BLACK NDNS

lovelylisa22: Buchanan: Being a black Indian at a Chickahominy...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 14:30:29 -0500

lovelylisa22:

Buchanan: Being a black Indian at a Chickahominy pow wow

lovelylisa22: Black Indian (Choctaw) Mance...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:30:47 -0500

lovelylisa22:

Black Indian (Choctaw) Mance Lipscomb

American bluessinger, guitarist and songster.

alostbird: Native American Teens: Who We Are In the Mix is the...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:30:24 -0500

alostbird:

Native American Teens: Who We Are

In the Mix is the Emmy award winning PBS documentary series for teens.What’s it like to be a young Native American today? Teens from throughout the United States share their stories in this In the Mix special co-hosted by rap star and film actor Litefoot. Shot around the country, the program features a champion lacrosse player from western New York, a Grammy-nominated flute player from rural Idaho, and short films made by teens in Alaska and Washington State. A group of young leaders from cities and reservations also weigh in on the issues that affect them every day—common misconceptions and stereotypes about Native Americans, how they balance traditional culture with contemporary concerns, and their hopes for the future.

alostbird: Andrew K.T.H. Lyn, Art Designer Nation(s): ...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:30:30 -0500

alostbird:

Andrew K.T.H. Lyn, Art Designer

Nation(s): Blackfeet/Seminole/Carib

Drew was born in Philadelphia. He has been dancing since he was three years old. He started out with northern traditional dancing and then started grass dancing when he was 7.

DREW is also an artist and owns & operates Xkloosiv clothing company. He hand paints tee shirts, jeans, hats, shoes and other accessories. Drew has also been chosen to be head man dancer for various powwows. He is a chicken dancer and has won many 1st place awards for his dancing. He is the youth coordinator for NNDT and continues to compete all over the country.

Drew is a brown belt in Shotokan & Ju-jitsu. He has been studying martial arts with his father Andrew Lyn, who is the founder of the Ju-jitsu Shotokan Karate Association and his mother Vaughnda Hilton, who is a third degree black belt. Andrew has been training in the martial arts since he could walk.

Andrew has incredible talent in grass dancing and also chicken dancing and hope that he can continue to pursue dancing on a competitive level. Drew loves to compete and has fun. He says “it is all for the thrill and I get to work out and keep the traditions going at the same time. Everybody in my family is active, competitive and still dances, so I will dance as long as I can just like my family.”

jalwhite: nitanahkohe: Just hours prior to the Grammys...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 12:53:30 -0500

jalwhite:

nitanahkohe:

Just hours prior to the Grammys Pre-Telecast earlier this month, Radmilla Cody, a Navajo recording artist and Grammy nominee, tied her mother’s hair into a traditional Navajo bun as they dressed for music’s biggest night. Both wore Navajo attire, with Radmilla in her most prized piece: A pair of moccasins her grandmother Dorothy made for her when Radmilla was a teenager. Dorothy passed away late last year at the age of 97 just before Cody learned of the Grammy nomination. Before walking out the door of a family friend’s home, her mother Margaret embraced her and tearfully said, “I’m very proud of you. You’ve come a long way. You worked so hard for this.” With tears streaming down her cheeks, Cody responded, “Mom you always said, let them talk. You said you’re going to be somebody and here we are.”

The road to the Grammys hasn’t been easy for the former Miss Navajo Nation, who is half black. Growing up on the reservation she endured racial slurs. In 2003 she went to prison for more than a year in connection with drug-dealing activities of her then-boyfriend’s drug dealing, who she has said was physically and mentally abusive. Despite her accomplishments since then, which include earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Relations with a minor in Sociology from Northern Arizona University, many Navajos refuse to forgive and forget. “Someone, (a Navajo), wrote ‘I hate you’ on my Facebook page after I received the Grammy nomination,” said Cody.

At the Nokia Theater for the Pre-Telecast, the family and friends in Team Cody screamed and yelled as if they were at a basketball game on the reservation when host David Alan Grier, actor, comedian and fellow Grammy nominee, introduced Cody as a presenter. It was the first time in Grammy history a Native American had served as a presenter. After introducing herself in Navajo, Cody announced the winners in ten categories. “It was exciting. It was nerve-wracking. I was very nervous but I was so honored (to present),” said Cody.

