We must think of our human commonality.

CBC News @CBCNews · 

'We have to think of ourselves as human beings. Instead of us and them, it should be we' http://cbc.sh/yDFFXGe 

 

pic.twitter.com/GjBgO1ZNlS

 

 

The Government Keeps Native Americans In Poverty

Forbes

5 Ways The Government Keeps Native Americans In Poverty

By Forbes Opinion @ForbesOpinion

As long as tribes are denied the right to control their own resources, they will remain locked in poverty and dependence.

View on web

 Pam van Hylckama ‏@BookaliciousPam 

Five ways the government keeps Native Americans in poverty. http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/13/5-ways-the-government-keeps-native-americans-in-poverty/ …

 

Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling

 

 HABS photograph: Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling c.1400, Arizona

Heritage Documentation Programs

Heritage Documentation Programs administers HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey), the Federal Government's oldest preservation program, and companion programs HAER (Historic American Engineering Record), HALS (Historic American Landscapes Survey), and CRGIS (Cultural Resources Geographic Information Systems). Documentation produced through the programs constitutes the nation's largest archive of historic architectural, engineering, and landscape documentation.



Link:  http://www.nps.gov/history/hdp/

 HABS photograph: Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling c.1400, Arizona

Crazy Horse

Photo attributed to Crazy Horse 

www.crazyhorserifles.com

Tashunca-uitco
(1849-1877)

Celebrated for his ferocity in battle, Crazy Horse was recognized among his own people as a visionary leader committed to preserving the traditions and values of the Lakota way of life.

Even as a young man, Crazy Horse was a legendary warrior. He stole horses from the Crow Indians before he was thirteen, and led his first war party before turning twenty. Crazy Horse fought in the 1865-68 war led by the Oglala chief Red Cloud against American settlers in Wyoming, and played a key role in destroying William J. Fetterman's brigade at Fort Phil Kearny in 1867.

Crazy Horse earned his reputation among the Lakota not only by his skill and daring in battle but also by his fierce determination to preserve his people's traditional way of life. He refused, for example, to allow any photographs to be taken of him. And he fought to prevent American encroachment on Lakota lands following the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, helping to attack a surveying party sent into the Black Hills by General George Armstrong Custer in 1873.

When the War Department ordered all Lakota bands onto their reservations in 1876, Crazy Horse became a leader of the resistance. Closely allied to the Cheyenne through his first marriage to a Cheyenne woman, he gathered a force of 1,200 Oglala and Cheyenne at his village and turned back General George Crook on June 17, 1876, as Crook tried to advance up Rosebud Creek toward Sitting Bull's encampment on the Little Bighorn. After this victory, Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull and on June 25 led his band in the counterattack that destroyed Custer's Seventh Cavalry, flanking the Americans from the north and west as Hunkpapa warriors led by chief Gall charged from the south and east.

Following the Lakota victory at the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and Gall retreated to Canada, but Crazy Horse remained to battle General Nelson Miles as he pursued the Lakota and their allies relentlessly throughout the winter of 1876-77. This constant military harassment and the decline of the buffalo population eventually forced Crazy Horse to surrender on May 6, 1877; except for Gall and Sitting Bull, he was the last important chief to yield.

Even in defeat, Crazy Horse remained an independent spirit, and in September 1877, when he left the reservation without authorization, to take his sick wife to her parents, General George Crook ordered him arrested, fearing that he was plotting a return to battle. Crazy Horse did not resist arrest at first, but when he realized that he was being led to a guardhouse, he began to struggle, and while his arms were held by one of the arresting officers, a soldier ran him through with a bayonet.




Link: http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/crazyhorse.htm

Never seen nothing like this before

 

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=153...

http://www.facebook.com/tashunka.witko

"When the Night Was Young" 

- ROBBIE ROBERTSON

 LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VXbt_A6zgw#t=184

Ancient Pueblo Peoples: Leave These Southwest Ruins Alone.

Op-Ed Contributor

Leave These Southwest Ruins Alone

Wren McDonald

By DAVID ROBERTS

Published: December 22, 2013

It has been called the best preserved ruin in the Southwest. 
Built in the 13th century by Ancient Pueblo peoples (Anasazi*), its 20-odd rooms splendidly fill an oval sandstone alcove in an obscure canyon on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. 

Nowadays, many people are not obeying the prohibition against entering the site nor obtaining the permit needed to hike the canyon — that of the Navajo Nation itself. 

The ruins and rock art left behind by the Ancient Ones all over the Southwest constitute, arguably, our country’s richest archaeological heritage. And they stand as mute testimony to a profound mystery — the sudden abandonment by the Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the whole of the Colorado Plateau in the years just before the beginning of the 14th century. 

