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.
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Showing posts with label Indians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indians. Show all posts
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
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
Restoring The Fundamental Human Rights Of Indigenous Peoples
By Thomas Dahlheimer
I am spearheading the local (MN), national and international movement to revert the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota’s "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota name Wakan, which translated means Spirit or Great Spirit. I am also trying to change 13 other derogatory MN geographic site names that are offensive to indigenous peoples.
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 Native people, he slightly edited it and then with the consent of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council he introduced it to the MN legislature.
I am also trying to influence the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revoke the 1493 papal bull "Inter-Caetera." Shortly after Indigenous Peoples Literature posted an article of mine, titled, Changing The Racist Name Of The Knights Of Columbus , Tony Castanha (Carib/Boricua), the internationally renowned leader of the movement to influence the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revoke the Papal bull, Inter Caetera, contacted me and said that I am doing "great work" and to keep him "updated". More recently, after I sent him a link to my youtube.com video, titled: "Protesting The Racist Name Of The Knights Of Columbus" Mr. Castanha contacted me and said: "time to go after these ‘Knights’ guys…" Tony Castanha is also on the forefront of themovement to put an end to the glorification of the colonial pirate Christopher Columbus.
In 2000 a delegation of roughly 15-20 human and indigenous rights activists from the Americas and Pacific region, a delegation with a mission to influence the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revoke Inter Caetera, were "received" at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. This is where the delegation had been sending its "Appeal to the Vatican." The delegation met with a Monsignor under the President of the Council. He assured the delegation that they were on the right track, and that the Council was an important player along with the Secretariat of State. The issue of the revocation of the Bull "Inter Caetera" was submitted to a commission at the Secretariat of State. This was a victory indicating for the first time that the Vatican is seriously considering this issue.
Revoking the Papal bull, Inter Caetera, would help restore the fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples. A movement to revoke the papal bull has been ongoing for a number of years. It was initiated by the Indigenous Law Institute in 1992. At the Parliament of World Religions in 1994 over 60 indigenous delegates drafted a Declaration of Vision. It reads, in part:
"We call upon the people of conscience in the Roman Catholic hierarchy to persuade Pope John II to formally revoke the Inter Caetera Bull of May 4, 1493, which will restore our fundamental human rights. That Papal document called for our Nations and Peoples to be subjugated so the Christian Empire and its doctrines would be propagated. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. McIntosh 8 Wheat 543 (in 1823) adopted the same principle of subjugation expressed in the Inter Caetera Bull. This Papal Bull has been, and continues to be, devastating to our religions, our cultures, and the survival of our populations."
Essentially, Inter Caetera is the cornerstone of an international system today based on the same ideology of dominion, subjugation and exploitation of lands and peoples as ushered into Africa and the Americas in the 15th century. We are not saying that the Catholic church is perpetuating the same atrocities they did 500 years ago, but what we are saying is that the same ideology and mentality of dominion grounded in contemporary law is ROOTED IN THEIR LAWS and this must be acknowledged and addressed.
The revocation of Inter Caetera will definitely announce before the world community that the Vatican no longer supports the principle of subjugation that it promulgated five and a half centuries ago. The Roman Catholic church will be demonstrating its seriousness about respecting the rights and dignity of all peoples. The revocation of Inter Caetera will be an extremely important spiritual and symbolic gesture of peace and healing in creating a culture of peace on earth.
The doctrine of discovery was a principle of international law developed in a series of 15th century papal bulls and 16th century charters by European monarchs. The doctrine essentially gave white Europeans the green light to go forth and claim the lands of non-Christian peoples and enslave their inhabitants.
In recent years, various tribal members and groups around the country have asked the pope to rescind the 15th century papal bulls.
Finally, after 500 years of the Papal sanctioned domination and subjugation of indigenous peoples, a group of continental U.S. Christians are asking the current English monarch to renounce the ”doctrine of discovery” that resulted in the genocide, colonization and dispossession of the indigenous peoples of the ”new world.”
Maine’s Episcopal diocese is the first in the continental United States to protest against the "doctrine of discovery". The diocese passed a resolution at their annual convention Oct. 26 calling for Queen Elizabeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury ”to disavow and rescind the claimed validity of the doctrine of discovery against all peoples, specifically as it is set forth in the 1496 Royal Charter granted to John Cabot and his sons by King Henry VII, and all other doctrines that have been relied thereon for the dispossession of lands and the subjugation of non-Christian peoples from their initial use to the present.”
