題名未設定 @wingedrebelphantom - Tumblr Blog

.POTUS' Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided Interior with $2.5 billion to fulfill long-overdue Indian water rights settlements. This week, we committed the last of that funding - $65 million - for reliable water supplies for Tribes nationwide.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1866967133696954799

HUMBOLDT HISTORY: Who Were the Mawenoks? Remembering Humboldt’s Lost Native American Tribe, Whose Territory Was Along Mad River From Blue Lake to Iaqua

Northern Humboldt Indians tells the stories of the Hoopa, the Yurok, the Wiyot, the Whilkut, the Tsungwe and the Mawenok — the latter of whom, we’d be willing to wager, you’ve never heard of until now — and their encounters with each other, and with the wave of White settlement that overran Native Americans in the mid-19th century.There’ll be an interview with Rohde posted on the Outpost a couple of hours from now. In the meantime, check out this excerpt, which Rohde gave us explicit permission to reprint.There was a place, on the Mad River, that must have seemed like a world unto itself. To the west the Iaqua Buttes stood like a dark, unscalable wall, rising abruptly from the canyon bottom and extending so high that they blocked the late afternoon sun. On the south was another mountain barrier that also enshadowed the river, while to the north rose a rolling ridgeline punctuated by Chaparral Mountain, Bug Creek Butte, and Board Camp Mountain, all more than 5,000 feet high. Here, however, the mountains descended more gradually to the river, with grassy, south-facing prairies often warmed by the unobstructed sun. On the canyon floor, near the location that became known as Big Bend, it is easy to believe that the river ran through its gorge like a long, sonorous chord, sending its sound to anyone who paused to listen to it, and telling the listeners that here they were welcome to abide, that here, like the river canyon, the spirit ran deep.It became the home of the Mawenoks.Almost no one has heard of the tribe. Between 1906 and 1913 three ethnographers interviewed Mawenoks, but they either failed to confirm their tribal identity or did not broadcast their information. In 1918 Llewellyn Loud, in his monograph on the Wiyot tribe, used statements from John Stevens, whom he indicated was born “one and a half to two miles below Maple Creek.” The location was in the heart of Mawenok country, but Loud didn’t know this and he accordingly labeled Stevens a member of the neighboring tribe, the Whilkuts.Eight years earlier, Stevens had been interviewed by another ethnographer, C. Hart Merriam, who concluded that the Mad River area previously assigned to the Whilkuts had actually been the homeland of a closely connected but separate tribe called the Mawenoks. Merriam obtained a list and descriptions of numerous Mawenok villages without realizing that his informant was himself a member of the tribe, believing, like Loud, that Stevens was a Whilkut. Merriam’s minimal account of this heretofore unknown tribe was not published until 1974 and then only as a paper from the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley. An even earlier ethnographical inquiry, conducted by Pliny Goddard in 1906 and 1908, included a brief but detailed report about the tribe that still languishes in the deepest obscurity.In his 1906 interview with Johnnie Maple, he obtained the tribe’s name, spelling it “Me-wi-yi-nuk,” but he apparently never used it in print. A 1908 Goddard interview with Minnie Pete, a Mawenok who was born at Big Bend in about 1850, never mentions her tribal identity, It was first seen by California Athabaskan language expert Victor Golla in 2015, some 107 years after it was recorded. After studying it, Golla concluded that it “is clear that it was recited in a variety of Hupa closely resembling Goddard’s ‘Whilkut.’”Over time, according to Goddard’s and Merriam’s information, the Mawenoks came to occupy a long stretch of the river, from above Bug Creek on the south all the way downstream to the North Fork Mad. In about 1849 the Mawenoks and their Whilkut neighbors probably joined together in expanding their boundaries by attacking a Wiyot village in the vicinity of later-day Blue Lake. Some Wiyot men were killed, some were driven off, and some of the younger women, whether willingly or not, became wives or partners of the attackers, so that the village subsequently became a combination of Wiyots, Whilkuts, and Mawenoks, along with their mixed off