Many of the places where the Anasazi once flourished are not only uninhabited today; they are so remote that it can take several days of backpacking through trail-less, tortuous canyons to reach them. 

Scattered about these ruins still lie broken pieces of painted pottery, chert flakes from which stone tools were made and corncobs filling granaries where the last dwellers left them. Under the dirt sleep the dead who made this world cohere. 

Yet no prehistoric sites in the U. S. are more fragile and vulnerable.  

A century and a half of looting and vandalism has severely damaged such monumental villages as Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde and the cave dwellings of Bandelier National Monument. 

By now, all that saves the still-pristine sites such as the one on the Navajo reservation is their obscurity and the difficulty of getting to them. 

With my fellow aficionados of the canyon country, I adhere to a rigid ethic: When you visit the ruins and rock art, disturb nothing, and if you write about them, be deliberately vague about where they are. 

The most ominous new trend is the proliferation of websites giving the GPS coordinates of those prehistoric ruins and rock art panels. Armed with those numbers, the most casual curiosity seeker need not even read a map: One can simply home in on the place with device in hand. 

And it is those folks, I believe, who are most likely to take home pots or arrowheads as souvenirs, or to damage the stone-and-adobe rooms as they clamber through them.

Can anything be done to reverse this trend? Americans are as fond of gizmos like the GPS as they are of guns. The Navajo Nation cannot be expected to post a year-round guard at that matchless ruin in the obscure canyon or at others in the remote reaches of the reservation. And government agencies cannot police the thousands of sites on federal land all over the Southwest. 

Educating the public may be the only hope. We can take heart in the virtual disappearance of some of the more rapacious crimes against Southwestern prehistory. In the early decades of the 20th century, for instance, ranchers and locals made a sport of using the petroglyphs for target practice. Their bullet scars are as indelible as the surreal humanoids carved so long ago into the sandstone.

David Roberts is the author of books about adventure and Western history, including “In Search of the Old Ones.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on December 23, 2013, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline:

 Leave These Southwest Ruins Alone.

 *The word Anaasází is Navajo for "Ancient Ones" or "Ancient Enemy".

 

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Read more @ Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/leave-these-southwest-ruins-alone.html?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20131223&_r=0

 

 .......................................

 

Ancient Pueblo Peoples

Ancient Pueblo peoples or Ancestral Pueblo peoples were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States, comprising southern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado.

 

 

 Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde

 

 

"T" shaped doorway at Balcony House. 

Emmett Harryson, a Navajo, in doorway,1929

 

Doorways, Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

They lived in a range of structures, including pit houses, pueblos, and cliff dwellings designed so that they could lift entry ladders during enemy attacks, which provided security. 

 
 Prehistoric roads and great houses in the San Juan Basin

Archaeologists still debate when this distinct culture emerged. The current consensus, based on terminology defined by the Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence around the 12th century BCE, during the archaeologically designated Early Basketmaker II Era. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers wrote that the Ancient Puebloans are ancestors of contemporary Pueblo peoples.

Archaeologists referred to one of these cultural groups as the Anasazi, although the term is not preferred by contemporary Pueblo peoples.  The word Anaasází is Navajo for "Ancient Ones" or "Ancient Enemy".  

Ancient Pueblo peoples Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Pueblo_Peoples

National Park Service

http://www.nps.gov/chcu/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

http://www.nps.gov/hfc/

George A. Grant photographer for National Park Service

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_A._Grant

Secret Bids Guide Hopi Indians’ Spirits Home

Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Alain Leroy, owner of an auction company in Paris, surrounded by sacred Hopi spirit masks.

By TOM MASHBERG

Published: December 16, 2013


The auction in Paris was set to move briskly, at about two items a minute; the room was hot and crowded, buzzing with reporters.

More than 100 American Indian artifacts were about to go on sale at the Drouot auction house, including 24 pieces, resembling masks, that are held sacred by the Hopi of Arizona. The tribe, United States officials and others had tried unsuccessfully to block the sale in a French court, arguing that the items were religious objects that had been stolen many years ago.

Now the Annenberg Foundation decided to get involved from its offices in Los Angeles. It hoped to buy all of the Hopi artifacts, plus three more sought by the San Carlos Apaches, at the Dec. 9 sale and return them to the tribes. To prevent prices from rising, the foundation kept its plan a secret, even from the Hopis, in part to protect the tribe from potential disappointment. Given the nine-hour time difference, the foundation put together a team that could work well into the night, bidding by phone in the auction in France.

The foundation had never done something like this before — a repatriation effort — and the logistics were tricky, to say the least.

Two staff members in Los Angeles, one a French speaker, were assigned to the job. The foundation also quietly arranged for a Paris lawyer, Pierre Servan-Schreiber, who had represented the Hopi pro bono in the court proceeding, to serve as lookout in the auction room.

