuing and accelerating. Ninety percent of the sheep and livestock, the sole economic base of traditional Dineh culture, have been confiscated and in 1999 the BIA, for the first time, has been authorized to confiscate all livestock. There is a ban on all new construction or repairs, forcing some families to live in underground bunkers. Firewood collection is prohibited without a permit, and is being confiscated during the winter. The Hopi Rangers and BIA Police have been stockpiling and training in SWAT weapons and tactics in preparation for the impending final solution. During 1999, BIA police and Hopi rangers prevented supporters from delivering supplies to the Black Mesa resisters, and shut down the 16th Annual Sun Dance. In a letter to longtime resister Ruth Benally, Hopi Tribal Council Chairman Wayne Taylor, Jr. declared: "the entire Hopi Reservation is closed to all access, except as authorized by the Hopi Tribe. All individuals entering and remaining on Hopi land without authorization of the Hopi Tribe will be subject to exclusion, assessment of penalties, and prosecution under the laws of the Tribe." This physical and economic coercion continues to have a devastating effect.

Many of the Dineh who relocated have lost everything and now live in squalor, dependent on government handouts. Lacking basic survival skills, thousands were forced into border towns such as Gallup, NM, where most soon lost their new homes, becoming ensnared in a cycle of "homelessness, welfare, alcoholism and suicide." Thousands more have been relocated to "the New Lands," a desert region on the Puerco River totally unfit for sheep herding. In 1979, a uranium tailings dam broke sending 100 million gallons of radioactive water hundreds of miles down the Puerco and Little Colorado Rivers, inundating the New Lands. According to a report released in June, 1999 by Robert Webb, hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey "The surface water of the Puerco River has at times been between 10 and 100 times beyond the maximum allowable level for radioactivity." Chris Shuey, Coordinator of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, NM said, "The government is forcing Navajos off their land to an area where there is not adequate safe water available... The water quality of the Rio Puerco is characterized by concentrations of radioactive materials and heavy metals that exceed federal and state drinking water standards up to 100 times higher than Arizona maximum limits." Dineh children playing in and around this unremediated Superfund site they call home are continually exposed to uranium, thorium, radon and other radioactive elements, as well as a toxic soup of heavy metals.

John McCain and Bill Clinton

In 1996, after more than 20 years of unsuccessful relocation efforts, the Hopi Tribal Council prevailed on Senator John McCain(R-AZ) to draft legislation authorizing the forced expulsion of all Dineh from the Hopi Partition Land by February 1, 2000. PL 104-301 was signed into law by President Bill Clinton . The law contained an "accommodation agreement" provision which permits the Dineh to live under a 75 year 'lifetime lease' in their own houses with three acres of land. This provision strips them of all political rights, leaving them at the tender mercy of their Hopi Tribal Council tormentors. Not allowed to vote or participate in the legal system (except as a defendant), government regulations strictly control every aspect of their personal lives. Permits are required for everything from collecting firewood and digging wells, to practicing their religion and burying their dead according to traditional ways. Permits for grazing sheep and livestock, are allocated according to a priority list(up to a maximum of 25 sheep, far fewer than subsistence level) thus ensuring the Black Mesa Dineh can never be economically self-sufficient.

In order to obtain signatures on the 'lifetime leases,' Congress provided the Hopi Tribal Council a $25 million grant if it succeeded in obtaining the signatures of 85% of the Dineh resisters(95 out of 112 families). This bribe inevitably resulted in a campaign of fraud and coercion carried out by the Hopi Tribal Council and the BIA. Dineh people were told that they would be arrested and evicted in the middle of the night, signatures were forged, and death threats made. Still many of the families refused to sign, and the expulsion campaign has escalated during the past year. An example is the family of Rena Babbitt Lane who like most of the resisters lives without electricity, phones and running water, raising her sheep, weaving rugs and gardening. On Tuesday, September 21, 1999, BIA agents raided her home and confiscated 17 sheep, 3 goats, and 6 cows. When she protested, she was served with papers informing her that on September 28, the remainder of her livestock would be confiscated without compensation, leaving her to face the brutal Black Mesa winter destitute. Rena, in her late 70s, has a heart condition which requires her to wear a pacemaker and has a seriously broken hand as a result of a previous BIA impoundment altercation. Her terrifying experience undoubtedly will be repeated again and again in a final extermination campaign. April 22, 1999 John McCain wrote: "I rite to urge the Departments of Justice and Interior to proceed carefully in the coming months to settle the relocation of remaining Navajo families in a timely and orderly process... I understand that the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation sent 90-day notices to the remaining Navajo families who have not signed the Accommodation Agreement... I ask that you submit in writing to me the actions that the Department of Justice will take in the coming months to ensure compliance with P.L. 104 301."

