As Americans Mourn Vegas, Schools Across US Will Be Forced To Celebrate a Mass Murderer Today

Just one week after the massacre that has been labeled the “deadliest shooting in modern U.S. History,” children in public schools across the country will be forced to celebrate the false achievements of a mass murderer—Happy Columbus Day!

Christopher Columbus is celebrated because he “sailed the ocean blue in 1492” and “discovered the new world,” but in addition to the fact that he didn’t actually discover anything, there is a very dark side of Columbus’ life that is not taught in school history books.

As Irish Central noted, when Columbus and his men explored the lands of present-day Dominican Republican and Haiti, they found an overwhelming abundance of gold, and Columbus’ lust for fame and fortune “set into motion a relentless wave of murder, rape, pillaging, and slavery that would forever alter the course of human history.”

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Catholic Priest Bartolomé de las Casas transcribed Columbus’ journals, and testified to the violence that was chronicled in them, noting that over 3 million people died of a result of the war and slavery championed by Christopher Columbus.

“There were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over 3,000,000 people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines,” de las Casas wrote. “Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it.”

Columbus appointed himself governor and viceroy over the Dominican Republic. As History.com reported, in order to silence any opposition from the citizens who lived in the area long before he arrived, Columbus “ordered a brutal crackdown in which many natives were killed,” and to deter further rebellion, he “ordered their dismembered bodies to be paraded through the streets.”

While many teachers and educators follow the textbook example and present Christopher Columbus as a white-washed hero who changed history by helping to discover the “New World,” the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools was featured for taking a very different approach.

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Bill Bigelow told SFGate that instead of celebrating Columbus, his curriculum puts Columbus, his crew, the King and Queen of Spain and the indigenous people on trial for murder, and then lets the students decide.

“It begins on the premise that there’s this monstrous crime in the years after 1492 when perhaps as many as 3 million or more Taínos on the island of Hispaniola lost their lives,” Bigelow said. “It asks students to wrestle with the responsibility in this.”

Anthea Hartig, executive director of the California Historical Society, told SFGate that part of the reason Columbus is still celebrated today is because “History has been traditionally taught in the hero style,” with a great man at the center of an event.

“These men were exalted and meant to inspire,” Hartig said. “If you read a lot of juvenile literature you’ll notice this. But really, the revolutions Columbus launched weren’t the revolutions for which he’s celebrated. What he imposed on the islands was some of the most heinous genocide and labor forced on the world. By 1555 there were no more natives. Then they started to import slaves from Africa.”

As The Free Thought Project has reported, not only did Columbus have an effect on the indigenous people in the lands he set out to “conquer,” but the religious doctrine that “legalized” the native genocide he pioneered went on to become federal law in the United States.

This year, as Americans mourn a deadly shooting that killed 59 people and injured over 500, students in public schools are forced to celebrate a mass murderer who is responsible for initiating a brutal takeover that led to the slaughter of over 3 million innocent people, and went on to affect the lives of millions more for years to come.

Judge Orders Removal of Gas Pipeline from Native American Property

Seventeen years after the expiration of an easement, a federal judge has ordered an energy company to completely remove its pipeline from the properties of 38 Native American landowners — none of whom have been compensated for the company’s use of their land since the year 2000.

Now, the pipeline company will have just six months to dismantle and completely remove the structure.

“Having carefully reviewed the parties’ submissions, and in light of the facts and circumstances in this case,” Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange wrote in the 10-page decision for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, “the court finds that a permanent injunction should be entered in this case. Specifically, it is plaintiffs’ interests in the exclusive possession of their land which has been invaded by the presence of the pipeline and defendants’ continued use of the pipeline.

“Further, Defendants have continued to use the pipeline and although they were advised by the [Bureau of Indian Affairs] on March 23, 2010, more than five and a half years before the instant action was filed, that ‘[i]f valid approval of a right of way for this tract is not timely secured, Enogex should be directed to move the pipeline off the subject property’ …”

Since the granting of the original 20-year easement to Producer’s Gas Company back in 1980, many of the landowners, who are primarily citizens of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Tribes, chose not to renew permission for Enable Midstream Partners, Enogex’ successor, to encroach on their private property — but the company opportuned the fact the ambivalence hasn’t been unanimous.