Several years ago the United Church of Christ, Hawai’i Conference, passed a resolution which resolves that: "President Paul Sherry on behalf of the United Church of Christ urges and calls upon people of conscience in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and in other organized religions to persuade Pope John Paul II to revoke the Papal Bulls Dum Diversas of 1452 [Romanus Pontifex of 1455] and Inter Caetera of 1493.…"
On November 26th 2007 I attended an Anoka-Hennepin Indian Education Parent Committee and Indian Education Staff public hearing. It was held in Anoka, Minnesota. The "Rum River" finds its confluence with the Mississippi River in Anoka. During the hearing I addressed the committee and staff and spoke about the work I am are doing to change Minnesota’s derogatory names that are offensive to Indian people.
I was asked a lot of questions, therefore, I was allowed to address the committee and staff for about twenty minutes. I told them about Jim Anderson’s and my two hour meeting with the mayor of Anoka, I spoke about the progress we made toward [fully] establishing an Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance. I also mentioned that we are trying to influence the City of Anoka to sponsor Anoka Pow Wows, cross-cultural educational programs, blend spirituality services, etc.. Jim Anderson is the Cultural Chair for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community and leading Minnesota Dakota activist.
I also spoke about a U.N. World Conference Against Racism Conference document that identifies two 15th century Papal bulls as the source of white racism against indigenous peoples. In addition, I mentioned that there is an international movement to influence the Vatican to revoke these Papal bulls. I told them that I have been corresponding with internationally renowned indigenous activists and internationally renowned multi-cultural educators and social activists. I also talked to them about my article "Changing The Racist Name Of The Knights of Columbus. When doing so, I mentioned the correspondence I had with two prominent member of Anoka’s Knights of Columbus organization.
I also mentioned that I believe that what is being taught in the public schools is "propaganda" and that the real history of what happened to the indigenous peoples of the Americas is still being covered up.
I told them that European international colonial law was based on two 15th century Papal bulls, and that it is called the "doctrine of discovery". I also mentioned that it was modified and then officially established as a U.S. law in 1832, and that - from a Christian perspective - it is a"doctrine of the Devil", and that America is based or founded on this doctrine of the Devil, and that this evil racist and religious sectarian doctrine should be replaced with a good humanitarian doctrine which respects the basic or fundamental human rights of all people.
The meeting went great and I was asked to come to their next meeting on the 28th of January and present more information on these topics. They also told me that Jim Anderson is welcome to address the committee and staff during their next meeting.
In the near future Mr. Anderson and I will be meeting again with the mayor of Anoka. Anderson recently told me that he will address the Anoka-Hennepin Indian Education Parent Committee and Indian Education Staff on the 28th of January, 2007.
On December 6th, 2007 I met with the mayor of Anoka and talked again about these mentioned above issues. After sending Leonard Wabasha, a hereditary chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota Oyate, manager of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community Cultural Resource Department and adviser of mine an e-mail about my recent meeting with the mayor of Anoka he asked that I ask the City of Anoka to write letters to the Minnesota Dakota Reservation Tribal Councils inviting them to get involved with Anoka’s mission to unite and reconcile with the Dakota people. I recently did what Mr. Wabasha advised me to do.
During my most recent meeting with the mayor of Anoka he told me that there is an Anoka organization that is being led by the President of the Anoka County Historical Society, Paul Pierce, and that this organization is trying to influence the City of Anoka to change the name of Anoka’s "Rum River Nature Area". I called Paul Pierce a few years ago and he, at the time, gave his support for the effort to change the profane "Rum River" name back to its sacred Dakota name Wakan.
__________________________________________________________________
Link to timeline of the efforts by Indigenous Nations and Peoples calling upon the Vatican to revoke the Inter Caetera Papal Bull of 1493: Timeline
I am spearheading the local (MN), national and international movement to revert the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota’s "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota name Wakan, which translated means Spirit or Great Spirit. I am also trying to change 13 other derogatory MN geographic site names that are offensive to indigenous peoples.
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 Native people, he slightly edited it and then with the consent of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council he introduced it to the MN legislature.
I am also trying to influence the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revoke the 1493 papal bull "Inter-Caetera." Shortly after Indigenous Peoples Literature posted an article of mine, titled, Changing The Racist Name Of The Knights Of Columbus , Tony Castanha (Carib/Boricua), the internationally renowned leader of the movement to influence the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revoke the Papal bull, Inter Caetera, contacted me and said that I am doing "great work" and to keep him "updated". More recently, after I sent him a link to my youtube.com video, titled: "Protesting The Racist Name Of The Knights Of Columbus" Mr. Castanha contacted me and said: "time to go after these ‘Knights’ guys…" Tony Castanha is also on the forefront of themovement to put an end to the glorification of the colonial pirate Christopher Columbus.
