Researcher Maurizio Seracini (foreground) views video from behind a Giorgio Vasari mural in Florence. Art researchers are wondering if an undiscovered painting by Leonardo da Vinci is hidden behind a 16th century mural by fellow artist Giorgio Vasari. Photo courtesy of National Geographic.
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“I am trying to say y’all and I like grits and things. Strange things are happening to me.”
— Mitt Romney joking to a Mississippi audience last week and apparently trying in vain to appeal to Republican voters there and in neighboring Alabama.
It’s bad enough the Republican Party has a virtual stranglehold on the Southeastern U.S. – mainly because of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that dared to guarantee Negroes and Indians the right to vote – but then politicians have to prove their insincerity with this kind of goofiness.
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Chris Faraone starts off with a great piece of business advice from his father: “develop a compelling product, sling it like your kid is starving, and never trust distributors.” I couldn’t offer better wisdom to any kind of business entrepreneur – especially to us writers. Self-publishing – once the bastion of desperation for writers – has become more than fashionable; it’s become competitive. It’s now a viable alternative to any scribe who’s tired of trying to appeal to the right book agent or publisher with just the right proposal at just the right time. Self-publishing is a leech on traditional book publishing – but it’s the proverbial “Holy Grail” for the independent writer. It puts the power of publishing in the hands of the right people – the writers themselves. It doesn’t make the actual task of writing any easier; nor does it simplify the equally difficult job of marketing. But with self-publishing, writers at least have complete control over their work. Faraone learned about the business from his father who, ironically, operated his own book publishing company. And, although the younger Faraone concentrates a good deal of his editorial on the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, I see a perfect analogy. If you don’t like the way something is, work to change it! That’s how progress is made.
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Looks like he’s having a tough time getting sweetness to stay interested. I just don’t understand why most southern conservative Republicans don’t like Romney. He’s tall, handsome, wealthy and – most importantly – a full-blooded Caucasian (even if though his daddy was born in México). Oh wait! How silly of me to forget! He’s a Mormon! Damn – just when they thought he was perfect!
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Northern lights accentuated by last week’s solar storms, as viewed from the Space Station. Photo courtesy National Geographic.
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“I feel it’s okay because I have no income and I have bills to pay. I have two houses.”
– Lincoln Park, MI resident Amanda Clayton explaining the $200 a month in food stamps she continued to collect after winning a $1 million state lottery jackpot.
Fortunately, officials ended up her benefits after this bit of news became public. Regardless, this just feeds the myth of the “welfare queen” Ronald Reagan created nearly 30 years ago, as both a reference to the need for smaller government and as code word for lazy Negroes and Indians. But still, two houses?!
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A boy named Ahmed mourned last Thursday for his father, Abdulaziz Abu Ahmed Khrer, who was killed by an army sniper in Syria.
As always in war, the children suffer the most – but the self-appointed leaders never can bring themselves to care about such trivialities.
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I think it’s been the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life. …I hate that people think compromise is a dirty word. It’s not a dirty word.”
– Former First Lady Barbara Bush during a symposium on the first ladies at Southern Methodist University last week.
My senses must have gone astray, since I actually agree with Mrs. Bush on this one. I lost respect for her after she dismissed the severity of the Iraq War in 2003 by saying, in effect, she didn’t want to be bothered by the sight on TV of dead and injured troops returning home. I really came to loathe her after she commented that things were “working very well” for Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans, as they landed in the Houston Astrodome – already having lost most everything they ever owned and being forsaken by the government. But, for once, the old broad gets it right this time! Indeed, compromise is not a dirty word. Tell that to John Boehner and New Gingrich!
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In yet another case of better late than never, the federal government is closer to repaying the 6 Chippewa nations of Minnesota for land and timber deals made more than a century ago – deals that were never honored. It’s a familiar story. The U.S. owes millions of dollars to the Fond du Lac, Bois Forte, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs and White Earth communities, which comprise the Chippewa tribe. Congress, however, has taken up the matter once more and is debating a $28 million payment to the 6 Chippewa bands. More than 40,000 Chippewa members could receive $300 each. The remaining $16 million would be split among the governments of the 6 bands.
Karen Diver, chairwoman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, said her band plans to divide its share of the money – more than $2.5 million – among its members so that each will get an additional $700, for a total of $1,000. “It will bring some level of closure,” she said, adding that mismanagement of Indian land decades ago cost her reservation dearly.
Of the 100,000 acres within the Fond du Lac reservation’s borders, 80% fell into non-Indian hands. The band has since bought back some of it and now owns about 33% of the land within its perimeters, Diver noted.
Not all Indigenous American communities have been so fortunate. The land seizure included a phenomenon some northern Minnesota Chippewa called “The Wandering 40,” said Jim Northrup, a Fond du Lac Band member and author who lives near Cloquet. “A timber company would buy the stumpage rights on an Indian’s allotted 40 or 80 acres, but then they’d get in there cutting and just keep wandering,” he explained.
The settlement stems from the federal government’s management of the 1889 Nelson Allotment Act, under which some reservation land was allotted to individual Indians, but other plots were ceded to the United States and sold to non-Indians. Proceeds from the sales were supposed to go into a trust fund for the Chippewa.
In many cases, that didn’t happen. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs dipped into the trust fund for maintaining its vehicles and other daily expenses. In 1999, a federal court found that the deal shortchanged the tribes, also known as the Ojibwe, and awarded the multimillion-dollar settlement.
The land comprises 650,000 acres across the six reservations, from White Earth in western Minnesota to Grand Portage at the tip of Minnesota’s Arrowhead country.
Stripping and selling the land deprived the tribe of development opportunities, said Mark Anderson, a Bois Forte Band member and Minneapolis-based attorney for the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.
In 1948 and 1951, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe brought those allegations in complaints to the Indian Claims Commission. The claims eventually formed the basis for the federal government’s agreement to pay the Chippewa $20 million. More than six decades later the government still hasn’t honored those agreements.
It’s not likely the current Congress will approve a lump sum of $28 million. In this tempestuous election year, with unemployment still high and gas prices on the rise, the economy remains like a rock hanging around the Obama Administration’s neck. I’m sure the GOP presidential candidates and other Republicans would twist any deal to reimburse the Chippewa into an example of Obama’s poor handling of financial matters. While they may claim fiduciary restraint, it’s actually code for blatant racism. The Caucasian elite that dominates the federal government always hoped the Indians would just go away, or accept their “place” in society; e.g. sub-human status. Here in North America, Europeans tried to wipe out the indigenous peoples through violence – and, of course, failed. So, their descendants resorted to such machinations as those that befell the Chippewa. When Native Americans – who already had been beaten down by violence and disease – had the audacity to demand reimbursement for all those contracts and agreements, the term “Indian giver” was born.
Many individual Chippewa, including Northrup, don’t find much comfort in what they see as pathetically deficient compensation for what their ancestors lost. “A thousand dollars is (nothing more than) a good night at bingo,” he said. “It should be $28 billion, not $28 million. They’re just trying to make legitimate the theft of Indian land.”
No amount of money or land could repay any Native American community for all the bigotry and exploitation they endured; just like no amount of Social Security can reimburse someone for a lifetime of hard work and putting up with bully bosses, coworkers with bad attitudes and paltry raises. But, as Karen Diver stated, it’s a start toward some degree of justice.
