On December 19, 2008 - the following letter to the editor of mine was published in the Anoka County Union, a Minnesota county newspaper. The population of Anoka County is 320,803 and its county seat is located in Anoka, Minnesota, a city located at the confluence of the 'Rum' and Mississippi rivers. I am the director of Rum River Name Change Organization.
Indigenous Peoples Rights
In an article published in Indian Country Today, the world's leading American Indian news source, titled - Newcomb: World Conservation Congress endorses Declaration there are two statements that I would like to share with Anoka County Union readers.
With the passage of the document, “Implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” the WCC also acknowledges a connection between the colonization of Indigenous Peoples’ lands and territories and several Vatican papal decrees and other similar documents from the fifteenth and later centuries. The motion explains that these were official authorizations to “invade, capture, vanquish” and “subdue” Indigenous Peoples, “subjugate” them and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery” and “to take away all their possessions and property.”
The motion acknowledges that the effect of these authorizations, and the doctrines that followed from them, such as the “doctrine of discovery,” “terra nullius” and “terra nullus,” not only have been ecologically and culturally destructive for Indigenous Peoples, their lands, territories and resources, but also made passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples necessary.
source: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/opinion/34082079.html?corder=reverse
A statement from my new article, 'A Tribal Cultures Influenced Catholic Globalization Mission' reads:
Indigenous Peoples Literature is an award winning site about indigenous peoples issues. This site has been accessed over 10,000,000 times. IPL posted my article, “Restoring The Fundamental Human Rights Of Indigenous Peoples”. In response to this posting, both Steven Newcomb and Tony Castanha - the two internationally renowned leaders of the movement to restore the fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples by trying to influencing the Vatican (Pope) to publicly revoke two 15th century Papal Bulls - contacted me. Newcomb wrote: 'Thomas, good article'. And Rob Capriccioso, an author for Indian Country Today, the world's leading American Indian news source, also contacted me and presented his ICT article about this topic. Tony Castanha has also contacted me to thank me for my youtube video wherein I protest against the Papal Bull Inter Caetera.
source, with reference links: http://www.towahkon.org/summary.html
Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
Director of Rum River Name Change Organization, Inc.
___________________________________________________________________
After I sent Steve Newcomb this letter he sent me a response e-mail wherein he wrote "Thanks Thomas, Keep up the good work..."
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Combating White Racism Against Indigenous Peoples
By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
I am a Christian activist who is spearheading the local, national and international movement to revert the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota's "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota Indian name Wakan, which translated means Spirit or Great Spirit.
I am also try to change 13 other derogatory geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians. After MN Representative Mike Jaros received my draft bill to change the name of the "Rum River" as well as 13 other MN geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians, he slightly edited it and then with the consent of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council he introduced it to the MN legislature.
This geographic site name-changing mission of mine is a part of my work to greatly transform Christianity by eliminating white racism in it.
Jerry Mander is an internationally renowned indigenous peoples rights activist. He is the Founder and Director of International Forum On Globalization (IFG), an organization that represents 60 organizations in 25 countries. He is also credited with co-editing a IFG book with Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. In his book The Absence Of The Sacred Mander writes:
"Our assumption of superiority does not come to us by accident. We have been trained in it. It is soaked into the fabric of every Western religion, economic system, and technology. Judeo-Christian religions are a model of hierarchical structure: one God above all, certain humans above other humans, and humans over nature. Political and economic systems are similarly arranged: organized along rigid hierarchical lines, all of nature's resources [including 'other humans'] are regarded only in terms of how they serve the one god, the god of growth and expansion. In this way, all of these systems are *missionary*; they embrace dominance. They are the creators and the enforcers of our beliefs. We live inside these forms, we are imbued with them and they justify our behaviors. In our turn, we believe in their viability and superiority [as systems] largely because they prove effective: they gain [us] power.
Gary R. Howard, the Founder and President of the REACH Center for Multicultural Education, has developed collections of curriculum materials which are being used internationally. He is frequently asked to deliver keynote addresses at regional and national conferences. He wrote:
"Most of our work in race relations and workforce diversity in the United States has emphasized the particular cultural experiences and perspectives of black, Asian, Hispanic and American Indian groups. These, after all, are the people who have been marginalized by the weight of European American dominance. With the shifting tide of population in the United States, however, there is now a need to take a closer look at the unique and changing role of white Americans. Attention to whites' role in multicultural education is very recent, and the focus on white identity development in multicultural education signals a shift away from equity pedagogy."
Professor Christine Sleeter is a multicultural educator, who lectures nationally and internationally. She won the National Association for Multicultural Education Research Award. She wrote:
"The importance of multicultural education is a struggle against white racism, rather than multiculturalism as a way to appreciate diversity. Both historically and in contemporary society, the relationships between racial and ethnic groups in this country are framed within a context of unequal power. People of European descent generally assume the power to claim the land, claim the resources, claim the language. They even claim the right to frame the culture and identity of who we are as Americans. That has been the case ever since Columbus landed on the North American continent."
The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) is combating white racism, and on this topic it teaches:
(1.)"In spite of the first two World Conferences to Combat Racism and their calls that Indigenous Peoples have a right to their lands and natural resources that must be protected, Indigenous Peoples continue to lose their lands at an alarming rate, seemingly a continuation of the 'Conquest' of the Americas."
(2.)"Ever since Pope Alexander VI's 1493 Papal Bull "Inter Caetera", calling for the subjugation of the Americas' "barbarous nations" and their lands, first colonial and then successor States have forcibly and violently destroyed Indigenous Peoples. To this day, the racial discrimination and cultural denigration established by Pope Alexander VI are engraved in the mentality of the Americas and continue to underlie the rational for racial discrimination against Indigenous Peoples. The religious imperatives of conversion and annihilation have been replaced by assimilation and "development " as the most desirable end for Indigenous Peoples. The State, economic elites and trans-national corporations have replaced the Spanish and Portuguese kings and Colonists as the beneficiaries of Indigenous lands and resources. "Reference: (1.)
Mililani Trask is an indigenous expert to the United Nations. She wrote: "Globalization is the new form of economic colonization. There is racism here, there surely is.
An IFG - Indigenous Peoples and Globalization Project - statement declares:
"This project aims to examine and publicize the multiple impacts of the globalization process on the most marginalized of all populations, native peoples. Today, millions of native people still live traditional lifestyles, each with a distinct culture, language, knowledge base, identity, and view of the cosmos. The impact of globalization is strongest on these populations perhaps more than any other because these communities have no voice and are therefore easily swept aside by the invisible hand of the market and its proponents. Globalization not only discounts native peoples, it is driving them closer and more rapidly toward extinction."
Note: Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the Chair of this IFG project as well as Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issue (UNPFII). The UNPFII has given its support for my effort to change the profane Rum River name, a faulty translation name that desecrates the sacred Dakota Indian name Wakan.
National and international leaders of multicultural education, the leaders of the International Forum On Globalization, and the International Indian Treaty Council seem to be on the same wave length when it comes to their campaigns to eliminate white-racism.
In addition to my Christian (Roman Catholic) social and political activist campaign to replace twenty six of Minnesota's white racist geographic site names that are offensive to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, I am also promoting my own campaign to eliminate white racism. A campaign that is similar to that of internationally renowned multicultural educators, leaders of the IFG and the International Indian Treaty Council. My Web site (2.)
Steve Russell (Cherokee), a Texas state judge, twice past President of the Texas Indian Bar Association, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Indiana University, wrote, when referring to my campaign: "This campaign is a valuable history lesson!" And Tom Wisner, a singer and song writer who is known nationally for his song "Chesapeake Born", and who has received national, state, and local awards for excellence in teaching, sent me an e-mail in response to the news of Rep. Mike Jaros' offer to help with the "important legislation" to change MN's geographic place names that are offensive to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In the e-mail Mr. Wisner mentioned that it is "conceivable to hire good education song writers" to promote legislative projects to show due respect for Indigenous peoples' languages and traditional cultures. And he also mentioned that he "could develop a proposal if he (Rep. Mike Jaros) is interested".
Apparently, white racists used the evil name of the Devil to name twelve of Minnesota's geographic place names. Linda Godfrey, a best-selling author and award winning journalist wrote:
"Racial hatred was why many geographic places were given the name Devil. Place names evoking the Devil reflect a dominant attitude on the part of Euro-American settlers towards the New World during the migration into the wild West. The history of place names is based in mistranslation, deliberate insult and slur..., as well as a Christian notion of the wilderness as the domain of the Devil."
"The origination of many of the Devils across Wisconsin probably has more to do with racial hatred than anything else. Early white settlers were mostly Christian and viewed Native Americans with their different spiritual practices as heathens (at best) or savages and devil-worshipers (most likely). It's a long-standing tradition across time to demonize your foes prior to taking everything they have, including their lives, to assuage any possible feelings of guilt."
"Native Americans saw spirits in many shapes and forms and though there was sometimes a Supreme Being, goodness or badness or tricks flowed from a variety of sources. In the simplistic Either/Or view of the early settlers, this mind-set of multiple spiritual sources was tantamount to practicing deviltry, and so settlers tended to put a malevolent spin on the landscape when interpreting native names for the surrounding landscape."
"...in the native cosmogony there is no single evil spirit comparable to the devil. In the mind of the settlers though, all this "heathen" spirituality had to be the work or the sign of the devil. So the name Devil was given often to native areas known formerly by names meaning Sacred or Spirit or Mystery."
"For example, Devil's Lake in Wisconsin's Sauk County is the white settlers' interpretation of the Ho-Chunk name Day-wa-kun-chunk, meaning Sacred Lake.
In the Encyclopedia of North American Indians there is an article titled: Place names. The following excerpt was take from the article. "Manitou and Wakanda are common names on the map as Algonquian and Siouan terms for the Great Spirit. Whites often changed these names to Devil, and so we have Devil's Lake in Michigan, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere."
In Minnesota we have Devil Track Lake and Devil Track River, in these cases the Ojibwe name for the Great Spirit (Manitou) was mistranslated Devil. And in Minnesota we also have Rum River and West Branch Rum River. In these cases the sacred Dakota name Wakan, translated as (Great) Spirit, was mistranslated as the "demon spirit" rum, which brought misery and ruin to many of the natives.
Let's replace these white racists names, let's not let these evil racist names adorn our geographic places and maps.
The first Pope (Peter) was a Jew, but all of the Popes since Peter have been white European men. I believe that the reason why a Catholic indigenous man of the Americas, who is participating in his people's culture, within his people's traditional homeland, can not become the Pope as well as why no other colored indigenous Catholic man who is participating in his people's culture, within his people's traditional homeland, can become the Pope is because the Roman Catholic Church believes in and practices extreme white racism in the context of radical institutional racism. Reference: statistics revealing institutional racism (3.)
I believe that many white people of European descent are psychologically addicted to a type of racism where in they need to dominate the world. They need their white European Pope sitting on the throne of Peter exercising great influence over the world.
A recent United Nations' World Conference Against Racism document proclaims that a 15th century Papal Bull "declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories." (4.) This Papal Bull, written by Pope Nicholas V, instructed Columbus and other slave traders to "capture, vanquish, and subdue the pagans, and other enemies of Christ," to "put them into perpetual slavery," and "to take all their possessions and property". (5.) And in Pope Alexander VI's papal bull of 1493 (Inter Caetera), he stated his desire that the "discovered" people be "subjugated and brought to the faith itself." By this means, said the pope, the "Christian Empire" would be propagated. (6.) Consequently, Columbus wrote, after discovering the homelands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold." (7.) ... (8.)
Reverend Bartolome de Las Casas, the first European historian in the Americas wrote, when referring to the Europeans' first forty years of genocidal behavior in the Americas:
"...for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons." Reference: (9.)
I believe that Pope Nicholas V and Pope Alexander VI were white racist genocidal madmen who are primarily responsible for 100,000,000 Indigenous Peoples of the Americas elimination in the course of Europe's ongoing "civilization" of the Western hemisphere. Both the present Pope as well as our nation's white Catholic Bishops are still pursuing Pope Nicholas V's and Pope Alexander VI's white racist genocidal agenda. Reference: (10.)
The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas sacred homelands were stolen from them, they were enslaved and killed by diseases, wars and alcohol. And those who survived this Roman Catholic Church instigated and promoted genocide were forced onto reservations (concentration camps) where they are now being assimilated. And on these reservations they are dying from alcohol abuse, hard drug abuse, tobacco abuse, poor diets etc.. And most white Christian leaders do not even care enough to do anything about this terrible situation. It's like when the Jews in white European Catholic nations were forced into slums where they were dying of malnutrition and diseases until Hitler decided not to prolong the genocide and exterminated them in his gas chambers.
Mililani Trask is an indigenous expert to the United Nations, she was nominated and appointed as the Pacific representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Ms. Trask is calling on Indigenous peoples the world over to work together to eliminate the prevailing colonial mindset. In her article, A Question of Sovereignty, Ms. Trask writes:"When you look at the nations sitting at the UN you can see that they're all sovereign, but nobody wants to give self-determination to Indigenous peoples."
"Why? Because with our history of colonization, our peoples were placed in a different political status from those of the dominant society. And that old colonial format was maintained by social mechanisms of power which exist to this very day."
"What are the roots of racism? We make a mistake if we believe that racism started when the colonizer sailed in. I really do not subscribe to this belief. If we're going to get to the roots of racism, we go beyond the point of colonization."
"Before Cook sails to Hawaii, what brought him there? What brought Columbus to America? What sent the Spaniards to Central and South America? How did that happen?"
"Well it started back in the 1500s and it started in Rome. From edicts that were enunciated through the Papal Bulls. These were statements and pronouncements that came from the Vatican. And with these pronouncements, the world was divided up for European Christian colonizers."
"What was actually happening at the time was that the monarchs of the Christian nations - the Brits, the French, the Italians, the Dutch - began to fight and war over land and natural resources. In seeking a way to resolve this bloodshed in Europe, they went to the Holy Father."
"This is at a period of time in Western history that predates the concept of secularization, there wasn't a division of the Church and the state and the Pope was the head of the world."
"And so we had, for a period of a couple of hundred years, these Papal Bulls sought to prevent the fighting by dividing the world."
"My favorite one is the Papal Bull of Pope Alexander the VI, it's called the Inter Caetera. When I read the translation of it, (it was written in Latin), it just stunned me. The Pope is saying here that he will sanctify the subjugation of the new world and its barbarous nations."
"So the blessing of the Pope was given, and the colonizer sailed out. It's important that we understand this to be the root of racism, because to this very day, the churches form a central part of the social system of the nation states that are Christian."
"And so the Pope divided up the world. When you look at the colonies, especially in North, Central and South America, you can see this division to this very day."
"When we get together and try to do business, it's tough. The Pacific peoples that come from Chile are speaking Spanish, the French coming in from Tahiti are speaking French, the Hawaiians are trying to regain our language but generally we speak in the tongue of the colonizers."
"We have to go back and seek accountability from the churches. And not only do we need to educate them, but we need to make a place for them at the table of reconciliation. They are called upon to acknowledge this past. To stand up and to walk with us, shoulder to shoulder. So that we can overturn these racist historical policies.
"I'm glad to see in the effort here in Australia that I have worked on myself, for reconciliation, strong voices come from the church. That is appropriate."
Christine Sleeter, a nationally and internationally renowned multicultural educator and social activist defines white racism or white supremacy as "the system of rules, procedures, and tacit beliefs that result in whites collectively maintaining control over the wealth and power of the nation and the world".
I believe that by indulging in extreme white racism the Roman Catholic Church continues to be the primary promoter of a health and earth destroying "civilization" and that it is continually spreading its influence throughout the world by way of its white supremacist world domination mission. And I believe that the reason why this is occurring is because the Roman Catholic Church is so radically white racist that it has not been able to, as Cardinal Danielou wrote: "refract Christianity through the many facets of human civilization. Christianity has been refracted through the Greek and Roman worlds, but it will have to be refracted through the Hindu facet and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas facet in order to attain its fulfillment. There are many aspects of Christianity that shall not be discover until Christianity has been refracted through every facet of the prism of human civilization." I also believe that the Roman Catholic Church is so extremely white racist that it can not believe that there are enough spiritual treasures in indigenous colored peoples' cultures and religions to make it worth while refracting Christianity though them in order to incorporate the spiritual treasures that are in them, hence it continues to lead the whole human race to its destruction.
In an article published in Minnesota's Saint Cloud Diocesan newspaper, the Visitor, James Engel, a past staff writer for the Visitor, wrote:
"Christianity came to the Americas nearly five centuries ago. Spirituality had been here long before that, and while Christians often disregard the principles of Christianity, nowhere has it done more damage than to the people native to the Americas. Traditionally, Native Americans recognized the presence of the Creator in all of His Creation...living and inert. Dating back centuries Native Americans are credited with respecting this creation: The lakes, which today are poisoned or have died. The earth, now cursed with pesticides and dotted with overcrowded landfills. The sky, today sporting holes in its unseen ozone and sporting too, thick layers of visible smog."
"European setters denied Native Americans their rights...to land, to life, to religion. Much was lost. And while there is little effort to retrieve that which was lost, something can be learned from it, even today."
"When Pope John Paul II toured the southern and western United States in the fall of 1987 he addressed, and was addressed by, a conference of Native Americans."
A Native American (Alfretta Antone) spoke at that conference and Engel wrote about his address:
"Upon initial contact with Europeans, we shared the land given us by our Creator and taught others how to survive here. History, however, stands as a witness to the use and abuse we have experienced in our homelands." "Today little remains of the gifts and richness which our Creator has shared with us, the original peoples of these lands."
Engle also wrote:
"Antone implored the Pope to help secure a dozen rights for Native Americans. Several dealt with fair treatment by the government, others dealt with much needed economic gains, others dealt with successful incorporation of Native American culture into American culture. But one stood out as important in its meaning, and its insight: (Antone said) 'That our sacred ways and prayers be respected'."
"Many Native Americans espouse some Christian religion, and while the Native American population in Minnesota might be higher than in some regions of the country, there is precious little Native American culture or pirituality in the ways and lives of central Minnesota Catholics. And, most probably, precious little respect for that spirituality."
"A 1977 pastoral letter on Native Americans, written by the bishops spoke of justice, the American experience, and the role of the Church. It spoke of faith and culture: the Catholic faith, the American culture. It virtually ignored the gifts, the talents, the spirituality that Native Americans bring to the Church."
It is because of this exclusive white racist mentality of the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy that the Catholic Church continues to lead the whole human race as well as all life on earth to its destruction. It is so extremely white racist that it can not do what it should do, and that is, refract Christianity through the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas facet of the prism of human civilization - and in doing so, incorporate the ecological awareness of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas into the Church, and by doing so, get the Church going in the direction of ecological salvation for the whole human race as well as for all other good life forms.
Hopefully, both, my local, national and international movement to replace Minnesota's geographic place names that are offensive to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as well as my - eliminating white racism in Christianity - Catholic teaching ministry will get the Roman Catholic Church going in the right direction.
Day by day, week by week, year by year, I am continually gaining more and more power to influence the Roman Catholic Church to change its course and get going in the right direction.
After the National Catholic Reporter was informed that I had received a letter from the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace it published a letter of mine about my effort to revert Minnesota's profane "Rum River" name back to its original Native name. The National Catholic Reporter is an independent newsweekly with over 120,000 loyal readers in 96 countries on 6 continents, a newsweekly that is commitment to in-depth reporting on global peace and justice issues and consistently wins national and international awards from the Catholic Press Association.
Archbishop Harry Flynn as well as my bishop, Bishop John Kinney, have given their support for my effort to change the profane Rum River name. In a letter from Archbishop Harry Flynn, he thanked me for crediting his support for a lot of the national and international support that I have received for my effort to change this river's profane name.
After sending an envelope containing (A.) a letter about my effort to change the profane Rum River name, (B.) the mentioned above letter from Archbishop Harry Flynn, (C.) a letter of support from the Tekakwitha Conference, an international Indigenous People of North America Catholic conference representing hundreds of tribes, and (D.) some "associated material", material about my worldview around the word wakan, Catholic prophetic visionary ministry, to the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE, I received a response letter from Bishop Giampaola Crealdi, a secretary for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, wherein he wrote: "Thank you for your letter of 24 January 2004, on your efforts to change the name of a river in Minnesota. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has taken note of your campaign and the associated material you sent with your letter." The "associated material" was my booklet about my, worldview around the word wakan, Catholic prophetic visionary ministry.
Professor Christine Sleeter, the mentioned above multicultural educator, who lectures nationally and internationally, and who won the National Association for Multicultural Education Research Award, has given her supported for the effort to revert the name of the "Rum River" back to its original Native name. She sent me the following letter of support.
