Ghost Rider Roads

new book...release date January 2012...

2012-01-07T20:36:00.001-08:00

Ghost Rider Roads

collected/by antoinette nora claypoole

a new book of collected works

about the American Indian Movement, 1970-present, includes:

essays about Anna Mae Aquash/murder trials from antoinette's Indian Country blog

previously unpublished work by Robert Robideau (rip)

and information on Leonard Peltier's current (2011-12) campaign for Executive Clemency....as provided by Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

READ THE INTRODUCTION, HERE !!!

EXCERPTS

connect here if you would like a FREE review copy

image: "NW AIM, circa 1972" donated by Robert Robideau (rip), photographer unknown

HOME

coming soon...release date January 2012...

2012-01-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

Ghost Rider Roads
(little endnotes [ i ] are in the piece. go to the end of this intro, to find/read them)

Introduction

by antoinette nora claypoole

This is a memory keeper book.

For all the reasons visionaries plant victory gardens and poets learn to hitchhike. This book emerges. A tapestry of landscape. Threads of a weave which began with the American Indian Movement (AIM) and extends into and beyond all humans pressing up against uncertainty.

Through the years defined here, via these writings, reading the entries here, the reader can feel what American Indian history of the second half of the 20^th century looked like. And discover not only history, but reality, right now. Which like a painted desert, sprawls through Indian Country. As I write this. For instance, an Anishanabe political prisoner, jailed in the 1970’s, Leonard Peltier, still fights for freedom, serving what many of us believe is a wrongful conviction. And two life sentences. And old, Traditional Dine (Navajo) “Grammas” continue their struggle against forced relocation by the U.S. Government.

It is my hope that by reading this collection, the reader can know, finally that First Nations (“Indian”) History is still being written. And continues to be necessary to contact and know. Of America is ever going to stop warring, find Heart. My ride over the past twenty five years, into Indian Country, taught me the truth of America’s lies as I, via a series of West coast synchronicities and with hippie girl roots in a young East Coast SDS, ended up hanging out with most of the Indians in this book.Some a very long time ago. Others just today.

Here, then, find a myriad of ways in which Indian Country came to me.

And how it is alive in others, still.

Robert Robideau, Anishanabe (RIP)

Why the Book

So. Why write of a renegade Indian Movement? Mostly because somewhere after I met AIM I became immersed in helping reclaim the legacy of one of it’s murdered members, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash (1945-1975/6). And because there is always more to the story.

This project/book began at first, with Robert Robideau (acquitted in the shooting of two FBI agents in 1975) to clarify and document the ongoing efforts to resolve the murder of one of AIM’s early leaders, Anne Mae Aquash. She was the matrix of my first book, Who Would Unbraid Her Hair: the legend of annie mae (dist. Clear Light Books, Santa Fe, N.M. 1999) and at the onset of putting Ghost Rider Roads together I was working closely with Robert to bring into focus ongoing, emerging information about her killing and the people being indicted for her murder. After Robert’s sudden passing in Feb. 2009, I put the work aside. Didn’t quite know where to go. We were going to write pieces “together”, gather interviews. I was lost.

After a year or so, I realized the message of the book had to be broadened, to include and become a documentation of varied aspects of AIM, especially because Robert Robideau was gone home, and could no longer do the work of keeping people awake, about AIM. So, the book became a place where old old AIM could meet, as they couldn’t do in “life”, so they are in the same room here, in Ghost Rider. The project now includes the current campaign for Robert’s cousin, Leonard Peltier and presents a perspective on how most of old AIM were/are impacted by Annie Mae’s death. It is complied with the idea that a new generation of activists can learn from our past. And that readers can know that AIM played (and still plays) a key role in Indian history and remembering traditional Native Ways, and that Indian history is not only still being written but it continues to call for public awareness and relies on current AIM chapters, around the United States, to support efforts which range from the freeing of Leonard Peltier to protection of sacred sites. To simply, keeping people “awake”.