Media Disinformation

Most media reports about the Big Mountain/Black Mesa atrocity describe the issue as 'Indian Vs. Indian,' and report that the U.S. Government is merely mediating a longstanding dispute between the Hopi and Navajo. Typical press accounts read as if written by a press agent for the BIA. The reality is much more complex and sinister, involving a cast of characters that includes the federal government, the Tribal Councils, Peabody Coal, the Mormon Church, surrounding state governments fighting over water rights, and most importantly the traditional Hopi and Dineh. The modern myth of Hopi Vs. Navajo was invented by the Hopi Tribal Council and its corporate allies in order to justify the campaign to physically partition the JUA. On July 21, 1975, the Washington Post published an expose of the phony 'range war' fabricated during the early 1970s by the Hopi Tribal Council, their lawyer, John Boyden, and a Salt Lake City public relations firm Evans and Associates, which also represented W.E.S.T., a consortium of 22 energy and resource corporations. To this day, most press accounts treat the 'Navajo/Hopi dispute' as a reality, while ignoring the well documented role played by Peabody Coal and its allies.

The mainstream press downplays the vibrant role of traditional Dineh culture, and the impact of forced expulsion. Unlike western culture which emphasizes private property rights, Dineh culture emphasizes respect and stewardship for the land; the culture and religion interwoven with the land and animals. According to activist Bill Sebastian, This land ethic "...is the key to the people being able to maintain a fiercely independent lifestyle living in remote areas without electricity, running water, telephones, or assistance from the government." Pauline Whitesinger, a Dineh Elder and resistance leader declares, "In the Dineh tongue, there is no word for 'relocation,' to move away means to disappear and never be seen again."

For hundreds of years, long before the European invasion, Dineh and Hopi lived together as neighbors, and like all neighbors have sometimes had disagreements. But according to the traditional elders, the two peoples have always settled their differences peacefully, trading together, intermarrying, and holding festivals together. According to Martin Gashweseoma, Keeper of the Hopi Fire Clan Tablets, "We want everyone to know that the Navajos are not the ones taking our land, but the United States. The Hopi and the Navajo made peace long ago, and sealed their agreement spiritually with a medicine bundle.... the illusion of a conflict has been created on the basis of the false modern concept of land title." The so called 'dispute' really boils down to resource corporations pitting elite Navajo and Hopi Tribal Councils against each other to the detriment of the people.

Resisting Genocide

It is critical that widespread public opposition to the genocide at Big Mountain/Black Mesa be continued and escalated after the February 1 deadline. The strategy of the government and its corporate allies is to continue the current harassment and coercion, maintaining and increasing economic and psychological pressure, while assuring the public that there will be no forced removals. The ongoing struggle for Black Mesa will be fought in Congress, the courts, and increasingly in the streets. The Indian People of the United States were driven to the brink of extinction by 500 years of European invasion and corporate exploitation; they need and deserve the full support of all people working for a more just and peaceful world.

The Dineh people themselves are leading the Big Mountain struggle. Elders like Roberta Blackgoat and Pauline Whitesinger have traveled around the world in an attempt to educate people about the terrible injustice being perpetrated at Black Mesa. In 1988, Jenny Manybeads filed suit in U.S. Federal Court under the Freedom of Religion Act claiming that forced relocation is in violation of the land centered Dineh religion. In 1994, the Sovereign Dineh Nation made the nation's first Environmental Justice complaint. In 1996, Judge Ramon Child ruled that Peabody Coal had to shut down their largest strip mine because it impacted on the Dineh People of Black Mesa without their permission. He was subsequently forced into "early retirement" and his landmark decision was overturned, with the Navajo and Hopi Nations intervening on the side of Peabody. In February, 1998, Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, visited the Dineh resisters in preparation for a forthcoming special report on human rights violations in the United States. Many supporters have traveled to Black Mesa, providing supplies and material support, while thousands more, worldwide, demand a halt to the relocation.

Traditional Hopi support their Dineh neighbors. To them, the Dineh are the guardians of the Hopi mesas and ancestral ways. Hopi have traveled around the world with the Dineh grandmothers, speaking out against the genocide at Black Mesa. Europeans have much to learn from the Dineh and Hopi, who often refer to them as "our younger sisters and brothers." People of conscience must support the Dineh resisters, not just to prevent the eradication of these ancient cultures, but because land based peoples like the Hopi and Dineh provide a key to the creation of a world based on respect for human dignity, and honor for Mother Earth. "The Black Mesa region is the last traditional (Dineh) stronghold and must he preserved... The Navajo traditionalists view their land as representing the essence of their being.