Court documents disclose the original parties to the easement were each paid $1,925 in compensation for the natural gas pipeline to traverse the 137-acres of land, individually, a 0.73-acre segment of their property.

But the tense relationship only unraveled from there, as Indianz.com reports,

“After the easement expired in 2000, they were offered $3,080 for another 20-year lease, according to the documents. But a majority of the allotment’s owners never agreed to the proposed amount, which they contend was far below market value.

“Despite the lack of consent, a firm named Enogex continued to operate the pipeline, which is part of a larger network of gas transmission lines in Oklahoma. The trespass continued even after the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2010 told the company to reach an agreement or stop using the land.”

Despite that assertive demand, the BIA proceeded to accept $1,098.35 in payment for the easement from 2000 until 2002. Worse, Indianz.com notes, the BIA continued to accept payments from Enogex through 2006 — but didn’t bother consulting landowners about the arrangement.

Worse, at one point — and in diametric opposition to its original posturing — the BIA essentially wrested the decision from the very people whose land would be impacted by the continued presence of the pipeline.

“Despite the rejection by a majority of landowners,” the ruling states, “on June 23, 2008, the Interim Superintendent of the BIA’s Anadarko Agency approved Enogex’s application for the renewal of the right-of-way easement for twenty years.”

A complaint filed by the Indigenous landowners ultimately reversed that approval, with the BIA determining “it did not have authority to approve the right-of-way” without the interested parties’ consent — thus, on March 23, 2010, BIA gave the company notice that, if an agreement satisfactory to all involved parties could not be reached in a timely fashion, the pipeline would need to be moved.

Because a compromise never came to fruition, the court held the pipeline operator has been trespassing on private land since that date — specifically striking down arguments from the defense the Oklahoma statute of limitations for trespass had long passed, and that the consent of just five property owners somehow nullified any claims of trespass.

For a federal judge to rule the energy company must remove an operational pipeline from the property of Native American landowners is an acute contrast to the eventual approval by officials for completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline — despite a monumental, months-long upswell of hundreds of thousands standing in opposition.

With a mere six-month window to disassemble and evacuate the pipeline, the federal court is forcing Enable Midstream Partners to tuck tail and rein in its arrogant exploitation of Indigenous Peoples — at least, for now, in this specific case.

An Oscar Was Once Refused to Protest Native Rights, and Could Happen Again Tonight

Icon and legend, actor Marlon Brando once turned down one of the most prestigious awards in Hollywood for reasons opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and supporters prove decidedly have yet to be resolved: the trampling of Native American rights and sovereignty.

Brando refused to accept the Academy Award for best actor on March 5, 1973 — amid the ongoing offensive by the U.S. government against the occupation by a group of 200 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement activists of the tiny South Dakota town, Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation — in part, because the movie industry was propagating the appalling government dehumanization of Native peoples.

“The motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile, and evil,” Brando wrote. “It’s hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children … see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.”

Not only did Brando’s rejection of the Oscar swell a tidal wave of controversy in its own right, but how the actor — who played the now-iconic mafioso, Vito Corleone, in “The Godfather” — chose to announce the decision only amplified the storm.

As Business Insider notes, Brando’s reputation behind the scenes prior to the stellar success of instant classic hadn’t won many allies in the industry, and his career seemed headed for the dustbin:

“‘The Godfather’ grossed nearly $135 million nationwide and is heralded as one of the greatest films of all time. Pinned against pinnacles of the silver screen — Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, and Peter O’Toole — Brando was favored to win best actor.”

However, the night before the Academy Awards were to take place, Brando threw quite the wrench into plans for the glitzy event — by announcing he would boycott.

When the time came for the godfather, himself, to ascend the stage to accept the well-deserved best actor award, the president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee and relatively unknown actress, Sacheen Littlefeather, took his place. With long hair pulled to the sides in intricately-beaded ties, the courageous Native American woman came to the podium sporting Brando’s statement, holding an open palm to refuse the prized statuette.