…Two days after attending the Grammys, Cody learned she is a nominee for a Native American Music Award (NAMA) for Best Female Artist, Record of the Year and Best Traditional Recording. The 14th annual NAMA ceremony will be held, Friday, May 10, at the Seneca Casino & Hotel in Niagra Falls, New York.

[source]

BLACK NATIVE PRIDE!

William (Bill) Pickett was born on this date in 1870. He was a...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:30:43 -0500

William (Bill) Pickett was born on this date in 1870. He was a legendary cowboy of Black and Cherokee descent.

Bill Pickett, the second of 13 children, began his career as a cowboy while in grade school. Pickett soon began giving exhibitions of his roping, riding, and bulldogging skills, passing a hat for donations. By 1888, his family had moved to Taylor, Texas, and Bill performed in the town’s first fair that year. He and his brothers started a horse-breaking business in Taylor, and he was a member of the National Guard and a deacon of the Baptist church.

He signed on with the 101 Ranch show in 1905, becoming a full-time ranch employee in 1907. Soon he moved his wife and children to Oklahoma. From 1905 to 1931, the 101 Ranch Wild West Show was one of the great shows in the country. The 101 Ranch Show introduced bulldogging (steer wrestling), an event invented by Bill Pickett, one of the show’s stars. Riding his horse, Spradley, Pickett came alongside a Longhorn steer, dropped to the steer’s head, twisted its head toward the sky, and bit its upper lip to get full control. Cowdogs of the Bulldog breed were known to bite the lips of cattle to subdue them. This was how Pickett’s technique got the name “bulldogging.”

He later performed in Canada, Mexico, South America, England. He became the first black cowboy movie star. Had he not been banned from competing with White rodeo contestants, Pickett might have become one of the greatest record-setters in his sport. He was often identified as an Indian or some ethnic background other than black to be allowed to compete. Bill Pickett died in 1932, after he was kicked in the head by a horse.

Famed humorist Will Rogers announced the funeral of his friend on his radio show. His grave is on what is left of the 101 Ranch near Ponca City, Oklahoma.

In 1989, years after being honored by the National Rodeo Hall of Fame, Pickett was inducted into the Pro-rodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy at Colorado Springs, Colorado. Bill Pickett is also in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

I’m lightbeam no stopping me: Afro Mexican films

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 14:30:33 -0500

I’m lightbeam no stopping me: Afro Mexican films:

peyoteflower:

De Florida a Coahuila (From Florida to Coahuila) (2009) - directed by Rafael Rebollar Corona, this film documents the history of the town of El Nacimiento de los Negros, Coahuila, where the descendants of the black Seminoles in the United States reside. The black Seminoles were of…

Blacks, Black Indians, Afromexicans: The Dynamics of Race, Nation, and Identity in a Mexican "moreno" Community (Guerrero) (pdf)

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:30:38 -0500

Blacks, Black Indians, Afromexicans: The Dynamics of Race, Nation, and Identity in a Mexican "moreno" Community (Guerrero) (pdf)

NYT: The Cherokees Free Their Slaves Written by Melinda Miller...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:01:00 -0500

NYT: The Cherokees Free Their Slaves

Written by Melinda Miller and Rachel Smith Purvis

Following on the heels of the Emancipation Proclamation, in February 1863 the Cherokee Nation declared that all slaves within its limits were “forever free.” In 1983, the descendants of these slaves, known as the Cherokee Freedmen, were removed from tribal membership rolls and prohibited from voting in Cherokee elections. A series of protracted legal battles over Freedmen citizenship ensued and continue today.

Questions on the status of the Cherokees’ former slaves in tribal life originated in the complicated landscape of the Civil War in Indian Territory, a story of an internal civil war within the larger conflict. Although the Cherokee Nation had initially joined the Confederacy, Principal Chief John Ross and his supporters began discussions with Northern forces during the summer of 1862. These loyal Cherokees convened a meeting of the National Council at Cowskin Prairie and produced two distinct emancipation acts, documents that reverberate in today’s controversies over the legal standing of the Cherokee Freedmen.

