Friday Nover 24, 2017

I have so much on my mind with my artist residency coming to an end soon. I need to prepare for the conclusion of my research and comments on what I've found out about the history of indigenous women within the city limits of Calgary, Alberta.

What I am going to explore is the murder of an indigenous woman name Rosaline. I don't know what tribe is came from, only that she was murdered here in this city. The trail went on and the man who murdered got off with any jail time served. Since there is a inquiry now open across Canada, it would be interesting to see just what the city did or did not do to get justice for her and her family.

Next week seems like a whole week of preparation of my Friday presentation. As this may turn out to be something that I wasn't really thinking of doing I may just switch gears. I was hoping to interview three women from my community; however, the way things are going for me with the archives I may focus on my sisterhood and their deaths.

I've done a art piece years ago that I could incorporate into my presentation. I just know its going to be very emotional and traumatic for me. This whole sense of self has so much to do with fear based feeling about living next of a major city. I know I live outside the city and I rarely see the homelessness of indigenous women on the streets; however, I know the women as if they were my sisters.

I have stored quite a few articles off the internet via my Facebook account. I'd need to review them, print them and source them on file in case anyone wish further clarification or references. I also, thought I would take a holiday during December, but that doesn't look at its going to happen. My priorities right now is to complete this project. It doesn't seem like much as most of the audience comes from this blog. I do have Facebook; however, the content there is personal in some ways.

A young Lakota man wrote on Facebook (Ohiyesa Locke) "American is not going to speak up for us, we can't be silent about the epidemic of Native Women Missing and Murdered. THEY CAN'T SPEAK SO SPEAK FOR THEM."
https://www.facebook.com/ohiyesa.locke/posts/10213854588094268

I believe I have felt this way my entire life. When people ask me what is it like to live in a First Nations Community or as USA calls it a Reservation, I say this. It's a constant battle to protect and focus on the positives of what was given to me as a blessing. Sometimes I feel like I am the opposite of everything or everyone. What some people say as in whose guiding them spiritually; they would say their grandparents keep their arm steady, as they walk forward in this life. I in my own way know I am different in that rather than just having my grandparents keeping my arm steady. I believe like most there are at least 10,000 grandparents keeping our hands steady. Early this morning, as I read a post on Facebook and saw this person's believe system has having only to ask one thing and that was for his grandparents to keep his arm steady. Maybe, its because I am of the female gender that I've had more fears of not being protected that I ask my grandfathers and grandmothers for many things like healing and protection. I also ask to the 10,000 to come when I pray. I ask for those whom I've loved to come help me heal and for now. I think in my prayers I am going to ask for the 100,000 million grandfathers and grandmothers to come help me, guide me, keep me steady. You may ask how did come up with such a high number. Well, here it goes.

logic says that from the time our ancestors were cannibals and roamed like wild animals 10,000 grandparents made us all who were are today. This being said, when I call on those who I've loved and those who've loved me to come protect and heal me or for me, it's those who have taken their journey home back into the great mystery. So, within my Indigenous family 100 million were murdered and missing. This means that no other race on this earth has had to many within one race be slaughtered. This means for me that 100 million grandfathers and grandmothers combined are here for me to call upon for protection and healing. In a spiritual sense this is the greatest blessing any one person could ever ask for in ones lifetime.

Upon seeing "White Buffalo Calf Woman" I felt such joy and wonder. I knew that the grandfathers and grandmothers were there. I knew that the great mystery they believed in was present. I know I can not change the way a person thinks or believes, as what I've come to understand is only now being acknowledged. Each one of us is connected to another. I hope and I pray for those that I can. I try to pray for myself and for my niece. Life is becoming too short. We need to understand ourselves first. This for me is the hardest thing to do. I think I understand.

Women’s song

Through these ten years I’ve sang this song. Despite the words being pronounced with a male tone. I’ve researched with Dakota speakers and Lakota speakers to try and convert it into a female voice. The result is the translation into Dakota

When I first heard this song, I thought it sounded funny. My mother who was raised speaking, reading and writing in the Dakota language listened to it as well. I further went to a Lakota woman to listen to the wording and hopefully translate it into a woman’s voice as well as have the correct spelling and pronunciation.

I thought I’d write this down as I will eventually will have this on my YouTube channel.

Nȧḣaƞ winyan


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSESJETKU5E&feature=share

Nahun winyan kin         Listen Women   na-ġuƞ wee kin

Bdiheciya ye                  Have Courage    Bdee he chee ya ye

Niye opeca                     get ready            Nee ye opee cha

Nicinca kin ca                your children      Nee chin cha kin cha

oyate kin ye                    your people        O ya tay kin ye

wacin hi yape                 your people are depending on you    Wa chin nee ya pe





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObEVuCJ7QUQ&list=RDaSESJETKU5E

Lakota winyan kin




https://youtu.be/cFjTCecuHA4



https://youtu.be/lueBdyjd0lg

A VERY SERIOUS QUESTION.