“I’m representing Marlon Brando this evening and he has asked me to tell you … that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry —”

Jeers from the crowd briefly cut the even-keeled actress short, and she says, “Excuse me,” but other attendees immediately topped detractors in supportive applause, as she continues,

“— and on television, in movie reruns, and also in recent happenings at Wounded Knee. I beg at this time that I have not intruded upon this evening, and that we will, in the future — our hearts and our understandings will meet with love and generosity.”

Due to time constraints, Littlefeather could not read Brando’s lengthy speech to the disquieted crowd, but the media soon received the text — and the actor’s stinging manifesto took industry ignorance, national apathy, and oppressive government to task.

“When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.

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“But there is one thing which is beyond the reach of this perversity and that is the tremendous verdict of history. And history will surely judge us. But do we care? What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice?”

Brando continued, his words tragically as pertinent now as they were over four decades ago,

“It would seem that the respect for principle and the love of one’s neighbor have become dysfunctional in this country of ours, and that all we have done, all that we have succeeded in accomplishing with our power is simply annihilating the hopes of the newborn countries in this world, as well as friends and enemies alike, that we’re not humane, and that we do not live up to our agreements.”

Outrage buried Brando and his emissary after the Academy Awards boycott, but nothing could strip the bite of truth from the resounding statement of solidarity in the action and its motivation.

Given the ongoing eviction of camps at Standing Rock, tonight presents a ripe opportunity for an Oscar winner to follow in Marlon Brando’s albeit difficult to fill shoes.

Kaepernick Sticks to $1mn Donation Pledge — Sends $50K to Standing Rock Health Clinic

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick announced Friday he will donate $50,000 to the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic Partnership at Standing Rock in order to “offset salaries for doctors and nurses who work at the free clinic for those who have gathered to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.”

In September, the athlete triggered factious debate when he took a knee during the national anthem over the issues of police brutality and oppression of minorities in the United States.

But it wasn’t a hollow act — the athlete also announced the formation of the Colin Kaepernick Foundation and set in motion a “Million Dollar Pledge” to give $100,000 each month for ten months to charitable organizations to “fight oppression of all kinds globally, through education and social activism.”

“I plan to take it a step further,” Kaepernick told the media following his quiet protest. “I’m currently working with organizations to be involved and making sure I’m actively in these communities, as well as donating the first million dollars I make this season to different organizations to help these communities and help these people.”

Now, the compassionate medical personnel at the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic — a partnership with the Do No Harm Coalition at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) — will benefit significantly thanks to Kaepernick’s foray into activism. According to NBC’s CSN, half of the donation will offset their salaries, while the “remainder of the donation goes toward offsetting building materials for the mobile medical clinic, medical supplies and liability insurance.”

Thousands of water protectors remain camped in support of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members fighting to halt Energy Transfer Partners’ construction of the contentious pipeline. Although water protectors — who include Indigenous peoples from hundreds of First Nations and tribes from around the world, as well as non-native allies — remain peaceful and prayerful, militarized law enforcement led by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department have used brutal and abhorrent force on a number of occasions.

From tear gas and pepper spray to rubber bullets, water cannons, and more, riot gear-clad police have seemingly employed every violent tactic imaginable against the unarmed water protectors — making medical staff an absolute necessity.

Two of the most horrific injuries occurred when police began attacking water protectors attempting to clear a blockade law enforcement erected at Highway 1806’s Backwater Bridge — an obstacle severely hindering the access of emergency personnel to the reservation and pipeline opposition camps — on the evening of November 20.

Militarized officers first fired rubber bullets, which attracted a crowd of around 400 irate but unarmed people. Police proceeded to unleash a barbaric show of disproportionate force, firing pressurized tear gas canisters, concussion grenades, mace, various ostensively less-than-lethal projectiles, and then — in conditions hovering well below freezing — doused the crowd with high-pressure water cannons.