Ross had originally rebuffed attempts to become engaged in the war, writing in June 1861: “I have already signified my purpose to take no part in it whatever.” But neutrality proved untenable, and the Cherokees signed a treaty of alliance with the Confederacy in October 1861. The nation raised two regiments; one was under the command of Ross’s nephew-in-law John Drew, while Stand Watie, Ross’s long-time political opponent, led the other.

By 1862, Ross had become disillusioned with the Confederate government. The first major military engagements in Indian Territory proved disastrous for both the Confederacy and the Cherokees. Retreating from Indian Territory, the Confederacy left the Cherokees open to Union advances and without supplies for Cherokee troops and destitute civilians. Although Ross believed the Confederacy was shirking its treaty promises, the Confederate colonel Douglas H. Cooper called upon Ross to fulfill his obligations by ordering all Cherokee men of fighting age to “take up arms to repel invasion.”

Union Capt. Harris S. Greeno was aware of Ross’s dissatisfaction with the Confederacy, and he ordered the arrest of Ross and his family at their plantation home, Rose Cottage, in present-day eastern Oklahoma. They were quickly paroled and escorted to Union territory, and they retreated to his wife’s family home in Philadelphia. Ross would spend the remainder of the war attempting to convince the Lincoln administration of the Cherokee’s loyalty and commitment to the Union cause.

With Ross absent from from Indian Territory, southern Cherokee leaders moved quickly to elect Stand Watie as principal chief and reaffirmed the Cherokee Nation’s treaty with the Confederacy. But in the winter of 1863, Col. William Phillips escorted Union Cherokees into the Cherokee Nation. There, they held a meeting of the National Council to affirm that they, and not Watie and his followers, were the true government of the Cherokee people. This 1863 loyal council opened by denouncing the Cherokee treaty with the Confederacy and insisting they were pressured into the alliance due to a lack of federal protection in Indian Territory. They then quickly moved to address the issue of slavery in the Cherokee Nation. Within the four-day period from Feb. 18 to Feb. 21, 1863, the Cherokee Council passed two separate emancipation acts.

The slavery issue was of such great importance they tackled it first: before they removed Stand Watie and other Confederates from office, before discussing how to deal with the utter devastation the Cherokee people faced in their war-torn country and before John Ross was appointed to represent the Cherokee Nation in discussions with the United States government.

The prominent place of slavery at these council meetings reflected a keen understanding of the nature of emancipation policy within the Lincoln administration. As the Cherokee Nation severed ties with the Confederacy and hoped to rejoin the Union, they were certainly aware of another government that had recently done exactly that: on Dec. 31, 1862, President Lincoln welcomed West Virginia into the Union, with its statehood conditional on its newly written constitution’s including an abolition clause.

The Emancipation Acts themselves further demonstrated the Cherokee Council’s acute awareness of President Lincoln’s policies. They first called for a Cherokee delegation to negotiate with the United States government to emancipate their slaves “upon the Principle of Compensation.” During the initial years of the Civil War, Lincoln had proposed ending slavery in the border states through a gradual dissolution of the peculiar institution, with compensation offered to slave owners for their financial losses. He again endorsed a plan for gradual and compensated emancipation in his annual address to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862. The Cherokee Council’s first Emancipation Act, passed on Feb. 18, was an attempt to take Lincoln up on this offer.

What is surprising, then, is how quickly the Cherokee council issued a second Emancipation Act that specified universal emancipation without compensation. On Feb. 20, the council declared: “Any person or Persons, who may have been held in Slavery are, hereby, declared to be forever free.” Why did Cherokee leaders change such a fundamental aspect of their emancipation plans?

Between Lincoln’s endorsement of compensated emancipation in his annual address and the Cherokees’ plan for compensated emancipation, a watershed had occurred. On Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This action forever altered the parameters of freedom in the United States, and Lincoln would cease his offers of compensated emancipation. The Cherokee Nation had missed its opportunity to receive payment for freeing slaves. Strengthening ties with the Union would require the Cherokees to adjust to Lincoln’s new emancipation policies.