With Robert’s passing, Ghost Rider Roads becomes now, more than the final sojourn into attempts to resolve Anne Mae’s murder. It is tapestry of landscape depicting the ongoing nature of Indian Country and the importance of AIM, itself. Documenting continued efforts to free AIM activist Leonard Peltier, wrongfully serving two life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents in the 1970’s (and though on Pres. Bill Clinton’s “short list” for clemency back in 2000, remains in prison), and offering explanations regarding the continued resistance to uranium mining on Dine (Navajo) land near Big Mountain, Az. All of this information meant to provide perspective for any new generation of warriors who want to understand how to prevail in the resistance to dominant, corporate greed. Yes. There are stories from now, AND “back then”.

And. There are many ways to tell a story.

“She was cutting labels off of her clothes right before she died. A vow we had in the movement was to remove labels from our clothes to make it harder for authorities to identify us. When we were killed.” Robert Robideau, acquitted in the killing of two FBI agents, in the Jumping Bull Shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 1975, explained that to me. And I know to die for a cause is a most honorable passing.

Yet. How brutal to be taken from within your own movement, your own people, at the nudging of a government afraid of Indians. “In the end one thing is simple. Certain. Anna Mae was murdered because of a trek she took through Oregon in 1975.” Robert Robideau explained that well in his talk with me on July 24, 2008. Details of this truth were to be written into a piece to be entitled “The Demise: Ontario, Oregon”, which-- due to Robert’s sudden death in 2009, while he and I were gathering materials for the completion of the collection—could not be included here. Still. The murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash forever changed the landscape of AIM’s life. It continues, to this day, to be one of the most brutal acts of government covert operations toward any single Protest Movement group[i] or organized coalition calling for change. It was successful only in the instilling of a death walk paranoia which is forever never to be undone.

The commitment to survive, and persist, despite the brutal acts of infiltration. Remain. Unscathed. Consider the following sentiments by Delaney Bruce--whose essays are included in this collection—regarding AIM, which has been attacked since it’s inception in the late 1960’s, by varied FBI media campaigns:[ii]

Nearly 30 years after the incident at Oglala (referred to in this book as the “Jumping Bull Shoot-out”) the FBI and government prosecutors still engage in vengeful acts.... {in}this past year (2011) ... they used actual court proceedings, primarily for the benefit of the media, to intentionally provide as fact, false information to the public on AIM and Leonard Peltier.

This has the effect of rewriting history with regard to AIM, in general, and Leonard Peltier, in particular, so as to prejudice the public against them.

The sensational claims of witnesses – some of them paid informants – were widely reported in the press.[iii] As other prosecutions with respect to the Aquash murder are pending (Dec. 2011), such behavior has the appearance of having been done for the purpose of prejudicing the public against AIM in a state where anti-AIM sentiment and racism against Native Americans already runs very high. In our considered opinion, these actions have been taken to influence the outcome of pending federal prosecutions by potentially poisoning the jury pool, as well as to destroy support for Peltier and prevent his release on parole in 2008 –Delaney Bruce

From the perspective of my years as witness, activist and friend, all writers in this collection reach through history, into the Now, arriving from an era which calls to a next generation. To learn from and rescript our mistakes, to retake our claim to neither believe in illusion of freedom, nor be instructed and ruled. By Fear. To use our “creative intelligence” as John Trudell explains.[iv]

This collection is, in the end, dedicated to the young, new “protestors” calling for something more than a fear-based, marginalized life. Here. A plethora of potentialities, gentle and harsh, lost and loving entries into and through histories and tragedies, love, war and prophecy. Ghost Rider Roads is a treatise to all humans: that despite the ravages of time, the tenacity to untangle the human mess persists. The ways and courage of the American Movement becomes/is a model of freedom so others can plan their escape. If not through the painful truth of historic broken treaties, perhaps most poignantly and brutally through the irreverent murders of a People. And our insistence that we will survive, despite the ravages of time. That is, all the stories, words, realities in this collection are based on real life, on-going events, people I met and knew and a Movement, AIM, which set out in the 1970’s to claim human rights, spiritual freedoms for American Indians, “Natives” as some say, “First Nations” as our Canadian neighbors call themselves. Without old and once young AIM, the landscape of Indigenous rights would have in any language never become what it is today. A celebration of the old ways, a remembering of connecting with Earth, by any nation (tribal Celtic, ancient Etruscean of S. Italy, Choctaw of Louisiana). Without old AIM we might have all forgotten where we came from. So we can arrive to the places we need to be. Mindfully.

