Changing Elizabeth Warren’s story to one about Native America – IndianCountryToday.com
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Category: The Americas,
We thought the Incas couldn’t write. These knots change everything
The Incas left no doubt that theirs was a sophisticated, technologically savvy civilization. At its height in the 15th century, it was the largest empire in the Americas, extending almost 5000 kilometers from modern-day Ecuador to Chile. These were the people who built Machu Picchu, a royal estate perched in the clouds, and an extensive network of paved roads complete with suspension bridges crafted from woven grass.
…The Incas may not have bequeathed any written records, but they did have colorful knotted cords. Each of these devices was called a khipu (pronounced key-poo). We know these intricate cords to be an abacus-like system for recording numbers. However, there have also been teasing hints that they might encode long-lost stories, myths and songs too.
…Recent breakthroughs have begun to unpick this tangled mystery of the Andes, revealing the first signs of phonetic symbolism within the strands. Now two anthropologists are closing in on the Inca equivalent of the Rosetta stone. That could finally crack the code and transform our understanding of a civilization whose history has so far been told only through the eyes of the Europeans who sought to eviscerate it.
We thought the Incas couldn’t write. These knots change everything | New Scientist
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Hirono grills Supreme Court nominee for views on Native Hawaiians that he went on record with
via Hirono grills Supreme Court nominee for past views on Native Haw – Hawaii News Now – KGMB and KHNL
Any official with any significant number of native americans in their district is doing their constituents a huge disservice if they vote to confirm this racist.
Teenage business owner aims to revitalize Blackfoot language
A young entrepreneur from the Siksika First Nation plans to use profits from his business to fund language lessons for Indigenous youth.
Teenage business owner aims to revitalize Blackfoot language | Globalnews.ca
very cool!
Immigrant debate wrongly includes indigenous people
We have been very focused these days on immigration and there has been much ink spilled on the matter. But there is a portion of this debate that presumes that all people living in North America are immigrants, even Native Peoples.
…The way in which the United States has mistreated our ancestors is beyond tragic – it is by today’s standards, criminal. Terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, dispossession, cultural genocide are how we should teach the true history of the United States. Let’s stop kidding ourselves by telling each other fairy tales, and truly embrace the reality of the past, not to create a sense of national guilt or embarrassment, but more so that we don’t repeat those same mistakes.
Immigrant debate wrongly includes indigenous people
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Artifacts from Central Texas site date back 16,000 years
Newly discovered prehistoric Native American artifacts found in the dirt near Florence date back 16,000 years which makes them the oldest man-fashioned tools ever found in North America.
…Gault bears evidence of continuous human occupation beginning at least 16,000 years ago, and now perhaps earlier, which makes it one of a few but growing number of archaeological sites in the Americas where scientists have discovered evidence of human occupation dating to centuries before the appearance of the Clovis culture at the end of the last ice age about 13,500 years ago.
…Collins says evidence at Gault shows “cultural manifestations at least two thousand years before the appearance of Clovis.”
…For decades archaeologists have subscribed to the “land bridge” theory when considering how man got to this continent.
But what GSAR and others now suggest is this part of the world was populated far earlier than first thought and those who were here back then probably got here by boat, not land bridge.
Most who study the issue believe Clovis technology spread through the indigenous population as those “Clovis” people moved across the land, but Collins now believes “Within a wider context, this evidence suggests that Clovis technology spread across an already regionalized, indigenous population,” he wrote.
…”The site was occupied intensively during all major periods of the prehistoric era,” an article published in Texas Beyond History, says.
Artifacts from Central Texas site date back 16,000 years
Wild!
Underneath ancient Mexican temple, archeologists find an even older one
A pyramid in Morelos (around 40 miles south of Mexico City,) was damaged by the quake. While assessing how much the quake had messed the ancient structure up, Archaeologists discovered that, underneath the pyramid, there was an even older temple that they hadn’t known was there.
From The BBC:
The temple is nestled inside the Teopanzolco pyramid in Morelos state, 70km (43 miles) south of Mexico City.
It is thought to date back to 1150 and to belong to the Tlahuica culture, one of the Aztec peoples living in central Mexico.