The Cherokees, however, differed from Lincoln and his cabinet over one key issue. There was no serious discussion or consideration of freedmen’s citizenship in the Cherokee Nation. Instead, on Nov. 14, the Cherokee Council passed an act that explicitly denied citizenship to former slaves and required freed slaves remaining in the Nation to obtain work permits. The incorporation of the former slaves of Cherokee masters into the Cherokee citizenry would wait until the 1866 Treaty between the Cherokees and United States.

In the aftermath of freedom, the United States incorporated freed people into the body politic with constitutional amendments outlining their citizenship rights. In the 1866 treaty, federal officials also required Cherokee leaders to grant former slaves and their descendants “all the rights of native Cherokees.” This particular phrase is important, because it did not explicitly state what these rights were - and has been a source of tension between Cherokee leaders and the Cherokee Freedmen ever since.

Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.

Sources: Clarissa Confer, “The Cherokee Nation in the Civil War”; William McLoughlin, “After the Trail of Tears”; Melinda Miller, “Essays on Race and the Persistence of Economic Inequality; Cherokee Nation, 1863 Emancipation Acts and Treaty of 1866; James Oaks, “Freedom National”; Rachel Smith Purvis, “‘Maintaining intact our homogenousness’: Race, Citizenship, & Reconstructing Cherokee”; United States Government, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

Melinda C. Miller, a visiting assistant professor of economics at Yale and an assistant professor of economics at the United States Naval Academy, studies the economic status of the Cherokee freedmen during the decades following the Civil War. Rachel Smith Purvis, a postdoctoral associate at Yale, is revising her manuscript on the Cherokee Nation during the Reconstruction era.

peyoteflower submitted: Video (pt.1) from the Instituto...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:01:00 -0500

peyoteflower submitted:

Video (pt.1) from the Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicacion Educativa about the Black Seminole ndns who settle in Coahuila and formed the town El Nacimiento de los Negros.

Everything You Need to Know About The GOP’s Opposition To Protecting Native American Women From Abuse

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:28:06 -0500

Think Progress:

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager of the Half in Ten campaign for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

As the last window of opportunity to pass a fully-inclusiveViolence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization comes close to shutting in the final days of the 112th Congress, many are wondering why Republican House leadership, particularly Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), are so opposed to the provisions protecting Native American women on tribal reservations. Other Republican leaders — including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), John Kline (R-MN), Mike Simpson (R-ID), Tom Cole (R-OK), and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) — have proposed a reasonable compromise that protects Native women, but it puts them at odds with the Majority Leader.

With the Issa compromise on the table and backed by several House Committee chairs, what are Republicans like Cantor still so concerned about that they’re willing to hold up the landmark law that funds services, strengthens law enforcement for domestic violence, and increases accountability for offenders?

Here’s everything you need to know about the GOP’s opposition to new protections for Native women on tribal lands:

1) Non-Native men will continue to receive a jurisdictional free pass for abusing Native women:

In response to the epidemic rates of domestic violence against Native women on reservations, the Department of Justice issued a legislative proposal that would restore Tribes’ ability to prosecute misdemeanor crimes of domestic and dating violence committed by non-Natives against Native women. This proposal also requires that the non-Native offender either live or work on the reservation and be in an existing relationship with the victim. DOJ statistics show that 3 out of 5 Native women had been assaulted by their intimate partners and 56 percent of American Indian women have non-Indian husbands.

Today on Indian reservations, the local governments don’t have the ability to respond to domestic violence crimes in their community if the perpetrator isn’t Native. Without this ability, non-Native offenders often go unpunished on tribal land because the only ones who can bring them to justice are federal prosecutors who are often hundreds of miles away and lack local resources to properly investigate and prosecute these crimes. The result, according to a recent National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded report, the offenders become emboldened, and the violence escalates to rape and in some cases homicide. On some Indian reservations, the homicide rate of Native women is 10 times the national average.