In 2000 a delegation of roughly 15-20 human and indigenous rights activists from the Americas and Pacific region, a delegation with a mission to influence the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revoke Inter Caetera, were "received" at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. This is where the delegation had been sending its "Appeal to the Vatican." The delegation met with a Monsignor under the President of the Council. He assured the delegation that they were on the right track, and that the Council was an important player along with the Secretariat of State. The issue of the revocation of the Bull "Inter Caetera" was submitted to a commission at the Secretariat of State. This was a victory indicating for the first time that the Vatican is seriously considering this issue.
Revoking the Papal bull, Inter Caetera, would help restore the fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples. A movement to revoke the papal bull has been ongoing for a number of years. It was initiated by the Indigenous Law Institute in 1992. At the Parliament of World Religions in 1994 over 60 indigenous delegates drafted a Declaration of Vision. It reads, in part:
"We call upon the people of conscience in the Roman Catholic hierarchy to persuade Pope John II to formally revoke the Inter Caetera Bull of May 4, 1493, which will restore our fundamental human rights. That Papal document called for our Nations and Peoples to be subjugated so the Christian Empire and its doctrines would be propagated. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. McIntosh 8 Wheat 543 (in 1823) adopted the same principle of subjugation expressed in the Inter Caetera Bull. This Papal Bull has been, and continues to be, devastating to our religions, our cultures, and the survival of our populations."
Essentially, Inter Caetera is the cornerstone of an international system today based on the same ideology of dominion, subjugation and exploitation of lands and peoples as ushered into Africa and the Americas in the 15th century. We are not saying that the Catholic church is perpetuating the same atrocities they did 500 years ago, but what we are saying is that the same ideology and mentality of dominion grounded in contemporary law is ROOTED IN THEIR LAWS and this must be acknowledged and addressed.
The revocation of Inter Caetera will definitely announce before the world community that the Vatican no longer supports the principle of subjugation that it promulgated five and a half centuries ago. The Roman Catholic church will be demonstrating its seriousness about respecting the rights and dignity of all peoples. The revocation of Inter Caetera will be an extremely important spiritual and symbolic gesture of peace and healing in creating a culture of peace on earth.
The doctrine of discovery was a principle of international law developed in a series of 15th century papal bulls and 16th century charters by European monarchs. The doctrine essentially gave white Europeans the green light to go forth and claim the lands of non-Christian peoples and enslave their inhabitants.
In recent years, various tribal members and groups around the country have asked the pope to rescind the 15th century papal bulls.
Finally, after 500 years of the Papal sanctioned domination and subjugation of indigenous peoples, a group of continental U.S. Christians are asking the current English monarch to renounce the ”doctrine of discovery” that resulted in the genocide, colonization and dispossession of the indigenous peoples of the ”new world.”
Maine’s Episcopal diocese is the first in the continental United States to protest against the "doctrine of discovery". The diocese passed a resolution at their annual convention Oct. 26 calling for Queen Elizabeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury ”to disavow and rescind the claimed validity of the doctrine of discovery against all peoples, specifically as it is set forth in the 1496 Royal Charter granted to John Cabot and his sons by King Henry VII, and all other doctrines that have been relied thereon for the dispossession of lands and the subjugation of non-Christian peoples from their initial use to the present.”
Several years ago the United Church of Christ, Hawai’i Conference, passed a resolution which resolves that: "President Paul Sherry on behalf of the United Church of Christ urges and calls upon people of conscience in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and in other organized religions to persuade Pope John Paul II to revoke the Papal Bulls Dum Diversas of 1452 [Romanus Pontifex of 1455] and Inter Caetera of 1493.…"
On November 26th 2007 I attended an Anoka-Hennepin Indian Education Parent Committee and Indian Education Staff public hearing. It was held in Anoka, Minnesota. The "Rum River" finds its confluence with the Mississippi River in Anoka. During the hearing I addressed the committee and staff and spoke about the work I am are doing to change Minnesota’s derogatory names that are offensive to Indian people.
I was asked a lot of questions, therefore, I was allowed to address the committee and staff for about twenty minutes. I told them about Jim Anderson’s and my two hour meeting with the mayor of Anoka, I spoke about the progress we made toward [fully] establishing an Anoka Dakota Unity Alliance. I also mentioned that we are trying to influence the City of Anoka to sponsor Anoka Pow Wows, cross-cultural educational programs, blend spirituality services, etc.. Jim Anderson is the Cultural Chair for the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community and leading Minnesota Dakota activist.