"I am writing to express my full support of the effort to return the "Rum River" to its original name, Wakan. I believe that this is the right and honorable thing to do for two reasons. First, there has been a long history among colonizers of changing names of the people and places as part of the process of conquest. As you know, schools have a history of Anglicizing children's names, which I see as a comparable practice to changing existing place names, as if the place did not already have a name. Names are valuable symbols of identity that should be respected."
"Second, when I found out why Europeans selected the name "Rum," I was appalled. Keeping that name maintains a racist, derogatory characterization of Mdewakanton Dakota peoples. U.S. citizens today do not need to perpetuate legacies of racism. The right thing to do would be to return the River to its original name, and get rid of the racist label that the name "Rum" keeps alive. I support the work you are doing to bring about this redress."
The more support I receive for my effort to revert the name of the "Rum River" back to its original Native name, the more power I gain to influence the Roman Catholic Church to change course and get going in the right direction.
related booklet
I am a Christian activist who is spearheading the local, national and international movement to revert the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota's "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota Indian name Wakan, which translated means Spirit or Great Spirit.
I am also try to change 13 other derogatory geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians. After MN Representative Mike Jaros received my draft bill to change the name of the "Rum River" as well as 13 other MN geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians, he slightly edited it and then with the consent of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council he introduced it to the MN legislature.
This geographic site name-changing mission of mine is a part of my work to greatly transform Christianity by eliminating white racism in it.
Jerry Mander is an internationally renowned indigenous peoples rights activist. He is the Founder and Director of International Forum On Globalization (IFG), an organization that represents 60 organizations in 25 countries. He is also credited with co-editing a IFG book with Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. In his book The Absence Of The Sacred Mander writes:
"Our assumption of superiority does not come to us by accident. We have been trained in it. It is soaked into the fabric of every Western religion, economic system, and technology. Judeo-Christian religions are a model of hierarchical structure: one God above all, certain humans above other humans, and humans over nature. Political and economic systems are similarly arranged: organized along rigid hierarchical lines, all of nature's resources [including 'other humans'] are regarded only in terms of how they serve the one god, the god of growth and expansion. In this way, all of these systems are *missionary*; they embrace dominance. They are the creators and the enforcers of our beliefs. We live inside these forms, we are imbued with them and they justify our behaviors. In our turn, we believe in their viability and superiority [as systems] largely because they prove effective: they gain [us] power.
Gary R. Howard, the Founder and President of the REACH Center for Multicultural Education, has developed collections of curriculum materials which are being used internationally. He is frequently asked to deliver keynote addresses at regional and national conferences. He wrote:
"Most of our work in race relations and workforce diversity in the United States has emphasized the particular cultural experiences and perspectives of black, Asian, Hispanic and American Indian groups. These, after all, are the people who have been marginalized by the weight of European American dominance. With the shifting tide of population in the United States, however, there is now a need to take a closer look at the unique and changing role of white Americans. Attention to whites' role in multicultural education is very recent, and the focus on white identity development in multicultural education signals a shift away from equity pedagogy."
Professor Christine Sleeter is a multicultural educator, who lectures nationally and internationally. She won the National Association for Multicultural Education Research Award. She wrote:
"The importance of multicultural education is a struggle against white racism, rather than multiculturalism as a way to appreciate diversity. Both historically and in contemporary society, the relationships between racial and ethnic groups in this country are framed within a context of unequal power. People of European descent generally assume the power to claim the land, claim the resources, claim the language. They even claim the right to frame the culture and identity of who we are as Americans. That has been the case ever since Columbus landed on the North American continent."
The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) is combating white racism, and on this topic it teaches:
(1.)"In spite of the first two World Conferences to Combat Racism and their calls that Indigenous Peoples have a right to their lands and natural resources that must be protected, Indigenous Peoples continue to lose their lands at an alarming rate, seemingly a continuation of the 'Conquest' of the Americas."
(2.)"Ever since Pope Alexander VI's 1493 Papal Bull "Inter Caetera", calling for the subjugation of the Americas' "barbarous nations" and their lands, first colonial and then successor States have forcibly and violently destroyed Indigenous Peoples. To this day, the racial discrimination and cultural denigration established by Pope Alexander VI are engraved in the mentality of the Americas and continue to underlie the rational for racial discrimination against Indigenous Peoples. The religious imperatives of conversion and annihilation have been replaced by assimilation and "development " as the most desirable end for Indigenous Peoples. The State, economic elites and trans-national corporations have replaced the Spanish and Portuguese kings and Colonists as the beneficiaries of Indigenous lands and resources. "Reference: (1.)
Mililani Trask is an indigenous expert to the United Nations. She wrote: "Globalization is the new form of economic colonization. There is racism here, there surely is.
An IFG - Indigenous Peoples and Globalization Project - statement declares:
"This project aims to examine and publicize the multiple impacts of the globalization process on the most marginalized of all populations, native peoples. Today, millions of native people still live traditional lifestyles, each with a distinct culture, language, knowledge base, identity, and view of the cosmos. The impact of globalization is strongest on these populations perhaps more than any other because these communities have no voice and are therefore easily swept aside by the invisible hand of the market and its proponents. Globalization not only discounts native peoples, it is driving them closer and more rapidly toward extinction."
Note: Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the Chair of this IFG project as well as Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issue (UNPFII). The UNPFII has given its support for my effort to change the profane Rum River name, a faulty translation name that desecrates the sacred Dakota Indian name Wakan.
National and international leaders of multicultural education, the leaders of the International Forum On Globalization, and the International Indian Treaty Council seem to be on the same wave length when it comes to their campaigns to eliminate white-racism.
In addition to my Christian (Roman Catholic) social and political activist campaign to replace twenty six of Minnesota's white racist geographic site names that are offensive to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, I am also promoting my own campaign to eliminate white racism. A campaign that is similar to that of internationally renowned multicultural educators, leaders of the IFG and the International Indian Treaty Council. My Web site (2.)
Steve Russell (Cherokee), a Texas state judge, twice past President of the Texas Indian Bar Association, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Indiana University, wrote, when referring to my campaign: "This campaign is a valuable history lesson!" And Tom Wisner, a singer and song writer who is known nationally for his song "Chesapeake Born", and who has received national, state, and local awards for excellence in teaching, sent me an e-mail in response to the news of Rep. Mike Jaros' offer to help with the "important legislation" to change MN's geographic place names that are offensive to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In the e-mail Mr. Wisner mentioned that it is "conceivable to hire good education song writers" to promote legislative projects to show due respect for Indigenous peoples' languages and traditional cultures. And he also mentioned that he "could develop a proposal if he (Rep. Mike Jaros) is interested".
Apparently, white racists used the evil name of the Devil to name twelve of Minnesota's geographic place names. Linda Godfrey, a best-selling author and award winning journalist wrote:
"Racial hatred was why many geographic places were given the name Devil. Place names evoking the Devil reflect a dominant attitude on the part of Euro-American settlers towards the New World during the migration into the wild West. The history of place names is based in mistranslation, deliberate insult and slur..., as well as a Christian notion of the wilderness as the domain of the Devil."
"The origination of many of the Devils across Wisconsin probably has more to do with racial hatred than anything else. Early white settlers were mostly Christian and viewed Native Americans with their different spiritual practices as heathens (at best) or savages and devil-worshipers (most likely). It's a long-standing tradition across time to demonize your foes prior to taking everything they have, including their lives, to assuage any possible feelings of guilt."
"Native Americans saw spirits in many shapes and forms and though there was sometimes a Supreme Being, goodness or badness or tricks flowed from a variety of sources. In the simplistic Either/Or view of the early settlers, this mind-set of multiple spiritual sources was tantamount to practicing deviltry, and so settlers tended to put a malevolent spin on the landscape when interpreting native names for the surrounding landscape."
"...in the native cosmogony there is no single evil spirit comparable to the devil. In the mind of the settlers though, all this "heathen" spirituality had to be the work or the sign of the devil. So the name Devil was given often to native areas known formerly by names meaning Sacred or Spirit or Mystery."
"For example, Devil's Lake in Wisconsin's Sauk County is the white settlers' interpretation of the Ho-Chunk name Day-wa-kun-chunk, meaning Sacred Lake.
In the Encyclopedia of North American Indians there is an article titled: Place names. The following excerpt was take from the article. "Manitou and Wakanda are common names on the map as Algonquian and Siouan terms for the Great Spirit. Whites often changed these names to Devil, and so we have Devil's Lake in Michigan, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and elsewhere."
In Minnesota we have Devil Track Lake and Devil Track River, in these cases the Ojibwe name for the Great Spirit (Manitou) was mistranslated Devil. And in Minnesota we also have Rum River and West Branch Rum River. In these cases the sacred Dakota name Wakan, translated as (Great) Spirit, was mistranslated as the "demon spirit" rum, which brought misery and ruin to many of the natives.
Let's replace these white racists names, let's not let these evil racist names adorn our geographic places and maps.
The first Pope (Peter) was a Jew, but all of the Popes since Peter have been white European men. I believe that the reason why a Catholic indigenous man of the Americas, who is participating in his people's culture, within his people's traditional homeland, can not become the Pope as well as why no other colored indigenous Catholic man who is participating in his people's culture, within his people's traditional homeland, can become the Pope is because the Roman Catholic Church believes in and practices extreme white racism in the context of radical institutional racism. Reference: statistics revealing institutional racism (3.)
I believe that many white people of European descent are psychologically addicted to a type of racism where in they need to dominate the world. They need their white European Pope sitting on the throne of Peter exercising great influence over the world.
A recent United Nations' World Conference Against Racism document proclaims that a 15th century Papal Bull "declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories." (4.) This Papal Bull, written by Pope Nicholas V, instructed Columbus and other slave traders to "capture, vanquish, and subdue the pagans, and other enemies of Christ," to "put them into perpetual slavery," and "to take all their possessions and property". (5.) And in Pope Alexander VI's papal bull of 1493 (Inter Caetera), he stated his desire that the "discovered" people be "subjugated and brought to the faith itself." By this means, said the pope, the "Christian Empire" would be propagated. (6.) Consequently, Columbus wrote, after discovering the homelands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold." (7.) ... (8.)
Reverend Bartolome de Las Casas, the first European historian in the Americas wrote, when referring to the Europeans' first forty years of genocidal behavior in the Americas:
"...for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons." Reference: (9.)
I believe that Pope Nicholas V and Pope Alexander VI were white racist genocidal madmen who are primarily responsible for 100,000,000 Indigenous Peoples of the Americas elimination in the course of Europe's ongoing "civilization" of the Western hemisphere. Both the present Pope as well as our nation's white Catholic Bishops are still pursuing Pope Nicholas V's and Pope Alexander VI's white racist genocidal agenda. Reference: (10.)
The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas sacred homelands were stolen from them, they were enslaved and killed by diseases, wars and alcohol. And those who survived this Roman Catholic Church instigated and promoted genocide were forced onto reservations (concentration camps) where they are now being assimilated. And on these reservations they are dying from alcohol abuse, hard drug abuse, tobacco abuse, poor diets etc.. And most white Christian leaders do not even care enough to do anything about this terrible situation. It's like when the Jews in white European Catholic nations were forced into slums where they were dying of malnutrition and diseases until Hitler decided not to prolong the genocide and exterminated them in his gas chambers.
Mililani Trask is an indigenous expert to the United Nations, she was nominated and appointed as the Pacific representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Ms. Trask is calling on Indigenous peoples the world over to work together to eliminate the prevailing colonial mindset. In her article, A Question of Sovereignty, Ms. Trask writes:"When you look at the nations sitting at the UN you can see that they're all sovereign, but nobody wants to give self-determination to Indigenous peoples."
"Why? Because with our history of colonization, our peoples were placed in a different political status from those of the dominant society. And that old colonial format was maintained by social mechanisms of power which exist to this very day."
"What are the roots of racism? We make a mistake if we believe that racism started when the colonizer sailed in. I really do not subscribe to this belief. If we're going to get to the roots of racism, we go beyond the point of colonization."
"Before Cook sails to Hawaii, what brought him there? What brought Columbus to America? What sent the Spaniards to Central and South America? How did that happen?"
"Well it started back in the 1500s and it started in Rome. From edicts that were enunciated through the Papal Bulls. These were statements and pronouncements that came from the Vatican. And with these pronouncements, the world was divided up for European Christian colonizers."
"What was actually happening at the time was that the monarchs of the Christian nations - the Brits, the French, the Italians, the Dutch - began to fight and war over land and natural resources. In seeking a way to resolve this bloodshed in Europe, they went to the Holy Father."
"This is at a period of time in Western history that predates the concept of secularization, there wasn't a division of the Church and the state and the Pope was the head of the world."
"And so we had, for a period of a couple of hundred years, these Papal Bulls sought to prevent the fighting by dividing the world."
"My favorite one is the Papal Bull of Pope Alexander the VI, it's called the Inter Caetera. When I read the translation of it, (it was written in Latin), it just stunned me. The Pope is saying here that he will sanctify the subjugation of the new world and its barbarous nations."
"So the blessing of the Pope was given, and the colonizer sailed out. It's important that we understand this to be the root of racism, because to this very day, the churches form a central part of the social system of the nation states that are Christian."
"And so the Pope divided up the world. When you look at the colonies, especially in North, Central and South America, you can see this division to this very day."
"When we get together and try to do business, it's tough. The Pacific peoples that come from Chile are speaking Spanish, the French coming in from Tahiti are speaking French, the Hawaiians are trying to regain our language but generally we speak in the tongue of the colonizers."
"We have to go back and seek accountability from the churches. And not only do we need to educate them, but we need to make a place for them at the table of reconciliation. They are called upon to acknowledge this past. To stand up and to walk with us, shoulder to shoulder. So that we can overturn these racist historical policies.
"I'm glad to see in the effort here in Australia that I have worked on myself, for reconciliation, strong voices come from the church. That is appropriate."
Christine Sleeter, a nationally and internationally renowned multicultural educator and social activist defines white racism or white supremacy as "the system of rules, procedures, and tacit beliefs that result in whites collectively maintaining control over the wealth and power of the nation and the world".
I believe that by indulging in extreme white racism the Roman Catholic Church continues to be the primary promoter of a health and earth destroying "civilization" and that it is continually spreading its influence throughout the world by way of its white supremacist world domination mission. And I believe that the reason why this is occurring is because the Roman Catholic Church is so radically white racist that it has not been able to, as Cardinal Danielou wrote: "refract Christianity through the many facets of human civilization. Christianity has been refracted through the Greek and Roman worlds, but it will have to be refracted through the Hindu facet and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas facet in order to attain its fulfillment. There are many aspects of Christianity that shall not be discover until Christianity has been refracted through every facet of the prism of human civilization." I also believe that the Roman Catholic Church is so extremely white racist that it can not believe that there are enough spiritual treasures in indigenous colored peoples' cultures and religions to make it worth while refracting Christianity though them in order to incorporate the spiritual treasures that are in them, hence it continues to lead the whole human race to its destruction.
In an article published in Minnesota's Saint Cloud Diocesan newspaper, the Visitor, James Engel, a past staff writer for the Visitor, wrote:
"Christianity came to the Americas nearly five centuries ago. Spirituality had been here long before that, and while Christians often disregard the principles of Christianity, nowhere has it done more damage than to the people native to the Americas. Traditionally, Native Americans recognized the presence of the Creator in all of His Creation...living and inert. Dating back centuries Native Americans are credited with respecting this creation: The lakes, which today are poisoned or have died. The earth, now cursed with pesticides and dotted with overcrowded landfills. The sky, today sporting holes in its unseen ozone and sporting too, thick layers of visible smog."
"European setters denied Native Americans their rights...to land, to life, to religion. Much was lost. And while there is little effort to retrieve that which was lost, something can be learned from it, even today."
"When Pope John Paul II toured the southern and western United States in the fall of 1987 he addressed, and was addressed by, a conference of Native Americans."
A Native American (Alfretta Antone) spoke at that conference and Engel wrote about his address:
"Upon initial contact with Europeans, we shared the land given us by our Creator and taught others how to survive here. History, however, stands as a witness to the use and abuse we have experienced in our homelands." "Today little remains of the gifts and richness which our Creator has shared with us, the original peoples of these lands."
Engle also wrote:
"Antone implored the Pope to help secure a dozen rights for Native Americans. Several dealt with fair treatment by the government, others dealt with much needed economic gains, others dealt with successful incorporation of Native American culture into American culture. But one stood out as important in its meaning, and its insight: (Antone said) 'That our sacred ways and prayers be respected'."
"Many Native Americans espouse some Christian religion, and while the Native American population in Minnesota might be higher than in some regions of the country, there is precious little Native American culture or pirituality in the ways and lives of central Minnesota Catholics. And, most probably, precious little respect for that spirituality."
"A 1977 pastoral letter on Native Americans, written by the bishops spoke of justice, the American experience, and the role of the Church. It spoke of faith and culture: the Catholic faith, the American culture. It virtually ignored the gifts, the talents, the spirituality that Native Americans bring to the Church."
It is because of this exclusive white racist mentality of the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy that the Catholic Church continues to lead the whole human race as well as all life on earth to its destruction. It is so extremely white racist that it can not do what it should do, and that is, refract Christianity through the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas facet of the prism of human civilization - and in doing so, incorporate the ecological awareness of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas into the Church, and by doing so, get the Church going in the direction of ecological salvation for the whole human race as well as for all other good life forms.
Hopefully, both, my local, national and international movement to replace Minnesota's geographic place names that are offensive to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as well as my - eliminating white racism in Christianity - Catholic teaching ministry will get the Roman Catholic Church going in the right direction.
Day by day, week by week, year by year, I am continually gaining more and more power to influence the Roman Catholic Church to change its course and get going in the right direction.
After the National Catholic Reporter was informed that I had received a letter from the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace it published a letter of mine about my effort to revert Minnesota's profane "Rum River" name back to its original Native name. The National Catholic Reporter is an independent newsweekly with over 120,000 loyal readers in 96 countries on 6 continents, a newsweekly that is commitment to in-depth reporting on global peace and justice issues and consistently wins national and international awards from the Catholic Press Association.
Archbishop Harry Flynn as well as my bishop, Bishop John Kinney, have given their support for my effort to change the profane Rum River name. In a letter from Archbishop Harry Flynn, he thanked me for crediting his support for a lot of the national and international support that I have received for my effort to change this river's profane name.
After sending an envelope containing (A.) a letter about my effort to change the profane Rum River name, (B.) the mentioned above letter from Archbishop Harry Flynn, (C.) a letter of support from the Tekakwitha Conference, an international Indigenous People of North America Catholic conference representing hundreds of tribes, and (D.) some "associated material", material about my worldview around the word wakan, Catholic prophetic visionary ministry, to the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE, I received a response letter from Bishop Giampaola Crealdi, a secretary for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, wherein he wrote: "Thank you for your letter of 24 January 2004, on your efforts to change the name of a river in Minnesota. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has taken note of your campaign and the associated material you sent with your letter." The "associated material" was my booklet about my, worldview around the word wakan, Catholic prophetic visionary ministry.
Professor Christine Sleeter, the mentioned above multicultural educator, who lectures nationally and internationally, and who won the National Association for Multicultural Education Research Award, has given her supported for the effort to revert the name of the "Rum River" back to its original Native name. She sent me the following letter of support.
"I am writing to express my full support of the effort to return the "Rum River" to its original name, Wakan. I believe that this is the right and honorable thing to do for two reasons. First, there has been a long history among colonizers of changing names of the people and places as part of the process of conquest. As you know, schools have a history of Anglicizing children's names, which I see as a comparable practice to changing existing place names, as if the place did not already have a name. Names are valuable symbols of identity that should be respected."
"Second, when I found out why Europeans selected the name "Rum," I was appalled. Keeping that name maintains a racist, derogatory characterization of Mdewakanton Dakota peoples. U.S. citizens today do not need to perpetuate legacies of racism. The right thing to do would be to return the River to its original name, and get rid of the racist label that the name "Rum" keeps alive. I support the work you are doing to bring about this redress."
The more support I receive for my effort to revert the name of the "Rum River" back to its original Native name, the more power I gain to influence the Roman Catholic Church to change course and get going in the right direction.
related booklet
History of the Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance
By Thomas Dahlheimer
On July 14, 2007 the Anoka County Historical Society hosted an event to commemorate Anoka County's sesquicentennial. It was held in conjunction with Anoka's annual "Riverfest and Craft Fair". The event draws attention to, as well as celebrates Anoka's historic river, the "Rum River". Unfortunately, this river has a profane and controversial name. It is believed that the sacred Dakota name for this historic river (Wakan), which when translated into English means Spirit or Great Spirit, was mistranslated in a punning way by early 18th century white fur traders to mean the spirituous liquor (rum), and that this is how it received its current profane name.