2) Republicans are more concerned with Non- Native perpetrators than Native victims:

So why do some Republicans like Cantor still have issues with a well-reasoned, narrowly-scoped DOJ proposal to reduce violence against Native women on reservations? An unbalanced concern for the rights non-Native men accused of these crimes. Even though the current Senate version of VAWA includes a full set of constitutional protections for suspects of abuse, including due-process rights and a right to counsel, Cantor and other Republicans continue to stall the VAWA Reauthorization because of baseless constitutional concerns for those accused of abusing Native women.

In the spirit of compromise within their own caucus, Issa and his colleagues proposed a powerful extra protection for defendants in their bill last week: a new right to remove the case to a federal court if the defendant’s rights are violated by a local tribal court. Although advocates for Native women would prefer to see the Senate version passed, this compromise is a reasonable way to get a deal done and improve the system of justice on reservations. It will clarify that all persons who commit a crime of domestic or dating violence on an Indian reservation will be arrested and held accountable, regardless of their race.

3) Local tribal law enforcement is more responsive to Native women:

The Senate version of VAWA would end jurisdictional black holes that give non-Native men a free pass to abuse Native women and evade justice. It would provide local tribal law enforcement with the much-needed ability to investigate and prosecute crimes against Native women in their own communities, just as other state and local authorities do for other victims in the country. Prosecuting these crimes requires sensitive and time-consuming work with family and community members. Tribal prosecutors are down the street on the reservation and work closely with the tribal police who respond to these crimes. Restoring local control will provide the victim, the family, and the community the ability to seek responsive justice locally. There’s no reason that their ability to fully prosecute these crimes should rest on the skin color of the accused abuser.

Today in Poverty: GOP Leadership and Violence Against Native Women

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:24:31 -0500

My question for Congress was and has always been: why did you not protect me, or my family? Why is my life, and the life of so many other Native American women, less important?”

—Deborah Parker, vice chairwoman, Tulalip Tribes, April 25, 2012.

On April 24, Deborah Parker, vice chairwoman of theTulalip Tribesin Washington State, visited Congress regarding an environmental protection matter. She stopped by Senator Patty Murray’s office and asked how the Senate reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was proceeding. Staff members informed her that despite the efforts of Senator Murray and others, provisions to protect Native American women would not be included in the bill.

Parker was devastated. She had been abused as a child and has also witnessed rape and abuse many times on the reservation. Each time the “non-Indian” perpetrator wasn’t prosecuted because tribal authorities only have jurisdiction over Native Americans, and state and federal authorities were unresponsive. This is a crisis not only for the Tulalip Tribes, but also on reservations across the country, where non-Indians are permitted to commit violence against Native women with impunity.

“I don’t feel people understand,” Parker tells me. “On the reservation there is such a feeling of despair—it’s not a matter of is it going to happen, it’swhenis it going to happen? Perpetrators even mock Indian women because they know they will not get prosecuted.”

The statistics are indeed horrific:one in three Native women will be rapedin their lifetimes; two in five are victims of domestic violence; three out of five will be physically assaulted. Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be assaulted—and more than twice as likely to be stalked—than other women in the US. On some reservations, the murder rate of Native women is ten times the national average. According to the Indian Law Resource Center,88 percentof these crimes are committed by non-Indians—the majority of the population residing on reservations is now non-Indian—and US attorneys are declining to prosecute 67 percent of sexual abuse matters referred to them.

As a result, the Department of Justice under the Obama Administration proposed that VAWA reauthorization allow tribal courts to prosecute cases of domestic and dating violence, and violations of restraining orders, where a non-Indian has a clear relationship with a tribal member. It is a limited reform—it doesn’t address stranger-on-stranger violence, rape, or sexual assault, for example. Still, it’s an important advance in addressing a situation which Parker describes as allowing non-Indians to “come on the reservation and commit heinous crimes and walk off and little to nothing occurs.”

After receiving the news from Murray’s staff, Parker attended her next meeting on the Hill. But she didn’t finish it. She returned to Murray’s office and asked to see the Senator.