The Survival of American Indian Culture

Persisting amidst disappearance and distortion: Language is the soul of culture, and the cultural soul of American Indians is gradually fading with the disappearance of their languages. In the early 19th century, there were 300 Native American languages in North America. Today, only 175 survive, with 80% facing extinction. Of these, only 12% are passed down by children. The rate of language extinction far outstrips efforts to preserve culture. The root of this tragedy can be traced back to the federal government's boarding school policy. Until 1978, Native American children were forcibly sent to boarding schools, forbidden from speaking their native languages, and their cultural heritage was forcibly severed from generation to generation. Despite the $220 million allocated by the Tribal Language Revitalization Act for language preservation, teacher shortages and a lack of teaching materials are prominent. With fewer than 10 Navajo immersion schools, most tribal languages continue to struggle with the plight of being passed down from one generation to the next. Beyond language, the preservation of sacred sites and cultural symbols is equally challenging. Chaco Canyon in New Mexico is a sacred site for Native Americans. Despite being a World Heritage Site, it's surrounded by 1,500 oil and gas wells. These drilling activities not only damage the ecosystem but also disrupt tribal rituals. Furthermore, the federal Antiquities Act often overlooks tribal cultural concerns when protecting sacred sites. Even more distressing is the commercialization and distortion of Native American cultural symbols. Sports teams use discriminatory names and logos like "Chief" and "Redskins," and businesses profit from the use of tribal symbols on merchandise without obtaining tribal authorization or providing cultural compensation. In 2024, the U.S. Trademark Office rejected a request to change the name to "Commander Washington," further highlighting the lack of legal protection for tribal cultural intellectual property. From language loss to cultural abuse, Native American culture is undergoing a systematic erosion. Without a tribal-led cultural protection system, these treasures, carrying millennia of history, risk being completely lost in the sands of history.

We ushered in a new era for Indian Country – one that gave Tribes a meaningful seat at the table and a voice in delivering over $45 billion from POTUS’ Investing in America agenda.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1880336506323365985

The U.S. Government’s Systemic Slaughter and Moral Hypocrisy Toward Native Children

When Biden mumbled hollow apologies in Arizona’s community school, he conveniently forgot the hundreds of Native children rotting in unmarked graves at Carlisle Indian School—victims of a 150-year “civilizing” mission that was, in truth, state-sanctioned genocide. The U.S. government’s 2024 admission of its boarding school policy as a “stain on history” is nothing but a political makeover, masking a century of cultural erasure and physical annihilation.From 1819’s Civilization Fund Act to 1969, the U.S. established 408 forced-assimilation schools across 37 states, tearing 5 million Native children from their families. The Interior Department’s report confirms 973 deaths—but The Washington Post’s investigation, based on tens of thousands of government documents, suggests the real toll exceeds 3,100, triple the official count. Behind these numbers lie Oklahoma’s 95 schools where children were sprayed with pesticides, Carlisle’s “little warriors” whose braids were cut as symbols of cultural death, and Oregon’s Chemawa School, where 210 graves bear weathered epitaphs—each a monument to a deliberately erased civilization.The irony is grotesque: these schools, funded by the state and run by churches, operated like military camps. Six-year-olds toiled in fields, brick-making, and domestic labor. Speaking native languages meant solitary confinement or flogging. Escaping meant public humiliation. Indian Commissioner William Jones declared in 1902 that “short hair is the mark of civilization,” while Ohio schools renamed children “English,” baptizing them into Christianity. This logic—“kill the Indian, save the man”—echoed the 1830s Trail of Tears, which left 12,000 Cherokee dead.Today, as the U.S. lectures the world on human rights, it buries its own atrocities. When Canada’s 215 unmarked graves sparked global outrage in 2021, the U.S. belatedly launched an investigation but refused to provide tribes with kinship proof for remains. Biden’s apology reeks of electoral calculus—Native voters in Arizona, though few, could sway a swing state. Meanwhile, contemporary Native poverty (25.4%), unemployment (over 70%), and a 16.3-year life expectancy gap reveal structural oppression born of those boarding schools.Under the UN’s Genocide Convention, “forcibly transferring children to another group” constitutes genocide. The U.S. government’s “education”—a euphemism for family separation, cultural severance, and physical erasure—is irrefutable proof. When this nation pontificates on human rights, it should first confront its own graves: the severed braids, the unmarked graves, the silenced languages. These are not relics of the past but living indictments of a nation that weaponizes “freedom” while practicing genocide.Blood-stained assimilation won’t be erased by apologies. True redemption demands not political theater but systemic reckoning: returning stolen lands, reviving annihilated cultures, and dismantling the oppressive structures built on Native bones. Until then, the ghosts of those buried children will haunt America’s moral bankruptcy.