There is a growing local, national and international movement to change the name of this river back to its sacred Dakota name. On June 10, 2007, Thomas Dahlheimer, the activist who is spearheading the river name-changing movement, asked the City of Anoka and Anoka County Historical Society officials if Jim Anderson, the Cultural Chair and Historian for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, could set up two tepees in Anoka, preferably near the historic river, but secondly at the Anoka County Historical Society Center (ACHC), and display interpretive text and signage about Dakota culture and history. Note: Permission was granted and Anderson set up a tepee and taught Dakota culture and history.
Prior to this request, Mr. Anderson had written a letter of support for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community. In this letter his community expressed its support for the effort to change the name of the river back to its sacred Dakota name. Therefore, when Dahlheimer asked the City of Anoka and Anoka County Historical Society officials if Anderson could set up tepees in Anoka they knew that Dahlheimer was attempting to help the Dakota people make inroads into Anoka for the purpose of helping Anoka residents understand that the river and land on both sides of it are considered sacred to the Dakota people, as well as for gaining support for the effort to change the name of the river. And also for helping Anoka residents understand that a significant number of the Dakota people could return to their sacred ancestral homeland territory now known as Anoka, to reverently celebrate and protect this sacred site of theirs. And that if this occurs, many Anoka residents will be changing their lifestyles in order to give due respect for the Dakota's cultural and spiritual sensitivities.
Dahlheimer also informed the officials about the Winona Dakota Unity Alliance and its annual Great Dakota Gathering & Homecoming event held in Winona Minnesota. He also told them about his desire to establish a similar alliance in Anoka, an alliance that would also plan, sponsor, and coordinate annual Great Dakota Gatherings & Homecoming events. Once a year a growing number of the Dakota people whose ancestors were driven from Minnesota after the 1862 Dakota conflict are coming from Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana and Canada to gather together and celebrate their return to their sacred traditional homeland in Winona.
Dahlheimer also informed Jim Anderson and another leading activist for the Dakota people, Leonard Wabasha, about his desire to establish an alliance in Anoka, a geographic location that the Dakota people once claimed as a part of their sacred homeland territory. And since they were forced from this area in the eighteenth century they have claimed it as a part of their traditional and ancestral homeland. Hence, the initiative to establish an Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance was made known to prominent members of both communities. And a short while later the Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance was established.
Since its establishment progress toward accomplishing its mission of bringing full unity and reconciliation to both communities has been continuous and glorious. (2007 statement)
Purpose
To promote unity and reconciliation between Anoka residents and the Dakota people, by planning, sponsoring and coordinating unity and reconciliation ceremonies as well as cross-cultural and educational programs, for the purpose of bringing the two communities together to enhance our appreciation of our shared heritage in Anoka and to plan for a glorious future where both communities will be reconciled and united in a city that will serve as a model for other cities seeking to resolve differences and unity with Native people.
Provide a forum to express grievances associated with past injustices committed against the Dakota people and offer solutions to heal the wounds inflicted on them by past injustices. Also, provide a forum to express present-day grievances as well as offer solutions to rectify the injustices.
Provide unity and reconciliation ceremonies as well as cross-cultural and educational programs to help build a unity and reconciliation bridge. A bridge that will put an end to the cultural gap that separates us, by bring us together in justice and peace, and assisting our different cultures and spiritualities to blend into a harmonious unity, a process and end result that will enrich both communities.
To dedicate city park land in Anoka to be used exclusively for unity ceremonies, cross-cultural and educational programs as well as to display interpretive text and signage about Dakota culture and history in general and specific to Anoka.
History of the Dakota people on their sacred river
The Dakota name for the lake that their sacred Wakan river flows out of is Wakan, which when translated means Spirit or Great Spirit. French colonizers named the lake Mille Lacs. This lake figures prominently in Dakota creation stories. The lake is considered sacred because, according one Dakota creation story the Dakota people emerged from it as human beings into this world.
In 1656, the Dakota were living at the headwaters of the river in five villages numbering about 5,000 people. On about July 1 hunters, 250 in number, departed, as was their custom at that time of year, to hunt the buffalo on the prairies of southern Minnesota. While canoeing down the Wakpa Wakan (Great Spirit River) they would stop and camp along the way at their favored locations. The rendezvous was at the confluence of the Wakan and Mississippi rivers, or at their people's sacred site now known as Anoka. In early fall they would return to their villages to gather wild rice, once again making their way up the beautiful Wakan. During their semiannual journeys up and down their sacred river they would reverently commune with it. Besides the journeys, there were also smaller groups of Dakotas frequently going on hunting trips down the river. The Dakota were in continual reverent communion with their sacred river as well as with their sacred land on both sides of it.
The name Anoka was derived from the Dakota word a-no-ka-tan-han, meaning on both sides of the river. Having been forced from their villages at the headwaters of the Wakan, the Dakota moved to the Minnesota and lower Mississippi river valleys. After being forced from their sacred homeland territory some Dakotas would occasionally return to try to regain the region. After about thirty years and two major battles with a band of Ojibwe they did not return again to try to regain their sacred homeland territory. White settlers and a band of Ojibwe then took full possession of their sacred homeland territory, including their sacred river.
As previously mentioned, the Wakpa Wakan has spiritual importance to the Dakotas. It was a spiritual tradition of remembrance for a family member to cut the hair of a deceased relative and bury it on the south facing bank of the river. The Dakota people believe that they belong to the sacred river and that it is a relative, and a "living" relative, to be treated with reverence and great respect.
The first Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance initiative
Initiative: Replace incorrect information currently displayed on the city's website with correct information. Information concerning [who] pushed the Dakota people from their sacred homeland territory, including the land now known as Anoka. The alliance is working with Vickie Wendell, the Program Manager for the Anoka County Historical Center and a member of the Anoka County Historical Society's Board of Directors, to accomplish this initiative.
Currently, information on the city's website state's that: "Prior to the 1800's, the area surrounding Anoka was claimed by the Dakota, but later the Ojibwa pushed the Dakota westward across the Mississippi." The alliance believes that the Dakotas once claimed the area surrounding Anoka, or the "Rum River" watershed area, including the land now known as Anoka. However, the alliance believes that the Ojibwe were not [primarily] responsible for pushing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory; and that, therefore, the city's website information falsely accuses, for the most part, the wrong people for pushing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. This contributes to the present-day alienation that some Dakota and Ojibwe people feel toward each other. White people of European descent were [primarily] responsible for forcing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. The incorrect information on Anoka's website unjustifiably sets white Euro-Americans free from guilt for what their ancestors did. And this unjustifiably sets them free from feeling any need to offer restitution to both the Dakota and Ojibwe people.
A World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) document as well as information displayed on the United Nations Permanent Forum On Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) website presents what the alliance believes to be the true historical account of [who] forced, or rather [who] stole, the Dakota's sacred homeland territory, including the area now known as Anoka. The WCAR, UNPFII and the alliance believe that all of the land that the indigenous people of America owned was stolen from them by (first) European colonizers and (later) by the United States. And like the WCAR and UNPFII the alliance believes that it was stolen in a similar way and for the same reasons.
The alliance believes that the WCAR information about how the Native people's land was stolen will soon be published in, and broadcast from, mainstream news media outlets. This will likely occur when the City of Anoka replaces the incorrect and white racist information that it currently has displayed on its website with information that tells the correct historical account of [who] was [primarily] responsible for forcing the Dakota people from their sacred homeland territory.
Three more alliance initiatives
Because the alliance believes that the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy was [primarily] responsible for stealing the Dakota's Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory, Mr. Dahlheimer, the current executive director of the alliance and parishioner of the Church of Saint Stephen in Anoka, decided, with the support of the other members of the alliance, to meet and speak with Father Mike Van Sloun, the Pastor of the Church of Saint Stephen in Anoka, about the alliance's mission to reconcile and unite the residents of Anoka and the Dakota people. And to also inform him about the following three alliance initiatives:
(1.) Inspire the Church of Saint Stephen in Anoka to conduct blended spirituality services on the historic river.
(2.) To inspire Fr. Van Sloun to write an apology letter for the Roman Catholic Church's past injustices committed against the Dakota people in the Anoka area. A letter that would apologize for two fifteenth century Papal Bulls being [primarily] responsible for the theft of the Dakota people's land in Anoka. Fr. Van Sloun said he could write an apology letter, but that he would first need to get permission from his bishop Archbishop Harry Flynn. The Most Reverend Archbishop Harry Flynn supports the mission to change the historic river's derogatory name.
(3.) To also inspire Fr. Van Sloun to help Dahlheimer and Jim Anderson, a leading Dakota activist, to establish and teach a seminar to help reconcile and unite Church of Saint Stephen parishioners with the Dakota people. The meeting with Fr. Van Sloun occurred and great progress was made.
For over a decade, Fr. Van Sloun has been following the progress of Dahlheimer's Roman Catholic social and political activist ministry to change the profane and derogatory name of the "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota name Wakan. Before Dahlhiemer even knew that the "Rum River" name was a profanation of the sacred Dakota name for the river, Fr. Van Sloun had been following the progress of Dahlheimer's [worldview around the name Wakan] prophetic visionary ministry. It is a ministry wherein he teaches and promotes his Catholic expression of the youth of the 1960s counter-cultural revolution. On a number of occasions he has referred to Dahlheimer as a "prophet". Fr. Van Sloun supports the mission to change the historic river's profane name.
Progress associated with the first initiative
Prior to the official establishment of the alliance, Dahlheimer had a conversation with Vickie Wendell. He told Wendell about his historic revisionist account of [who] was [primarily] responsible for forcing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. Wendell then stated, "the Ojibwe got some help" forcing the Dakota from their homeland territory.
Future progress
Hopefully, in the future, Anoka will display its own presentation of the following information on its website:
The Dakota once claimed all of the Wakan River watershed area as their sovereign homeland territory, including the land now know as Anoka. But then in 1687, Daniel DuLuth, a French explorer, upon discovering the great village of the Dakota, a village located at the headwaters of the Wakan River set up the arms of his majesty in token of a claim by right of discovery. By doing so, he claimed the Dakota's sacred homeland territory as French territory, including the land now know as Anoka. When he did this he was following the edicts of his Pope and King, or abiding by the Christian Doctrine of Discovery. After this occurred the Dakota people's sacred homeland territory "belonged" to France and no other European nation's explorer could claim the Dakota's homeland territory for his nation, provided French colonist settlers subjugated the Dakota and annexed their land, which they could do by forcing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory.
Then about 1745 this occurred during a violent attack. A newly arrived band of Ojibwe were in Dakota territory and were at war with the long established Dakota. French settlers took advantage of the situation and allied with the band of Ojibwe who were in Dakota territory by giving them gun powder. The Ojibwe, with the help of the white men's gun powder, then violently force the Dakota from their villages located at the headwaters of the Wakan River. The Dakota, then, unwillingly moved to the Minnesota and lower Mississippi river valleys. The Dakota people had been subjugated and their land annexed.
After being forced from their sacred homeland territory some of the Dakotas would occasionally travel to the confluence of the Wakan and Mississippi rivers and stay for a while. They considered the land now know as Anoka to be a sacred site. After staying a short while at this sacred site they would sometimes go up the Wakan River on hunting expeditions and war parties to regain their sacred homeland territory. Unfortunately, after about thirty years and two major battles with this same band of Ojibwe they left and did not return again to their sacred homeland territory.
White settlers exploited red indigenous people by ruthlessly spreading the disease of alcoholism amongst many native tribes during the fur trade era. This caused excessive competition between the tribes trading furs for alcohol, which caused intertribal wars, such as the Wakan River Watershed Area Ojibwe/Dakota wars. After causing intertribal wars they often used the newly arrived tribes to drive the long established tribes from their sacred homelands, which they were very attached to because of ancestral ties, sacred sites and often creation stories. Because of these attachment sentiments the long established tribes were harder to manipulate and exploit within their sacred homeland territories than the newly arrived tribes. White settlers, therefore, often used the newly arrived tribes to force the long established tribes from their sacred homelands. This is one reason why white men used a band of Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory.
Forcing the long established tribes from their sacred homelands separated them from a very important part of their traditional religions. This made it easier for white "Christian" colonizers to convert them to "Christianity" as well as to assimilate them into their "civilized" culture. This is another reason why white men used a band of Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory. The fifteenth century Papal Bull, Inter Caetera, instructed Christian settlers to "subjugate the barbaric nations, and bring them to the faith". Native American Indians to this present-day are a [subjugated] people. They cannot own land or have full independent nation sovereignty rights, which are two fundamental human rights .
And forcing tribes that had lived in an area for a long time from their sacred homeland territories in order to make it easier to "Christianize" them was radical state sponsored "Christian" religious persecution of red indigenous people. The Dakota people who were forced from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory are still suffering from religious persecution. They are still exiled from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory. It is still occupied by the descendents of the white invaders who stole it from them. And the current white occupiers are still radically desecrating their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory.
As long they remain exiled from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory they will continue to experience religious persecution, including separation from their traditional sacred sites as well as partial separation from their Great Spirit and spirits (gods). The Dakota's Mde Wakan (Spirit Lake) and Wakpa Wakan (Spirit River) were like temples or churches to the Dakota people. And they have a creation story associated with their Spirit Lake. The Dakota originally believed that they were placed on earth to live in and care for this sacred body of water (lake/river) and its immediate region. After being exciled from their homeland they lost this belief. However, the alliance believes that many of the Dakota people will re-acquire this belief as they return to their sacred traditional and ancestral homeland.
Historical information on the Minnesota DNR website states: "Early White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of the area by white men. The French instigated fights between the Ojibwe and the Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." After white men used the Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory the Ojibwe were not given any of the land as their own. They were only given a part of it to live on. It "belonged" to France, then Britain, and it now "belongs" to the United States. The Dakota were indirectly forced by white men from their sacred homeland territory, including the land now known as Anoka.
History of the Dakota near their sacred river
Before and during the 1862 Dakota conflict there was a Dakota band located not far from the Wakan/"Rum" River. Hockokadute (Red Middle Voice) was the chief of the Rice Creek band of Dakotas whose village was located at the mouth of Rice Creek in Anoka County. After being forced from their sacred Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory the Dakota people, including Hockokadute and his band, were increasingly in contact with white settlers. From then on it was a constant struggle for the Dakotas. They had plenty of food to eat when they lived in their sacred Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory. But now years later and still exiled from their food plentiful homeland, food shortages coupled by late annuity payments from the government caused widespread hunger. Frustration and hunger led to foraging. One Dakota foraging party attacked a family of settlers near Acton, MN on August 17th, 1862. With three men and two women dead, the Dakota gathered. Hockokadute and some members of his band somehow managed to convince the Dakota leader Little Crow (Taoyateduta) that the time to go to war against the settlers was at hand. Thus began the Dakota Conflict.
It was mostly the members of the Rice Creek band who scattered throughout the white invaders' settlements administrating justice for the terrible atrocities committed against the Dakota people. This just war was meant to punish the white invaders with the intent to discourage more white racist atrocities from being committed against the Dakota people. They were also trying to regain all of their land that the white invaders had stolen and desecrated. In addition, they were also trying to preserve their culture, religion and language, which the white invaders were destroying.
The white invaders indirectly forced the Dakota from their sacred Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory and then, just prior to the 1862 conflict, they were trying to nearly starve the Dakota people to death and were also mocking them. This caused the 1862 conflict to begin. After it came to an end, thirty-eight Dakota people were brutally and unmercifully hanged in Mankato. They were largely of Hockokadute's band. It was to his village that brave Dakota warriors of the 1862 war first retreated after their last defeat at New Ulm. Here, at the Rice Creek village, were gathered about 1,000 lodges. They remained at this place until a day or two after the battle of Birch Cooley, then they moved west in a train two or three miles long.
The white invaders used the newly arrived Ojibwe tribe to violently force the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. During the violent terrorist attract and annexation of the Dakota people from their villages at the headwaters of the Wakan/"Rum" River many women and children were massacred. The alliance believes that Hockokadute and his Rice Creek band believed that it was their responsibility to instigate the war and fight in it. If the white invaders had not continued to commit radical injustices against the Dakota, there would not have been a 1862 conflict and a Dakota band would probably still be located at the mouth of Rice Creek in Anoka County. A location not far from the heart of their traditional/ancestral homeland territory, where they could be easily traveling to, to reverently commune with their sacred river in Anoka.
associated article
On July 14, 2007 the Anoka County Historical Society hosted an event to commemorate Anoka County's sesquicentennial. It was held in conjunction with Anoka's annual "Riverfest and Craft Fair". The event draws attention to, as well as celebrates Anoka's historic river, the "Rum River". Unfortunately, this river has a profane and controversial name. It is believed that the sacred Dakota name for this historic river (Wakan), which when translated into English means Spirit or Great Spirit, was mistranslated in a punning way by early 18th century white fur traders to mean the spirituous liquor (rum), and that this is how it received its current profane name.
There is a growing local, national and international movement to change the name of this river back to its sacred Dakota name. On June 10, 2007, Thomas Dahlheimer, the activist who is spearheading the river name-changing movement, asked the City of Anoka and Anoka County Historical Society officials if Jim Anderson, the Cultural Chair and Historian for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, could set up two tepees in Anoka, preferably near the historic river, but secondly at the Anoka County Historical Society Center (ACHC), and display interpretive text and signage about Dakota culture and history. Note: Permission was granted and Anderson set up a tepee and taught Dakota culture and history.
Prior to this request, Mr. Anderson had written a letter of support for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community. In this letter his community expressed its support for the effort to change the name of the river back to its sacred Dakota name. Therefore, when Dahlheimer asked the City of Anoka and Anoka County Historical Society officials if Anderson could set up tepees in Anoka they knew that Dahlheimer was attempting to help the Dakota people make inroads into Anoka for the purpose of helping Anoka residents understand that the river and land on both sides of it are considered sacred to the Dakota people, as well as for gaining support for the effort to change the name of the river. And also for helping Anoka residents understand that a significant number of the Dakota people could return to their sacred ancestral homeland territory now known as Anoka, to reverently celebrate and protect this sacred site of theirs. And that if this occurs, many Anoka residents will be changing their lifestyles in order to give due respect for the Dakota's cultural and spiritual sensitivities.
Dahlheimer also informed the officials about the Winona Dakota Unity Alliance and its annual Great Dakota Gathering & Homecoming event held in Winona Minnesota. He also told them about his desire to establish a similar alliance in Anoka, an alliance that would also plan, sponsor, and coordinate annual Great Dakota Gatherings & Homecoming events. Once a year a growing number of the Dakota people whose ancestors were driven from Minnesota after the 1862 Dakota conflict are coming from Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana and Canada to gather together and celebrate their return to their sacred traditional homeland in Winona.
Dahlheimer also informed Jim Anderson and another leading activist for the Dakota people, Leonard Wabasha, about his desire to establish an alliance in Anoka, a geographic location that the Dakota people once claimed as a part of their sacred homeland territory. And since they were forced from this area in the eighteenth century they have claimed it as a part of their traditional and ancestral homeland. Hence, the initiative to establish an Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance was made known to prominent members of both communities. And a short while later the Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance was established.
Since its establishment progress toward accomplishing its mission of bringing full unity and reconciliation to both communities has been continuous and glorious. (2007 statement)
Purpose
To promote unity and reconciliation between Anoka residents and the Dakota people, by planning, sponsoring and coordinating unity and reconciliation ceremonies as well as cross-cultural and educational programs, for the purpose of bringing the two communities together to enhance our appreciation of our shared heritage in Anoka and to plan for a glorious future where both communities will be reconciled and united in a city that will serve as a model for other cities seeking to resolve differences and unity with Native people.
Provide a forum to express grievances associated with past injustices committed against the Dakota people and offer solutions to heal the wounds inflicted on them by past injustices. Also, provide a forum to express present-day grievances as well as offer solutions to rectify the injustices.
Provide unity and reconciliation ceremonies as well as cross-cultural and educational programs to help build a unity and reconciliation bridge. A bridge that will put an end to the cultural gap that separates us, by bring us together in justice and peace, and assisting our different cultures and spiritualities to blend into a harmonious unity, a process and end result that will enrich both communities.
To dedicate city park land in Anoka to be used exclusively for unity ceremonies, cross-cultural and educational programs as well as to display interpretive text and signage about Dakota culture and history in general and specific to Anoka.