Murray left the Senate floor within ten minutes and met alone with Parker, whom she has known through many years of working together on tribal issues. The moment Murray saw Parker she said, “You’re it”—that Parker was the person they needed to be a spokesperson on this issue. Murray told her that she would hold a press conference the next day, and that Parker should just “tell the story that’s most important to you—I want people to understand how this is affecting tribes.”

On April 25, Parkertoldof being “one of many girls” violated and attacked as a toddler on the reservation in the 1970s, and how the man responsible was never convicted. She spoke of an occasion in the 1980s, when she hid her younger cousins while listening to the screams of her aunt who was being raped by four or five men—the perpetrators were never prosecuted. She described her realization that “the life of a Native woman was short,” and consequently “fighting hard” to attend the University of Washington, where she studied criminal justice in the 1990s “so that I could be one to protect our women. However, I am only one.” She asked Congress to support the new provisions in VAWA to help protect Native women: “Send a strong message across the country that violence against Native women is unlawful and it is not acceptable in any of our lands.”

It was a turning point in the Senate’s work on the bill. It passed that month with sixty-eight votes, including fifteen Republicans—the kind of bipartisanship that is almost unheard of these days—with the new protections for Native women, and also for undocumented immigrant women and theLGBT community.

But in May the House passed a stripped-down version of the bill that contained none of these key provisions. Only six Democrats voted for it and twenty-three Republicans opposed it. Speaker John Boehner then used aprocedural maneuverto avoid reconciling with the Senate on a final VAWA bill. Five House Republicans—led by Illinois Congresswoman Judy Biggert—wrote aletterto Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor urging them to adopt the stronger Senate provisions and move to a final bill.

Yet the legislation languished—until now.

Perhaps sensing from the 2012 election results that the GOP has a serious problem when it comes torelating to womenwho live on this planet and in this century, Cantor is now negotiating with the Senate andVice President Biden—who sponsored the original VAWA in 1994. Word is Cantor has relented on the provisions for the LGBT community and undocumented immigrant women. He refuses, however, to consider any provision that gives tribes any kind of criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.

While President Obama and the Vice President have met personally with Parker and other tribal leaders—“they get it,” she says—GOP leadership has so far declined. Last week, when Parker and others asked to join a meeting arranged by tribal lobbyists in DC, she says they were initially told “there wasn’t enough room” and that “they would only meet with our two non-Indian lobbyists.” In the end, she and two female tribal leaders were included in the discussion with Cantor’s staff members.

“But why isn’t GOP leadership having us at the table to have this discussion?” says Parker. “If they truly want a solution then you sit down with the very people who this bill affects.”

Still, Parker and others close to the negotiations are hopeful. Republican Representatives led by Darrell Issa and Tom Cole—a member of the Chickasaw Nation—have pushed for a compromise that allows non-Indian defendants the right to remove the case to a federal court if they can prove their rights have been violated by a local tribal court. (Issa tried to offer this proposal as anamendmentwhen the House Judiciary Committee originally worked on the bill in the spring, but GOP leadership didn’t allow a vote on it.)

Sources close to the negotiations tell me that we are now running out of time to pass this bill and that the next 48 hours are crucial. If the final bill isn’t approved, Native American groups who have pushed for this for ten years—and steadily worked on this reauthorization for three years—will be forced to start over from scratch.

“If this doesn’t pass it would be one of the worst messages we could send to Native American women,” says Parker. “It would be devastating to communities all over Indian country, and would send a clear message to perpetrators. It would leave reservations wide open for continued abuse.”

You can tell House Republicans to pass a VAWA that includes these protections here.

After spending over two years in prison, Patricia Spottedcrow...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:06:25 -0500

After spending over two years in prison, Patricia Spottedcrow greets her children when they get home from school.

Oklahoma woman serving 12 years for pot case released from...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 12:04:47 -0500

Oklahoma woman serving 12 years for pot case released from prison

OKLAHOMA CITY — Patricia Spottedcrow once faced 12 years in prison, but on the morning she was released on parole, it took less than 20 minutes to walk free.