In other words, they view themselves as an integral part of the environment- the mountains, the vegetation and the animals that share the land. Everything has a name, a place, a sex and role within the Navajo frame of reference. All of these things are part of what is considered sacred and occupies a place on the sacred land and contributes to the balanced ecological, cultural niche." (From the First Session of the International Peoples' Tribunal on Human Rights & the Environment)

Women, Feminism and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton

Same but Different 1988, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

In 1983 when I had the dream that inspired this painting of women of four colors nursing their babies in peace beneath the tree of life, my two oldest sons were babies and our country was on the brink of nuclear extinction with nuclear warheads poised to ignite the Cold War between the US and the former USSR.

When the Nuclear Arms Treaty was signed, mothers in America and the USSR breathed a bit easier.

Never, while I was nursing and raising my four children, did I imagine that our country would find itself in an endless war on terror by the time they were in their teens and twenties.

This is not the world we hoped for our children. It is our responsibility to heal it and work every day for peace with justice at home and abroad.

What gives me hope, is the chance to have a president who understands that women's rights are human rights.

Check out the links below to an articulate speech by Chelsea Clinton about her mother's commitment and record of good work for women and girls in America and around the world.

http://www.dailymantra.com/2008/04/chelsea_clinton_keeps_feminist.html

Chelsea Clinton was asked if her mother Hillary Clinton was true to feminist principles on Equal Pay Day, the first Tuesday in April.

http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/Hillary-Clinton/

Go to this link for Hillary Clinton's inspiring speech on why women's rights are human rights to the UN Meeting on the Rights of Women in Beijing in 1995
http://media.fastclick.net/w/pc.cgi?mid=230279&sid=4747
Women's Rights Are Human Rights Famous Speech by Hillary Clinton
Beijing, China: 5 September 1995
Mrs. Mongella, Under Secretary Kittani, distinguished delegates and guests:

I would like to thank the Secretary General of the United Nations for inviting me to be part of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration - a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in their communities, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens and leaders.

It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country.

We come together in fields and in factories. In village markets and supermarkets. In living rooms and board rooms.

Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concerns. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and our families. However different we may be, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future. And we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world - and in so doing, bring new strength and stability to families as well.

By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and participate fully in the political life of their countries.

There are some who question the reason for this conference.

Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe.

Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou - the homemakers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, policymakers, and women who run their own businesses.

It is conferences like this that compel governments and people everywhere to listen, look and face the world's most pressing problems.

Wasn't it after the women's conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum, where government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working on ways to address the health problems of women and girls.

Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local - and highly successful - programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.

What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish.

And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.

That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on our planet has a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children and families. Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country and around the world.

I have met new mothers in Jojakarta, Indonesia, who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care.

I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in creative, safe, and nurturing after-school centers.

I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping build a new democracy.

I have met with the leading women of the Western Hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy and better health care for the children of their countries.

I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, rickshaws, thread and other materials to create a livelihood for themselves and their families.

I have met doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

The great challenge of this Conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.

Women comprise more than half the world's population. Women are 70% percent of the world's poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write.

Women are the primary caretakers for most of the world's children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued - not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.

At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries.

Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated; they are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation; they are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers; they are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending office and banned from the ballot box.

Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not.

As an American, I want to speak up for women in my own country - women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can't afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.

I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who have raised their families and now find that their skills and life experiences are not valued in the workplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, and fast food cooks so that they can be at home during the day with their kids; and for women everywhere who simply don't have time to do everything they are called upon to do each day.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women. The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.

We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential.

We also must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.

Our goals for this Conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments - here and around the world - accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights.

The international community has long acknowledged - and recently affirmed at Vienna - that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear.

No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse or torture.

Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated.

Even in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world's refugees. When women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse.

I believe that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights.

These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

The voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loud and clear: It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.

It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend - or have been prohibited from fully taking part.

Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of women's suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote.

It took 72 years of organized struggle on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America's most divisive philosophical wars. But it was also a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired.

We have also been reminded, in V-1 Day observances last weekend, of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and build a better world.

We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war.

But we have not solved older, deeply-rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world's population.

Now it is time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too.

Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care; families rely on women for labor in the home; and increasingly, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives.

As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace around the world - as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled and subjected to violence in and out of their homes - the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Let this Conference be our - and the world's - call to action.

And let us heed the call so that we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future.

Thank you very much.

God's blessings on you, your work and all who will benefit from it.


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Making Decisions for the 7th Generation

Charleen Touchette with Raoul in Tuba City 1987, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Since I was a girl, I heard people like Oren Lyons and other indigenous leaders and teachers talk about how we have to make decisions for the 7th generation. As you'll hear from Oren Lyons in a video below, making decisions for the 7th generation is "not just a casual term, that's a real instruction for survival."

So what can we as mothers, fathers and young adults do to make our live more in sync with that instruction for survival to make decisions for the 7th generation?

One thing is to conserve, reuse, recycle and reinvent.

The videos and words below show some exciting ways regular people make a difference and contribute to the solution.

Enjoy and have a great earth day every day.