History of the Dakota people on their sacred river
The Dakota name for the lake that their sacred Wakan river flows out of is Wakan, which when translated means Spirit or Great Spirit. French colonizers named the lake Mille Lacs. This lake figures prominently in Dakota creation stories. The lake is considered sacred because, according one Dakota creation story the Dakota people emerged from it as human beings into this world.
In 1656, the Dakota were living at the headwaters of the river in five villages numbering about 5,000 people. On about July 1 hunters, 250 in number, departed, as was their custom at that time of year, to hunt the buffalo on the prairies of southern Minnesota. While canoeing down the Wakpa Wakan (Great Spirit River) they would stop and camp along the way at their favored locations. The rendezvous was at the confluence of the Wakan and Mississippi rivers, or at their people's sacred site now known as Anoka. In early fall they would return to their villages to gather wild rice, once again making their way up the beautiful Wakan. During their semiannual journeys up and down their sacred river they would reverently commune with it. Besides the journeys, there were also smaller groups of Dakotas frequently going on hunting trips down the river. The Dakota were in continual reverent communion with their sacred river as well as with their sacred land on both sides of it.
The name Anoka was derived from the Dakota word a-no-ka-tan-han, meaning on both sides of the river. Having been forced from their villages at the headwaters of the Wakan, the Dakota moved to the Minnesota and lower Mississippi river valleys. After being forced from their sacred homeland territory some Dakotas would occasionally return to try to regain the region. After about thirty years and two major battles with a band of Ojibwe they did not return again to try to regain their sacred homeland territory. White settlers and a band of Ojibwe then took full possession of their sacred homeland territory, including their sacred river.
As previously mentioned, the Wakpa Wakan has spiritual importance to the Dakotas. It was a spiritual tradition of remembrance for a family member to cut the hair of a deceased relative and bury it on the south facing bank of the river. The Dakota people believe that they belong to the sacred river and that it is a relative, and a "living" relative, to be treated with reverence and great respect.
The first Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance initiative
Initiative: Replace incorrect information currently displayed on the city's website with correct information. Information concerning [who] pushed the Dakota people from their sacred homeland territory, including the land now known as Anoka. The alliance is working with Vickie Wendell, the Program Manager for the Anoka County Historical Center and a member of the Anoka County Historical Society's Board of Directors, to accomplish this initiative.
Currently, information on the city's website state's that: "Prior to the 1800's, the area surrounding Anoka was claimed by the Dakota, but later the Ojibwa pushed the Dakota westward across the Mississippi." The alliance believes that the Dakotas once claimed the area surrounding Anoka, or the "Rum River" watershed area, including the land now known as Anoka. However, the alliance believes that the Ojibwe were not [primarily] responsible for pushing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory; and that, therefore, the city's website information falsely accuses, for the most part, the wrong people for pushing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. This contributes to the present-day alienation that some Dakota and Ojibwe people feel toward each other. White people of European descent were [primarily] responsible for forcing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. The incorrect information on Anoka's website unjustifiably sets white Euro-Americans free from guilt for what their ancestors did. And this unjustifiably sets them free from feeling any need to offer restitution to both the Dakota and Ojibwe people.
A World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) document as well as information displayed on the United Nations Permanent Forum On Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) website presents what the alliance believes to be the true historical account of [who] forced, or rather [who] stole, the Dakota's sacred homeland territory, including the area now known as Anoka. The WCAR, UNPFII and the alliance believe that all of the land that the indigenous people of America owned was stolen from them by (first) European colonizers and (later) by the United States. And like the WCAR and UNPFII the alliance believes that it was stolen in a similar way and for the same reasons.
The alliance believes that the WCAR information about how the Native people's land was stolen will soon be published in, and broadcast from, mainstream news media outlets. This will likely occur when the City of Anoka replaces the incorrect and white racist information that it currently has displayed on its website with information that tells the correct historical account of [who] was [primarily] responsible for forcing the Dakota people from their sacred homeland territory.
Three more alliance initiatives
Because the alliance believes that the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy was [primarily] responsible for stealing the Dakota's Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory, Mr. Dahlheimer, the current executive director of the alliance and parishioner of the Church of Saint Stephen in Anoka, decided, with the support of the other members of the alliance, to meet and speak with Father Mike Van Sloun, the Pastor of the Church of Saint Stephen in Anoka, about the alliance's mission to reconcile and unite the residents of Anoka and the Dakota people. And to also inform him about the following three alliance initiatives:
(1.) Inspire the Church of Saint Stephen in Anoka to conduct blended spirituality services on the historic river.
(2.) To inspire Fr. Van Sloun to write an apology letter for the Roman Catholic Church's past injustices committed against the Dakota people in the Anoka area. A letter that would apologize for two fifteenth century Papal Bulls being [primarily] responsible for the theft of the Dakota people's land in Anoka. Fr. Van Sloun said he could write an apology letter, but that he would first need to get permission from his bishop Archbishop Harry Flynn. The Most Reverend Archbishop Harry Flynn supports the mission to change the historic river's derogatory name.
(3.) To also inspire Fr. Van Sloun to help Dahlheimer and Jim Anderson, a leading Dakota activist, to establish and teach a seminar to help reconcile and unite Church of Saint Stephen parishioners with the Dakota people. The meeting with Fr. Van Sloun occurred and great progress was made.
For over a decade, Fr. Van Sloun has been following the progress of Dahlheimer's Roman Catholic social and political activist ministry to change the profane and derogatory name of the "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota name Wakan. Before Dahlhiemer even knew that the "Rum River" name was a profanation of the sacred Dakota name for the river, Fr. Van Sloun had been following the progress of Dahlheimer's [worldview around the name Wakan] prophetic visionary ministry. It is a ministry wherein he teaches and promotes his Catholic expression of the youth of the 1960s counter-cultural revolution. On a number of occasions he has referred to Dahlheimer as a "prophet". Fr. Van Sloun supports the mission to change the historic river's profane name.
Progress associated with the first initiative
Prior to the official establishment of the alliance, Dahlheimer had a conversation with Vickie Wendell. He told Wendell about his historic revisionist account of [who] was [primarily] responsible for forcing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. Wendell then stated, "the Ojibwe got some help" forcing the Dakota from their homeland territory.
Future progress
Hopefully, in the future, Anoka will display its own presentation of the following information on its website:
The Dakota once claimed all of the Wakan River watershed area as their sovereign homeland territory, including the land now know as Anoka. But then in 1687, Daniel DuLuth, a French explorer, upon discovering the great village of the Dakota, a village located at the headwaters of the Wakan River set up the arms of his majesty in token of a claim by right of discovery. By doing so, he claimed the Dakota's sacred homeland territory as French territory, including the land now know as Anoka. When he did this he was following the edicts of his Pope and King, or abiding by the Christian Doctrine of Discovery. After this occurred the Dakota people's sacred homeland territory "belonged" to France and no other European nation's explorer could claim the Dakota's homeland territory for his nation, provided French colonist settlers subjugated the Dakota and annexed their land, which they could do by forcing the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory.
Then about 1745 this occurred during a violent attack. A newly arrived band of Ojibwe were in Dakota territory and were at war with the long established Dakota. French settlers took advantage of the situation and allied with the band of Ojibwe who were in Dakota territory by giving them gun powder. The Ojibwe, with the help of the white men's gun powder, then violently force the Dakota from their villages located at the headwaters of the Wakan River. The Dakota, then, unwillingly moved to the Minnesota and lower Mississippi river valleys. The Dakota people had been subjugated and their land annexed.
After being forced from their sacred homeland territory some of the Dakotas would occasionally travel to the confluence of the Wakan and Mississippi rivers and stay for a while. They considered the land now know as Anoka to be a sacred site. After staying a short while at this sacred site they would sometimes go up the Wakan River on hunting expeditions and war parties to regain their sacred homeland territory. Unfortunately, after about thirty years and two major battles with this same band of Ojibwe they left and did not return again to their sacred homeland territory.
White settlers exploited red indigenous people by ruthlessly spreading the disease of alcoholism amongst many native tribes during the fur trade era. This caused excessive competition between the tribes trading furs for alcohol, which caused intertribal wars, such as the Wakan River Watershed Area Ojibwe/Dakota wars. After causing intertribal wars they often used the newly arrived tribes to drive the long established tribes from their sacred homelands, which they were very attached to because of ancestral ties, sacred sites and often creation stories. Because of these attachment sentiments the long established tribes were harder to manipulate and exploit within their sacred homeland territories than the newly arrived tribes. White settlers, therefore, often used the newly arrived tribes to force the long established tribes from their sacred homelands. This is one reason why white men used a band of Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory.
Forcing the long established tribes from their sacred homelands separated them from a very important part of their traditional religions. This made it easier for white "Christian" colonizers to convert them to "Christianity" as well as to assimilate them into their "civilized" culture. This is another reason why white men used a band of Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory. The fifteenth century Papal Bull, Inter Caetera, instructed Christian settlers to "subjugate the barbaric nations, and bring them to the faith". Native American Indians to this present-day are a [subjugated] people. They cannot own land or have full independent nation sovereignty rights, which are two fundamental human rights .
And forcing tribes that had lived in an area for a long time from their sacred homeland territories in order to make it easier to "Christianize" them was radical state sponsored "Christian" religious persecution of red indigenous people. The Dakota people who were forced from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory are still suffering from religious persecution. They are still exiled from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory. It is still occupied by the descendents of the white invaders who stole it from them. And the current white occupiers are still radically desecrating their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory.
As long they remain exiled from their sacred Wakan River Watershed homeland territory they will continue to experience religious persecution, including separation from their traditional sacred sites as well as partial separation from their Great Spirit and spirits (gods). The Dakota's Mde Wakan (Spirit Lake) and Wakpa Wakan (Spirit River) were like temples or churches to the Dakota people. And they have a creation story associated with their Spirit Lake. The Dakota originally believed that they were placed on earth to live in and care for this sacred body of water (lake/river) and its immediate region. After being exciled from their homeland they lost this belief. However, the alliance believes that many of the Dakota people will re-acquire this belief as they return to their sacred traditional and ancestral homeland.
Historical information on the Minnesota DNR website states: "Early White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of the area by white men. The French instigated fights between the Ojibwe and the Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." After white men used the Ojibwe to force the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory the Ojibwe were not given any of the land as their own. They were only given a part of it to live on. It "belonged" to France, then Britain, and it now "belongs" to the United States. The Dakota were indirectly forced by white men from their sacred homeland territory, including the land now known as Anoka.
History of the Dakota near their sacred river
Before and during the 1862 Dakota conflict there was a Dakota band located not far from the Wakan/"Rum" River. Hockokadute (Red Middle Voice) was the chief of the Rice Creek band of Dakotas whose village was located at the mouth of Rice Creek in Anoka County. After being forced from their sacred Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory the Dakota people, including Hockokadute and his band, were increasingly in contact with white settlers. From then on it was a constant struggle for the Dakotas. They had plenty of food to eat when they lived in their sacred Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory. But now years later and still exiled from their food plentiful homeland, food shortages coupled by late annuity payments from the government caused widespread hunger. Frustration and hunger led to foraging. One Dakota foraging party attacked a family of settlers near Acton, MN on August 17th, 1862. With three men and two women dead, the Dakota gathered. Hockokadute and some members of his band somehow managed to convince the Dakota leader Little Crow (Taoyateduta) that the time to go to war against the settlers was at hand. Thus began the Dakota Conflict.
It was mostly the members of the Rice Creek band who scattered throughout the white invaders' settlements administrating justice for the terrible atrocities committed against the Dakota people. This just war was meant to punish the white invaders with the intent to discourage more white racist atrocities from being committed against the Dakota people. They were also trying to regain all of their land that the white invaders had stolen and desecrated. In addition, they were also trying to preserve their culture, religion and language, which the white invaders were destroying.
The white invaders indirectly forced the Dakota from their sacred Wakan/"Rum" River watershed homeland territory and then, just prior to the 1862 conflict, they were trying to nearly starve the Dakota people to death and were also mocking them. This caused the 1862 conflict to begin. After it came to an end, thirty-eight Dakota people were brutally and unmercifully hanged in Mankato. They were largely of Hockokadute's band. It was to his village that brave Dakota warriors of the 1862 war first retreated after their last defeat at New Ulm. Here, at the Rice Creek village, were gathered about 1,000 lodges. They remained at this place until a day or two after the battle of Birch Cooley, then they moved west in a train two or three miles long.
The white invaders used the newly arrived Ojibwe tribe to violently force the Dakota from their sacred homeland territory. During the violent terrorist attract and annexation of the Dakota people from their villages at the headwaters of the Wakan/"Rum" River many women and children were massacred. The alliance believes that Hockokadute and his Rice Creek band believed that it was their responsibility to instigate the war and fight in it. If the white invaders had not continued to commit radical injustices against the Dakota, there would not have been a 1862 conflict and a Dakota band would probably still be located at the mouth of Rice Creek in Anoka County. A location not far from the heart of their traditional/ancestral homeland territory, where they could be easily traveling to, to reverently commune with their sacred river in Anoka.
associated article
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Draft Resolution
Introduction:
The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) asked me [Thomas Dahlheimer] to write and send Annamarie Hill, the council's executive director, a MIAC draft resolution endorsing the bill to replace Minnesota's derogatory geographic site names that are offensive to Indians. My draft resolution is presented below.
Alfred Bone Shirt (Sigangu), a nationally renowned Indian activist who is the contact person for the Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Human Rights Advocacy Coalition, published the following Minnesota Indian Affairs Council draft resolution. _____________________________________________________________
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Draft Resolution
Dear Minnesota Legislators,
In respect to Representative Mike Jaros' bill to change our state's derogatory and, in some cases, also profane geographic site names, names that are offensive to American Indians as well as to a lot of other people, we, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, request that you pass this important bill.
We find our state's geographic site name that refers to the Dakota people as a snake, as does, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's Web site, Snake River, to be very demeaning and insulting. And because some of our state's Dakota/Sioux people, consider the name Sioux to be a derogatory and offensive name, we therefore request that the geographic site names, Sioux River, Little Sioux River, Cut Foot Sioux Lake and Indian Sioux River be considered derogatory and therefore included with the other geographic place names that we would like for you to replace by passing this bill.
The name Dakota, a Dakota language name meaning friend or ally, is the name that we would like for you to use to replace the name Sioux. The name Sioux was given to the Dakota people by colonial Frenchmen. It is an abbreviation of a past derogatory Ojibwe name for the Dakota people (Nadouesioux), a term of hatred, meaning "snakes, enemies".
We also find the geographic site name that refers to both the Dakota and Ojibwe people as redskins, as does Redskin Lake, to be demeaning and insulting. We also find the geographic site names that refer to Dakota and Ojibwe people as savages, as does, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's Web site, Savage Lake and East Savage Lake to be very demeaning and insulting.
We also find it very demeaning and insulting that our state has two geographic site names that are the White man's faulty translation names for a lake and river that the Ojibwe named to honor their Great Spirit (Manido), Manido bimadagakowini zibi is the Ojibwe name for this lake and its outlet river, it means the spirits (or God) walking-place-on-the-ice river. However, white men mistranslated Manido as Devil, hence our state, unfortunately, has a lake named Devil Track Lake and a river named Devil Track River. We not only find these names demeaning and insulting, but also very disrespectful toward the Ojibwe 's traditional religion and spirituality.
In a book published by the Minnesota Historical Society, a book titled, "Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origins and Historic Significances", Warren Upham wrote that the Rum River name is "the white men's perversion of the ancient Sioux name Wakan". He also wrote, in this same book, that: "The name of Rum river, which Carver in 1766 and Pike in 1805 found in use by English-speaking fur traders, was indirectly derived from the Sioux. Their name of Mille Lacs, Mde Wakan, translated Spirit lake, was given to its river, but was changed by the white man to the most common spirituous liquor brought into the Northwest, rum, which brought misery and ruin, as Du Luth observed of brandy, to many of the Indians..."
We find it very demeaning and insulting that the Dakota people's sacred "name" for a river (Wakan River), translated as (Great) Spirit River was mistranslated by white men to mean the alcohol spirit rum, and that the river was then give the faulty and punning translation name (Rum).
And we believe that what makes this "Rum" River name even worst is the fact that, at the time when the river was named Rum, rum was not only bringing misery and ruin to many of the Dakota people, it was also being used to help steal their land.
White European rum runners were transporting rum from the trading posts on the Mississippi River to the Dakota people's villages on the headwaters of the badly named "Rum River". They were supplying them with enough alcohol to cause a lot of the Dakota people to become alcoholic drunkards. This was a method that the European settlers used to separate the Dakota from their traditional religion and spirituality, a religion and spirituality that was intimately connected with their sacred relationship with their land and consequently to their attachment to it. This made it easier to lure a lot of the Dakota people to leave their sacred homeland and go to where they could get a steady supply of rum to satisfy their alcoholic addition cravings.
According to colonial European international law, after Duluth planted the flag of France on the Dakota people's land it officially belonged to France, provided the French annex the Dakota people from their land. The French not only supplied these Dakota people with a lot of alcohol they also supplied a band of Ojibwe people (a band that had recently migrated from the east coast into the Dakota people's territory) with a lot of alcohol. According to information presented on our state's DNR Web site, "Early White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of the area by white men. The French, instigated fights between the Ojibwe and Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." The Dakota and Ojibwe people were abusing alcohol and the French knew that they were abusing it. And the French also knew that by continuing to supply them with a lot of alcohol they would cause the Dakota and Ojibwe people to become hateful and violent toward each other. This occurred, and when it occurred, the French sided with the Ojibwe, including providing them with gun powder. They did this in order to be successful in using the Ojibwe (in a radically abusive way) to drive all of the Dakota people from their sacred land on the headwaters of the "Rum River". And by doing so, they finalize their land grabbing transaction.
We believe that these derogatory and, in some cases, also profane names demean our traditional cultures and languages, and in some cases, also desecrate sacred sites of ours, and that they are legacies of racism that are a shameful scandal to our wonderful state of Minnesota.
In addition, we believe that replacing the derogatory and profane "Rum River" name would help our people who are suffering from alcohol abuse to increase their appreciation of our/their traditional cultures and values and that this would help to heal the wounds that are contributing to their drinking problems, and that this, in turn, would be good for all of our Minnesota Indian communities.
We appreciate the local, national and international support for the effort to change the derogatory and profane name of the "Rum River". We are aware that there is a United Nations Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues promoted international movement to change derogatory and profane geographic site names that are offensive to indigenous peoples who are still suffering from the oppressive effects of colonialism. We are more than happy to participate in this international movement by endorsing our state's name-changing bill. We believe that indigenous people all around the world will be helped by, both, our endorsement of this bill as well as by, hopefully, your passage of it.
We are also aware that there is a national movement to replace derogatory and profane geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians and we are more than happy to also participate in this movement by endorsing our state's name-changing bill. We believe that our endorsement of this bill sets another national precedent and that if you pass this bill, it will also set another national precedent that will help our nation to replace all of its racists names, names that demean American Indian cultures and languages and, in some cases, also desecrate sacred American Indian sites. We believe that our endorsement of this bill and, hopefully, your passage of it will help promote the national movement to replace all of our nation's derogatory and profane geographic site names, and that this will help our nation to become a better place to live.
We also believe that this campaign to change our state's derogatory and profane geographic site names is a valuable history lesson and that if you pass this bill, this valuable history lesson will even more so help to transform our wonderful state so that the people of the dominate culture more fully respect and appreciate our people's traditional cultures and languages.
We also believe that in the wake of a recently published on-line document by the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism that the true history of what happened to our people will be revealed to the general public, and be revealed by (1.) the campaign to replace our state's derogatory and profane names, (2.) our endorsement of this bill as well as (3.), hopefully, your passage of it, and that this true history will cause both our state's Ojibwe people, especially the Mille Lacs Band of Ojiwe, as well as the dominate culture to apologize to the Dakota people as well as offer them restitution justice. In addition, we also believe that the revealing of this true history of our people will cause the dominate culture to also apologize and offer restitution justice to our state's Ojibwe people, and especially to the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, for the injustices committed against them, and that everyone will benefit from our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it.
After reading a recent United Nations' World Conference Against Racism document and then searching to find out why our state has these derogatory and profane names it becomes clear as to why our state has these derogatory names. Thanks to both this World Conference Against Racism document and campaign to replace our state's derogatory geographic place names, for the first time, the true history of what happened to our state's Dakota and Ojibwe people is fully revealed. On-line articles about what happened to our state's Dakota and Ojibwe people can be viewed at:
(1.) http://www.towahkon.org/SEED.html
(2.) http://www.towahkon.org/Regaining.html
(3.) http://www.towahkon.org/Renamingsites.html
(4.) http://www.towahkon.org/sae.html
(5.) http://www.towahkon.org/Dakotarights.html.
Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer, the person who originally drafted the name-changing bill and who also asked Representative Jaros if he would like to introduce an apology resolution, which Rep. Jaros said he would, has, so far, also asked the Minnesota Council of Churches, Greater Minneapolis and Saint Paul Area Councils of Churches, the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota, the Diocese of Saint Cloud, the Bishop of Minnesota's United Methodist Church and the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota to not only apologize for their ties to the exploitation of our people, but to also radically repent and reform their lives, and do so, in order to treat our people with due respect.
Mr. Dahlheimer has been corresponding with the leaders of these Christian organizations and churches and this causes us to believe that our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it will help influence the establishment and promotion of an, indigenous peoples rights, social and political movement that will greatly transform our state, and that this movement will spread throughout our nation as well as throughout the Americas, setting all of the Americas' indigenous peoples free from the subjugated state of existence imposed upon us by Pope Alexandria the VI's 15th century Papal Bull (Inter Caetera). A Papal Bull that continues to be the source of the oppressive White racism being perpetrated against us to this present-day. We believe that Pope Alexandria the VI's present-day predecessor as well as the leaders of both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestant Churches continue to abide by this papal bull's, subjugation of indigenous peoples, racist edicts.
In the Papal Bull (Inter Caetera) Pope Alexandria the VI called for the "subjugation of the New World's barbarous nations and their lands". And ever since, first colonial and then successor States have subjugated our people and our lands as well as kept our people and our lands in subjugation. According to the Papal Bull (Inter Caetrea) and colonial European international law (law basis on this Papal Bull) a law that was later incorporated into U.S. law only White European Christian nations could own land. Therefore, we believe that there is a need for the leaders of Christian Churches as well as their people to radically repent and reform their lives. Christian leaders and colonial European international law denied us two of our basic human rights. And U.S. law, currently, denies us these same basic human rights. We had, and still have, a right to absolute root ownership of our homelands as well as full sovereignty rights. However, thanks to, primarily, Christian Church leaders we are still being denied these two basic human rights. This has to change to make things right.
And we also believe that this Christian reformation will occur, primarily, because of our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it, and that this Christian reformation will cause a great and wonderful transformation of our state, our nation and the entire world.
This campaign to change our state's derogatory and profane names is revitalizing our appreciation of our traditional cultures and languages. And we believe that your passage of this bill would even more so help us to preserve what is left of our traditional cultures as well as restore that which has been lost. And we believe that this would be good for everyone, and especially for everyone living in our wonderful state of Minnesota.
Sincerely,
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council
________________________________________________________________
Click apology resolution to view and read a Minnesota apology resolution for the exploitation of Native Americans.
The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) asked me [Thomas Dahlheimer] to write and send Annamarie Hill, the council's executive director, a MIAC draft resolution endorsing the bill to replace Minnesota's derogatory geographic site names that are offensive to Indians. My draft resolution is presented below.
Alfred Bone Shirt (Sigangu), a nationally renowned Indian activist who is the contact person for the Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Human Rights Advocacy Coalition, published the following Minnesota Indian Affairs Council draft resolution. _____________________________________________________________
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Draft Resolution
Dear Minnesota Legislators,
In respect to Representative Mike Jaros' bill to change our state's derogatory and, in some cases, also profane geographic site names, names that are offensive to American Indians as well as to a lot of other people, we, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, request that you pass this important bill.
We find our state's geographic site name that refers to the Dakota people as a snake, as does, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's Web site, Snake River, to be very demeaning and insulting. And because some of our state's Dakota/Sioux people, consider the name Sioux to be a derogatory and offensive name, we therefore request that the geographic site names, Sioux River, Little Sioux River, Cut Foot Sioux Lake and Indian Sioux River be considered derogatory and therefore included with the other geographic place names that we would like for you to replace by passing this bill.
The name Dakota, a Dakota language name meaning friend or ally, is the name that we would like for you to use to replace the name Sioux. The name Sioux was given to the Dakota people by colonial Frenchmen. It is an abbreviation of a past derogatory Ojibwe name for the Dakota people (Nadouesioux), a term of hatred, meaning "snakes, enemies".
We also find the geographic site name that refers to both the Dakota and Ojibwe people as redskins, as does Redskin Lake, to be demeaning and insulting. We also find the geographic site names that refer to Dakota and Ojibwe people as savages, as does, according to the Minnesota Historical Society's Web site, Savage Lake and East Savage Lake to be very demeaning and insulting.
We also find it very demeaning and insulting that our state has two geographic site names that are the White man's faulty translation names for a lake and river that the Ojibwe named to honor their Great Spirit (Manido), Manido bimadagakowini zibi is the Ojibwe name for this lake and its outlet river, it means the spirits (or God) walking-place-on-the-ice river. However, white men mistranslated Manido as Devil, hence our state, unfortunately, has a lake named Devil Track Lake and a river named Devil Track River. We not only find these names demeaning and insulting, but also very disrespectful toward the Ojibwe 's traditional religion and spirituality.
In a book published by the Minnesota Historical Society, a book titled, "Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origins and Historic Significances", Warren Upham wrote that the Rum River name is "the white men's perversion of the ancient Sioux name Wakan". He also wrote, in this same book, that: "The name of Rum river, which Carver in 1766 and Pike in 1805 found in use by English-speaking fur traders, was indirectly derived from the Sioux. Their name of Mille Lacs, Mde Wakan, translated Spirit lake, was given to its river, but was changed by the white man to the most common spirituous liquor brought into the Northwest, rum, which brought misery and ruin, as Du Luth observed of brandy, to many of the Indians..."
We find it very demeaning and insulting that the Dakota people's sacred "name" for a river (Wakan River), translated as (Great) Spirit River was mistranslated by white men to mean the alcohol spirit rum, and that the river was then give the faulty and punning translation name (Rum).
And we believe that what makes this "Rum" River name even worst is the fact that, at the time when the river was named Rum, rum was not only bringing misery and ruin to many of the Dakota people, it was also being used to help steal their land.
White European rum runners were transporting rum from the trading posts on the Mississippi River to the Dakota people's villages on the headwaters of the badly named "Rum River". They were supplying them with enough alcohol to cause a lot of the Dakota people to become alcoholic drunkards. This was a method that the European settlers used to separate the Dakota from their traditional religion and spirituality, a religion and spirituality that was intimately connected with their sacred relationship with their land and consequently to their attachment to it. This made it easier to lure a lot of the Dakota people to leave their sacred homeland and go to where they could get a steady supply of rum to satisfy their alcoholic addition cravings.
According to colonial European international law, after Duluth planted the flag of France on the Dakota people's land it officially belonged to France, provided the French annex the Dakota people from their land. The French not only supplied these Dakota people with a lot of alcohol they also supplied a band of Ojibwe people (a band that had recently migrated from the east coast into the Dakota people's territory) with a lot of alcohol. According to information presented on our state's DNR Web site, "Early White/Indian intervention played an important role in the settlement of the area by white men. The French, instigated fights between the Ojibwe and Dakota so as to ally themselves with the Ojibwe." The Dakota and Ojibwe people were abusing alcohol and the French knew that they were abusing it. And the French also knew that by continuing to supply them with a lot of alcohol they would cause the Dakota and Ojibwe people to become hateful and violent toward each other. This occurred, and when it occurred, the French sided with the Ojibwe, including providing them with gun powder. They did this in order to be successful in using the Ojibwe (in a radically abusive way) to drive all of the Dakota people from their sacred land on the headwaters of the "Rum River". And by doing so, they finalize their land grabbing transaction.
We believe that these derogatory and, in some cases, also profane names demean our traditional cultures and languages, and in some cases, also desecrate sacred sites of ours, and that they are legacies of racism that are a shameful scandal to our wonderful state of Minnesota.
In addition, we believe that replacing the derogatory and profane "Rum River" name would help our people who are suffering from alcohol abuse to increase their appreciation of our/their traditional cultures and values and that this would help to heal the wounds that are contributing to their drinking problems, and that this, in turn, would be good for all of our Minnesota Indian communities.
We appreciate the local, national and international support for the effort to change the derogatory and profane name of the "Rum River". We are aware that there is a United Nations Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues promoted international movement to change derogatory and profane geographic site names that are offensive to indigenous peoples who are still suffering from the oppressive effects of colonialism. We are more than happy to participate in this international movement by endorsing our state's name-changing bill. We believe that indigenous people all around the world will be helped by, both, our endorsement of this bill as well as by, hopefully, your passage of it.
We are also aware that there is a national movement to replace derogatory and profane geographic site names that are offensive to American Indians and we are more than happy to also participate in this movement by endorsing our state's name-changing bill. We believe that our endorsement of this bill sets another national precedent and that if you pass this bill, it will also set another national precedent that will help our nation to replace all of its racists names, names that demean American Indian cultures and languages and, in some cases, also desecrate sacred American Indian sites. We believe that our endorsement of this bill and, hopefully, your passage of it will help promote the national movement to replace all of our nation's derogatory and profane geographic site names, and that this will help our nation to become a better place to live.
We also believe that this campaign to change our state's derogatory and profane geographic site names is a valuable history lesson and that if you pass this bill, this valuable history lesson will even more so help to transform our wonderful state so that the people of the dominate culture more fully respect and appreciate our people's traditional cultures and languages.
We also believe that in the wake of a recently published on-line document by the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism that the true history of what happened to our people will be revealed to the general public, and be revealed by (1.) the campaign to replace our state's derogatory and profane names, (2.) our endorsement of this bill as well as (3.), hopefully, your passage of it, and that this true history will cause both our state's Ojibwe people, especially the Mille Lacs Band of Ojiwe, as well as the dominate culture to apologize to the Dakota people as well as offer them restitution justice. In addition, we also believe that the revealing of this true history of our people will cause the dominate culture to also apologize and offer restitution justice to our state's Ojibwe people, and especially to the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, for the injustices committed against them, and that everyone will benefit from our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it.
After reading a recent United Nations' World Conference Against Racism document and then searching to find out why our state has these derogatory and profane names it becomes clear as to why our state has these derogatory names. Thanks to both this World Conference Against Racism document and campaign to replace our state's derogatory geographic place names, for the first time, the true history of what happened to our state's Dakota and Ojibwe people is fully revealed. On-line articles about what happened to our state's Dakota and Ojibwe people can be viewed at:
(1.) http://www.towahkon.org/SEED.html
(2.) http://www.towahkon.org/Regaining.html
(3.) http://www.towahkon.org/Renamingsites.html
(4.) http://www.towahkon.org/sae.html
(5.) http://www.towahkon.org/Dakotarights.html.
Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer, the person who originally drafted the name-changing bill and who also asked Representative Jaros if he would like to introduce an apology resolution, which Rep. Jaros said he would, has, so far, also asked the Minnesota Council of Churches, Greater Minneapolis and Saint Paul Area Councils of Churches, the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota, the Diocese of Saint Cloud, the Bishop of Minnesota's United Methodist Church and the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota to not only apologize for their ties to the exploitation of our people, but to also radically repent and reform their lives, and do so, in order to treat our people with due respect.
Mr. Dahlheimer has been corresponding with the leaders of these Christian organizations and churches and this causes us to believe that our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it will help influence the establishment and promotion of an, indigenous peoples rights, social and political movement that will greatly transform our state, and that this movement will spread throughout our nation as well as throughout the Americas, setting all of the Americas' indigenous peoples free from the subjugated state of existence imposed upon us by Pope Alexandria the VI's 15th century Papal Bull (Inter Caetera). A Papal Bull that continues to be the source of the oppressive White racism being perpetrated against us to this present-day. We believe that Pope Alexandria the VI's present-day predecessor as well as the leaders of both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Protestant Churches continue to abide by this papal bull's, subjugation of indigenous peoples, racist edicts.
In the Papal Bull (Inter Caetera) Pope Alexandria the VI called for the "subjugation of the New World's barbarous nations and their lands". And ever since, first colonial and then successor States have subjugated our people and our lands as well as kept our people and our lands in subjugation. According to the Papal Bull (Inter Caetrea) and colonial European international law (law basis on this Papal Bull) a law that was later incorporated into U.S. law only White European Christian nations could own land. Therefore, we believe that there is a need for the leaders of Christian Churches as well as their people to radically repent and reform their lives. Christian leaders and colonial European international law denied us two of our basic human rights. And U.S. law, currently, denies us these same basic human rights. We had, and still have, a right to absolute root ownership of our homelands as well as full sovereignty rights. However, thanks to, primarily, Christian Church leaders we are still being denied these two basic human rights. This has to change to make things right.
And we also believe that this Christian reformation will occur, primarily, because of our endorsement of this bill as well as, hopefully, your passage of it, and that this Christian reformation will cause a great and wonderful transformation of our state, our nation and the entire world.
This campaign to change our state's derogatory and profane names is revitalizing our appreciation of our traditional cultures and languages. And we believe that your passage of this bill would even more so help us to preserve what is left of our traditional cultures as well as restore that which has been lost. And we believe that this would be good for everyone, and especially for everyone living in our wonderful state of Minnesota.
Sincerely,
Minnesota Indian Affairs Council
________________________________________________________________
Click apology resolution to view and read a Minnesota apology resolution for the exploitation of Native Americans.
Solving The Alcohol Abuse Epidemic
By Thomas Dahlheimer
In a Minnesota country newspaper article, subtitled: “300 gather to note the toll by alcohol abuse”, Melvin Eagle, the hereditary Chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted as saying: “Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people.”
I am an Indigenous Peoples of the Americas rights activist who is spearheading an international movement to change the derogatory name of a Minnesota U.S.A. river, the Rum River. In a book published by the Minnesota Historical society, a book titled: Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origins and Historic Significances, Warren Upham wrote: the Rum River name is “the white men’s perversion of the ancient Sioux name Wakan“. Another reason why the current name for the Rum River is inappropriate is because, as stated by Upham in this same book, “rum brought misery and ruin, as Duluth observed of whisky, to many of the Indians”.
I believe the restoration of the river’s original name would help uplift the Indian community, which has been historically plagued by alcohol. When Europeans came to the Americas, the homelands of great multitudes of indigenous people, they brought rum and other alcoholic beverages with them. At the time, the Indians had no cultural controls in place for their usage. Hence, because of alcohol abuse, things moved into degradation and multitudes of premature deaths. And this situation was made even worse by the White’s frequent use of alcohol in ruthless genocidal attacks, alcohol was given to the Indians in order to kill, subdue, or cheat them.
I believe that by drawing attention to the Rum River name-change issue “white guilt” will increase, because of a heightened awareness of the catastrophic consequences caused by white settlers introducing and selling alcohol to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas; and that this increase of “white guilt” will, in a lot of ways, cause the dominate cultures of the Americas to offer all the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas their long over due restitution justice, especially when it comes to making amends to help them free themselves from the plague of alcoholism.
I also believe that, by reverting the profane name of the Rum River back to its original American Indian name Wakan, translated as (Great) Spirit, we would be honoring the importance of spirituality for Indians. I believe that the Rum River name has become like a joke - an antagonistic joke that’s very antagonistic, and that by changing the river’s name we would be putting an end to a source of racial antagonism.
During prohibition there was a movement to change the Rum River name. At the time, a lot of people did not want rivers and other geographic places to have names that were advertisements for alcoholic beverages, or addictive products that they considered harmful to society. And this is another reason why I am spearheading the movement to change the name of the Rum River.
In the Mentota Mdewakanton Dakota Community’s letter of support - Jim Anderson, the Historian and Cultural Chairman for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, wrote:
“I believe that renaming the river ‘Wakpa Wakan’ or ‘Spirit River’ is a great stride in mending the circle that we share with all four colors of man. We, as Dakotas, are very happy that there are people out there that are trying to understand that by using names like ‘rum’ and ‘devil’ to label sacred sites and places is degrading to our children, our elders and also to our ancestors. These places were already named in our language by our people because of their special meaning. When we have to tell our children why these places have been named after a poison or the worst words in their language. It is demoralizing to us to have to explain why a place is named after the same things that helped to steal our land and language. To have to be reminded of the cultural genocide that has been perpetrated on all Indian people. So, in changing the name back to the Dakota language, it will help in the healing process that our people continue to deal with.”
“Many schools and teams have already changed their names in respect to our children and adults. It promotes us to be proud of our heritage, language and culture, to respect themselves and being Indian in our own homeland. I am writing in support of the name change of the Rum River.”
“We, as the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota, request the County Commissioners in the affected counties to support our hope of righting this wrong. Please do the respectful and moral thing and change this disrespectful and culturally damaging name.”
In a Star Tribune newspaper article Jim Anderson is quoted as saying: “It’s another derogatory term.” “Naming a sacred river after what they were binging up to our people is wrong. We’re in favor of the name change.”
During an early stage of this river name-change movement, I was asked to use this name-change issue to gain access to public forums wherein I would be able to express my opinion on whether it was right or wrong for Europeans to bring alcohol to the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas; and that if, in my opinion, it was not right, explain what could and should be done to rid alcohol from the Americas. And because of the world-wide support that I have received for my effort to change the name of the Rum River, I believe that it will not be long until I will be receiving recognition in the U.S. mainstream news media as a social engineer in the forefront of a world-wide movement to stop the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas alcohol-abuse epidemic.
And I, as a Catholic social activist, have radical grievances against my Church’s supreme hierarchal authorities’ world-wide support for the legality and use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol. And I am especially troubled by their support for the legality and use of alcohol in the Americas, where the homelands of a great multitude of indigenous people our located. In addition, I am radically opposed to my Church’s use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I have talked to the pastors of Catholic churches located near the headwaters of the “Rum” River, or, in Minnesota’s Mille Lacs Lake area about petitioning our Bishop, Bishop John Kinney of Saint Cloud Diocese, to give them permission to stop using wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I am trying to evangelize the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to the Catholic churches located on the south end of Mille Lacs Lake. And at least some Mille Lacs Band members are trying to “pull together and away from alcohol”, but my Church’s supreme hierarchal authorities want me to lead them to alcohol (wine) on these churches’ alters.
An open letter to my pastor about this issue:
During last Sunday’s Mass a song with the words “I will drink wine on my knees” was sung. Those words filled me with holy indignation. Why sing those words when everywhere in the world where alcohol is legal and available there are catastrophic consequences?
Now-days, we know a lot more about the dangers of alcohol than they did back when Jesus walked the earth. And when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding party those people who drank the wine did not have cars to get in and drive off and kill people. The circumstances associated with the moral issue concerning the legality and use of alcohol has, over a 2000 year period of time, radically changed. But most people are stuck in the past and can not accepted this truth. Even our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities are still stuck in their erroneous traditional way of thinking when it comes to the question as to whether or not our Church should change its attitude about alcohol. I believe that our supreme hierarchical authorities should stop supporting the legality and use of alcohol throughout the world, and especially in the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
When it comes to our supreme hierarchical authorities’ other traditionally approved of deadly drug (tobacco), they are beginning to change their traditional attitude and policies. They just recently banded the smoking of tobacco in Vatican buildings. When modern-day scientific evidence first indicated that it was wrong to continue to allow smoking of tobacco in buildings where people would have to breath second hand smoke, our Church’s hierarchical authorities did not take the moral lead and become the first, or one of the first major building managerial committees to ban smoking from their buildings, but rather they waited quite a long time before banning the smoking of tobacco in their public buildings.
When they were pressured by concerned public health activists to deal with this modern-day tobacco use in public buildings moral issue, they finally had to admitted that they had made a mistake in the past, and that they made it when they originally allowed the use of tobacco in Vatican buildings. We know that in the past they have gotten stuck in some erroneous traditional ways of thinking, and then made immoral judgments when new scientific evidence was telling them that their traditional stances on some issues were radically wrong. Imagine how much Galileo had to suffer because he discovered that the Church’s traditional position on an issue was radically wrong, and our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities would not, for a long time, accept the new scientific evidence that indicated that he was right.
Modern-day scientific evidence informs us, and this is even the official position of the French government, that when comparing the traditional mood-altering drug of both the Church and the white raced people (alcohol) with the drugs of colored people throughout the world, alcohol has been found to be one of the most addictive and harmful drugs, and that everywhere it is legal and available there are catastrophic health and social consequences. But never-the-less our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities continue to disapprove of the use of colored people’s traditional mood-altering drugs and then give their (back in the days of Jesus’ earthly life and out of touch with today’s reality) traditional white racist support for the legality and use of alcohol. And they also continue in their erroneous traditional way of thinking when it comes to their misguided support for the legal use of tobacco.