Because Robert Robideau passed before we could complete the project, Ghost Rider Roads has many of my own writings and interviews from/about Indian Country—only those which Robert gave me for the book, before he died, are included here. Yet. The project is intermingled with the generous spirit of other writers/leaders: an Introduction and essays by Ben Carnes, poignant stories about early AIM, written by Robert Robideau while he was in “Leavenworth”, essays by Delaney Bruce from the only, “official” Leonard Peltier information source, the Leonard Peltier Defense/Offense Committee, and haunting excerpts from an interview with one of the original founders of AIM, Vernon Bellecourt, Anishanabe, words published before he passed in 2007. Revealing the texture of the times, Bellecourt delivers to us the atmosphere of paranoia which was a result of covert, government operations within AIM. Much as the Black Panthers and SDS experienced, AIM was hit with fallout from the turbulent late 60’s, also depicted in upfront style in the 1976 news article, “OPEN FIRE” by activists and Yippies Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, presented in this collection as a “giveaway” by Judy Gumbo to Robert Robideau/this book, whose news article which can be found in Part One.

Part One

In the first section there are stories of “NW AIM, 1973” by Robert Robideau, Anishanabe/Ojibway, which paint the truth of old AIM via his personal account from the “front lines”, where ceremony and activism intersected. Robideau’s true stories about he and his cousin Leonard Peltier, are compelling accounts which invite the reader to grasp the depths of struggle which ensues when a people rise and claim their rights. The “Jumping Bull” shoot-out, in June 1975, where two FBI and one Indian Man were killed on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, S. Dakota, became the event which, in the end, has “defined” AIM and and it’s importance and struggle to remain rightfully respected as key to comtemporary tribal history. Details of that event and the subsequent murder of Anna Mae Aquash are here, in Ghost Rider Roads, for the taking. Most striking is a letter, supposedly written in jail, by Anna Mae Naguset Eask, Sun Woman, soon after a bust in Oregon, 1975. And the news piece “Open Fire” (1976) written about the Butler/Robideau trial as they were charged and acquitted, in the killing of the two FBI agents at Jumping Bull.

Part Two

That theme of death and threats, continues in Part Two, with blips about how I personally first met AIM, during my days with Dine (traditional Navajo) resistance. To forced relocation at Big Mountain, Az. A time warped reality---1986 and now. Indians still fighting for the right to pray. Included are pieces emerging from my journal entries written while inside an AIM/ Dine resistance camp (which would soon after our stay, be called “Camp Anna Mae”), excerpts from my “historical fiction” work Rivers in her Eyes (about Big Mountain). And details about initial investigations into the murder of Anna Mae Aquash, including some communiqués by her cousin Robert Pictou Branscombe (RIP).

Part Three

In this section, details from my radio/freelance writing coverage of murder trial and extradition hearings regarding the murder of Anne Mae Aquash, over twenty years after she was found executed. This includes excerpts from my personal, controversial interview with John Graham, S. Tutchone, accused murderer of Annie Mae, details of his trials, subsequent conviction, and life sentence (early 2011). Reading Graham’s own words in “Reckoning Winds of the Yukon” can take you inside the heart and mind of an Indian man accused of killing his own friend, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, whose brief history with AIM is documented, here.

That is, the reader can stand inside and read of the 21st century Court trials in Indian Country which concerned a murder three decades prior. This exposé becomes a mirror. For all readers. The human paradox of existence reflected as one considers--through interviews and transcribed radio commentaries—the impact of Aquash’s self-proclaimed allegiance to a movement which struggles today. The scar of her death in it’s heart. And in practical terms, for the next generation of activists. Part three reveals the brutal intricacies of how FBI and CIA operatives within ANY movement, can corrupt and kill the intentions and people involved.