Peace,
Charleen Touchette
TouchArt@aol.com

Winona LaDuke in Shiprock on Global Warming, part 2








Winona LaDuke says "We do not need another 2 billion dollar coal fired power plant." and "Stop corporate welfare. Don't give tax breaks to corporations to pollute our air, take our water and destroy our future." May 2007.

How mercury kills the brain.



Jenny McCarthy talks about the link between mercury exposure and autism.



Scientist explains connection between Mercury and Autism and Neurological Diseases



There has been a criminal disregard for public safety in the widespread exposure of the population to mercury from thimerasol in vaccines and emissions from coal-fired electric plants.

ENS-newswire.com reports that "Attorneys General from nine states have filed a lawsuit challenging a new federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that they allege fails to protect the public from harmful mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, which they say pose a grave threat to the health of children."

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-31-03.asp

Hear another talk from Oren Lyons, Onondaga Faithkeeper and Chief speak about the mandates for life. "We are now placing in your hands all life. And it is your responsibility and your duty to care for all life."




Thanks for viewing this blog from TouchArt.
"The Earth is our Mother. We need to treat her and all mothers better.

This video shows a solution to recycling glass and plastic bottles to make warm earth friendly homes for mothers and families in Bolivia.



Charleen Touchette at TouchArt.net and Mixed Blood Radio Archives has a dream for every community to start collection centers for bottles, cans and tires and build homes for families below the poverty line in our urban cities, rural towns, and Indian reservations. You can also build homes with used tires. Check out Earthships in Taos, New Mexico too.



To power these homes for America's 38 million poor, let's call on genuis Dean Kamen, inventer of the Sedgeway, who has brought the 18th century Stirling Engine up with 21st century innovation to create an engine that can create electricity and purify water for our communities that still don't have potable water. Kamen is working to get these generators to those who need them in Africa. Ask him to get them to our rural, Spanish Land Grant, Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo Indians in the Four Corners.

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=164485




http://www.geekologie.com/2008/04/segway_inventor_makes_water_re.php

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/04/22/water-cleaner.jpg

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=164485


Pollution in the Four Corners coming from coal fired electric plants cause deterioration of the ancestor Pueblo ruins and the wall art by the people who began civilization here in America in Canyon de Chelly.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2316/2381226895_89efaeaea9.jpg?v=0


Do a new thing today to reduce your use of coal-powered electricity.
ONE EARTH - Think About It/Act Like It.

Today's Earth Day message from your friends at TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.

IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANUCK GIRL

IT STOPS WITH ME: MEMOIR OF A CANUCK GIRL, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Publishing my memoir estranged me from family and friends who abandoned me as well as those in my community who were not ready to face the reality of pervasive domestic violence.
It took nearly thirteen years to decide to tell my story and publish it. Although I paid a great emotional cost for telling, I did it for all the people who have been healed by reading my memoir. Family members and French Canadians have written to thank me for telling their story. Franco American literature scholars from the Sorbonne, Université de Rouên and the University of Florida write and deliver papers and Ph.D. dissertations focusing on IT STOPS WITH ME beside Jack Kerouac. Indian readers from reservations have thanked me for the art and writing that also describe their experiences. I’ve made new family across the country with people who also want to heal our families and vow to make it stop with them.
There is a direct connection between the abuse of women, children and the family and the abuse and destruction of the earth and indigenous people. Once we tell our stories and take responsibility for our healing, we become powerful beyond measure. We also become dangerous to those who profit off of violence and fear. Thus, they will do anything to silence and stop us. That just makes me more determined.
It is unacceptable that women and children today still suffer worldwide from war, oppression and violence. Each day the call to peace is more urgent. Mothers everywhere want peace with justice.
Today, we are in a dark time of war and violence, when we are called upon to bring light and love into this world. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
My grandmother Mimi embodied mother love. Despite adversity, Mimi loved unconditionally and laughed whole-heatedly. Now that I am becoming an elder and officially a crone, I understand the source of my grandmother’s joy. I can see why despite her hard life and the difficult times she witnessed including two World Wars; she still embodied joi de vivre, and shared it.
As a woman and a mother, I see it is time for action. We are not powerless. It doesn't start with them and it isn't their fault. It starts with me and you.
We need to restore the power and respect for the matriarchy that served humankind for tens of thousands of years before the establishment of patriarchy just a few thousand years ago that has led our earth to the edge of destruction. Cultures and religions in which women and children are oppressed and denigrated are the most violent and the most destructive of the environment worldwide.
As a mother, I know first-hand how every action affects the earth and my children’s and grandchildren’s future. As Winona LaDuke wrote, “We are mothers of our nations, and anything that concerns our nations is of concern to us as women. Those choices and necessities move us to speak out and to be active.”
I am a mother of four young people ages 17 to 27. I don’t have the luxury of blaming others, I must act to create a world where their creativity can flourish and they and their children beyond the seventh generation can breathe clean air, drink fresh water, eat healthy food and live in peace with justice.
The time is now. There is no path, no blueprint, no road map to peace. The path is peace.
Act to support and nurture irrepressible, unstoppable creativity. Writing and Art do matter. They can change lives and inspire the world.
People talk about "us" and "them." But we are doing this to the earth and other human beings. It is our habits and greed that deplete the earth’s resources, enable inhumane working conditions, destroy the environment and cause catastrophic climate change.