This question was posted on my Facebook timeline and I wanted to put some serious thought into this question this morning.

A VERY SERIOUS QUESTION.

Why are there so many native kids in care? Really.

Can parents take care of their kids? Can the community? As a cop having worked with aboriginal communities, I have seen much suffering in Aboriginal families due to alcohol. Kids would have died without intervention.

I think that there is serious disfunction somewhere. An abandonment of hope, or siding with stimulation over kids etc.

What my sisterhood taught me about substance addiction isn't just their desire to side with the stimulus they took over their children. I didn't see this nor do I think my sisterhood comprehended they were making a choice. I saw periods within their induced substance addiction where they were completely conscious about what they were saying and what they were doing like the walking dead.

This is where I believe the separation between substance addiction and behavior addiction split. One can observe the shift in movement from one phase into another. So much focus over these decades focuses on substance addiction and this I believe was only a band aid to the real issue of helping the parent  with their behavior addiction. I heard of this in an extreme cases when addiction counselors are dealing with homeless people with schizophrenia. When the addict has a mental health issue and the counselor is trying to provide them with a safe place to sleep and their client will not take their medication.

It sounds extreme; however, the amount of children in care is extreme. For so many years generations were raised away from parents from their communities. Maybe, its one of the reasons why I am so pro-community based self-help approach. Even in the face extreme behavior having friends who are their through the thick and thin of things is far more important towards a child's mental health.

This labelling of dysfunctional thinking is only in the side of a behavioral addiction. Yes, children's safety is important; however, not every person who is working in some form of social development program is professional enough to properly care to the best needs of any child.

We see this in organized based self-help organizations whose soul purpose to help parents get their children back into their homes and communities. After all the decades of abuse on all sides, their is hope coming from all sides. Children, parents who grew up in this child welfare system and who are helping educated their own communities and indigenous people into how to work through the system. This effort is working. One need only look at Manitoba's Sandy Bay First Nations who brought 50% of their children home.

As a community, not as an individual, as a sisterhood and not just a sister, we can bring our children home. We must help these children and their parents work through mental health issues. Issues that were not their fault to begin with in the first place. Issues that were created generations before we were born into our indigenousness.

If I had a magic wand, I would wave it over these children. I would hope that they would guide their children with help through therapist, counsel, sisterhood, brotherhood and healers to guide them forward.

I dont understand.

• Why are there so many native kids in care?    From last count there are approximately 50,000 indigenous children in foster care in Canada. I can only comment on what I believe is going on. There are generations of indigenous people who were not raised by their parents. From all sources we can safely say that children suffer from being taken away. The trauma of being put out an environment that the child perceived as being safe. When indigenous were taken away there was nothing anything their parents could do. They would be put into jail for amount of time if they resisted.
• As a child growing up there was no such thing as child welfare nor was there any policing of my parents. I really didn't know they were raised in a Indian Residential |School system. I just know that I was loved. My parents tried to fed us with my dad having two jobs and my mom one full time job. It was difficult keeping babysitters. And, maybe that's were the problem is.
• Many children grow up not understanding who they are. Whether they are male or female or when they are pregnant whether they are going to have a litter or a dozen babies in one setting. It may sound crazy; however, when one is raised by people who really don't give a damn about you mental health, as a child wouldn't you wonder what life is all about?
• I've seen all sorts of organization come into my community trying educate us with life skills, addiction program on self-help and self-awareness. I've seen single parents wonder how are they going to handle their children. They are looking for support. The problem isn't for the lack of concern from the parents rather the vision of what life is like outside our cave. Parents want their children to explore; however, to explore in a safe way. It's not easy.
• I grew up in a very progressive community. I lived right next to a big city. In fact, most people who first met one of us thinks were are trying to ACT white because we sound so WHITE. Meaning we don't have an accent or is we do its very minimal. I am using my experience because this is all I have.
• My sisterhood had their own children and we raised them together. If we went out for the night there was always another sister looking after the others children. It never occurred to me that such a structure wasn't had by all. Yet, despite having this in place for their children once the sisterhood moved and were separated is when things started falling apart. I see this within our community. I'm fortunate that their are groups of sisterhoods for my nieces and nephews.
• Yes, when my sisterhood separated from each other they didn't stop their drinking and their need to self medicate over took their need to be amongst others. Despite my sisterhood dying off at a very young age their children were raised. It seemed that once our sisterhood was destroyed so did our lives.
• I helped bury most of my sisterhood. Five sisters from within my sisterhood died. Each having children and each of their children having to grow up without a father or in a few cases their brothers stepped in to help raised their children or one case the father stepped in. Today, I see their grandchildren and children thriving and I know they know my connection to their mothers. My life is much richer than anyone can ever imagine what we shared as sisters. My sisterhood would have given their life for me and I to them. We had are difference and we were not perfect when it came to coping with their substance addictions.  

