Obama administration makes new promise on Indian health

WASHINGTON – The nation’s top health official has told Indian country health leaders that the Obama administration believes American Indians deserve special consideration in any national reform to health insurance.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/59729182.html

Crow Chief receives Medal of Freedom

President Barack Obama had to poke his head around the feathers of Joe Medicine Crow's warrior headdress to hang the nation's highest civilian honor on the Crow Indian elder's chest.

The white eagle feathers on the headdress and the gold eagles that surround the white star in the medal are symbolic of the esteem that Medicine Crow has earned in service to his tribe and the nation.

The headdress represents Medicine Crow's status as a warrior chief of the Crow Tribe, earned by war deeds he performed in World War II. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed in a White House ceremony Wednesday, represents his role as a living legend in America.

Skull found in Oakland was from Native American burial ground

By Angela Hill, The Oakland Tribune, Calif.

OAKLAND, Calif. (MCT) – A human skull and bone fragments unearthed June 5 by a construction crew working on a sidewalk on Dennison Street near the Oakland Estuary have been determined to be from an American Indian burial site, police said.

“The coroner had a historian working with the Native American Heritage Commission examine the skull and fragments,” said Oakland police homicide Sgt. Rachael Van Sloten. “He was able to determine they came from a burial site through various observations, such as noting that the teeth showed wear consistent with individuals eating food ground by stone. In addition, this was found in a location well-documented as burial grounds.”

The site is adjacent to the Hide-A-Way Cafe in the 1900 block of Dennison, near the Embarcadero, and historians say maps from 1878 and 1910 show that area was indeed the site of numerous American Indian burial grounds, also known as shellmounds.

The skull found last month was about three feet below ground when the construction crew started digging to remove two sections of sidewalk on a contract job for AT&T to replace an underground cable, police said.

There was clearly “no evidence that would make it a recent burial. No items such as modern dental work, a pocket watch, rings, and so on,” said historian Andrew Galvan, who examined the bones. Galvan can trace his ancestry to Native Americans in the East Bay before 1769 and holds the designation as a “Most Likely Descendant.”

He said the burial site dates anywhere from 250 to 2,000 years ago. The age or gender of the person was not determined. According to Native American practices, the remains will be reburied near the site where they were found, he said.

A similar case occurred in January, when human remains – which were later determined to be those of an American Indian child about 4 years of age – were found underneath an Alameda street when public works crews dug up a section of the 3000 block of Washington Street.

Natives use Twitter to showcase sacred site

OXFORD, Ala. – A growing number of Native American Internet users are turning to the popular social media Web site, Twitter, to get the word out on issues of traditional and cultural importance.

Ramp It Up!

Skateboard exhibition 7/3/09 at the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC Young Native American skaters and an exhibit on skateboarding in the Native American culture

When Yosemite Miwok elders were Paiutes

Even though Jay Johnson and his brother Burleigh have children who are currently enrolled members in Nevada Paiute tribes he does have Miwok ancestry. But the Miwok ancestry was not from Chief Tenaya. Johnson was not a direct descendent of Chief Tenaya on his Miwok side. Henry and Mary Ann Johnson, Jay Johnson's paternal grandparents stated on their 1928-1929 California Enrollment Applications that their chief was Chief Bautista, the same chief who was the ally of James Savage of the Mariposa Battalion and enemy of Chief Tenaya. It was Bautista who gave the term "Yosemite" to the Ahwahnee Indians, which in his language meant "The Killers" and said he was afraid to enter Yosemite Valley.
Jay Johnson's maternal great grandparent, Captain Sam, stated on his 1928-1929 California Indian Application that he and his wife Susie Sam were Mono Lake Paiutes and Johnson's maternal grandfather, Bridgeport Tom, said on his application he was a Mono Lake Paiute. None stated they were related to Chief Tenaya, who by the way was born at Mono Lake.

So apparently the Miwok elders of the group did not always identify themselves as Miwok, but as the original Yosemite Indian tribe, the Paiutes.

In this video on Youtube one of the elders of the Southern Sierra Miwuks is identified as a Paiute in a recent video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEmZtqCCELk

We Cannot Blame the White People any Longer

By Dr. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.

They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English.

I can't even talk the way these people talk:

"Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,
Who you be...".

And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around.

The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.

$500 sneakers for what?

And they won't spend $200 for "Hooked on Phonics."

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2?

Where were you when he was 12?

Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?

And where is the father? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward. Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?

People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?

Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles (piercings) going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from?

We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa.

I say this all of the time — it would be like white people saying they are European-American — that is totally stupid.

I was born here, and so were my parents and grand parents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany, Scotland, England, Ireland, or the Netherlands.

The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa — so stop, already!

With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap...and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.

People used to be ashamed.

Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' — or men or whatever you call them now.

We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks, have to do a better job.

Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

We have to start holding each other to a higher standard....