He stood in the back, on the phone to the foundation. Whispering updates to him was Philip J. Breeden, a cultural attaché from the United States Embassy.

“It was intense, like a movie,” Mr. Servan-Schreiber said.

But camouflaging the role of the foundation was crucial.

“I knew nothing good would come out of it if the house knew there were people out to get the whole thing,” he said. “I was sure that would jack up the prices.”

The sale had been assembled by the auction house EVE with pieces from a variety of American tribes that were held by a number of French collectors, all of whom said they had owned the items for many years and had good title to them. Several collectors said they had been impressed by prices realized at an April auction of 70 Hopi artifacts.

The tribe had been angered by the earlier sale as well, which like this auction featured vibrantly decorated Hopi headdresses, known as Katsinam. The tribe, which had gone to court to block both sales, believes the items are not simply religious, but living entities with divine spirits.

Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, vice president and director of the foundation who lives in Paris, had followed the legal battle in the French news media. After the Hopi lost in court on Dec. 6, he went to the auction house to preview the artifacts, all of which are more than a century old.

“These are not trophies to have on one’s mantel,” Mr. Weingarten would say later. “They are truly sacred works for the Native Americans. They do not belong in auction houses or private collections.”

Mr. Weingarten had his California staff tally the presale estimates from the auction catalog and confirm that the objects were authentic. The staff members also became familiar with the Hopi belief system and built a database that would allow them to follow online the bidding on the objects they wanted. Mr. Weingarten approved a budget of $500,000 to $1 million to buy all 27 disputed Native American lots — the 24 masklike Hopi artifacts and three items of divine significance to the San Carlos Apache, also in Arizona. To do so he tapped into a discretionary fund set aside for individual projects.

“It was a leap-of-faith kind of moment for us,” said Leonard J. Aube, executive director of the foundation, which was founded by Walter H. Annenberg, the publisher, philanthropist and diplomat. “Not a lot of foundations are geared up for this kind of clandestine, late-night activity.”

At one point, the owner of the EVE auction house, Alain Leroy, said he had noticed that one phone bidder was grabbing up the disputed Hopi objects and told an employee to check into it. Reassured that the buyer had wired money ahead of time and was legitimate, he says he nonetheless grew frustrated and even muttered aloud that he hoped the secret bidder would “leave some for the others.”

Members of the Hopi tribe were also watching the sale online from Arizona. Unaware of the forces at work on their behalf, they said they became dispirited as item after item sold. Sam Tenakhongva, a cultural director for the Hopi, said when he turned off his lights at 2 a.m., he felt he was saying goodbye to the spirits embodied in the headdresses.

The foundation, however, had enjoyed marked success in the bidding. By the end of the auction, it had spent $530,695 and bought all but three of the 24 Hopi objects and the three other Apache artifacts that the foundation had sought.

And one of the three, a Hopi headdress featuring antelope antlers, had been bought by Mr. Servan-Schreiber on behalf of a couple, Marshall W. Parke, of the private equity firm Lexington Partners, and his wife, Véronique, who had instructed him to obtain what he could as a gift to the Hopis.

Mr. Servan-Schreiber said when it was his turn to bid, he took care to inform the foundation people, “so we wouldn’t start bidding against each other.”

The foundation lost out on only two items, both times, participants said, because of miscommunication. But they secured the auction’s priciest lot, a Hopi Crow Mother headdress that sold for $130,000. The event, which was over in a quick hour, generated $1.6 million in sales.

“It’s a good outcome for the Hopi but not the collectors, I suppose,” Mr. Leroy, the auction house owner, said of the foundation’s tally. The Hopi did not learn of their tribe’s good fortune until several hours later when the foundation sent an email alerting them to its clandestine purchases. Mr. Aube said the Annenberg Foundation, which focuses on civic and community projects, is consulting with the Hopi on how best to return the Katsinam.

The objects, surreal faces made from wood, leather, horsehair and feathers and painted in vivid reds, blues, yellows and oranges, cannot be encased in Bubble Wrap, for example, because it would be seen as suffocating the divine spirits. The Hopi have not identified their plans for these artifacts on their return, but they are not viewed as art objects or housed in museums. Typically, Katsinam are still used in spiritual ceremonies or are retired and left to disintegrate naturally.

For Mr. Tenakhongva, the fact that the Katsinam had to be bought and paid for, even by benefactors, was a bittersweet nod to the reality that some American Indian artifacts have become highly sought, expensive commodities.

“No one should have to buy back their sacred property,” he said. “But now at least they will be at home with us and they will go to rest.” 





Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/arts/design/secret-bids-guide-hopi-indians-spirits-home.html?pagewanted=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131217