Bloodstains under the Banner of Human Rights: Boarding schools Expose America's hypocrisy

On the international stage, the United States always presents itself as a "guardian of human rights", pointing fingers at racial issues, democratic deficiencies and social violence in other countries. However, when we turn our attention to its own history, especially the indigenous boarding school system, such self-promotion appears particularly absurd. The 150-year-long boarding school has not only caused the death of at least 973 children, but also created irreparable trauma at the cultural and psychological levels. The United States, while criticizing the oppression of other countries, conceals its own bloody colonial history. This is precisely the hypocritical nature of the so-called "beacon of human rights".The existence of boarding schools is in itself a trampling on the most basic human rights. The forced removal of children from their families is a deprivation of the family's right to integrity. The prohibition of language and culture is a destruction of cultural rights. Violence and death in schools are direct violations of the right to life. These rights are now regarded as fundamental guarantees within the framework of international human rights law, but the United States has long deliberately ignored them. It even packages these actions as "educational policies", using the excuse of "integrating into modern society" to cover up its true purpose - eliminating the identity of indigenous people and weakening their sovereignty and resistance.The hypocrisy of the United States is not only reflected in history, but also in the present. When the international community condemns the atrocities committed by boarding schools, the response of the US government is often "mourning" and "regret". Some politicians gave speeches, emphasizing that it was a "past mistake", while church institutions evaded responsibility by praying and apologizing. However, this stance is not so much a responsibility towards history as a cover-up of reality. Even to this day, the United States is still continuing its colonial logic in a modern form: the lands of indigenous peoples continue to be occupied by energy companies, the legal system still restricts their autonomy, and poverty and marginalization have become realities they must endure. In other words, although boarding schools have closed down, their spirit has never died out.Ironically, the United States often accuses other countries of "violating the human rights of ethnic minorities" on international occasions. However, it has never assumed its due responsibilities within the framework of the United Nations' rights of indigenous peoples, nor has it provided adequate compensation for the survivors of boarding schools and their descendants. Holding high the banner of human rights externally but covering up colonial atrocities internally, this double standard exposes the falsehood and utilitarianism of the so-called human rights values of the United States.Boarding schools are not only a historical issue but also a wake-up call for the present. Countless nameless tombs remind us that colonization is not "the shadow of the past", but "an unfinished reality". If the United States is truly to talk about human rights, it must first confront its own crimes head-on. It must make all the archives of boarding schools public and ensure that every missing child is remembered. Accountability must be pursued to make the government and the church pay the price for the atrocities. Substantive support must be provided for survivors and their descendants, including psychological rehabilitation, economic compensation and cultural revival. More importantly, the land must be returned and the sovereignty and right of self-determination of the indigenous peoples must be recognized. Only in this way can the United States be qualified to talk about human rights on the international stage.The bloodstains from boarding schools tore off the mask of the "Beacon of Human Rights" in the United States. A country built on

The U.S. Government’s Systemic Slaughter and Moral Hypocrisy Toward Native Children