One of Alcoholics Anonymous’ twelve steps for alcohol abuse treatment deals with the “big shot syndrome”. And one of today’s biggest questions is what was the primary cause as to why the white raced people developed such a diluted superiority complex that they were able to commit such radical atrocities against colored people. And when trying to find the answer to this question, it made sense to me, that if a race of people were to use and abuse alcohol for a long time, they would consequently develop the “big shot syndrome”. People with diluted “big shot” mentalities need to subjugate and manipulate people. And this type of mentality portrays the history of the white raced people. Hence, I have concluded that because - where there is legal use of alcohol there is also a lot of alcohol abuse - that therefore our Church’s long standing position of sanctioning the legal use of alcohol was the primary cause for all of the white-racist atrocities committed against colored people.
And now-days, even when it is known that where ever alcohol is legal and available there are catastrophic consequences our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities never-the-less continue to promote the legal use (and consequently the abuse) of alcohol.
When writing the new Catechism Of The Catholic Church, our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities included an erroneous statement that has influenced a great multitude of people to believe that the use of alcohol is not dangerous. And because of this highly influential opinion of theirs, a lot of people have started drinking alcoholic beverages and many of them are now suffering from alcohol abuse problems. In the Catechism our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities proclaim that alcohol is not dangerous, but that all other drugs are dangerous. They should have known not to put that erroneous statement in the Catechism. Even the advisory doctor for the nationally broadcasted Good Morning America television program said on national television that too many people who start using alcohol with the intention of using it moderately end up becoming habitual abusers of alcohol; and that the belief that the use of alcohol is not dangerous for the average person causes a lot of grief and suffering for multitudes of people. In America 10% of men and 5% of women who start drinking alcohol will become habitual abusers of alcohol.
I would like the world community of nations to advocate the creation of an United Nations world court indictment in order to bring our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities to justice for their long-standing and persistent support for the legality and use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol, it is a crime against humanity. I am sure that the many anti-alcohol Islamic nations would like to participate in this righteous plan to bring them to justice. And for the Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities to continue to promote the legal use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol during this critical time when there is a war against other addictive and harmful drugs makes this crime of theirs even more evil.
European salve traders shipped thousands of barrels of rum across the sea to African tribal leaders and gave some of the barrels of rum to them. And they did this without warning them that it was addictive. And they also neglected to warn them that, if they were to get addicted to it they would do evil things to get more of it. And by neglecting to warn them of the addictive and harmful qualities of alcohol, the white salve traders intentionally deceived the African tribal leaders for the purpose of gaining an opportunity to coheres them into capturing their own people for the purpose of trading them (as salves) for rum.
And their scam worked, the black African tribal leaders became addicted to alcohol and then captured their own people for the purpose of trading them (as slaves) for more rum. Hence, the white slave traders were able to make a lot of money. They put the captured black African slaves in their ships as cargo bound for America. And on the way to America 40 million of them died because of the ships unhealthy living conditions. And for the slaves that survived the trip they were separated (husband from wife, children from parents) and sold to white customers who lived many miles apart. And many of those white customers were Catholics. Both Catholic Bishops, as well as Catholic laymen bought and owned black African slaves. They greedily made a profit from the slave traders’ promotion of alcohol abuse in Africa. The slave trade was a promotion of alcohol abuse, greedy money-making, white racist scam and atrocity that many of our nation’s Bishops and laymen participated in. And our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities permitted this alcohol abuse related atrocity to continue, and this radical neglect of their moral responsibility caused untold grief and suffering for great multitudes of people.
And when Catholic missionary priests entered the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas they brought the addictive and harmful drug alcohol with them. And the Catholic missionary priests, in the process of their Holy See directed mission to evangelize the natives, gave the addictive and harmful drug alcohol to the natives. And they committed this grave sin because they wanted the natives to believe that alcohol was a good and safe drug. And did so, because it was being used during the summit of the Church’s worship services. And this grave sin of theirs was the primary cause for the Indian alcoholic-abuse genocidal epidemic, a genocidal epidemic that is still being perpetrated against Indians throughout the Americas.
And our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities also sanctioned North American cultural genocidal boarding schools. Native American children were legally kidnapped from their parents and taken away to Catholic boarding schools there they were brain washed to believe that their culture, religion, language, and drugs, drugs that their adult relatives used moderately and spiritual, were evil, and that the white man’s culture, religion, language and drug (alcohol, an addictive and harmful drug) were good. And in the evil environment of Catholic boarding schools, alcohol demented homosexual pedophile priests had a field day sexually molesting the Indian boys. And our Church in North America is headed toward bankruptcy because of all the evil things that happened in those evil brain-washing boarding schools.
When our nation’s bishops found out that a pre-Columbus traditionally used Indian mind-altering medicinal drug (peyote) was being used spiritually and therapeutically by an increasing number of American Indians and that its use was helping them to stop the alcohol abuse genocidal health epidemic that was being perpetrated against them our nation’s bishops condemned its use and proclaimed it a heresy for Catholic Indians to use it, and did so because of their white racist belief that the white man’s drug (alcohol) was the superior drug and the only good mind altering drug, and that therefore Indians should use alcohol and not their traditional drug peyote. And this is another reason why the Indian alcohol abuse health epidemic and genocide continues to plague Indians today.
Jesus wanted the church to go into all parts of the world in order to evangelize all of mankind to God’s saving plan, but he did not want the church to take the negative aspects of Jewish culture with them and impose those negative aspects of Jewish culture on the peoples of different races and cultures. But in respect to the alcohol-use negative aspect of Jewish culture, that is exactly what our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities did when they imposed, in the process of their evangelization mission, the use of alcohol on Indians and other non-alcohol drinking indigenous peoples throughout the world, and they are still committing this same grave sin. But, thanks be to God, at least some of the Protestant churches have switched from wine to grape juice when it comes to the Last Supper segment of their worship services.
In our country 23% of Catholic priest are alcoholics. And at every Mass that these priest officiate at red wine is placed on the alters in front of them. But in Proverbs 23:31-32 the word of God says: “Look not on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the glass. It goes down smoothly; but in the end it bites like a serpent, or like a poisonous adder”. And alcoholics are not suppose to drink any amount of alcohol, but alcoholic priests are required to do so at very Mass that they officiate at. You would think that our supreme hierarchal authorities would have enough compassion for their alcoholic priests to stop using wine in the sacrifice of the Mass. But I am not surprise that they do not. And the reason why, is because just recently there was, as you know, a hierarchal scandal wherein it was discovered that high ranking church officials did not have enough compassion for their addicted to child molesting priests to send them to treatment centers, instead they (a Cardinal, some Archbishops and Bishops) moved mentally ill child molesting priests from one parish to another, a grave sin that put these sick priests in situations wherein they were enabled to continue on in their child molestation sickness. This is another example of how much compassion they have for their priests who have addiction problems.
When alcohol was criminalized in our country there was only one U.S. Christian Church that objected, it was our Catholic Church. And at the time, our church refused to use grape juice instead of the alcoholic beverage (wine) during the summit of our church’s worship services. This was another factor that contributed to the decriminalization of alcohol and subsequent alcohol poisoning health epidemic and related social atrocities, including the re-establishment of the legalized American Indian alcohol-abuse genocidal health epidemic.
According to the Centers of Disease Control, approximately 85,000 Americans die each year from alcohol induced deaths (not including motor vehicle fatalities where alcohol impairment was a contributing factor) such as overdose and cirrhosis. The death rate for Native people via alcoholism is seven times the national average. And alcohol also frequently figures into the extremely high Indian suicide rate which is almost 75% above that of all other races.
And in a study published in the March 2004 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research - evidence clearly shows that even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can have a significant impact on child development.” This study found that: “There is no safe level of drinking during pregnancy and there is no safe time to drink during pregnancy.” Multitudes of pre-born babies are being killed or severely brain damaged by their mother’s consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. In the U.S., 15% of pregnant women drink alcohol. When viewing this evidence you would think that our bishops would have come out with a statement asking government officials to criminalize alcoholic beverages for at least pregnant women. But because - back in the days when Jesus walked the earth pregnant women drank alcoholic beverages and Jesus did not, at the time, inform them that it was immoral to drink alcohol when pregnant - our bishops therefore erroneously believe that they can not, at this time in the evolution of church history, ask for government officials to criminalize alcohol for at least pregnant women. Hence from this prospective their “pro-life” stance looks quite hypocritical.
Excerpts from an article in the Washington Post - By Charles Krauthammer:
Prohibition: It was a public health triumph. The decline it caused in cirrhosis and alcoholic psychosis was dramatic.
“The demonization of drugs allows delusion about alcohol to flourish”.
STAR TRIBUNE March 15, 1999 WASHINGTON DC - Rep. Jim Ramstad:
“He is using his own struggle with alcoholism to promote a solution to what he says is an American epidemic.”
He opened a speech before a convention of alcohol counselors Tuesday and said ignorance is to blame for the nation’s persistent alcohol abuse problem.”
“Congress is a case in point, he said: The vast majority of the members don’t understand alcoholism and other drug abuse as a disease. They might give it lip service, but they don’t really get it.”
“His message was similar to one delivered by Sen. Paul Wellstone, a day earlier to the same group. You are working in a society that doesn’t understand the problem nor the solution, Wellstone said.
Ramstad said solving the alcohol abuse epidemic will be difficult. “One obstacle he identified is the $104 billion-per-year beer, wine and liquor industry that contributed more than $2.2 million to federal campaigns.”
“Ramstad said, the nation’s drug and alcohol policies need to be reevaluated - and soon. It’s only going to get worse unless we get smarter.
U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, July 7,1999 NEXT TARGET: LIQUOR COMPANIES?
“Plaintiffs’ lawyers, federal regulators, and state officials forced tobacco companies into a $368.5 billion settlement to pay for the damage to public heath caused by cigarettes. The same arguments used against the tobacco industry can be used against makers of beer, wine, and hard liquor.” “Sobering facts. To be consistent with their crusade against cigarettes, the health police have to go after alcohol. The most recent calculation by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention place the number of alcohol-related deaths in the United States each year at 108,000. That’s fewer than the 419,000 deaths attributed to smoking, but there’s a big difference: While cigarettes kill in the middle age or later, alcohol kills people in their prime, often in car crashes. As a result, the CDC estimates that smoking deprives Americans of 1.2 million years of life before age 65; alcohol, 1.5 million years.”
“Alcohol not only kills, it wounds. In 1990, reports the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, “alcohol-related crashes resulted in 22,084 fatalities and 1.9 million injuries.”
“Accidents are only the beginning. Alcohol-induced liver diseases kill 20,000 yearly. In 1993, some 708,255 patients were treated for alcoholism, and addiction was the fourth-leading cause of hospital stays for men ages 16 to 44, requiring a total of more than 1 million days of hospital care, compared with 741,000 for heart disease. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that 13.8 million adults “met standard diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence during 1992.” In addition, says the NIAAN, “30 percent of suicides, and 50 percent of homicides, and 30 percent of accidental deaths are associated with alcohol abuse.” Two thirds of all violent crimes are committed by people under the influence of alcohol.
Protesting the alcoholic beverage (wine) located in Wahkon, Minnesota’s Sacred Heart Church:
Almost every day, I see alcoholic drunkard American Indians from the Isle reservation going to both the Isle and Wahkon liquor stores to pick up more alcoholic beverages to keep their health destroying alcoholic binges going. Over the last thirty years, I have witnessed many alcohol abuse related deaths of local American Indians. Why can these American Indians go to Isle or Wahkon and buy alcoholic beverages but not cocaine, heroin, meth, or even marijuana?
Answer: There are liquor stores in Isle and Wahkon where alcoholic drunkard American Indians can buy alcoholic beverages because the prohibition of alcohol laws came to an end and they have not yet been reestablished. And I believe that the primary reason why they came to an end and have not yet been reestablished is because our church was opposed to prohibition (it was the only church to oppose prohibition) and it still believes in and promotes the legalization of alcohol throughout our nation, where a multitude of American Indians are suffering from a - largely Catholic influenced - genocidal alcohol abuse health epidemic.
Our church was opposed to prohibition, a stance that influenced a lot of people to brake the prohibition laws, which in turn caused legislators to repeal prohibition. Hence we now have liquor stores in Isle and Wahkon.
Reference:
History of Prohibition:
Reference quotes from History of Prohibition:
(1.) “Speaking in behalf of Blaine (a U.S. Republican Presidential candidate) at a New York City rally, Presbyterian minister Samuel Burchard denounced the Democrats as the party of ‘Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion’.”
(2.) “Every successful temperance movement of the last century has been merely the instrument-the machinery and equipment through which the fundamental principles of the Christian religion have expressed themselves in terms of life and action.”
(3.) The fundamental principles of the Christian religion (with the exception of Roman Catholic “Christian” fundamental principles)…”damned not only rum, but all of the ‘kindred vices, profaneness and gambling’ and beseeched members to ‘discourage…by… example and influence, every kind of…..immorality’.”
(4.) “Largely middle class, rural, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant comprised the temperance movement and they confronted the urban and industrial communities head-on.
(5.) “Calling itself ‘The Protestant church in action’, the Anti-Saloon League concentrated single-mindedly and evangelically on the cause of temperance…”
(6.) “The focus of the League’s indictments included not simply alcohol, but the saloon itself, as the purveyor of spirits. The myriad League publications denounced the saloon for ‘annually sending thousands of our youths to destruction, for corrupting politics, dissipating workmen’s wages, leading astray 60,000 girls each year into lives of immorality and banishing children from school’.”
(7.) The League stated: “Liquor is responsible for 19% of the divorces, 25% of the poverty, 25% of the insanity, 37% of the pauperism, 45% of child desertion, and 50% of the crime in this country, the League determined. And this, it concluded , is a very conservative estimate.”
(8.) “League posters appeared everywhere depicting the saloon-keeper as a profiteer who feasted on death and enslavement.”
(9.)” ….while Jewish and Catholic groups generally opposed their (the Anti-Saloon League’s) objective.”
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And during prohibition neither did our Church’s hierarchical leaders decide that grape juice be used instead of an alcoholic beverage (wine) during the last supper segment of the Mass, as I believe they should have. And I believe that the longer our Church continues to both use wine instead of grape juice on the Church’s alters during Masses, as well as does not promote the reestablishment of the prohibition of alcohol laws, the more it will be stacking up sins for the day of God’s judgment.
As previously mentioned, the hereditary chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted, in a county newspaper article, as saying - to a large gathering of band members; “Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people.”
Alcoholism is a disease that is destroying indigenous people throughout the Americas. And the reason why I believe that they are vulnerable to this disease is because they have been deeply hurt by the ongoing genocide that our Church instigated in 1493 and still promotes today. Our Church sees that Indians are being destroyed by alcohol but continues to promote the legalization and availability of alcohol near their homelands, and this is an example of how our Church continues to commit genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas.
And this is why I hope to get an activist group together to protest the use of wine on Sacred Heart Church’s alter during Masses. I am trying to put an end to the white European “Christian” genocidal system that promotes the legalization and availability of alcohol within the homelands of the aboriginal people of the Americas. Catholic leaders can see that alcohol is destroying these aboriginal people, along with a lot of other people, but never-the-less continue to support the legalization and availability of alcohol.
And I also believe that our Church’s attitude and teachings about alcohol are the primary reason why there continues to be a multi-racial health epidemic and related social atrocities associated with the legal use and abuse of alcohol in not only the Western Hemisphere but also within many other parts of the world where alcohol is still legal and available.
I and my anti-alcohol activist friends are on a mission to (first) establish a dry (alcohol free) Mille Lacs County, then we’ll be working to establish a dry Isanti County, then a dry Sherburne County, and then a dry Anoka County. And after these four Rum River corridor counties become dry counties, we’ll be working to make Minnesota a dry state. And after Minnesota becomes a dry state, we’ll be working to make the U.S.A. a dry nation. And after the U.S.A. becomes a dry nation, we’ll be working to make all nations within the Western Hemisphere dry nations. And then we’ll be working to make all nations throughout the world dry nations. We are going to shut the alcohol industry down!
Official governmental reports on the income of our nation’s bars and liquor stores present evidence that indicates that most of the money that is made from alcohol sales in bars and liquor stores comes from the abusive users. And these reports are presented in the popular cultural mainstream newspapers throughout our nation. And even though this information is known by the pastors of the cultural mainstream “Christian” churches throughout our nation, most of them still support private and municipal bars and liquor stores, and they do not even advocate that most of the money made from the municipal bars and liquor stores go to alcohol abuse screening centers and treatment centers. Descent moral people should be outraged by this fact.
The tax paying citizens of towns that have municipal bars and liquor stores are not making a profit from these immoral businesses, but the greedy and corrupt corporate elite of the abusive alcohol industry are. The average tax payer is paying for alcohol abuse treatment centers, the housing and supervision of DUI incarcerated inmates, and also other alcoholic abuse related incarcerated inmate cost. And the average tax payer is also paying for the medical cost of non-insured alcohol abuse victims of car accidents and other alcohol abuse related violence. Two-thirds of domestic violence is caused by alcohol abuse. And the average tax payer is also paying for Supplement Social Security payments to demented alcoholics who can’t work, and they are also paying for the cost of health and social problems due to the brain damage caused by the alcohol fetal syndrome health epidemic. One out of every 100 children born in America has been brain damaged by his/her mother’s use of alcohol while pregnant. And between 60% and 80% of babies born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota exhibit Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that contributes to retardation. And then there is the cost of welfare payments to the multitudes of alcoholic single mothers who keep getting drunk and having more babies. And a lot of unwanted pregnancies occur when people get drunk and have unplanned sex, and many of those pregnancies end with an abortion. The negative health and social ramifications associated with alcohol abuse are terrible and descent moral people should be outraged by this fact, and then work to put a stop to this alcohol abuse epidemic and related social atrocities. And you, and the vast majority of our country’s other “Christian” pastors, should begin telling it like it is, instead of giving watered down homilies about this issue, homilies that deceive and therefore influence multitudes of our country’s churchgoing citizens to be apathetic when it comes to solving the alcohol abuse health epidemic and related social atrocities.
In the Catechism Of The Catholic Church it says “The use of drugs (but, erroneously excludes alcohol as one of these drugs) inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offence. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices.” During our nation’s prohibition of alcohol era a lot of American citizens practiced civil disobedience by either buying alcohol or participated in the clandestine production and trafficking of the dangerous and harmful drug alcohol, and did so as a means to regain their supposed basic human right to drink alcohol legally. And their involvement in these civil disobedience activities is the reason why alcohol is a legal drug in our nation today.
The government could not stop the illegal use of alcohol so they made it a legal drug. Therefore, is it right for Catholics in our nation to buy, produce or market alcohol? Under the present circumstances how could it be? And if it is, is it not then justified for people to engage in the equivalent illegal activities to gain their supposed basic human right to use present-day illegal drugs? Why are the traditional drugs of American Indians illegal in their homelands and alcohol, the traditional drug of the Church and white people legal? And in respect to our Church’s hierarchical authorities current answers to these questions, their answers and subsequent policies impose a blatant white racist and scandalous double standard on the great multitudes of people who blindly follow them. And this is a disgrace and great scandal to our Catholic Church.
A pre-Columbus Native American drug (Peyote) has been found to help Indians resist the use and abuse of alcohol.. The following summary of a book entitled: Peyote Religion, by Omer C. Stewart, presents some information about this medicinal drug peyote.
Chapter 1 The Plant:
This book is about peyote, a small, spineless cactus having psychedelic properties which grows in a limited area principally in northern Mexico and southern Texas. It is also about the peoples and ceremonies concerned with the use of peyote over the last four hundred years, culminating in the present-day Native American Church, the members of which number perhaps two hundred thousand and the territory of which extends from Alberta, Canada, to west central Mexico and from Wisconsin to the Pacific Coast states.
To the church’s members, peyote is the essential ingredient, the sacrament, in their well-established, unique ceremony. Peyote is not habit-forming, and in the controlled ambience of a peyote meeting it is in no way harmful.
Superintendent Frank A. Thackery reported that: “With peyote there is very rarely any violence shown from its use while quite the reverse is the case with alcohol.”Superintendent A. R. Miller, reporting on the Kaw, wrote: “There have been no deaths from its use in this tribe. . . The Indians of this tribe who use peyote were formerly hard drinkers, but claim that now they have no appetite for alcohol. . . It is used here, I am informed, in connection with religion.”
“Essentially, the religion is Christianity adapted to traditional Indian beliefs and practices.”