Our money pays for the destruction; and we can stop it. Us and Them is an Illusion - we are them and they are us. They won’t make polluting products if we don’t buy them. We can vote with our voices, and with our actions.
Earth Changes today tell us we all need to be ndns again. Everybody is indigenous to this planet earth. We need to stop taking more than we need and adopt indigenous values of respect, sharing, and family.
All my relations.
Charleen Touchette
TouchArt.net
www.OneEarthBlog/blogspot.com

Meeting Sonny Rollins

Charleen Touchette Meets Sonny Rollins, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

One of the most luminous moments of my life was meeting the great saxophonist and musical genius Sonny Rollins last year in Santa Fe. That's Sonny holding my book - It Stops with Me - and the corner of my silver streaked head in bottom corner.

Sonny Rollins came to Santa Fe to play at Lensic, and we were lucky enough to hear him do an interview the day before about jazz. He is brilliant and it was a great honor to be in his presence.

Marian Naranjo H.O.P.E.

Marian Naranjo Explains H.O.P.E. - Honor Our Pueblo Existence at her home in Santa Clara Pueblo May 2007, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Toxic dumps on Indian lands and in communities of color and poor urban and rural counties nationwide is an environmental justice and poverty issue.

Marian Naranjo from Santa Clara Pueblo in Northern New Mexico founded H.O.P.E. - Honor Our Pueblo Existence - to work to clean up the toxic wastes from nuclear work at Los Alamos that has poisoned the homeland of her people.

Paste this web address for entire transcript of EPA Hearing.

loading...
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/wipp/epajan9.pdf

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/2319462039_c53cc05e...



MARIAN NARANJO: Good afternoon. My name is Marian Naranjo, and I'm a member of the pueblo of Santa Clara, which is one of the core tribes, meaning that it's one of the tribes that's mostly affected by the waste at Los Alamos. I decided at the last minute to change what I came here to say. I have been a potter for 24 years, and this is a tradition of my people since prehistoric time. My connection to understanding what happened at Los Alamos was explained to me by my mentor in pottery who is not living anymore but her spirit lives on. When I approached her in asking her the questions on the designs of pottery from prehistoric times of our people, the designs are the feathers, the serpent and the bear paw. And these designs were done on individual pots and 16 they were powerful, powerful designs. Symbols as the scientists use symbols. Now our ancestral people were, to me they were the top notch scientists. They lived natural law. They left these things for us to learn from. Their dwellings. You know, they didn't have microscopes in that time, but yet the dwellings they built were circles and squares.
You look under a microscope and you see cell structures of life. There's an animal, it's found. If it's plants, it's got corners, squares.
They lived this natural life. Our dances, our songs are in praise to life. The story that she told me that I want to share with you is because of the place of our ancestral home, the Puji Cliffs, which is in the Jemez Mountains, our sacred mountains, there are writings on the wall there of a dragon with the fire coming from the mouth and that symbol is still utilized. It's a Santa Clara symbol. I asked of the meaning of this. I was told that during the time of our people's migration of all of these sacred places, that there were reasons of moving on and there were reasons why these places were covered. We were told that you are not to uncover these places, especially this place of Puji, because you will be opening the mouth of the fire dragon. Well, at that time nobody knew what that meant, but you never questioned what the elders told you . During the time in the late 1800's when Dr. Edgar Hewlitt and Adolph Bandelier approached the tribe to ask them permission to uncover our sacred mountain, it was at a time of change and it was time to move on to a new circle, and our elders, our spiritual leaders knew that. And it was a very hard decision for them to make, in that half of the people said we can't do that because we'll be unleashing -- opening the mouth of the fire dragon even though not knowing what it meant.