The structure is dedicated to Tláloc, the Aztec rain god.
Archaeologists say it would have measured 6m by 4m (20ft by 13ft). Among the temple’s remains they also found an incense burner and ceramic shards.
Underneath ancient Mexican temple, archeologists find an even older one / Boing Boing
Wild!
4 Environmental Activists Are Killed Every Week
Latin America is by far the world’s most dangerous place to be an environmental defender. Almost 60 percent of the environmental killings recorded in 2017 took place in the region.
Mexico’s tropical forests, for example, have been ravaged by everything from illegal cattle ranching to avocado farming. In January 2017, Isidro Baldenegro López, a prominent indigenous activist who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for his work protecting the forests of the Sierra Tarahumara mountain range in northern Mexico from logging, was shot dead.
…The Global Witness report records several massacres in countries such as Brazil and the Philippines ― in the latter country, the military reportedly killed at least eight indigenous people in December as they tried to protect their land from a coffee plantation.
Brazil remains the most deadly country for environmental activists, with 57 murders last year ― the highest ever recorded by any country. Twenty-two members of one tribe ― the Gamela ― were assaulted in one land-grabbing incident. Some had their hands cut off.
4 Environmental Activists Are Killed Every Week So We Can Have Snacks, Meat And Coffee | HuffPost
Sigh….
Immigrant ‘was offered reunification with child if he agreed to leave’
Illegal immigrant separated from his six-year-old daughter at the border says he was offered to be reunited with his child at the airport if he agreed to deportation.
…Immigrants who crossed into the United States have been told that they would be able to get their children back in exchange for agreeing to immediately leave the country, it has been reported.
…Immigration lawyers have advised him to revoke the paperwork he signed and appeal for asylum before an immigration judge.
Carlos is currently being housed at a privately run adult detention center in Polk County, Texas, some 75 miles outside of Houston.
He said that his daughter was taken from him on the day he went to a McAllen court to plead guilty to illegal entry.
Carlos said that he was told his daughter would be taken to an aunt in California, but this was ‘pure lies,’ he said.
‘She’s a prisoner,’ he said.
Immigrant ‘was offered reunification with child if he agreed to leave’ | Daily Mail Online
…And then the governments lies about it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat…..
There Is No Immigration Crisis
While it may benefit Democrats politically to take a harder line on immigration, that doesn’t mean it’s better policy—and political commentators should stop saying otherwise.
…It may be true that Democrats would benefit politically by taking a harder line on illegal immigration, as Bill Clinton[ benefited] in the [1990’s] by taking a harder line on welfare and crime. I’m not sure. The contention is plausible but difficult to prove. Regardless, family detention is a terrible response to a largely fictitious crisis. It would be lovely if shrewd politics and sound policy always went hand in hand. But it’s important for commentators to acknowledge that, often, they don’t.
…They call illegal immigration a crisis—not just a political crisis for Democrats because Trump is using it to rally support, but an actual crisis because undocumented migrants are deluging America at the border.
…This is misleading. Over the last decade, illegal immigration has been going down.
…By historical standards, this isn’t a “mass movement.” It’s the opposite. And illegal immigration is unlikely to return to the levels of the [1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s] anytime soon for one simple, and under appreciated, reason: Mexican women are having fewer children. Since the early 2000s, the number of Mexicans being caught at the border has collapsed. Even a strengthening U.S. economy hasn’t lifted the numbers, because the young Mexican men who in past decades crossed the border today don’t exist in the same numbers. That’s because, since 1960, the Mexican birthrate has dropped from almost seven children per mother to just over two. Which means the pool of potential migrants is far smaller.
…The children Trump separated from their parents are overwhelmingly Central American. But Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador don’t have large populations. Combined, they contain about one-quarter as many people as Mexico. Frum and Sullivan both link America’s immigration crisis to Europe’s. But in scale, the problems are quite different. Europe is near large countries with high fertility rates. (The fertility rate is close to three in the Middle East and North Africa and near five in sub-Saharan Africa). The United States is not.