Can parents take care of their kids? Can the community? 

• I grew up with my sisterhood; however, it was in my teens that I became separated from them. I ran away from home when I was seventeen and for some strange reason my sisterhood ran to where I was after I returned home. They went with each other as a group of young indigenous women.  Five of them to be exact and me I went off to another city with a different agenda. I really didn't know what my sisterhood got themselves into while we were separated on in that after about six years we came together. By this time, three of the sisterhood had children.
• The children's fathers were no where to be found; however, the stories these sisters had about they had done and the trouble they got themselves into while they were in that other city was amazing to me. Just as my sisterhood took care of each other so did they care of each others children. And, they got themselves into trouble doing so. Apparently, they did serve time in a prison for welfare fraud. They explained it to me this way. In this city they would go into a district welfare office seeking help. Each sister would take the others children and their children would be taught to call their aunt, mom. So, that when the social worker came for a home visit the worker would think this young woman this many children. Their welfare cheques added up to quite a large sum each month.
• Now, don't get me wrong. These young indigenous women were taught how to do this by their indigenous common-in-law husbands.  From what I could comprehend this left nothing for them in terms of privacy. My one sister within this sisterhood was with a criminal whose connections were such that in the middle of the night she's told me he'd get a phone call. This phone call would be from his friend who said he's on his way with a groups of their friends to party. It seemed that she couldn't say no, nor could he, or their friends could turn them into the police for fraud. It just seemed like a horrible way to live.
• From being taught to care for each other in a traditional manner to having such sisterhood become corrupt by participating in fraud was what they told me about how they lived. I was fortunate that when I reconnect with them they were not with these men anymore. They seemed like they were trying to settle down and remember we were all under the age of twenty=five years of age.
• Somewhere and somehow the values that my sisterhood that was taught by our grandmothers became corrupt and within the community that we grew up in started to turn against us. I was guilty by association and yet, I really admired my sisterhood. We went places and did things I had never experienced before with a group a indigenous women I grew up with. Again, substance abuse was getting the best of my sisterhood. I realized that if I continued living their lifestyle I would have a substance abuse problem, so after one year of partying with my sisterhood I became their designated driver. I didn't this for three years. I could hand being sworn at when they were drunk because something inside me thought it was the substance within their system that provoked them to treat me this way; however, I had to stop being around them after four years because they were started to swear at me when they were sober.
• As much as I thought they remembered our times together I was starting to realize that they missing parts of their life with me. This was the lowest experience I had with my sisterhood. Within this sisterhood, I've help bury their parents who died from substance addiction, each of my sisterhood died in form or another of substance abuse directly or indirectly as a slow death.
• Today, I write freely about what I think in hopes that someone who read this will be helped the way I was helped. Creator reminds us of the reason we are meant to walk a certain plan in this life we've chosen. Generosity isn't just the act of giving of a material gift rather its also giving of oneself to another or to a cause. Generosity is one of the virtues of the teaching of White Buffalo Calf Woman. When we do something that feels right and we do it to help another. It's important even if it means babysitting or helping a sisterhood with their children.

I owe so much to my sisterhood in all their vulnerability and within all their weakness. I say to them "I love you, I miss you & forgive me for not celebrating life and for not celebrating love. I am grateful for what you've taught me."

This is offensive! Pocahontas was a child. She raped and depicted as a Princess.

Why is the image offensive?

nickiminajVerified 

gdelislediaz@gdelislediaz instagram is refusing to let me cite the Maize of Injustice, an Amnesty International report published in 2007. It’s online and free, available to anyone who is willing enough to just google it.gdelislediazTake a second to understand those statistics within the Maize of Injustice and juxtapose them with the notions utilized in and perpetuated by this mere “illustration” in its fetishism of indigenous women. see if you can as much as attempt to justify why this ignorance in any way is defendable or not even in the least bit harmful. Indigenous women’s narratives, voices and rights have been suppressed long enough and whether you like it or not we will continue to assert our voices.

daytimeformariaTake this shit down nicki!! Why is this not getting any media attention? Please everyone get ahold of media outlets and tag them in this post. She needs to be held accountable. Us native will no longer be silenced.

When it comes to the perception of what makes a indigenous women feel like she is being exploited even by her own people is in the nature society perceives us. Some may call  it a conspiracy theory and other will see it for what it truly is. Every since Disney came out with their depiction of  Pocahontas this myth about how a girl being raped was turned into some sort of love story.

Captain Smith rapes a fourteen year old girl. Then justifies he intercourse as being permitted because the child he raped was an Indian Princess. This whole notion that a "white dude" could and dare not have sex with just any old indigenous girls or indigenous woman, rather he has to elevate her status into that of a Princess. And, this is where this whole notion of Indian Industrial School was thought of as not being the right fit for educating the savage out of the indigenous boys. The Federal government of Canada had to pass a motion in Parliament to decree that there was a need to establish "Indian Residential School."