Why Anna Mae Aquash Murder Indictments

We explore the murder of Anna Mae Aquash and the subsequent murder trials 30 years later because these events depict the intensity with which it appears the FBI has intended to dispel the accomplishments and need for the American Indin Movement.

With the murder of Aquash, AIM prevails still.

But did suffer a deep blow to it's ability to navigate accomplished, consistent efforts to not only protect native Elders and traditional ways of life but to revive a threatened culture. One which has been targeted for decades, in acts of genocide, manifest destiny and assimilation practices such as boarding school, the taking of Indian children into Mormon homes and arrests and confiscation of family members for practicing ceremony--spiritual ceremonies such as sun dance, sweat lodge and vision quest. Life in Indian Country was/is harsh, and AIM intended to reclaim their rightful culture. It still does.

By 1978 AIM had accomplished the Freedom of Religion Act, signed by Jimmy Carter, as well as the Indian Child Welfare Act of the 1978.[v] AIM continued into the 1980's to support Dine grammas of Big Mountain, Az., who called for protection when Pres. Ronald Regan threatened "national guard" presence to force relocation of traditional elders living on the wrong side of a fence/boundary created by the U.S. a Senate Bill meant to allow for uranium and coal mining the Big Mountain, Black Mesa of Arizona[vi].

Efforts of AIM, active efforts in many humanitarian efforts for more than four decades, continues, repeatedly steeped in controversy based on the killing of Anna Mae Aquash. For this reason, her murder and ongoing investigations into the ranks of old AIM are included in this book as an essential explanation of how AIM, although a crucial and necessary part of Indian Country, continues to struggle against negative media campaigns[vii] and legal campaigns which attempt to diffuse/destroy AIM and it's true past and continual contribution to sustaining pride, in being Indian.

Within the murder trials and convictions regarding Aquash, much of AIM leadership is/has been threatened. Here in Part Three, murder trials and updates (up to Fall 2011) regarding ongoing appeals are presented. With the focus on this fact: as this book goes to print a few old AIM leaders, well-known public figures, are STILL potentially being named and/or targeted for indictments, as various State (S. Dakota) and federal agencies continue to claim they want to indict old AIM leaders for Aquash's murder. Though two “AIM” men were sentenced to life for the killing. One of the men, Arlo Looking Cloud, has had his sentence “reduced” (2011) for potentially “co operating” with the Government. It is thought he may still be expected, to “name names”. Nothing about the murder case, remains static. Or resolved. It continues to deeply impact lives.

Part Four

Despite these threats and tension, AIM is still active around the United States. In Part four you will read of a Walk Across America for Human Rights, sponsored for and by old AIM political prisoner, Leonard Peltier. Launched in Dec. 2011. This walk intends to call attention to the ongoing needs of Indian nations, while also bringing attention to the current AIM demand for Pres. Obama to offer Peltier, Executive Clemency. Something Pres. Clinton had seriously considered, but after a "private visit from the FBI, in Dec. 2000, refused to address, again.

Information about Leonard Peltier, old AIM security who knew Anna Mae Aquash, seen as an ongoing political prisoner by many as he was sentenced to life in prison for the killing of two FBI agents—the same crime for which his cousin Robert Robideau was acquitted. This section documents some of Peltier’s campaigns for released from his two life sentences, over the past twenty years, as I was privy to them, via fundraisers, demand for clemency actions and essays by people I met in “the movement”. Included are “A Happening in Rapid City” written in 2007 by Barry Bachrach, former attorney to Peltier, essays by the Peltier Defense Committee, and words from Robert Robideau, Peltier’s key spokesperson for many years. All of their work is a poignant peering into the windowless justice for Indians.

Throughout the book, a whisper, a howl a push and shove into truth. As you hear/find the voice of Vernon Bellecourt, “narrating” via my interview with him in 2000. Bellecourt was one of the early founders of AIM, and came to me to “do an interview” as the Aquash investigation were heating up, to “tell his story” about what happened. And old friend, Ed Little Crow is also a voice, a guide, of another kind. He comes into the story as a poetic helper, reflecting the essence of surviving in these confusing times. Throughout Ghost Rider there is a sense that there really is no word, no name, for the us we longed to be. Still. There. Is a longing to remember how not to forget how we get to be where we always were.