… It’s not true that the only way the government can keep track of asylum seekers is by imprisoning them. As Dara Lind has noted in Vox, the Obama administration (while, to its discredit, it detained some immigrant families) also experimented with two highly successful alternatives. The first was called “Community Supervision.” Asylum seekers were released to the care of government-funded social workers, who helped them find attorneys and places to live, and worked to ensure they showed up to court. The other was called “Intensive Supervision Alternative Program.” Asylum seekers were released with ankle bracelets linked to an app on immigration officials’ phones. The officials also regularly called and visited them. Under both programs, according to the people who ran them, asylum seekers showed up for their proceedings at rates of between 97 and 99 percent. The programs were also vastly cheaper than detention. The Trump administration closed the largest Community Supervision program last year.
…Yes, America takes far too long to adjudicate—and, when necessary deport—asylum seekers. But that’s largely because past administrations have showered money on the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) agencies, which catch undocumented immigrants, while starving the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which employs the judges who hear their cases. Rather than respond to the current backlog by denying asylum seekers due process, as Trump wants, the government could hire many more immigration judges.
Another way to humanely reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the Rio Grande is to make it easier for Central Americans to apply for refugee status in their home countries, as the Obama administration began doing when it established refugee processing centers in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in 2014.
…In a 2007 study of undocumented Mexican migrants, Wayne A. Cornelius of the University of California at San Diego and Idean Salehyan of the University of North Texas found that “tougher border controls have had remarkably little influence on the propensity to migrate illegally to the USA.” Surveying the academic literature for The Washington Post this March, Anna Oltman of the University of Wisconsin at Madison noted that, “researchers increasingly find that deterrence has only a weak effect on reducing unauthorized immigration.”
…Politicians can’t be purists. But if political commentators are going to endorse such moral compromises, it’s crucial that they at least acknowledge those compromises for what they are. The truth is that in the United States today, immigration is a challenge but not a crisis—except to the degree Trump makes it one. The United States can expedite and improve its asylum process, and reduce the number of people coming across the border, without putting families behind bars. Immigration enforcement does not require inhumanity. And saying so has never been more important than it is now.
There Is No Immigration Crisis – The Atlantic
Amen.
U.S. border deaths rise on family, child migrants: patrol agency
The number of migrants dying from extreme heat on the U.S.-Mexico border rose 55 percent in the past nine months after an increase in unaccompanied children and families trying to enter the United States illegally, the U.S. government said on Monday.
Heat-related deaths, the main cause of migrant fatalities on the U.S. southwest border, rose to 48, up from 31 over the same period in 2017, said U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora.
…The death toll is expected to rise in the triple-digit heat of summer months as vulnerable, unacclimatized immigrants attempt to cross harsh environments, putting border fatalities on track for a year-on-year increase in 2018, Zamora said.
…Humanitarian groups such as San Diego-based Border Angels say the main cause of rising deaths is tighter border security and law enforcement, such as the recent imposition of a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossers. That has prompted migrants to make long treks through hostile terrain via remote crossing points.
…Until four years ago, the vast majority of migrants arrested at the border were Mexicans. With improved economic conditions in Mexico, their number has fallen, as have overall arrests on the border, which dropped to 303,916 in 2017, down 26 percent from 2016, according to Border Patrol data.
Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador now top the list of people arrested at the southern border as gun and gang-related violence drives an exodus from those countries, according to U.S. government data.
…“You really know someone is leaving a bad situation if they’re willing to risk their lives and their children’s’ lives for a chance to live,” said Cordero, 36, a water drop leader.
Morones suspects Border Patrol agents of destroying the water supplies left by his group. One such act was caught on video in Arizona by another humanitarian group called No More Deaths.
U.S. border deaths rise on family, child migrants: patrol agency | Reuters
hmmm
De Blasio: Feds have ‘no game plan’ for reuniting 300 immigrant kids in NYC with parents
Because the federal department of Health and Human Services has refused to provide information about how many children have been brought to New York, the city has resorted to reaching out to each provider with a contract with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. In the city, that’s Cayuga Centers, Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Guardian Services. Across the three, there are about 300 children here as a result of the policy, de Blasio said.
Most are at Cayuga — where a worker laid out the challenges involved with reaching their parents last week.