They realized that by educating only the boys that these boys would go back home and marry indigenous girls who would convert them back into savages. You see, even Captain Smith, he could be seen as having intercourse with a savage. No! she had to be a noble savage to justify he violence against her.

And, isn't this the case with the thousand of murdered and missing indigenous women whose lives ended very violently? This conspiracy theory goes further in why do men find indigenous women repulsive. This notion of indigenous women having some sort of power over men that men lose their morality by having intercourse with one of us. This feeling of lowering ones standards that somehow a man must elevate their wife, girlfriend or partner into something that she isn't by not allowing her to voice her opinion or opinions. I believe that it's this submissiveness that men expect an indigenous women to behave or to become in order to elevate his status.

The Indian Act of Canada is a document that was made to tame the indigenous woman. This law was and is still in power over the sexual discrimination against indigenous women. When I want to travel anywhere in the Americas, I must travel with caution. Since everywhere there are those who wish to kill us. We as indigenous women are the most hunted of all the female species of this world.

People must look at this fact with open eyes. They can not afford to divert the gaze. they can not afford to create a conspiracy theory. We as indigenous women knew we were being killed. We don't know someone from the outside to say that the government was ignoring us. This just didn't happen over night. It just didn't happen when an artist decided to hang up RED DRESSES. I've been there. I've help bury my indigenous sisters of my sisterhood. I feel that I owe my voice to their memories.

These women had a healthy indigenous female sexuality. Society wanted to tame them, and the society where they grew up wanted to tame them. They died way too young. 

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786,635 likes

• nickiminaj🤔😩 which one should get hung up in my Barbie room? @papermagazine @ellenvonunwerth I’m torn between the bad bunnies, the horses & Pocahontas 🤧
• Load more comments
• asapcharm@lil_angel13 Do you know why it’s offensive?
• gdelislediaz@gdelislediaz instagram is refusing to let me cite the Maize of Injustice, an Amnesty International report published in 2007. It’s online and free, available to anyone who is willing enough to just google it.
• lil_angel13@asapcharm I honestly don’t see how this is offensive. It’s JUST a picture. And the character just so happened to be Pocahontas. I swear if the artist had chosen Cinderella, or Snow White people would think this is fine
• jessa_songwriter@jennsells818 I wanted you to see the ignorance we see daily. That's why I'm talking to you not her. I love you too have an amazing day
• asapcharm@jennsells818 You’re saying you don’t need to comment on social media that will never been seen by anybody but here you are being somebody seeing all this shit. Don’t try to act like you’re above everyone , you’re here too typing paragraphs. Lmao😂
• malinusch@nativesamya this is great 👏🏼 and so important!! 👏🏼❤️
• mi55p4rkerPocahontas was 13 at the time, you know this right? Or are you like your brother and promote pedophile shit as well???! Smh!
• asapcharm@nativesamya ✊🏽✊🏽#wearestillhere we don’t need this hyper sexualization
• asapcharm@straunwagnerart it’s gross isn’t it?
• tmariem83This is a cruel thing to post on Native American Heritage Month.
• asapcharm@jminajj Nah you’re just not educated enough. Keep being a lil brainwashed sheep and keep on not questioning anything because it really shows you ignoramus 😂
• newboygenius@blondexblue enlighten me
• _an.xo@jiovani2cute in the real story she was a child who was raped by the people who came from Europe to America 😕
• gdelislediazTake a second to understand those statistics within the Maize of Injustice and juxtapose them with the notions utilized in and perpetuated by this mere “illustration” in its fetishism of indigenous women. see if you can as much as attempt to justify why this ignorance in any way is defendable or not even in the least bit harmful. Indigenous women’s narratives, voices and rights have been suppressed long enough and whether you like it or not we will continue to assert our voices.
• daytimeformariaTake this shit down nicki!! Why is this not getting any media attention? Please everyone get ahold of media outlets and tag them in this post. She needs to be held accountable. Us native will no longer be silenced.
• asapcharm@pitmama2015 It’s fucking sad. I already struggle and this shit just is really mean lol. I was born this way you know, didn’t ask to be this way.
• laurenk.sherman@lil_angel13 well if you was from a indigenous tribe you would see that is problem. She can sexualize herself all she wants, leave us out of it. When your race is the highest in rape, missing & murdered women in the country it's not right.
• realnativesonly@imsolucky00 You would like that wouldn't you? However you don't run shit over here and you ain't gon do shit either.
• kyliejenner21k@daytimeformaria well how do you expect Nicki and other RACES to know that?
• zuleysevillaMaldita negra asquerso puerca

2 days ago

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