In the end, this book is offered to honor AIM, depict the nature of it's ongoing struggle with FBI attacks and misguided lawsuits, and to place AIM into a solid, secure annals of American History, a movement which has survived the tumultuous times of the 1960's

and continues to defy controversy, to rise to the needs of sovereign Indian tribes, "nationwide".

And so. In sum, though there is much history, here. Ghost Riders is not only history. It is a story still being told. For the stories are still being written. A trail to the petroglyphs persists while thistles snag the very nowness of the trip.

This book, in the cycle of existence, is a living tribute/ongoing journal about the people and politics of one era bleeding into the now of our fast track to redefine being human, before it’s “too late”. The now popular end times speak is illuminated and paled simultaneously by these events which were set in motion, by Love, four decades ago, and now nearly consumed by fear. Fear. The one thing that can always undo a people.

Here. Instead.

Lives and stories.

Truth, the great elixir.

Barefoot into the mist we sojourn.

Onto Ghost Rider Roads. Together.

We imagine. Surviving.

antoinette nora claypoole

Cochiti Lake, New Mexico Jan. 2009

Ashfield, Mass. Jan. 2012

HOME

ENDNOTES from intro

[i] the shooting and federal attacks of Judi Bari is one example of U.S. Government, “cointelpro” attacks of non native “protestors” (www.judibari.org)

[ii] see Part Three for an essay written by Delaney Bruce which documents FBI media campaign against AIM.

[iii] see Part Two of this book, for essays/news clips regarding the Aquash murder, indictments and trials.

[iv] Trudell interview with Alex Jones of infowars.com, on Dec. 29, 2011, anniversary date of the massacre of wounded knee, 1890.

[v] see AIM manifesto, written in the 1970’s, in the Appedix of this book.

[vi] “Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act” (PL93-531) 1974.

[vii] LPDOC, media campaign FBI files, as posted on their website www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

coming soon...release date January 2012...

2011-12-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

Ghost Rider Roads

collected/by antoinette nora claypoole

a new book of collected works

about the American Indian Movement, 1970-present, includes:

essays about Anna Mae Aquash/murder trials from antoinette's Indian Country blog

previously unpublished work by Robert Robideau (rip)

and information on Leonard Peltier's current (2011-12) campaign for Executive Clemency....as provided by Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

READ THE INTRODUCTION, HERE !!!

EXCERPTS
connect here if you would like a FREE review copy

image: "NW AIM, circa 1972" donated by Robert Robideau (rip), photographer unknown

HOME

Leonard Peltier explains, about he how came, to work for the People

2011-12-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

from upcoming book (release date January 2012)....
collected/by antoinette nora claypoole Ghost Rider Roads

LEONARD PELTIER...the last years of the Eisenhower era....

"Leonard was about 14 years old at the time. With his father, he attended meetings on the reservation to discuss the government's decision to terminate Turtle Mountain. He recalls one Ojibwa lady, a cousin, who stood up angrily and asked in a loud, emotional, tear-filled voice, "Where are our warriors? Why don't they stand up and fight for their starving people?"

'That sent electric vibrations from my scalp all the way down my spine to the soles of my feet.'

Peltier says. 'It was like a revelation to me—that there was actually something worthwhile you could do with your life, something more important than living your own selfish little life day by day. Yes, there was something more important than your poor miserable self: your People. You could actually stand up and fight for them... and as I would come to see in later years, all Indian people, all Indigenous People, all human beings of good heart. I vowed right then and there that I would become a warrior and that I'd always work to help my people. It's a vow I've done my best to keep.' " --by Delaney Bruce....courtesy Leonard Peltier Defense/Offense Committee

please connect if you would like to write a review...of this book

watersongs@gmail.com

home to wild embers

ABOUT THE PROJECT

2011-11-27T14:06:00.001-08:00

A collection of work compiled/created by antoinette nora claypoole, Ghost Rider Roads chronicles the American Indian Movement from 1970-present, from the perspective of, and information shared with antoinette nora claypoole during her two and half decades "inside Indian Country". The book Includes details about Anna Mae Aquash (1945-1975/6), the 21st century murder trials of John Graham and Arlo Looking CLoud and a special section about /from Leonard Peltier and his Defense Offense Committee.