“She said some kids are old enough that they know the names of their relatives and they know the phone numbers. She said some kids have a scrap of paper in their pocket with a phone number for their mother or their grandmother, where they can reach them. She said younger kids a lot of time don’t have that, or they had the scrap of paper and they lost it,” de Blasio said.
…That the federal government has refused to provide information about the children to the city and the state is unprecedented, de Blasio said.
“People should see this as a very dangerous precedent where even senators and congress members can’t go into the centers in Texas and the federal government is refusing to give us a straight answer about how many kids are involved,” de Blasio said.
Aghhhhhhhhhhhh
Migrants reportedly told they could reunite with children if they agree to deportation.
Detained migrants who have been split up from their children are reportedly being told they will be able to get their kids back if they agree to be deported. The Texas Tribune cites a 24-year-old Honduran man who is being detained in Texas and claims to have abandoned his asylum case out of “desperation” to see his six-year-old daughter. Two immigration attorneys also confirmed that they had heard about similar offers to other detained migrants.
…. In a fact sheet released Saturday night, the Department of Homeland Security says parents can request whether they want their children to be deported with them. In the past many have chosen to be deported without their children.
Even with a process supposedly in place, the Department of Homeland Security statement doesn’t detail how long it will take to reunite the 2,053 children currently in the government’s custody with their families.
…For now, the Port Isabel detention center in Texas has been set up as “the primary family reunification and removal center,” the statement said. For many, reunification likely won’t be simple to coordinate considering dozens were “being funneled from Texas shelters to foster homes across the country, including in South Carolina and Michigan,” according to the Houston Chronicle. It is also unclear how reunification would happen for migrants claiming asylum protections.
Migrants reportedly told they could reunite with children if they agree to deportation.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Here’s how hard it is to trace a migrant kid who has been separated from his mom
An unknown number of parents have already been deported without their children. Wherever they are living or being held, it can be difficult for parents and families to connect with a caseworker on the federal hotline set up to reunify families. Parents will have to work with consulates and family members back home to produce identification documents that can prove they are the parents of a child.
…El Paso County Commissioner Vince Perez, whose precinct includes Tornillo, the so-called tent city where more than 300 children are being held, has been sharply critical of the use of the jail to hold immigrant detainees. “Depriving refugees of their children as a matter of policy is vile and we should not condone or facilitate this practice,” Perez said.
Taylor Levy, legal coordinator for Annunciation House, said staff would try as hard as they could to help the parents find their children.
“We know that’s going to be the first question that all these parents are going to have,” Levy said. “They’re all really worried about their children.”
Here’s how hard it is to trace a migrant kid who has been separated from his mom
sigh…
White House reasserts zero tolerance policy as Border Patrol suspends it
“We’re not prosecuting those parents,” McAleenan said. He cited as the reason President Donald Trump’s executive order last week requiring parents to be detained with their children, after an earlier policy of separating parents and children prompted a national uproar.
McAleenan said the suspension was temporary, but he didn’t say when prosecutions would resume.
Several DHS officials have said privately that the president’s order made it impossible to continue zero tolerance, but McAleenan was the first to say so publicly.
…But the Justice Department can’t prosecute parents who cross the southern border with children if Border Patrol doesn’t refer them for prosecution.
Border Patrol’s suspension of those referrals reinstates what Trump has publicly criticized as a “catch and release“ policy for migrant families.
Trump’s executive order barring the separation of parents and children rendered the zero-tolerance policy unenforceable almost immediately because there wasn’t sufficient detention space to house the thousands of family members who arrive at the border each month.
…The decision to suspend zero tolerance may ease a growing housing crunch for unaccompanied minors.
Under the policy, adults were referred for federal prosecution under illegal entry and re-entry statutes. Children traveling with them were then placed in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The separated children flooded the shelter system, which held nearly 12,000 children last week.
To create additional shelter capacity, the administration opened a “tent city” earlier this month near a port of entry in Tornillo, Texas.
But the contract for that facility will end July 13, an HHS spokesperson told a local ABC affiliate. The federal government has not made a decision on whether to extend the contract, according to an ACF spokesman.
White House reasserts zero tolerance policy as Border Patrol suspends it – POLITICO
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