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/wipp/epajan9.pdf

The leaders at the time decided that it's time. The reason she was telling me this is to explain our meaning of what full circle meant. In that you cannot have good without bad, man without woman, hot-cold, positive-negative. That all of this completes a circle. And that when the digs happened and they uncovered our sacred place, that Los Alamos happened. And if that ain't opening the mouth of the fiery dragon, I don't know what else is.
Now this knowledge has become full circle. It is around the world. Let me back up a little and tell you the power of those symbols that I mentioned before, their meanings. The feathers are the protectors and keepers of our sky; the bear paw is the walker, keeper and protector of the land, and the serpent is the controller and keeper of the water. This, these power signs or symbols were also universal in that countries utilized these power symbols for their power. In that we have the United States eagle, the feathers, the Russian bear, the bear paw and, the Chinese dragon, the serpent. So these are very powerful things and these symbols are also your symbols. Environmental Protection Agency, our environment, includes these symbols.
As I watched you yesterday and I have watched you today, I can really see who you are in that our ancestral people have given us these knowledges and these powers, and I see that in your spirit as these people in charge of our environment, our livelihood, that the power is in your hands to help us go on to a new circle. This circle, and it's a job and it's almost a war, so to speak, and that it's time to close the mouth of the fiery dragon. We are at a time at the end of this circle where WIPP is not the answer. We don't want to tail end it and WIPP it. It's waste and it stinks, this dragon. And we have these accord agreements, and I really would want to pay more attention to these because it's only been a one-way street. You're dangling, our U.S. government is dangling these dollars in front of our leaders and telling them for money, you know? It's a detrimental thing to think that sacred really means something, that we messed with this sacred thing already. Let's learn a lesson from that. The other thing is that it hurts me deep inside to know that we're touching another sacred thing. We have a thing called salt woman, salt mother, and now it's destroying something else sacred. Why bother with that, that is not the answer.
So I am asking you to utilize the power that you've been given to save us, clean up this thing, reroute the money, to really save us, because if you save us, you're going to save the rest of the world. This knowledge will start again and it will go full circle again. So please, take us into this new circle. Help us go into this new circle of closing that mouth of the fiery dragon. Stop the source and then let's concentrate on cleaning up as good as we can so there will be future generations. My bloodline from way back can continue. I'm a mother of four children and I'm a grandmother. I don't want to leave a legacy that we didn't do anything about this. I'm sure we don't wish this on you, that you have this power and that it won't be documented that you go down or we go down doing nothing about continued destruction. This Los Alamos it's the whole opposite of what our whole essence is was life. Los Alamos was the opposite, destruction. We need to really find those balances, and taking the knowledges we've learned from this 50 year experience and utilizing these knowledges that are beneficial for mankind. And all of those things that are destructive, put them back and don't touch it no more. Thank you.

PRESIDING OFFICER: Thank you.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

PUBLIC COMMENTS REGARDING EPA'S PROPOSED RULE ON
WASTE ISOLATION PILOT PROJECT
JANUARY 9, 1998
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1189/528942134_c7e775ccc

LELA-International Artists in Los Angeles

LELA-International-artists-, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Hibakusha Artist Sakata San is in center wearing brown shirt and black vest. Group photo of L.E.L.A. Lantern of the East International Arts Festival at the Dozaiki Gallery at the Japanese Contemporary Cultural Center in Los Angeles in September 2008 Oppressionist artists Russell Means and Charleen Touchette are in back two rows left of center under the pink painting.




Community Dance at LELA Festival Opening

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3091/2431982030_85a9333761.jpg?v=0

Azteca Dancers with Hideo Sakata San

http://flickr.com/photos/touchart/2431986608/

Little Azteca Dancers in Los Angeles

Why Navajos Oppose Desert Rock Power Plant and Everyone Should FightMercury Pollution

Sage Paisner by the Hogan, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Elouise Brown and family in Four Corners block power plant from entering ancestral lands. Watch Dine Shima, grandmother, explain in Navajo how her family has used and cared for this land for generations.

See the power plants already operating in the Four Corners area spew poison including mercury, a known neuro-toxin linked to the autism epidemic into the once pristine skies above the northeast corner of the Navajo homeland that intersects four states, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

The Four Corners area was just named the biggest polluter in the nation. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2007/2007-07-26-05.asp

"By total tons of nitrogen oxides emitted, the worst offender is New Mexico's Four Corners power plant, owned by Arizona Public Service."

20070726_fourcorners.jpg
Four Corners power plant (Photo courtesy SRP)

Absent aggressive national climate policy and the retirement of existing facilities, these new coal plants will contribute to a projected 34 percent increase in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions over the 2005-2030 period," according to the report.


Four Corners power plant (Photo courtesy SRP)
Already coping with the highest emissions of nitrogen oxides, Navajo communities in the Four Corners area have been at a standoff with Sithe Global Power and the Dine Power Authority over the construction of Desert Rock, a 1,500 megawatt coal fired power plant that would cost 2.2 billion dollars to build and sit on 580 acres about 30 miles southwest of Farmington.

At a time when tribes, cities, states and nations are working to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the Desert Rock plant would increase them.

"It is blatant environmental racism and injustice when you place a third power plant in an impoverished community with little or no access to healthcare," said Lori Goodman of Dine CARE. "For our elders and future generations, we vow to fight this intrusion upon our people's health and way of life."