I also spoke about a U.N. World Conference Against Racism Conference document that identifies two 15th century Papal bulls as the source of white racism against indigenous peoples. In addition, I mentioned that there is an international movement to influence the Vatican to revoke these Papal bulls. I told them that I have been corresponding with internationally renowned indigenous activists and internationally renowned multi-cultural educators and social activists. I also talked to them about my article "Changing The Racist Name Of The Knights of Columbus. When doing so, I mentioned the correspondence I had with two prominent member of Anoka’s Knights of Columbus organization.
I also mentioned that I believe that what is being taught in the public schools is "propaganda" and that the real history of what happened to the indigenous peoples of the Americas is still being covered up.
I told them that European international colonial law was based on two 15th century Papal bulls, and that it is called the "doctrine of discovery". I also mentioned that it was modified and then officially established as a U.S. law in 1832, and that - from a Christian perspective - it is a"doctrine of the Devil", and that America is based or founded on this doctrine of the Devil, and that this evil racist and religious sectarian doctrine should be replaced with a good humanitarian doctrine which respects the basic or fundamental human rights of all people.
The meeting went great and I was asked to come to their next meeting on the 28th of January and present more information on these topics. They also told me that Jim Anderson is welcome to address the committee and staff during their next meeting.
In the near future Mr. Anderson and I will be meeting again with the mayor of Anoka. Anderson recently told me that he will address the Anoka-Hennepin Indian Education Parent Committee and Indian Education Staff on the 28th of January, 2007.
On December 6th, 2007 I met with the mayor of Anoka and talked again about these mentioned above issues. After sending Leonard Wabasha, a hereditary chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota Oyate, manager of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community Cultural Resource Department and adviser of mine an e-mail about my recent meeting with the mayor of Anoka he asked that I ask the City of Anoka to write letters to the Minnesota Dakota Reservation Tribal Councils inviting them to get involved with Anoka’s mission to unite and reconcile with the Dakota people. I recently did what Mr. Wabasha advised me to do.
During my most recent meeting with the mayor of Anoka he told me that there is an Anoka organization that is being led by the President of the Anoka County Historical Society, Paul Pierce, and that this organization is trying to influence the City of Anoka to change the name of Anoka’s "Rum River Nature Area". I called Paul Pierce a few years ago and he, at the time, gave his support for the effort to change the profane "Rum River" name back to its sacred Dakota name Wakan.
__________________________________________________________________
Link to timeline of the efforts by Indigenous Nations and Peoples calling upon the Vatican to revoke the Inter Caetera Papal Bull of 1493: Timeline
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Pope’s remarks whitewashed the genocide of Indigenous Peoples
By Thomas Dahlheimer
On May 9, 2007 Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Brazil for his first visit as pope to Latin America, where more than half of all Catholics live. During his visit he made perverse and morally obscene remarks which described the genocidal destruction of the Western Hemisphere’s pre-Columbus cultures as a “purifying” act which gave the indigenous peoples just what they were “longing” for. His historical revisionism whitewashes genocide, ethnocide, slavery, land theft, and the continuing subjugation of Indigenous Peoples.
The Pope declared that “the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean” were “silently longing” to receive Christ as their savior. Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an “adoption” of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures “fruitful” and “purifying” them. Accordingly, “the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.”
In a United Nations World Conference against Racism document there are statements that radically contradict the Pope’s remarks. “Historians and academics agree that the colonization of the New World saw extreme expressions of racism - massacres, forced-march relocations, the ‘Indian wars’, death by starvation and disease. Today, such practices would be called ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
“In the fifteenth century, two Papal Bulls set the stage for European domination of the New World and Africa. Romanus Pontifex …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. Inter Caetera ….officially established Christian dominion over the New World. It called for the subjugation of the native inhabitants and their territories,….”
“The Papal Bulls have never been revoked, although indigenous representatives have asked the Vatican to consider doing so. These ‘doctrines of discovery’ provided the basis for both the ‘law of nations’ and subsequent international law. Thus, they allowed Christian nations to claim ‘unoccupied lands’ (terra nullius), or lands belonging to “heathens” or “pagans”. In many parts of the world, these concepts later gave rise to the situation of many Native peoples in the today - dependent nations or wards of the State,…”
According to Pope Benedict the invasion and conquest of the Americas, which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population of around 100 million, was something the natives had been pining for all along. They weren’t just “asking for it,” as some male rapists depict the women they raped. They were actually “longing” for it, since salvation and “purification” came with it. The Pope’s logic is similar to the following statement. If a man brutally rapes a woman and she gives birth to his child she should be grateful and thank the rapist for raping her since their child came with it.
