Please Help the Crow Creek Sioux Fight Washington and the IRS

Please help the Crow Creek Sioux in their struggle against an unusual land grab by Washington D.C. Have a look at the petition below, and please sign it. The Sioux made a video that explains their desperate situation, with the long but appropriate title, "As Obama promises 100 billion a year for UN Climate Scam, Our people live like this!!!" A summary of the landgrab situation here, from USA Today: SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — About 7,112 acres of land on a poverty-stricken South Dakota Indian reservation was auctioned Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service but the buyer's identity is a mystery. The IRS auctioned the land on one of America's poorest Indian reservations after efforts Wednesday to block the sale in U.S. District Court failed. The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe had gone to court to try and stop the IRS auction to settle overdue employment taxes it claims are owed by the tribe. But the auction went ahead, with a winning bid of $2,577,210, IRS spokeswoman Carrie Resch said "It's the first time I've ever heard of the IRS moving against tribally owned property in this manner," said Robert Williams Jr., a law professor and director of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona. (Source, and full story: USA Today, IRS to auction land on Indian reservation, by Jeff Martin, Dec. 3, 2009, accessed Dec. 22, 2009) An excerpt from the petition reads as follows: On December 3, 2009 the Internal Revenue Service unlawfully auctioned off 7100 acres located on Crow Creek Sioux Tribal land. The land is owned by Crow Creek Tribal Farms, Inc. a Tribal corporation and distinct legal entity from the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. According to the recent motion for temporary restraining order, filed by the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, the IRS seized and auctioned the land to recover $3,123,789.73 dollars in unpaid employment taxes. The document states, Because of erroneous tax advice received from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe became delinquent in the payment of employment taxes collected by the IRS beginning in 2003. The BIA had informed the Tribe that, because it was a federally recognized Tribe, it was not necessary to pay federal employment taxes. The Crow Creek Indian Reservation was created by the 1868 Treaty, Act of April 29, 1868, 15 Stat. 635, and by Section 6, Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888. "Taxes collectd by the IRS?" Wait a minute. By treaty, the Indian nations are - nations. For Washington to tax any of the reservations created by treaty is illegal. Imagine Canada trying to tax Illinois, Michigan or North Dakota. It's long past time for Washington to live up to the treaties that it made with the Sioux and other Indian nations within our borders. RELATED: Crow Creek gains support of Calif. tribe IRS sells SD Indian tribe's land to settle debt Obama Administration Agrees to Settle 13-Year-Old Indian Lawsuit for $3.4 Billion Crow Creek: Stolen Lands, Wind Farms and Taking a Stand for the People South Dakota Office of Tribal Government Relations -- Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Video: Native American Rights Under Assault Video: Crow Creek Indian Tribe on The Power Hour, 1/9: Government land theft Leave a Comment * Conservative T-Shirts * Follow CNB on Twitter * RSS Feed

Why "Native American" is a Stupid Term

While attending the dedication of the "Indian Land Dancing" mural at Foster and Lake Shore Drive on August 22, I was reminded of a ridiculous argument. That ongoing argument is over the correct way to refer to indigenous peoples of North and South America, the folks who were here thousands of years before any European. The argument is full of hypocrisy, ignorance and politically correct silliness. It wasn't until the 1960's that the term "Native American" began to be used in earnest. Some folks say "we're not American Indians, we're Native Americans" and rationalize it by saying that "Columbus thought he landed in India and we're not Indians." Here's a newsflash: The Americas, both North and South, are named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian who helped Columbus prepare his ships for his second and third voyages to the "New World." To dismiss the term "Indian" because it was used mistakenly by Columbus, yet happily use "American" as part of the name, is simply ridiculous. Furthermore, the word "native" was never spoken in the New World prior to the arrival of Europeans, since "native" is a European word. Its origin is Middle English "natif," from Middle French, from Latin "nativus," from "natus," past participle of "nasci" ("to be born"). So to use the term "Native American" instead of "Indian" or "American Indian" because Columbus mistakenly thought he'd landed in India, but to use the European word "native" and a derivative of an Italian explorer's name in combination instead is not only stupid, it shows a complete lack of imagination. How about using an actual word or phrase of one of the indigenous languages? Surely there's an Apache or Navajo term? Related: American Indian Tribal List: Native American Tribes and Languages Index of Native American Language Resources on the Internet Native American Languages Cool Hats & Shirts for Cool Conservatives Leave a Comment... Chicago News Bench RSS Feed We're on Twitter...

Mayor Daley, Ald. Smith Dedicate "Indian Land Dancing" Bricolage

On this fall-like August morning, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Alderman Mary Ann Smith (photo left) helped dedicate a mural in the underpass at Foster Avenue and N. Lake Shore Drive. A crowd of approximately 150 looked on. This portion of the mural is called "Indian Land Dancing." Neither Smith nor Daley danced, unless you count a gratuitous appearance at a mural dedication as a type of dancing.

The mural is a beautiful stretch of eye candy, both visually appealing and evoking a sense of history. It is composed of hundreds of ceramic and mirror tiles, photographs and paintings. The mural is a project by local artists and young people from Alternatives, Inc. which took about six weeks to create.