In the video MAKING A STAND AT DESERT ROCK, Elouise Brown says she doesn't have electricity and has to haul water at her place near where the Desert Rock power plant threatens to be built.

Many Dine, Apache, Pueblo, Ute and other Indians and rural New Mexicans don't have electricity and have to haul water.

I'd like to see a Green Indigenous Initiative where people like the developer of the Stirling Engine that supplies energy pollution free and purifies water invest in providing this invaluable technological innovation to the people of the Four Corners area. The people could maintain their ancient self-sufficient lifestyle with the help of this and other green technologies. There is lots of need in Africa and abroad, but there are also crucial needs here in rural and Indian America.

Call to action to support Elouise and her relatives against the Desert Rock Power Plant.

www.desert-rock-blog.com

Conserve electricity. ONE EARTH. Every time we turn on a light, think about how it contributes to poisoning the air for people in the Four Corners and stealing their children's brains with mercury poisoning. This is an issue of economic justice.
Lobby your congress people for immediate conversion to green technology for energy production and immediate legislation to enforce scrubbers to diminish poisonous emissions at coal fired electricity plants.

Write these New Mexico Senators and tell them we're appalled that the Four Corners has more air pollution than most major metropolitan areas.
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Senator

Work: (202) 224-5521
Home: (505) 766-3636
Fax: (202) 224-2852
e-mail: senator_bingman@bingaman.senate.gov

Address: United States Senate
703 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510

________________________________________________________________________


Pete Domenici, New Mexico Senator

Work: (202) 224-6621
Fax: (202) 228-0900
Email: senator_domenici@domenici.senate.gov
Address: United States Senate
328 Hart SOB
Washington, DC 20510


Then go to - http://www.desert-rock-blog.com/blog/WhatYoucandotoHelp
for a complete list of who to send your letter to oppose the Desert Rock Power Plant and help the Dine and everybody else who lives in the Four Corners area.

Clean air and water are human rights.

Visit www.nmglobalwarming.org and learn about major strides in mass production, economic incentives, and pending legislation to get Green Energy workable and stop global warming courtesy of Bill Brown who was one of the first 1,000 scientists and leaders trained by Al Gore on the Climate Crisis.

www.honortheearth.org has links to people, projects, initiatives, and art dedicated to honoring and healing our earth.

Citizens in San Juan County are educating themselves and others and getting active around air pollution and other global warming iissues in the Four Corners area - http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/air/desertrock.shtml

Mercury emissions from the proposed Desert Rock facility. Projections are that Desert Rock would contribute more mercury (117-161 pounds per year, at a minimum - coal core sample analyses gave not been completed!) to the atmosphere with mercury controls only “if necessary.” Data from the EPA’s Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemical Program website provides year 2000 total mercury emissions from the Four Corners Power Plant (1,174 pounds) and San Juan Generating Station (1,194 pounds).

This emitted mercury is showing up as mercury deposition in virtually all of the major water bodies in the Four Corners region. These regional waters include the San Juan, Animas, La Plata rivers; Navajo and Vallecito lakes; Narraguinnep and McPhee reservoirs, and numerous water bodies found on the Navajo Nation where fish consumption advisories due to mercury contamination have been issued.

The Draft EIS for Desert Rock claims that the existing power plants are not the source for mercury showing up in our region’s waterways as methylmercury.

Given the news that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King has joined more than a dozen states challenging the EPA's rules governing mercury emissions from power plants and the quote attributed to him, “Simply put, this brief alleges that the EPA's rules weaken the Clean Air Act. Especially in New Mexico, which has the highest atmospheric concentration of airborne mercury in the nation, we feel the EPA's rules are unacceptable,” SJCA believes that stringent mercury reduction measures are more important than ever. Cap and trade of mercury emissions, as proposed in the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) would be a disaster for the Four Corners region. On February 8, 2008, a Federal Court of Appeals vacated the Mercury Rule.



Cumulative Air Quality Impacts in the Four Corners region The proposed siting of the Desert Rock facility, as currently designed, would be detrimental to citizens of the Four Corners region through increased emission levels of CO2, mercury and pollutant contributions that result in the formation of ozone. There are literally thousands of sources (coal plants, refineries, natural gas compressors, natural gas compressors) that are contributing to the formation of ozone in the Four Corners.