In the wake of (1.)…the United Nations statements about the Roman Catholic Church being primarily responsible for the genocide committed against Indigenous Peoples, and (2.)…nation states such as Australia and Canada recently apologizing for the atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples in their nations, and (3.)…U.S. Senator Sam Brownback’s sponsored May resolution which acknowledges a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes and offers an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States, a resolution that is making its way through Congress, and (4.)…the U.S. Colorado state government passing a resolution in April which compared the deaths of millions of American Indians to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide around the world, and (5.)…the recent Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission’s admittance that Minnesota committed ethnocide and genocide against Natives during its early history…the Pope and other high ranking Catholic officials are, unquestionably, looking at dealing with another upcoming big scandal, a scandal that will make the pedophile priests’ sex scandal cover up look like a drop in the bucket.
Hopefully, Pope Benedict XVI will soon formally revoke the 15th century papal bulls which were primarily responsible for the horrible atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples and then lead the Catholic Church and Western “Civilization” through a process of radical transformation, and by doing so, lead humanity into a new age, wherein Indigenous Peoples will be given their due respect.
On May 9, 2007 Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Brazil for his first visit as pope to Latin America, where more than half of all Catholics live. During his visit he made perverse and morally obscene remarks which described the genocidal destruction of the Western Hemisphere’s pre-Columbus cultures as a “purifying” act which gave the indigenous peoples just what they were “longing” for. His historical revisionism whitewashes genocide, ethnocide, slavery, land theft, and the continuing subjugation of Indigenous Peoples.
The Pope declared that “the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean” were “silently longing” to receive Christ as their savior. Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an “adoption” of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures “fruitful” and “purifying” them. Accordingly, “the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.”
In a United Nations World Conference against Racism document there are statements that radically contradict the Pope’s remarks. “Historians and academics agree that the colonization of the New World saw extreme expressions of racism - massacres, forced-march relocations, the ‘Indian wars’, death by starvation and disease. Today, such practices would be called ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
“In the fifteenth century, two Papal Bulls set the stage for European domination of the New World and Africa. Romanus Pontifex …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. Inter Caetera ….officially established Christian dominion over the New World. It called for the subjugation of the native inhabitants and their territories,….”
“The Papal Bulls have never been revoked, although indigenous representatives have asked the Vatican to consider doing so. These ‘doctrines of discovery’ provided the basis for both the ‘law of nations’ and subsequent international law. Thus, they allowed Christian nations to claim ‘unoccupied lands’ (terra nullius), or lands belonging to “heathens” or “pagans”. In many parts of the world, these concepts later gave rise to the situation of many Native peoples in the today - dependent nations or wards of the State,…”
According to Pope Benedict the invasion and conquest of the Americas, which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population of around 100 million, was something the natives had been pining for all along. They weren’t just “asking for it,” as some male rapists depict the women they raped. They were actually “longing” for it, since salvation and “purification” came with it. The Pope’s logic is similar to the following statement. If a man brutally rapes a woman and she gives birth to his child she should be grateful and thank the rapist for raping her since their child came with it.
In the wake of (1.)…the United Nations statements about the Roman Catholic Church being primarily responsible for the genocide committed against Indigenous Peoples, and (2.)…nation states such as Australia and Canada recently apologizing for the atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples in their nations, and (3.)…U.S. Senator Sam Brownback’s sponsored May resolution which acknowledges a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes and offers an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States, a resolution that is making its way through Congress, and (4.)…the U.S. Colorado state government passing a resolution in April which compared the deaths of millions of American Indians to the Holocaust and other acts of genocide around the world, and (5.)…the recent Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission’s admittance that Minnesota committed ethnocide and genocide against Natives during its early history…the Pope and other high ranking Catholic officials are, unquestionably, looking at dealing with another upcoming big scandal, a scandal that will make the pedophile priests’ sex scandal cover up look like a drop in the bucket.
Hopefully, Pope Benedict XVI will soon formally revoke the 15th century papal bulls which were primarily responsible for the horrible atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples and then lead the Catholic Church and Western “Civilization” through a process of radical transformation, and by doing so, lead humanity into a new age, wherein Indigenous Peoples will be given their due respect.
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