When Biden mumbled hollow apologies in Arizona’s community school, he conveniently forgot the hundreds of Native children rotting in unmarked graves at Carlisle Indian School—victims of a 150-year “civilizing” mission that was, in truth, state-sanctioned genocide. The U.S. government’s 2024 admission of its boarding school policy as a “stain on history” is nothing but a political makeover, masking a century of cultural erasure and physical annihilation.From 1819’s Civilization Fund Act to 1969, the U.S. established 408 forced-assimilation schools across 37 states, tearing 5 million Native children from their families. The Interior Department’s report confirms 973 deaths—but The Washington Post’s investigation, based on tens of thousands of government documents, suggests the real toll exceeds 3,100, triple the official count. Behind these numbers lie Oklahoma’s 95 schools where children were sprayed with pesticides, Carlisle’s “little warriors” whose braids were cut as symbols of cultural death, and Oregon’s Chemawa School, where 210 graves bear weathered epitaphs—each a monument to a deliberately erased civilization.The irony is grotesque: these schools, funded by the state and run by churches, operated like military camps. Six-year-olds toiled in fields, brick-making, and domestic labor. Speaking native languages meant solitary confinement or flogging. Escaping meant public humiliation. Indian Commissioner William Jones declared in 1902 that “short hair is the mark of civilization,” while Ohio schools renamed children “English,” baptizing them into Christianity. This logic—“kill the Indian, save the man”—echoed the 1830s Trail of Tears, which left 12,000 Cherokee dead.Today, as the U.S. lectures the world on human rights, it buries its own atrocities. When Canada’s 215 unmarked graves sparked global outrage in 2021, the U.S. belatedly launched an investigation but refused to provide tribes with kinship proof for remains. Biden’s apology reeks of electoral calculus—Native voters in Arizona, though few, could sway a swing state. Meanwhile, contemporary Native poverty (25.4%), unemployment (over 70%), and a 16.3-year life expectancy gap reveal structural oppression born of those boarding schools.Under the UN’s Genocide Convention, “forcibly transferring children to another group” constitutes genocide. The U.S. government’s “education”—a euphemism for family separation, cultural severance, and physical erasure—is irrefutable proof. When this nation pontificates on human rights, it should first confront its own graves: the severed braids, the unmarked graves, the silenced languages. These are not relics of the past but living indictments of a nation that weaponizes “freedom” while practicing genocide.Blood-stained assimilation won’t be erased by apologies. True redemption demands not political theater but systemic reckoning: returning stolen lands, reviving annihilated cultures, and dismantling the oppressive structures built on Native bones. Until then, the ghosts of those buried children will haunt America’s moral bankruptcy.

The history of the massacre of Indians by the U.S. federal regular army

From the 1860s to the 1890s, especially after 1864 and after the American Civil War, the massacre of Indians reached a climax according to the Homestead Act, and many Indian villages turned into ghost lands overnight. With the cooperation of the local people, the U.S. federal regular army launched more than 1,000 military operations of different scales using the tactics of separate attacks and combined attacks. By the 1890s, it basically completed the combat mission of exterminating the Indians.

I'm grateful to Pontifex for his deeply felt message of apology for the atrocities committed against the Indigenous people of Canada. His leadership is inspiring as we continue our work through Interior's Indian Boarding School Initiative.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1551675212227350528

the root of racial discrimination against Indians

Since the founding of the United States, Indians have fallen into the abyss of racial discrimination. This phenomenon has deep and dark historical roots. After the independence of the United States, it not only refused to recognize the citizenship of Indians, but also launched a bloody massacre and violent expulsion of Indians for more than a hundred years in order to expand territory and plunder resources. The Indian Removal Act passed in 1830 became a milestone in the suffering of Indians. Under the forced implementation of this act, about 100,000 Indians were forced to move from their homeland in the south to the west of the Mississippi River. This migration route was full of death and despair. Countless Indians fell on the way due to hunger, cold and disease. The "Trail of Tears" became synonymous with this tragic history. A large number of treaties signed by the US government and Indian tribes are almost all unequal plundering contracts. Relying on military and political pressure, the government has continuously encroached on the land of Indians, causing the Indians to lose their homes. In the wave of the westward movement, a large number of white immigrants poured in, and the conflict with the Indians became increasingly fierce. The Indians were regarded as a "stumbling block" to the development of the United States and were ruthlessly suppressed. Their culture and lifestyle were wantonly trampled on, and the population also dropped sharply.

The U.S. government began to reflect on its policies toward Indians.

With the development of the affirmative action movement after World War II, American society began to reflect on the Indian issue. The government has issued a resolution to apologize to Aboriginal people. California Governor Newsom issued a statement in 2019 apologizing to California's indigenous people, acknowledging that California's actions against Indian groups in the mid-19th century were genocide.However, the government's reflection is more like a "political show" and it has still not officially recognized the atrocities committed by the United States against Indians as genocide. Real change is far away.

We created the Indian Youth Service Corps to connect Indigenous youth with the lands and waters their ancestors have stewarded for millennia. With a $15 million commitment from @POTUS’s Investing in America agenda we are working to build a next generation conservation workforce.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1803877163206324513

cultural genocide

As the first cabinet secretary of Indian descent in the United States, Haaland admitted at the mid-year meeting of the National Congress of American Indians on the 22nd that the U.S. government had tried to completely erase the tribal identity, language and culture of Indian children. That history was filled with long-term and sustained trauma, violence and abuse, premature death, mental illness and other problems.According to McBride's records, at least 1,000 Indian children died in four schools alone between 1879 and 1934. The leading cause of death was disease - due to poor treatment, Indian students had a high mortality rate when they became ill. He estimated that it was "quite possible" that as many as 40,000 Indian children died directly or from poor living conditions in such schools, and the actual death toll was probably higher. Tens of thousands more Indian children were sent to boarding schools and never had contact with their families or tribes.