San Juan County, the Cities of Aztec, Bloomfield, and Farmington, the NMED, and the EPA signed the San Juan County Early Action Compact (EAC) on December 20, 2002. The EAC entails milestones through 2007 that are designed to keep San Juan County in attainment of the federal standard for ground-level ozone. If San Juan County cannot remain in attainment for ozone, there would certainly be significant economic and environmental repercussions. The proposed Desert Rock facility represents serious implications that apply to climate change, mercury policies and ozone attainment for the State of New Mexico. Note that the EPA is tightening the rules for ground-level ozone to 75 ppb. EPA proposes to set the primary (health) standard to a level within the range of 0.070-0.075 ppm (70 -75 ppb)

It is essential that state of New Mexico, state of Colorado, and Federal legislators be involved in siting and design decisions for the Desert Rock facility, to understand potential alternatives (including renewables, demand-side management, energy efficiency) that preclude the need to build more coal-fired power plants in our state. "






Winona LaDuke in Shiprock on Global Warming, part I



Winona LaDuke in Shiprock on Global Warming, part 2

"We do not need another 2 billion dollar coal fired power plant." and "Stop corporate welfare. Don't give tax breaks to corporations to pollute our air, take our water and destroy our future." May 2007.

How mercury kills the brain.



Jenny McCarthy talks about the link between mercury exposure and autism.



Scientist explains connection between Mercury and Autism and Neurological Diseases



There has been a criminal disregard for public safety in the widespread exposure of the population to mercury from thimerasol in vaccines and emissions from coal-fired electric plants.

ENS-newswire.com reports that "Attorneys General from nine states have filed a lawsuit challenging a new federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that they allege fails to protect the public from harmful mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, which they say pose a grave threat to the health of children."

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-31-03.asp

Hear Oren Lyons, Onondaga Faithkeeper and Chief speak about the mandates for life. "We are now placing in your hands all life. And it is your responsibility and your duty to care for all life."




The Earth is our Mother. We need to treat her and all mothers better.

This video shows a solution to recycling glass and plastic bottles to make warm earth friendly homes for mothers and families in Bolivia.



Charleen Touchette at TouchArt.net and Mixed Blood Radio Archives has a dream for every community to start collection centers for bottles, cans and tires and build homes for families below the poverty line in our urban cities, rural towns, and Indian reservations. You can also build homes with used tires. Check out Earthships in Taos, New Mexico too.



To power these homes for America's 38 million poor, let's call on genuis Dean Kamen, inventer of the Sedgeway, who has brought the 18th century Stirling Engine up with 21st century innovation to create an engine that can create electricity and purify water for our communities that still don't have potable water. Kamen is working to get these generators to those who need them in Africa. Ask him to get them to our rural, Spanish Land Grant, Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo Indians in the Four Corners.

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/04/segway_inventor_makes_water_re.php


In "Indian Trust" (PD 2010), young indigenous fictional characters face the consequences of mercury poisoning.

"In Leech Lake, Wayne has moved in with an elder couple who teach him Anishinaabe herbal medicine. He learns his sister's autism could be tied to something in the water in the lakes and rivers surrounding his people's ancestral homeland. Mercury dumped into the air and water by coal fired electric plants kills parts of the brains of developing babies and children. Each time Wayne bicycles to his janitor job at the high school, he logs onto the internet in the computer lab before beginning to mop the hallways. Each time the stats on autism are worse. First 1 in 100, then 1 in 150, 1 in 160 and now they claim 1 in 166 children have a form or autism. "If that isn't an epidemic, what do they think an epidemic is?" Wayne mumbles as he surfs the web for treatments and cures to help his sister Sage who was just about to have a birthday.
Wayne knows the state of Minnesota is covering up the extent of the autism epidemic and the dangers of mercury and other toxins in the air and water. The state stopped testing all the mutated frogs brought in by school children after pressure by multinational corporations based outside Minneapolis in sprawling suburbs like Edina and Lake Minnetonka.
Today, Wayne Petit internet search is urgent. He overheard his parents tell their pastor that they plan to take Sage for a born again
exorcism in the church basement after they bring her to town for a birthday ice cream cake at the DQ. Wayne decides to kidnap his little sister then and there..."

Story. Wayne Petit takes his autistic sister Sage on a journey to a newly uncovered Maya temple in the Yucatan to seek a medicine woman who does a ceremony to heal brains destroyed by neurotoxins like mercury. The siblings travel via Taos, Tuba City, Santa Fe, and Phoenix, and on the way, Petit hooks up with chemists who reveal the annabolistic and synergetic results of combining mercury with selenium, and he stumbles upon a multinational conspiracy to introduce these powerful neurotoxins into food and medicine worldwide to takeover the world economy. Wayne and his sister Sage journey deep into the jungle in the Yucatan and meet up with a Mayan medicine woman who gives them the neurotoxin in ceremony with the companion herb that anabolizes the negative effects of autism spectrum disorder, reactivates the dead parts of Sage's brain and opens up his sister's inner world." from "Indian Trust" a novel by Charleen Touchette and S. Barry Paisner

It won't happen that easily in the non-fiction world of real life. But it is possible to say no to mercury and other neuro-toxins that pollute our air, water and earth and destroy children's and adult's brains.

Do one thing each day to reduce your consumption of coal-powered electricity.
ONE EARTH - Think About It/Act Like It.

Another Earth Day message from your friends at TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.