According to Chi-Town Daily News writer Natasha Wasinski "Project designers Tracy VanDuinen, Todd Osborne and Cynthia Weiss reached out to Native American artists, scholars and families last October to ask for direction and preliminary designs for the project. Involving the Native American community was integral to the project's success, VanDuinen says."

Wasinski quoted VanDuinen as saying, “We didn’t want to make it Indian-ish.” Rather, said VanDuinen, "the artists sought to portray Native Americans 'as a culture now met with their past.'” You'll notice that "Waskinski" is not an American Indian name, nor is VanDuinen, Osborne or Weiss.

The Indians did not insist on the mural being called "Native American Land Dancing." A bunch of white people, marching blindly to the drum beat of political correctness, stood in front of a mural made in large part by Indians, with a huge embedded title of "Indian Land Dancing," and insisted on calling the American Indians "Native Americans."

I'm not sure what VanDuinen meant by saying that they didn't want the mural to be "Indian-ish." The name of the mural is "Indian Land Dancing."

The very look of the mural is all about American Indians, a number of whom attended the dedication dressed in traditional costumes. The mural includes many large images of American Indians. VanDuinen's quote, then, is rather mysterious.

As the mayor and the 48th Ward alderman stood in front of the mural at 10:00 a.m., ten large lights burned without reason in the bright morning sun. Combined with thousands of other lights burning during the day throughout Chicago, hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money are wasted every year.

Daley and Smith seemed oblivious to the wasteful, non-green use of electricity even as they celebrated the American Indian-themed mural and listened to speeches about harmony with nature. I wonder how many people at the dedication saw the disconnect of a beautiful mural that celebrates American Indian heritage being stuck underneath a concrete-and-steel highway overpass in Lincoln Park, named after a man who participated in the Indian Wars of the 19th Century.

The origin of the word "bricolage" is French. Mirriam-Webster's Online Dictionary defines bricolage as "construction (as of a sculpture or a structure of ideas) achieved by using whatever comes to hand." The term "bricolage," then, is not restricted to murals made of a variety of things. As the dictionary tells us, it could refer to a "structure of ideas." If I interpret the definition correctly, a casserole made with whatever left-overs are available could be called a bricolage.

Another definition is "the jumbled effect produced by the close proximity of buildings from different periods and in different architectural styles." That's from The Collins English Dictionary.

The best definition seems to come from Wise Geek. They tell us that bricolage is "a word which is used to mean an assemblage of objects, along with the trial and error process of putting such objects together. Someone who practices bricolage is known as a bricoleur. Bricolage plays an important role in a number of fields, from computer programming to music, and it is part of the artistic and cultural expression of many cultures around the world. You may have even engaged in a bit of bricolage yourself; perhaps, for example, you rigged up a simple solution to a household problem, using materials which were to hand. This is a form of bricolage."

INDIA'S MAOIST BLOWBACK

The Indians just went to the moon, but they can't clean up their own backyard. If they don't get a handle on an extreme threat to their very existence, and soon, the India that we know and love today will soon turn into a hellish whirlwind of bloody anarchy. The threat comes from ultra-leftists known as Maoists, also known as the Communist Party of India. A report from AFP today: NEW DELHI (AFP) – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday said India was failing in its efforts to crush a Maoist rebellion plaguing vast swathes of the country. Addressing a conference of senior police and security officials in New Delhi, Singh once again described the ultra-leftist insurgency as "the most serious internal security threat" India was facing. Full Article... Just who are the Maoists in India? Jane's notes that "[t]he proscribed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) was founded on 21 September 2004, following the merging of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People's War, also known as the People's War Group, and the Maoist Communist Centre of India - two of India's most prominent insurgent groups." In short, they're communists. It should be noted that communists come in a variety of flavors, and Maoism is one of them. There are even variations with the global Maoist movement, and the Indian Maoists are particular nasty. Again, from Jane's: "The CPI-Maoist is the largest group of a wider communist insurgent movement, known as Naxalites after the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal, the site of a revolutionary rural uprising in 1967. The CPI-Maoist has a presence in 185 districts in 17 out of India's 28 states, exerting varying degrees of influence in these areas. Chhattisgarh is currently the state worst affected by the insurgency, particularly its southern Bastar region, which was referred to as a "war zone" in July 2007 by state police chief Vishwaranjan. Other states affected by Maoist violence are Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Maharashtra. Andhra Pradesh - where the insurgents are currently on the retreat - has been affected for the longest period of time - since 1964, when radical elements of the political Communist Party of India (Marxist) waged a rebellion called the Srikakulam armed struggle." More at Jane's Intelligence... The irony in all of this is that India's problem with Maoists is, at least in part, blowback from previous intelligence wars of its own. In the past, India has made use of the Maoists as allies in its arguments with Nepal (see India Using Maoists Against Nepal). RELATED: Maoist rebels spread across rural India csmonitor.com YouTube - India's Maoist Revolution - India Subscribe to The Bench by E-mail. It's free!