At Indian Country Today, Cari Carpenter, associate professor of English at West Virginia University, where she is also a core member of the Native American Studies Program, writes a story about Sarah Winnemucca, the Northern Paiute activist who sought to have the land stolen from her people at gunpoint returned to them. Part of that land now includes the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, now occupied by armed extremists:
Sarah Winnemucca isn’t a name known by many—her surname is more likely identified as a town in Nevada than the last name of one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent American Indian writers and activists. Authorof Life Among the Piutes, one of the first published narratives by a Native American, she made frequent headlines for her vocal support of indigenous rights. One of her most long-lasting campaigns was to restore her people, the Northern Paiutes, to the Malheur Reservation, which was created in 1872 by the U.S. government. In January 1879, following the Bannock War, residents of the reservation were forced to travel 350 miles to the Yakama Indian Reservation after an ill-informed decision to punish the Northern Paiutes, many of whom had supported the US against the Bannocks in the War. Even the so-called “hostiles” in the war were motivated by the usual: colonialist land encroachment and resource exploitation. [...]
Malheur—known now mainly to birders who prize species like the Sandhill Crane—has been a contentious site before. Nineteenth-century newspaper articles that Carolyn Sorisio and I published in the collectionThe Newspaper Warrior: Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’s Campaign for American Indian Rights 1864-1891(University of Nebraska Press 2015) indicate that the rightful owner of Malheur was a contested question long before the militia’s current occupation. [...]
The Northern Paiutes found that Winnemucca’s heroic fidelity to the US was not rewarded in the aftermath to the Bannock War, when the residents of Malheur were ordered to move to the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington Territory. At Yakama, where, Winnemucca reported, “not an Indian was ever taught the alphabet,” Paiutes were denied the education they had received at Malheur. She also reported that her people weren’t adequately reimbursed for their work and, if paid, were later stripped of their earnings: “Yes, poorer in clothes. Poorer in horses. Poorer in victuals; in every thing. We have lost 53 head of horses, and have left 257 head. Our sick have been poorly cared for, and many have died for want of something to eat. Now, can anyone blame us for wanting to go back to our own country?” By November 1879 it was reported that no Indians remained at Malheur.
In response to Winnemucca’s appeals to return the Paiutes to the original reservation, government agents threatened to kill anyone who tried to do so. In 1880 Winnemucca went to Washington DC to argue for reinstatement at Malheur. While there she testified in front of a subcommittee of the US Congress: what was surely a lonely enterprise as the only American Indian, and likely the only woman, in the room. She left the nation’s capital with what she thought was a victory: the administration promised that the Paiutes would be returned to Malheur. This promise was ultimately rejected, however, by a local agent. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—John Boehner—who could make a mint on pipeline—whines about President Obama delaying Keystone:
With the Obama administration's refusal to kowtow to the arbitrary and politically motivated Republican deadline to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, Speaker of the House John Boehner was one of the first out of the gate to express his fauxrage:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah …
What he didn't say?
... in December 2010, according to Boehner’s financial disclosure forms, he invested $10,000 to $50,000 each in seven firms that had a stake in Canada’s oil sands, the region that produces the oil the pipeline would transport.
So in the coming days, as Republicans crawl out of the woodwork to denounce the president's decision, ask yourself what's in it for them besides scoring political points.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Political stagecraft gone awry. Guncraft gone awry. Enforce the laws already on the books! Unless the NRA doesn’t want to! Uberization of work. Bundypalooza’s “legal” word salad. What if wildlife refuge occupiers were black? Well, they once were.
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