This project was initially a collaboration between antoinette nora claypoole and AIM member Robert Robideau (RIP), who was acquitted, along with Dino Butler, in a "shoot out" on PIne Ridge Indian Reservation in the early 1970's. Robideau and claypoole were gathering writings of their own, and other key figures in Indian Country, to create this book. His sudden death in Barcelona, Spain (Feb. 2009) created a gap in the project, which is now, finally, healed. Writings, previously unpublished, about early AIM, written by Robideau, stories he intended to have in the collection, are included. His family has been notified about the project and partial proceeds from the sales of this book will go to being certain Robert Robideau's artwork remains viable and accessible for future generations. Of all Nations.

The book also includes antoinette's previously unpublished "mini" interview with John Trudell (from the early 1990's), writings by Delaney Bruce of the Peltier Defense Offense Committee, a news piece (1975) about FBI shootout on Pine Ridge by Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, essays by Ben Carnes and new, previously unpublished stories by Robert Robideau (RIP), about his early AIM days.

Overall, Ghost Rider chronicles antoinette's work /sojourn in and through the American Indian Movement over the past two and a half decades and is dedicated her old friend/uncle, Dave Chief, Lakota (1929-2005), Oglala Lakota.

Visit, excerpts. Here.

All People Are One.

a. nora claypoole

more about...Ghost Rider Roads

Roads also includes interviews antoinette nora claypoole has done with various members of old AIM. Including stories which emerged from her interviews with Ed Little Crow (excerpted from his book Dreaming of a True World A Opchine Wala Ohkon, (Wild Embers Press, Dec 2009), Vernon Bellecourt (1931-2007) founder of the American Indian Movement), and John Graham, recently convicted to a life sentence for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash.

Also included is a rare 1970's article about the FBI Cointelpro/Pine Ridge shootings by Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, and a special section about Leonard Peltier with essays provided by Delaney Bruce and LPDOC (his defense committee). All woven together with commentaries and news clips by antoinette nora claypoole, recent recipient of Oregon Literary Arts fellowship (Jan. 2006 for her current work on Louise Bryant).

In sum, the book chronicles AIM and hopes to provide information for a new generation of activists, with a special emphasis and supporting the ongoing work to Free Leonard Peltier.

The book will be released in Jan 2012. Please connect with us about free review copies.

This project is dedicated to
Dave Chief, Lakota (1929-2005)

2011-11-27T14:04:00.000-08:00

(scroll down for Essay by Ben Carnes)

STATEMENT FROM AIM WEST, about LEONARD PELTIER
WALK ACROSS AMERICA
Dec. 18 2011-May 2012

INFO ABOU THE SIX MONTH WALK
visit www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
and look for "walk info"
for details about how to volunteer, and offer
support to this effort.

THE WALK IS LAUNCHED

A Sunday morning ceremony (Dec. 18) on The Rock (Alcatraz Island) was held to announce
and initiate a spiritual walk across north America entitled "The Leonard Peltier
Walk for Human Rights".
The sacred Walk is an effort to raise attention regarding political prisoner
Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for over 35 years, to seek his freedom, and to
encourage President Obama to assert his authority by providing an Executive
Clemency. (All my relations can also call the White House comment line at
202-456-1212 and express freedom now for Leonard!)
The boat leaves from San Francisco at Pier # 33 beginning 9:10 am until 12 high
noon! Sunday, Dec. 18th. Tickets (tentatively) are * $14 (same price as
October/November annual sunrise events).

Mr. Dennis Banks, AIM National Leader, Dorothy Ninham, Coordinator for Walk for
Human Rights, and spiritual advisors Fred Short, and Yvonne Swan, regional
representatives, were on hand to guide the prayer service/ceremony. The
morning's theme also addressed the US injustice system and support for all
political prisoners human rights.