Spottedcrow had to call a friend to pick her up from Hillside Community Corrections Center in Oklahoma City, her mother hadn’t even arrived from Kingfisher yet when corrections guards asked Spottedcrow to leave the prison’s grounds.

Her friend drove her to a nearby pharmacy parking lot, so she could reunite with her mother, Delita Starr, and her attorney, Laura Deskin.

“Oh, man, this is wonderful!,” Spottedcrow said. “I’m so excited I can’t take it!”

She was released Thursday morning after completing the community corrections-level portion of her sentence required by Gov. Mary Fallin as a condition of her parole. She entered prison Dec. 22, 2010.

Spottedcrow’s 12-year prison sentence for selling $31 worth of marijuana garnered widespread attention after her story was featured in a 2011 Tulsa World series on women in prison.

She was originally handed a 12-year sentence in a blind plea before a judge for selling a “dime bag” of marijuana to a police informant. It was a first-time offense, but because children were in Spottedcrow’s home when she was arrested, a charge was added for possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor.

Gov. Fallin agreed in July to approve parole for Spottedcrow upon the unanimous recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board.

Corrections officials had told Spottedcrow her release date would be sometime near Dec. 15, but she was told this week it would be even a little earlier than planned.

Starr wiped away tears as she hugged her daughter in the drugstore parking lot.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she said.

Spottedcrow’s reunion with her four children - now ages 11, 6, 5 and 3 - would have to wait a few hours, until the school bus arrived back in Kingfisher. The children were in school and daycare and Starr didn’t want to ruin their perfect attendance records, she said.

The women hugged and thanked all the people who had prayed, written letters and offered support to the family since Spottedcrow began serving her prison sentence in 2010.

“We’ve got a new road and we’ve got to travel it together,” Starr said.

Deskin, Spottedcrow’s attorney, said she first heard about her client’s case through the Tulsa World article and local activists, and was “absolutely shocked” at what had happened in Oklahoma’s legal system.

Now, they plan to focus on the possibility of post-conviction relief for Spottedcrow and possibly modifying the 30-year suspended sentence Starr received for her role in the crime, Deskin said.

[Source: Tulsa World]

mujerdelasnubes: Afro Mexican/Indigenous girl from...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:55:07 -0500

mujerdelasnubes:

Afro Mexican/Indigenous girl from Huazolotitlan, Oaxaca in la Costa Chica

mujerdelasnubes: Afro Mexicana from the Costa Chica of Oaxaca

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:54:46 -0500

mujerdelasnubes:

Afro Mexicana from the Costa Chica of Oaxaca

Carpe Diem, not YOLO: Help Preserve Native American Children and Culture

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:40:24 -0500

Carpe Diem, not YOLO: Help Preserve Native American Children and Culture:

me-less:

Hi friends!

Sadly, each year, 90% of over 700 Lakota children taken by South Dakota’s Department of Social Services are placed in non-Native foster care, impeding these children from learning and furthermore continuing their beloved culture.

Lakota People’s Law Project, a non-profit law firm that is working with the Indian Child Welfare Act directors in South Dakota, we are pushing to make the Bureau of Indian Affairs keep its pledge to hold a summit on Lakota foster care. The summit is 9 months overdue!

We have a petition going around on our Facebook. If you could pass it along, it would help return these children back to their tribes and families. We need as many signatures as possible!

This is the link to the petition: https://www.facebook.com/LakotaPeoplesLawProject/app_128953167177144

If you would like to learn more, visit us at:

www.LakotaLaw.org

lakotapeopleslawproject: Russell Means tribute: Never before...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:37:24 -0500

lakotapeopleslawproject:

Russell Means tribute: Never before seen footage

Viewing the Afro-Mexican Female Revolutionary: Francisco Rojas González's "La negra Angustias"

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:55:00 -0500

Viewing the Afro-Mexican Female Revolutionary: Francisco Rojas González's "La negra Angustias"

mujerdelasnubes: Winner of the Reina Afromexicana pageant in...

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:53:00 -0500

mujerdelasnubes:

Winner of the Reina Afromexicana pageant in California in 2009