Superintendent A. R. Miller reported: I have a list of ninety-seven members of the (peyote) Society. Some have belonged for five years, others have joined since that time. Of these ninety-seven, over sixty of them I knew as habitual drunkards. Some ten or twelve of them got drunk every time they came to town. Of this ninety-seven I have seen fully one-half of them under the influence of liquor on election day. With hardly an exception the whole list of ninety-seven members are now total abstainers.
William H. Ketchum, to the Bureau of Indian Affairs indicated that the Catholics were aware of peyote and eager to have it declared illegal.
From the beginning, the Catholic church found in peyote another evil to be rooted out of the New World. In an effort to purge their new Christian converts of the use of peyote the Church prepared a catechism to be used by priest conducting confessionals.
The Catholic Church said: “We order that henceforth no person of whatever rank or social condition can or may make use of said herb, peyote, nor any other kind under any name or appearance for the same or similar purposes, nor shall he make the Indians or any other person take them, with the further warning that disobedience to these decrees shall cause us. . . to take action against such disobedient and recalcitrant persons as we would against those suspected of heresy to our Holy Catholic Faith."
“Peyotists are strongly opposed to the use of liquor and claim that peyote destroys the taste for alcohol.”
“The Indians had made a strong statement to the effect that peyotism was a sincere religion which helped them resist liquor.”
“It was in the sixties when the hippie generation became interested in peyote…”
“The Drug Abuse Control Acts have been tested a number of times in a number of states and in relation to other religions than peyotism. One of these involved the Neo-American Church, a church which was organized and incorporated by Art Kleps when he and Timothy Leary (a hippie leader) were promoting the general use of all psychedelic substances.”
In the 1960s, I, as a hippy, took two hits of mescaline, the psychedelic drug found in peyote. And during that “trip” I was converted from a somewhat Christian expression of New Age hippie Hinduism to Christianity. In addition, I also received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. When great multitudes of 1960s youth started to experiment with psychedelic substances, including peyote, our brainwashed minds began to see the truth about our country’s culture, including our country’s cultural mainstream Christian churches. In the past, when the slave traders arrived in America, Catholic Bishops were there to greet them, shake their hands, and buy their black African slaves. And with this fact in mind, us psychedelic drug using youth of the 1960s began to question the morality of the alcoholic beverage drinking bishops’ anti-psychedelic drugs stance. We, at the time, came to believe that present-day bishops were a lot like the immoral slave owning bishops of the past, but now they were not in cahoots with slave traders, but with the greedy and corrupt corporate elite of the health and earth destroying industries, including the oil, nuclear, gambling, tobacco and alcohol industries. And that they were brainwashing their followers by telling them that they should not question their positions on social justice issues, and that there was no such thing as resistance loyalty.
In the 1960s us counter-cultural revolutionaries came to believe that these cultural mainstream “Christian” bishops were telling their followers to basically conform to the mainstream culture and that they should only take counter cultural positions on social justice issues when they were asked to do so by themselves. And we believed that these bishops could not retain their positions of power and influence over great multitudes of their people unless they continued to make a lot of compromises in order to please the people who were running our nation, those people being the greedy and corrupt corporate elite. Hence when we tried to expose the greedy and corrupt corporate elite’s evil deeds, we could not do so because these bishops’ brainwashed cultural mainstream followers were brainwashed to believe that they were not suppose to discern whether our (not supported by the bishops) counter cultural positions on social justice issues were right or wrong. They believed that they were suppose to blindly believe that they were wrong. And the bishops’ cultural mainstream brainwashed followers would not use traditional Indian truth revealing psychedelic substances because their bishops were opposed to their illegal use and also opposed to their legalization for spiritual use. And this same pitiful situation has continued up to this present day. Hence our nation’s greedy and corrupt elite continue to lead our nation and the whole world to hell in a hand basket.
In 1914 narcotics were criminalized nation-wide and in 1919 it became a federal crime to posses alcohol, but marijuana was not criminalized until 1932. During this time span when narcotics and alcohol were illegal drugs and marijuana was still legal Mexican Indians were growing marijuana and selling it to Hispanics who were migrating into our nation’s southwestern states. And just prior to the prohibition of marijuana our nation’s governmental leaders came to believe that marijuana would spread to the white people throughout our nation. Hence they decided to criminalize it. It was to much to ask people to abstain from all mood altering substances hence when marijuana was criminalized the prohibition of alcohol laws did not stop the use and abuse of alcohol. Hence they legalized alcohol. We need to try to re-enact the prohibition of alcohol laws again but not until we legalize marijuana. Numerous studies and federally commissioned reports have endorsed marijuana’s relative safety compared to other drugs, and recommended its decriminalization or legalization. Virtually all of these studies have concluded that the criminal “classification of cannabis is disproportionate in relation both to its inherent harmfulness, and to the harmfulness of other substances.” Even a pair of editorials by the premiere British medical journal, The Lancet, acknowledge: “The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. … It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat… than alcohol or tobacco.”
I, as a Catholic prophet with a pharmaceutical social engineer ministry, am in the process of trying to found a religious organization that will seek to gain the legal right to use marijuana and peyote in a strictly therapeutic way during religious ceremonies. And in the process of trying to establish this organization I am trying to influence our Catholic Church’s supreme hierarchal authorities to help me and others to gain the legal right to use marijuana and peyote moderately and spiritually during future religious ceremonies.
I believe in “pulling together and away from alcohol”, and that the moderate spiritual use of marijuana would help people of alcohol drinking cultures to become alcohol free. I would like to rid the world of the plague of alcohol abuse. And I believe that in nations where alcohol is legal and available there should be both movements to criminalize it, as well as movements to legalize moderate spiritual use of marijuana. And I believe that if these, hopefully futuristic, movements were to become manifest and successful at accomplishing their goals they would put an end to the world’s alcohol abuse epidemic and related social atrocities.
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New about the popularity of this blog:
A shorter presentation of the following article is posted on AAANativearts.com's website. It is AAANativearts.com's most read "issues & activism" article. It has had over20,000 readers. It can be viewed at: http://www.aaanativearts. com/printout683.html .
The staff of The Health Reformer website/newsletter recently used four paragraphs from the following article to create their lead in article to present their stance against the use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist/Last Supper. They refer to me as a Native American in the article's title. I only have a little Native blood in me. The article can be viewed and read by clicking The Health Reformer .
Skip Stone, the webmaster of the biggest hippie site in the world, posted a revised edition of my "Solving the Alcohol Abuse Epidemic" article on his hippy.com website'ssister site Coolove. It can viewed and read by clicking Coolove.
The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community (MMDC) has this article published on its website. It can be viewed and read by clicking MMDC site article and then scrolling down to the second article. This article is also displayed on the MMDC's sister site. You can go directly to it by clicking MMDC sister site article
In a Minnesota country newspaper article, subtitled: “300 gather to note the toll by alcohol abuse”, Melvin Eagle, the hereditary Chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted as saying: “Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people.”
I am an Indigenous Peoples of the Americas rights activist who is spearheading an international movement to change the derogatory name of a Minnesota U.S.A. river, the Rum River. In a book published by the Minnesota Historical society, a book titled: Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origins and Historic Significances, Warren Upham wrote: the Rum River name is “the white men’s perversion of the ancient Sioux name Wakan“. Another reason why the current name for the Rum River is inappropriate is because, as stated by Upham in this same book, “rum brought misery and ruin, as Duluth observed of whisky, to many of the Indians”.
I believe the restoration of the river’s original name would help uplift the Indian community, which has been historically plagued by alcohol. When Europeans came to the Americas, the homelands of great multitudes of indigenous people, they brought rum and other alcoholic beverages with them. At the time, the Indians had no cultural controls in place for their usage. Hence, because of alcohol abuse, things moved into degradation and multitudes of premature deaths. And this situation was made even worse by the White’s frequent use of alcohol in ruthless genocidal attacks, alcohol was given to the Indians in order to kill, subdue, or cheat them.
I believe that by drawing attention to the Rum River name-change issue “white guilt” will increase, because of a heightened awareness of the catastrophic consequences caused by white settlers introducing and selling alcohol to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas; and that this increase of “white guilt” will, in a lot of ways, cause the dominate cultures of the Americas to offer all the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas their long over due restitution justice, especially when it comes to making amends to help them free themselves from the plague of alcoholism.
I also believe that, by reverting the profane name of the Rum River back to its original American Indian name Wakan, translated as (Great) Spirit, we would be honoring the importance of spirituality for Indians. I believe that the Rum River name has become like a joke - an antagonistic joke that’s very antagonistic, and that by changing the river’s name we would be putting an end to a source of racial antagonism.
During prohibition there was a movement to change the Rum River name. At the time, a lot of people did not want rivers and other geographic places to have names that were advertisements for alcoholic beverages, or addictive products that they considered harmful to society. And this is another reason why I am spearheading the movement to change the name of the Rum River.
In the Mentota Mdewakanton Dakota Community’s letter of support - Jim Anderson, the Historian and Cultural Chairman for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community, wrote:
“I believe that renaming the river ‘Wakpa Wakan’ or ‘Spirit River’ is a great stride in mending the circle that we share with all four colors of man. We, as Dakotas, are very happy that there are people out there that are trying to understand that by using names like ‘rum’ and ‘devil’ to label sacred sites and places is degrading to our children, our elders and also to our ancestors. These places were already named in our language by our people because of their special meaning. When we have to tell our children why these places have been named after a poison or the worst words in their language. It is demoralizing to us to have to explain why a place is named after the same things that helped to steal our land and language. To have to be reminded of the cultural genocide that has been perpetrated on all Indian people. So, in changing the name back to the Dakota language, it will help in the healing process that our people continue to deal with.”
“Many schools and teams have already changed their names in respect to our children and adults. It promotes us to be proud of our heritage, language and culture, to respect themselves and being Indian in our own homeland. I am writing in support of the name change of the Rum River.”
“We, as the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota, request the County Commissioners in the affected counties to support our hope of righting this wrong. Please do the respectful and moral thing and change this disrespectful and culturally damaging name.”
In a Star Tribune newspaper article Jim Anderson is quoted as saying: “It’s another derogatory term.” “Naming a sacred river after what they were binging up to our people is wrong. We’re in favor of the name change.”
During an early stage of this river name-change movement, I was asked to use this name-change issue to gain access to public forums wherein I would be able to express my opinion on whether it was right or wrong for Europeans to bring alcohol to the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas; and that if, in my opinion, it was not right, explain what could and should be done to rid alcohol from the Americas. And because of the world-wide support that I have received for my effort to change the name of the Rum River, I believe that it will not be long until I will be receiving recognition in the U.S. mainstream news media as a social engineer in the forefront of a world-wide movement to stop the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas alcohol-abuse epidemic.
And I, as a Catholic social activist, have radical grievances against my Church’s supreme hierarchal authorities’ world-wide support for the legality and use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol. And I am especially troubled by their support for the legality and use of alcohol in the Americas, where the homelands of a great multitude of indigenous people our located. In addition, I am radically opposed to my Church’s use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I have talked to the pastors of Catholic churches located near the headwaters of the “Rum” River, or, in Minnesota’s Mille Lacs Lake area about petitioning our Bishop, Bishop John Kinney of Saint Cloud Diocese, to give them permission to stop using wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I am trying to evangelize the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to the Catholic churches located on the south end of Mille Lacs Lake. And at least some Mille Lacs Band members are trying to “pull together and away from alcohol”, but my Church’s supreme hierarchal authorities want me to lead them to alcohol (wine) on these churches’ alters.
An open letter to my pastor about this issue:
During last Sunday’s Mass a song with the words “I will drink wine on my knees” was sung. Those words filled me with holy indignation. Why sing those words when everywhere in the world where alcohol is legal and available there are catastrophic consequences?
Now-days, we know a lot more about the dangers of alcohol than they did back when Jesus walked the earth. And when Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding party those people who drank the wine did not have cars to get in and drive off and kill people. The circumstances associated with the moral issue concerning the legality and use of alcohol has, over a 2000 year period of time, radically changed. But most people are stuck in the past and can not accepted this truth. Even our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities are still stuck in their erroneous traditional way of thinking when it comes to the question as to whether or not our Church should change its attitude about alcohol. I believe that our supreme hierarchical authorities should stop supporting the legality and use of alcohol throughout the world, and especially in the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
When it comes to our supreme hierarchical authorities’ other traditionally approved of deadly drug (tobacco), they are beginning to change their traditional attitude and policies. They just recently banded the smoking of tobacco in Vatican buildings. When modern-day scientific evidence first indicated that it was wrong to continue to allow smoking of tobacco in buildings where people would have to breath second hand smoke, our Church’s hierarchical authorities did not take the moral lead and become the first, or one of the first major building managerial committees to ban smoking from their buildings, but rather they waited quite a long time before banning the smoking of tobacco in their public buildings.
When they were pressured by concerned public health activists to deal with this modern-day tobacco use in public buildings moral issue, they finally had to admitted that they had made a mistake in the past, and that they made it when they originally allowed the use of tobacco in Vatican buildings. We know that in the past they have gotten stuck in some erroneous traditional ways of thinking, and then made immoral judgments when new scientific evidence was telling them that their traditional stances on some issues were radically wrong. Imagine how much Galileo had to suffer because he discovered that the Church’s traditional position on an issue was radically wrong, and our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities would not, for a long time, accept the new scientific evidence that indicated that he was right.
Modern-day scientific evidence informs us, and this is even the official position of the French government, that when comparing the traditional mood-altering drug of both the Church and the white raced people (alcohol) with the drugs of colored people throughout the world, alcohol has been found to be one of the most addictive and harmful drugs, and that everywhere it is legal and available there are catastrophic health and social consequences. But never-the-less our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities continue to disapprove of the use of colored people’s traditional mood-altering drugs and then give their (back in the days of Jesus’ earthly life and out of touch with today’s reality) traditional white racist support for the legality and use of alcohol. And they also continue in their erroneous traditional way of thinking when it comes to their misguided support for the legal use of tobacco.
One of Alcoholics Anonymous’ twelve steps for alcohol abuse treatment deals with the “big shot syndrome”. And one of today’s biggest questions is what was the primary cause as to why the white raced people developed such a diluted superiority complex that they were able to commit such radical atrocities against colored people. And when trying to find the answer to this question, it made sense to me, that if a race of people were to use and abuse alcohol for a long time, they would consequently develop the “big shot syndrome”. People with diluted “big shot” mentalities need to subjugate and manipulate people. And this type of mentality portrays the history of the white raced people. Hence, I have concluded that because - where there is legal use of alcohol there is also a lot of alcohol abuse - that therefore our Church’s long standing position of sanctioning the legal use of alcohol was the primary cause for all of the white-racist atrocities committed against colored people.
And now-days, even when it is known that where ever alcohol is legal and available there are catastrophic consequences our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities never-the-less continue to promote the legal use (and consequently the abuse) of alcohol.
When writing the new Catechism Of The Catholic Church, our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities included an erroneous statement that has influenced a great multitude of people to believe that the use of alcohol is not dangerous. And because of this highly influential opinion of theirs, a lot of people have started drinking alcoholic beverages and many of them are now suffering from alcohol abuse problems. In the Catechism our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities proclaim that alcohol is not dangerous, but that all other drugs are dangerous. They should have known not to put that erroneous statement in the Catechism. Even the advisory doctor for the nationally broadcasted Good Morning America television program said on national television that too many people who start using alcohol with the intention of using it moderately end up becoming habitual abusers of alcohol; and that the belief that the use of alcohol is not dangerous for the average person causes a lot of grief and suffering for multitudes of people. In America 10% of men and 5% of women who start drinking alcohol will become habitual abusers of alcohol.
I would like the world community of nations to advocate the creation of an United Nations world court indictment in order to bring our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities to justice for their long-standing and persistent support for the legality and use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol, it is a crime against humanity. I am sure that the many anti-alcohol Islamic nations would like to participate in this righteous plan to bring them to justice. And for the Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities to continue to promote the legal use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol during this critical time when there is a war against other addictive and harmful drugs makes this crime of theirs even more evil.
European salve traders shipped thousands of barrels of rum across the sea to African tribal leaders and gave some of the barrels of rum to them. And they did this without warning them that it was addictive. And they also neglected to warn them that, if they were to get addicted to it they would do evil things to get more of it. And by neglecting to warn them of the addictive and harmful qualities of alcohol, the white salve traders intentionally deceived the African tribal leaders for the purpose of gaining an opportunity to coheres them into capturing their own people for the purpose of trading them (as salves) for rum.
And their scam worked, the black African tribal leaders became addicted to alcohol and then captured their own people for the purpose of trading them (as slaves) for more rum. Hence, the white slave traders were able to make a lot of money. They put the captured black African slaves in their ships as cargo bound for America. And on the way to America 40 million of them died because of the ships unhealthy living conditions. And for the slaves that survived the trip they were separated (husband from wife, children from parents) and sold to white customers who lived many miles apart. And many of those white customers were Catholics. Both Catholic Bishops, as well as Catholic laymen bought and owned black African slaves. They greedily made a profit from the slave traders’ promotion of alcohol abuse in Africa. The slave trade was a promotion of alcohol abuse, greedy money-making, white racist scam and atrocity that many of our nation’s Bishops and laymen participated in. And our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities permitted this alcohol abuse related atrocity to continue, and this radical neglect of their moral responsibility caused untold grief and suffering for great multitudes of people.
And when Catholic missionary priests entered the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas they brought the addictive and harmful drug alcohol with them. And the Catholic missionary priests, in the process of their Holy See directed mission to evangelize the natives, gave the addictive and harmful drug alcohol to the natives. And they committed this grave sin because they wanted the natives to believe that alcohol was a good and safe drug. And did so, because it was being used during the summit of the Church’s worship services. And this grave sin of theirs was the primary cause for the Indian alcoholic-abuse genocidal epidemic, a genocidal epidemic that is still being perpetrated against Indians throughout the Americas.
And our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities also sanctioned North American cultural genocidal boarding schools. Native American children were legally kidnapped from their parents and taken away to Catholic boarding schools there they were brain washed to believe that their culture, religion, language, and drugs, drugs that their adult relatives used moderately and spiritual, were evil, and that the white man’s culture, religion, language and drug (alcohol, an addictive and harmful drug) were good. And in the evil environment of Catholic boarding schools, alcohol demented homosexual pedophile priests had a field day sexually molesting the Indian boys. And our Church in North America is headed toward bankruptcy because of all the evil things that happened in those evil brain-washing boarding schools.
When our nation’s bishops found out that a pre-Columbus traditionally used Indian mind-altering medicinal drug (peyote) was being used spiritually and therapeutically by an increasing number of American Indians and that its use was helping them to stop the alcohol abuse genocidal health epidemic that was being perpetrated against them our nation’s bishops condemned its use and proclaimed it a heresy for Catholic Indians to use it, and did so because of their white racist belief that the white man’s drug (alcohol) was the superior drug and the only good mind altering drug, and that therefore Indians should use alcohol and not their traditional drug peyote. And this is another reason why the Indian alcohol abuse health epidemic and genocide continues to plague Indians today.
Jesus wanted the church to go into all parts of the world in order to evangelize all of mankind to God’s saving plan, but he did not want the church to take the negative aspects of Jewish culture with them and impose those negative aspects of Jewish culture on the peoples of different races and cultures. But in respect to the alcohol-use negative aspect of Jewish culture, that is exactly what our Church’s supreme hierarchical authorities did when they imposed, in the process of their evangelization mission, the use of alcohol on Indians and other non-alcohol drinking indigenous peoples throughout the world, and they are still committing this same grave sin. But, thanks be to God, at least some of the Protestant churches have switched from wine to grape juice when it comes to the Last Supper segment of their worship services.
In our country 23% of Catholic priest are alcoholics. And at every Mass that these priest officiate at red wine is placed on the alters in front of them. But in Proverbs 23:31-32 the word of God says: “Look not on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the glass. It goes down smoothly; but in the end it bites like a serpent, or like a poisonous adder”. And alcoholics are not suppose to drink any amount of alcohol, but alcoholic priests are required to do so at very Mass that they officiate at. You would think that our supreme hierarchal authorities would have enough compassion for their alcoholic priests to stop using wine in the sacrifice of the Mass. But I am not surprise that they do not. And the reason why, is because just recently there was, as you know, a hierarchal scandal wherein it was discovered that high ranking church officials did not have enough compassion for their addicted to child molesting priests to send them to treatment centers, instead they (a Cardinal, some Archbishops and Bishops) moved mentally ill child molesting priests from one parish to another, a grave sin that put these sick priests in situations wherein they were enabled to continue on in their child molestation sickness. This is another example of how much compassion they have for their priests who have addiction problems.