Charlie Toledo, Executive Director
Suscol Intertribal Council
PO Box 5386, Napa CA 94581
#707.256.3561

from upcoming book
Ghost RIder Roads

ESSAY BY BEN CARNES, Choctaw

“First Nations and Religious Freedom”

by Ben Carnes

The recent ruling, regarding the sacred San Francisco Peaks, by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in reversing their earlier decision illustrates a pattern of disrespect for the long-standing spiritual traditions of the First Nations. It is an irony that the court would issue their reversal just a few days before the 30th anniversary of the passage of Public Law 95-341, “The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978”, which was signed into law on August 11, 1978.

The enactment of the Code of Religious Offenses in 1883 outlawed a way of praying by Native people that kept hope alive. Instead of sheepishly abiding by the law, the ceremonies went underground and were conducted in private. It wasn’t until the latter part of the past century that many of the ceremonies began to emerge into the open.

It was not until the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s that Native people began to demand their rights to follow their traditions and spirituality. Those demands threatened the governments control over the natural resources that were held in its’ trust.

The 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties caravan culminated in the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C. In traveling across the country from the West Coast, they held “Red Ribbon” hearings in Indian country and from the concerns voiced by Native people; they formulated a Twenty-point position paper.

The Twenty-points included:

1. RESTORATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL TREATY-MAKING AUTHORITY

(The 1871 Indian Appropriations Act ended treaty-making with the First Nations)

2. ESTABLISHMENT OF TREATY COMMISSION TO MAKE NEW TREATIES

3. AN ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE & JOINT SESSSIONS OF CONGRESS

4. COMMISSION TO REVIEW TREATY COMMITMENTS & VIOLATIONS

5. RESUBMISSION OF UNRATIFIED TREATIES TO THE SENATE

6. ALL INDIANS TO BE GOVERNED BY TREATY RELATIONS

7. MANDATORY RELIEF AGAINST TREATY RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

8. JUDICIAL RECOGNITION OF INDIAN RIGHT TO INTERPRET TREATIES

9. CREATION OF CONGRESSIONAL JOINT COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIAN RELATIONS

10. LAND REFORM AND RESTORATION OF A 110-MILLION ACRE NATIVE LAND BASE

11. REVISION OF 25 U.S.C. 163; RESTORATION OF RIGHTS TO INDIANS TERMINATED BY ENROLLMENT AND REVOCATION OF PROHIBITIONS AGAINST "DUAL BENEFITS"

12. REPEAL OF STATE LAWS ENACTED UNDER PUBLIC LAW 280 (1953)

13. RESUME FEDERAL PROTECTIVE JURISDICTION FOR OFFENSES AGAINST INDIANS

14. ABOLITION OF THE BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS BY 1976

15. CREATION OF AN "OFFICE OF FEDERAL INDIAN RELATIONS AND COMMUNITY RECONSTRUCTION

16. PRIORITIES AND PURPOSE OF THE PROPOSED NEW OFFICE

17. INDIAN COMMERCE AND TAX IMMUNITIES

18. PROTECTION OF INDIANS' RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND CULTURAL INTEGRITY

19. NATIONAL REFERENDUMS, LOCAL OPTIONS, AND FORMS OF INDIAN ORGANIZATION

20. HEALTH, HOUSING, EMPLOYMENT, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, AND EDUCATION

Although, the majority of these points dealt with re-establishing treaty relations and sovereignty, a demand for the respecting our spirituality was made. The only response by then President Nixon was “Get those Goddamn Indians out of there!” Profit – exploitation of Native resources – was at stake and the government wasn’t going to have it.

It is no different in the case of the San Francisco Peaks and when the executive branch of the government exerts its influence upon the judicial branch to change it’s ruling, the myth of a democratic and freedom loving America is revealed.

When the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed, many thought that a new dawn had appeared on the horizon, and many closed doors were opened to Native people in the public institutions: public schools, prisons, and military, ie. began to openly practice their First Amendment rights. Or they at least had a law to stand upon when their rights were infringed, but it changed when the Supreme Court denied a Native American Church member the right to use Peyote as a religious practice (Employment Division, Oregon Department of Human Resources v. Smith). By this time, a number of cases found that the AIRFA could not provide the protections they believed they had.