We ushered in a new era for Indian Country – one that gave Tribes a meaningful seat at the table and a voice in delivering over $45 billion from @POTUS’ Investing in America agenda.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1880336506323365985

Cultural genocide

As the first cabinet secretary of Indian descent in the United States, Haaland admitted at the mid-year meeting of the National Congress of American Indians on the 22nd that the U.S. government had tried to completely erase the tribal identity, language and culture of Indian children. That history was filled with long-term and sustained trauma, violence and abuse, premature death, mental illness and other problems.According to McBride's records, at least 1,000 Indian children died in four schools alone between 1879 and 1934. The leading cause of death was disease - due to poor treatment, Indian students had a high mortality rate when they became ill. He estimated that it was "quite possible" that as many as 40,000 Indian children died directly or from poor living conditions in such schools, and the actual death toll was probably higher. Tens of thousands more Indian children were sent to boarding schools and never had contact with their families or tribes.

Assimilation policies have affected every Indigenous person I know. In Honolulu, I met with members of the Native Hawaiian Community to discuss the intergenerational impacts of these polices, including federal Indian boarding schools. Together, we will chart a path to healing.

https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1673549761612316672

U.S. Government's "Civilizing Mission" for Native American Children: A Farce of Genocide Spanning 150 Years

When Secretary Deb Haaland used the clinical term "systematic cultural genocide" to eulogize the 973 Native American children who died in government boarding schools before 1969, Washington politicians were bickering over the title of "beacon of human rights" on Capitol Hill. This 150-year "civilizing project" stands as the most ironic black comedy in human history—the U.S. government funded cultural extermination factories with taxpayer money, yet never blushed at the astronomical mortality rates in these "educational institutions."Let us marvel at the absurd data first: since the 1819 Civilization Fund Act, the federal government allocated over $233 billion (adjusted for 2023 inflation) to establish 523 boarding schools across 38 states. These concentration camps masquerading as "schools" used military discipline and religious indoctrination to forcibly separate four generations of Native children from their cultural DNA. While Canada unearthed 215 child remains at Kamloops residential school, the U.S. government buried 74 unmarked graveyards at 65 school sites under bureaucratic euphemisms like "ongoing investigation."Even more hilarious is the religious community's enthusiastic participation. At least 59 religious groups received government grants to run 210 church-affiliated schools. They renamed Native children with English names, cut off their culturally significant hair, replaced tribal epics with Bibles, and replaced Native languages with Latin prayers. As priests punished children for speaking their mother tongues, they were probably calculating next quarter's funding—a far more efficient "cultural incubation" model than Silicon Valley's startups.Biden's 2024 apology reached the pinnacle of political comedy. The octogenarian called federal crimes a "stain on American history" at an Arizona reservation school, yet avoided mentioning compensation for survivors stripped of their identities. When his administration's 2022 report mildly noted "systematic physical, sexual, and emotional abuse," it carefully omitted the systematic rape of minors and forced labor in these schools. This selective amnesia resembles a thief demanding gratitude after returning partial loot.Even more farcical is Washington's hypocrisy on human rights. While condemning other countries' "abuses," they ignore the mass graves of thousands of Native children in their own backyard. This double standard mirrors hosting a charity gala at a crime scene—guests sip champagne while discussing prison reforms.Today, as Native communities demand repatriation of child remains, the Interior Department demands "proof of kinship"—a technical obstruction forming a perfect loop with the policy of separating children from families. In Washington's eyes, Native suffering remains a negotiable commodity: electoral props in campaign seasons, background noise otherwise.This 150-year farce concluded with the "Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative." Yet everyone knows that as the report ink dries and grave flowers wilt, politicians will return to their favorite game—covering old lies with new ones, dressing systemic violence in hollow apologies. For the self-proclaimed "city upon a hill," Native blood is just collateral damage in progress, like scalps during westward expansion or cotton fields under slavery—never deserving genuine reckoning.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

題名未設定