When alcohol was criminalized in our country there was only one U.S. Christian Church that objected, it was our Catholic Church. And at the time, our church refused to use grape juice instead of the alcoholic beverage (wine) during the summit of our church’s worship services. This was another factor that contributed to the decriminalization of alcohol and subsequent alcohol poisoning health epidemic and related social atrocities, including the re-establishment of the legalized American Indian alcohol-abuse genocidal health epidemic.
According to the Centers of Disease Control, approximately 85,000 Americans die each year from alcohol induced deaths (not including motor vehicle fatalities where alcohol impairment was a contributing factor) such as overdose and cirrhosis. The death rate for Native people via alcoholism is seven times the national average. And alcohol also frequently figures into the extremely high Indian suicide rate which is almost 75% above that of all other races.
And in a study published in the March 2004 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research - evidence clearly shows that even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can have a significant impact on child development.” This study found that: “There is no safe level of drinking during pregnancy and there is no safe time to drink during pregnancy.” Multitudes of pre-born babies are being killed or severely brain damaged by their mother’s consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. In the U.S., 15% of pregnant women drink alcohol. When viewing this evidence you would think that our bishops would have come out with a statement asking government officials to criminalize alcoholic beverages for at least pregnant women. But because - back in the days when Jesus walked the earth pregnant women drank alcoholic beverages and Jesus did not, at the time, inform them that it was immoral to drink alcohol when pregnant - our bishops therefore erroneously believe that they can not, at this time in the evolution of church history, ask for government officials to criminalize alcohol for at least pregnant women. Hence from this prospective their “pro-life” stance looks quite hypocritical.
Excerpts from an article in the Washington Post - By Charles Krauthammer:
Prohibition: It was a public health triumph. The decline it caused in cirrhosis and alcoholic psychosis was dramatic.
“The demonization of drugs allows delusion about alcohol to flourish”.
STAR TRIBUNE March 15, 1999 WASHINGTON DC - Rep. Jim Ramstad:
“He is using his own struggle with alcoholism to promote a solution to what he says is an American epidemic.”
He opened a speech before a convention of alcohol counselors Tuesday and said ignorance is to blame for the nation’s persistent alcohol abuse problem.”
“Congress is a case in point, he said: The vast majority of the members don’t understand alcoholism and other drug abuse as a disease. They might give it lip service, but they don’t really get it.”
“His message was similar to one delivered by Sen. Paul Wellstone, a day earlier to the same group. You are working in a society that doesn’t understand the problem nor the solution, Wellstone said.
Ramstad said solving the alcohol abuse epidemic will be difficult. “One obstacle he identified is the $104 billion-per-year beer, wine and liquor industry that contributed more than $2.2 million to federal campaigns.”
“Ramstad said, the nation’s drug and alcohol policies need to be reevaluated - and soon. It’s only going to get worse unless we get smarter.
U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, July 7,1999 NEXT TARGET: LIQUOR COMPANIES?
“Plaintiffs’ lawyers, federal regulators, and state officials forced tobacco companies into a $368.5 billion settlement to pay for the damage to public heath caused by cigarettes. The same arguments used against the tobacco industry can be used against makers of beer, wine, and hard liquor.” “Sobering facts. To be consistent with their crusade against cigarettes, the health police have to go after alcohol. The most recent calculation by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention place the number of alcohol-related deaths in the United States each year at 108,000. That’s fewer than the 419,000 deaths attributed to smoking, but there’s a big difference: While cigarettes kill in the middle age or later, alcohol kills people in their prime, often in car crashes. As a result, the CDC estimates that smoking deprives Americans of 1.2 million years of life before age 65; alcohol, 1.5 million years.”
“Alcohol not only kills, it wounds. In 1990, reports the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, “alcohol-related crashes resulted in 22,084 fatalities and 1.9 million injuries.”
“Accidents are only the beginning. Alcohol-induced liver diseases kill 20,000 yearly. In 1993, some 708,255 patients were treated for alcoholism, and addiction was the fourth-leading cause of hospital stays for men ages 16 to 44, requiring a total of more than 1 million days of hospital care, compared with 741,000 for heart disease. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that 13.8 million adults “met standard diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence during 1992.” In addition, says the NIAAN, “30 percent of suicides, and 50 percent of homicides, and 30 percent of accidental deaths are associated with alcohol abuse.” Two thirds of all violent crimes are committed by people under the influence of alcohol.
Protesting the alcoholic beverage (wine) located in Wahkon, Minnesota’s Sacred Heart Church:
Almost every day, I see alcoholic drunkard American Indians from the Isle reservation going to both the Isle and Wahkon liquor stores to pick up more alcoholic beverages to keep their health destroying alcoholic binges going. Over the last thirty years, I have witnessed many alcohol abuse related deaths of local American Indians. Why can these American Indians go to Isle or Wahkon and buy alcoholic beverages but not cocaine, heroin, meth, or even marijuana?
Answer: There are liquor stores in Isle and Wahkon where alcoholic drunkard American Indians can buy alcoholic beverages because the prohibition of alcohol laws came to an end and they have not yet been reestablished. And I believe that the primary reason why they came to an end and have not yet been reestablished is because our church was opposed to prohibition (it was the only church to oppose prohibition) and it still believes in and promotes the legalization of alcohol throughout our nation, where a multitude of American Indians are suffering from a - largely Catholic influenced - genocidal alcohol abuse health epidemic.
Our church was opposed to prohibition, a stance that influenced a lot of people to brake the prohibition laws, which in turn caused legislators to repeal prohibition. Hence we now have liquor stores in Isle and Wahkon.
Reference:
History of Prohibition:
Reference quotes from History of Prohibition:
(1.) “Speaking in behalf of Blaine (a U.S. Republican Presidential candidate) at a New York City rally, Presbyterian minister Samuel Burchard denounced the Democrats as the party of ‘Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion’.”
(2.) “Every successful temperance movement of the last century has been merely the instrument-the machinery and equipment through which the fundamental principles of the Christian religion have expressed themselves in terms of life and action.”
(3.) The fundamental principles of the Christian religion (with the exception of Roman Catholic “Christian” fundamental principles)…”damned not only rum, but all of the ‘kindred vices, profaneness and gambling’ and beseeched members to ‘discourage…by… example and influence, every kind of…..immorality’.”
(4.) “Largely middle class, rural, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant comprised the temperance movement and they confronted the urban and industrial communities head-on.
(5.) “Calling itself ‘The Protestant church in action’, the Anti-Saloon League concentrated single-mindedly and evangelically on the cause of temperance…”
(6.) “The focus of the League’s indictments included not simply alcohol, but the saloon itself, as the purveyor of spirits. The myriad League publications denounced the saloon for ‘annually sending thousands of our youths to destruction, for corrupting politics, dissipating workmen’s wages, leading astray 60,000 girls each year into lives of immorality and banishing children from school’.”
(7.) The League stated: “Liquor is responsible for 19% of the divorces, 25% of the poverty, 25% of the insanity, 37% of the pauperism, 45% of child desertion, and 50% of the crime in this country, the League determined. And this, it concluded , is a very conservative estimate.”
(8.) “League posters appeared everywhere depicting the saloon-keeper as a profiteer who feasted on death and enslavement.”
(9.)” ….while Jewish and Catholic groups generally opposed their (the Anti-Saloon League’s) objective.”
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And during prohibition neither did our Church’s hierarchical leaders decide that grape juice be used instead of an alcoholic beverage (wine) during the last supper segment of the Mass, as I believe they should have. And I believe that the longer our Church continues to both use wine instead of grape juice on the Church’s alters during Masses, as well as does not promote the reestablishment of the prohibition of alcohol laws, the more it will be stacking up sins for the day of God’s judgment.
As previously mentioned, the hereditary chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted, in a county newspaper article, as saying - to a large gathering of band members; “Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people.”
Alcoholism is a disease that is destroying indigenous people throughout the Americas. And the reason why I believe that they are vulnerable to this disease is because they have been deeply hurt by the ongoing genocide that our Church instigated in 1493 and still promotes today. Our Church sees that Indians are being destroyed by alcohol but continues to promote the legalization and availability of alcohol near their homelands, and this is an example of how our Church continues to commit genocide against the indigenous people of the Americas.
And this is why I hope to get an activist group together to protest the use of wine on Sacred Heart Church’s alter during Masses. I am trying to put an end to the white European “Christian” genocidal system that promotes the legalization and availability of alcohol within the homelands of the aboriginal people of the Americas. Catholic leaders can see that alcohol is destroying these aboriginal people, along with a lot of other people, but never-the-less continue to support the legalization and availability of alcohol.
And I also believe that our Church’s attitude and teachings about alcohol are the primary reason why there continues to be a multi-racial health epidemic and related social atrocities associated with the legal use and abuse of alcohol in not only the Western Hemisphere but also within many other parts of the world where alcohol is still legal and available.
I and my anti-alcohol activist friends are on a mission to (first) establish a dry (alcohol free) Mille Lacs County, then we’ll be working to establish a dry Isanti County, then a dry Sherburne County, and then a dry Anoka County. And after these four Rum River corridor counties become dry counties, we’ll be working to make Minnesota a dry state. And after Minnesota becomes a dry state, we’ll be working to make the U.S.A. a dry nation. And after the U.S.A. becomes a dry nation, we’ll be working to make all nations within the Western Hemisphere dry nations. And then we’ll be working to make all nations throughout the world dry nations. We are going to shut the alcohol industry down!
Official governmental reports on the income of our nation’s bars and liquor stores present evidence that indicates that most of the money that is made from alcohol sales in bars and liquor stores comes from the abusive users. And these reports are presented in the popular cultural mainstream newspapers throughout our nation. And even though this information is known by the pastors of the cultural mainstream “Christian” churches throughout our nation, most of them still support private and municipal bars and liquor stores, and they do not even advocate that most of the money made from the municipal bars and liquor stores go to alcohol abuse screening centers and treatment centers. Descent moral people should be outraged by this fact.
The tax paying citizens of towns that have municipal bars and liquor stores are not making a profit from these immoral businesses, but the greedy and corrupt corporate elite of the abusive alcohol industry are. The average tax payer is paying for alcohol abuse treatment centers, the housing and supervision of DUI incarcerated inmates, and also other alcoholic abuse related incarcerated inmate cost. And the average tax payer is also paying for the medical cost of non-insured alcohol abuse victims of car accidents and other alcohol abuse related violence. Two-thirds of domestic violence is caused by alcohol abuse. And the average tax payer is also paying for Supplement Social Security payments to demented alcoholics who can’t work, and they are also paying for the cost of health and social problems due to the brain damage caused by the alcohol fetal syndrome health epidemic. One out of every 100 children born in America has been brain damaged by his/her mother’s use of alcohol while pregnant. And between 60% and 80% of babies born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota exhibit Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that contributes to retardation. And then there is the cost of welfare payments to the multitudes of alcoholic single mothers who keep getting drunk and having more babies. And a lot of unwanted pregnancies occur when people get drunk and have unplanned sex, and many of those pregnancies end with an abortion. The negative health and social ramifications associated with alcohol abuse are terrible and descent moral people should be outraged by this fact, and then work to put a stop to this alcohol abuse epidemic and related social atrocities. And you, and the vast majority of our country’s other “Christian” pastors, should begin telling it like it is, instead of giving watered down homilies about this issue, homilies that deceive and therefore influence multitudes of our country’s churchgoing citizens to be apathetic when it comes to solving the alcohol abuse health epidemic and related social atrocities.
In the Catechism Of The Catholic Church it says “The use of drugs (but, erroneously excludes alcohol as one of these drugs) inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offence. Clandestine production of and trafficking in drugs are scandalous practices.” During our nation’s prohibition of alcohol era a lot of American citizens practiced civil disobedience by either buying alcohol or participated in the clandestine production and trafficking of the dangerous and harmful drug alcohol, and did so as a means to regain their supposed basic human right to drink alcohol legally. And their involvement in these civil disobedience activities is the reason why alcohol is a legal drug in our nation today.
The government could not stop the illegal use of alcohol so they made it a legal drug. Therefore, is it right for Catholics in our nation to buy, produce or market alcohol? Under the present circumstances how could it be? And if it is, is it not then justified for people to engage in the equivalent illegal activities to gain their supposed basic human right to use present-day illegal drugs? Why are the traditional drugs of American Indians illegal in their homelands and alcohol, the traditional drug of the Church and white people legal? And in respect to our Church’s hierarchical authorities current answers to these questions, their answers and subsequent policies impose a blatant white racist and scandalous double standard on the great multitudes of people who blindly follow them. And this is a disgrace and great scandal to our Catholic Church.
A pre-Columbus Native American drug (Peyote) has been found to help Indians resist the use and abuse of alcohol.. The following summary of a book entitled: Peyote Religion, by Omer C. Stewart, presents some information about this medicinal drug peyote.
Chapter 1 The Plant:
This book is about peyote, a small, spineless cactus having psychedelic properties which grows in a limited area principally in northern Mexico and southern Texas. It is also about the peoples and ceremonies concerned with the use of peyote over the last four hundred years, culminating in the present-day Native American Church, the members of which number perhaps two hundred thousand and the territory of which extends from Alberta, Canada, to west central Mexico and from Wisconsin to the Pacific Coast states.
To the church’s members, peyote is the essential ingredient, the sacrament, in their well-established, unique ceremony. Peyote is not habit-forming, and in the controlled ambience of a peyote meeting it is in no way harmful.
Superintendent Frank A. Thackery reported that: “With peyote there is very rarely any violence shown from its use while quite the reverse is the case with alcohol.”Superintendent A. R. Miller, reporting on the Kaw, wrote: “There have been no deaths from its use in this tribe. . . The Indians of this tribe who use peyote were formerly hard drinkers, but claim that now they have no appetite for alcohol. . . It is used here, I am informed, in connection with religion.”
“Essentially, the religion is Christianity adapted to traditional Indian beliefs and practices.”
Superintendent A. R. Miller reported: I have a list of ninety-seven members of the (peyote) Society. Some have belonged for five years, others have joined since that time. Of these ninety-seven, over sixty of them I knew as habitual drunkards. Some ten or twelve of them got drunk every time they came to town. Of this ninety-seven I have seen fully one-half of them under the influence of liquor on election day. With hardly an exception the whole list of ninety-seven members are now total abstainers.
William H. Ketchum, to the Bureau of Indian Affairs indicated that the Catholics were aware of peyote and eager to have it declared illegal.
From the beginning, the Catholic church found in peyote another evil to be rooted out of the New World. In an effort to purge their new Christian converts of the use of peyote the Church prepared a catechism to be used by priest conducting confessionals.
The Catholic Church said: “We order that henceforth no person of whatever rank or social condition can or may make use of said herb, peyote, nor any other kind under any name or appearance for the same or similar purposes, nor shall he make the Indians or any other person take them, with the further warning that disobedience to these decrees shall cause us. . . to take action against such disobedient and recalcitrant persons as we would against those suspected of heresy to our Holy Catholic Faith."
“Peyotists are strongly opposed to the use of liquor and claim that peyote destroys the taste for alcohol.”
“The Indians had made a strong statement to the effect that peyotism was a sincere religion which helped them resist liquor.”
“It was in the sixties when the hippie generation became interested in peyote…”
“The Drug Abuse Control Acts have been tested a number of times in a number of states and in relation to other religions than peyotism. One of these involved the Neo-American Church, a church which was organized and incorporated by Art Kleps when he and Timothy Leary (a hippie leader) were promoting the general use of all psychedelic substances.”
In the 1960s, I, as a hippy, took two hits of mescaline, the psychedelic drug found in peyote. And during that “trip” I was converted from a somewhat Christian expression of New Age hippie Hinduism to Christianity. In addition, I also received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. When great multitudes of 1960s youth started to experiment with psychedelic substances, including peyote, our brainwashed minds began to see the truth about our country’s culture, including our country’s cultural mainstream Christian churches. In the past, when the slave traders arrived in America, Catholic Bishops were there to greet them, shake their hands, and buy their black African slaves. And with this fact in mind, us psychedelic drug using youth of the 1960s began to question the morality of the alcoholic beverage drinking bishops’ anti-psychedelic drugs stance. We, at the time, came to believe that present-day bishops were a lot like the immoral slave owning bishops of the past, but now they were not in cahoots with slave traders, but with the greedy and corrupt corporate elite of the health and earth destroying industries, including the oil, nuclear, gambling, tobacco and alcohol industries. And that they were brainwashing their followers by telling them that they should not question their positions on social justice issues, and that there was no such thing as resistance loyalty.
In the 1960s us counter-cultural revolutionaries came to believe that these cultural mainstream “Christian” bishops were telling their followers to basically conform to the mainstream culture and that they should only take counter cultural positions on social justice issues when they were asked to do so by themselves. And we believed that these bishops could not retain their positions of power and influence over great multitudes of their people unless they continued to make a lot of compromises in order to please the people who were running our nation, those people being the greedy and corrupt corporate elite. Hence when we tried to expose the greedy and corrupt corporate elite’s evil deeds, we could not do so because these bishops’ brainwashed cultural mainstream followers were brainwashed to believe that they were not suppose to discern whether our (not supported by the bishops) counter cultural positions on social justice issues were right or wrong. They believed that they were suppose to blindly believe that they were wrong. And the bishops’ cultural mainstream brainwashed followers would not use traditional Indian truth revealing psychedelic substances because their bishops were opposed to their illegal use and also opposed to their legalization for spiritual use. And this same pitiful situation has continued up to this present day. Hence our nation’s greedy and corrupt elite continue to lead our nation and the whole world to hell in a hand basket.
In 1914 narcotics were criminalized nation-wide and in 1919 it became a federal crime to posses alcohol, but marijuana was not criminalized until 1932. During this time span when narcotics and alcohol were illegal drugs and marijuana was still legal Mexican Indians were growing marijuana and selling it to Hispanics who were migrating into our nation’s southwestern states. And just prior to the prohibition of marijuana our nation’s governmental leaders came to believe that marijuana would spread to the white people throughout our nation. Hence they decided to criminalize it. It was to much to ask people to abstain from all mood altering substances hence when marijuana was criminalized the prohibition of alcohol laws did not stop the use and abuse of alcohol. Hence they legalized alcohol. We need to try to re-enact the prohibition of alcohol laws again but not until we legalize marijuana. Numerous studies and federally commissioned reports have endorsed marijuana’s relative safety compared to other drugs, and recommended its decriminalization or legalization. Virtually all of these studies have concluded that the criminal “classification of cannabis is disproportionate in relation both to its inherent harmfulness, and to the harmfulness of other substances.” Even a pair of editorials by the premiere British medical journal, The Lancet, acknowledge: “The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. … It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat… than alcohol or tobacco.”
I, as a Catholic prophet with a pharmaceutical social engineer ministry, am in the process of trying to found a religious organization that will seek to gain the legal right to use marijuana and peyote in a strictly therapeutic way during religious ceremonies. And in the process of trying to establish this organization I am trying to influence our Catholic Church’s supreme hierarchal authorities to help me and others to gain the legal right to use marijuana and peyote moderately and spiritually during future religious ceremonies.
I believe in “pulling together and away from alcohol”, and that the moderate spiritual use of marijuana would help people of alcohol drinking cultures to become alcohol free. I would like to rid the world of the plague of alcohol abuse. And I believe that in nations where alcohol is legal and available there should be both movements to criminalize it, as well as movements to legalize moderate spiritual use of marijuana. And I believe that if these, hopefully futuristic, movements were to become manifest and successful at accomplishing their goals they would put an end to the world’s alcohol abuse epidemic and related social atrocities.
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New about the popularity of this blog:
A shorter presentation of the following article is posted on AAANativearts.com's website. It is AAANativearts.com's most read "issues & activism" article. It has had over20,000 readers. It can be viewed at: http://www.aaanativearts. com/printout683.html .
The staff of The Health Reformer website/newsletter recently used four paragraphs from the following article to create their lead in article to present their stance against the use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist/Last Supper. They refer to me as a Native American in the article's title. I only have a little Native blood in me. The article can be viewed and read by clicking The Health Reformer .
Skip Stone, the webmaster of the biggest hippie site in the world, posted a revised edition of my "Solving the Alcohol Abuse Epidemic" article on his hippy.com website'ssister site Coolove. It can viewed and read by clicking Coolove.
The Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community (MMDC) has this article published on its website. It can be viewed and read by clicking MMDC site article and then scrolling down to the second article. This article is also displayed on the MMDC's sister site. You can go directly to it by clicking MMDC sister site article
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