A congressional bill was drafted and named the “Native American Free Exercise of Religion Act” to provide enforcement mechanisms to the toothless AIRFA. The bill did not make it through Congress intact.

Another movement was created to pass the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993”. “In 1997, part of this act was overturned by the United States Supreme Court because it overstepped Congress's power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the past 125 years since the Code of Religious Offenses, it seems that every step gained by Native people are lost when the government changes the rules of the game. It is when corporate interests in natural resources and tourists dollars are affected by the protection of our sacred lands, the courts will rule in the favor of profits.

ED LITTLE CROW

2011-08-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

Crow, his Mom and dog Tommy

click here

for more info about Ed Little Crow and his book Dreaming of a True World A Opchine Wala Ohkon

and here
for UPCOMING Ghost Rider Roads (Dec. 2011)

includes excerpts from Crow's work

connect here for review copies...
of Ghost Riders....

Excerpts from Ghost Rider Roads

2011-03-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

book in print...January 2012!!

cover photo donated by Robert Robideau (RIP)
"old Northwest AIM" circa 1973

the book is over 400 pages long...
here are a few, EXCERPTS...

pieces by antoinette nora claypoole

INTRODUCTION to Ghost Rider Roads

"Decades of Deceit" Feb. 2010 John Graham/Anna Mae Aquash Verdict

"The Elder Bellecourt" Jan. 2000 Interview with Founder/Leader of the American Indian Movement

"A Blue Desert Trail Home" Feb. 2009 The Death of Robert Robert Robideau, Anishanabe

piece by Delaney Bruce/Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

"Leonard Peltier, the Activist" about Leonard's early days, what "brought him" to work for the People

piece by Judy Gumbo and Stewart Albert

"in the Line of Fire" circa 1974 about the trial of Dino Butler and Robert Robideau

piece by Ben Carnes, Choctaw

"First Nations and Religious Freedom"

excerpts by Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, 1974

2007-04-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

from Ghost Rider Roads
People and Other Realities inside Indian Country

compiled/created by antoinette nora claypoole

news clips/ graphic used w/permission by Judy Gumbo Albert, author of "Open Fire"

photos by antoinette nora claypoole
Eddie Little Crow

First Nations Day
Ashland, Or. Oct. 2006

From the book/project....

antoinette: Do you have a Thomas Banyacya (1910-1999) story?

Little Crow: Thomas Banyacya was a Hopi elder who has the Hopi prophecies, and when I met him he had moved to California, he was doing a workshop for his activities at a nuclear workshop , and asked me to talk on the subject to tell his views. In 1942, Banyacya was appointed with three others to take the prophecies to the four corners of the universe, and that has been done.

antoinette: So they told people about the four directions and did they end up at the United Nations?

Little Crow: Yes, Thomas and the others ended up at the United Nations, they went to Switzerland and the Geneva conference, it was the first time that native people got to appear before the United Nations.

antoinette :For you what did his message say?

Little Crow: For me he was a peacekeeper, he told us young people never forget where we come from or who we were.

Even though this linear society keeps us as third class citizens, with first class papers. It is very difficult for people from this western hemisphere that people still live as they always have. As a person who grew up like that, I will never change. Despite policies and our connection to the white world, I will never change how I feel about this society. I have always despised the English language, the way people are treated in this American state, that is why I spent 22 years of my life locked up for just talking , just informing people about the world condition, the world plight.

Society is missing a lot because there is no elders anymore to make predictions, or prophecies to teach people especially young people, children, how to live in this alienation. The education is programmed education, and if you do not have a social order or a structure, a social structure you are nothing. If you don’t have a job or position, then they think you don’t believe in anything. If you don’t belong to a certain group or organization in this acculturation of a society you are nothing.

All of of these old people have told these people this for years and years.

Cause as a rainbow warrior, as my friend Jesse Jackson would say, I have to keep on keeping on. That is what I basically do. I go around the country talking about how this society is, how it treats people.

*&*&*&

copyright 2007
wild embers press
all People are One

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