During the attack, police fired a tear gas canister at a water protector known as Sioux Z, which exploded in her face, severing her retina — and it’s now highly unlikely she will regain vision in that eye. Another, Sophia Wilansky, had her arm blown apart when police launched what is believed to be either a concussion grenade or pressurized tear gas canister as she carried bottles of water to people on the front line.

Medics and first responders reported dozens of cases of hypothermia, around 20 hospitalizations, one cardiac arrest — and resuscitation — and hundreds of other injuries.

Kaepernick’s donation to the Mni Wiconi Health Clinic will help the medics attending those dedicated to protecting the Standing Rock Sioux’ water supply — but the clinic will continue after the encampments ultimately disband. According to the UCSF crowd-fund website,

“The Mni Wiconi (Water is Life) Health Clinic is a free integrative clinic that is developing with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe traditional healers, UCSF providers and students, National Nurses United, Changing Woman Initiative (indigenous midwifery group) and Global Health Care Alternative Project to provide free care to all people on tribal land in the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. At the invitation of the tribe, our consortium’s goal is to create a space for the imagining and practice of decolonized medicine in order to further the health of the community in the short-term with the expanded population due to pipeline resistance and in the longterm after the encampments have dissolved.”

Appetite for Change in Minneapolis — a group installing an urban community farm plot as part of its dedication to improving the nutrition of urban dwellers — received $25,000 as part of this month’s donation. SOUL of Chicago received the remaining quarter of Kaepernick’s funds, which will be allotted for Funding for Decarcerate Chicago, “a campaign to end mass incarceration and over-criminalization of communities of color in Illinois.”

As controversial a figure as the athlete might be, Colin Kaepernick continues to back up the vow to spread his wealth to groups fighting to improve communities around the United States.

BREAKING: Chippewa Tribe Calls for Pipeline Removal from All Tribal Land, Refuses Right-of-way Renewal

Odanah, WI — In a spectacular act of resistance to Big Oil, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Council refused to renew a right-of-way easement for an Enbridge crude oil pipeline running through the Bad River Reservation.

While Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members remain entrenched in a battle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Bad River tribal council passed a formal resolution against renewing rights-of-way for Enbridge’s Energy Line 5 — and officially called for the pipeline to be decommissioned and removed from all tribal lands and the affected watershed.

Originally known as Lakehead Pipeline Company, Enbridge installed the pipeline in 1953; however, by 2013 — when “15 Individual grant of easement rights of way for Line 5 expired” — Band River had reacquired interests in eleven of those parcels.

“As many other communities have experienced, even a minor spill could prove to be disastrous for our people,” Bad River Tribal Chairman Robert Blanchard noted on the remarkable decision in the press release. “We depend upon everything that the creator put here before us to live mino-bimaadiziwin, a good and healthy life.”

Blanchard explained the resolution had not been motivated solely by the Band’s concerns — rather, the well being of the region, as a whole — all inhabitants as well as the living environment.

“We will work with our native and non-native communities to make sure that Line 5 does not threaten rights of people living in our region, and we will reach out to federal, state and local officials to evaluate how to remove Line 5, and we will work with the same communities and officials to continue developing a sustainable economy that doesn’t marginalize indigenous people,” Blanchard stated.

Not wasting any time, the Band has already begun planning for Line 5’s disassembly and removal, taking into account the handling of hazardous materials and remnants of toxic crude. Disposal of the pipeline parts, recycling and disposal of hazardous contents, and restoration of the land to as pristine a state as possible — with minimal impact on the ecosystem — are now of primary concern.

“These environmental threats not only threaten our health, but they threaten our very way of life as Anishinaabe,” Tribal Council Member Dylan Jennings asserted. “We all need to be thinking of our future generations and what we leave behind for them.”

Where the Bad River Band holds a distinct advantage compared to the Standing Rock Sioux in its fight to protect the water and land perhaps most concerns the location of the pipeline.

Energy Transfer Partners plans for the Dakota Access Pipeline directly threaten the water supply of the Standing Rock Reservation — but the pipeline’s path under the Missouri River’s Lake Oahe reservoir lies just north of government-declared tribal lands.

This means the majority of project in the area traverses private property, which ETP can pay owners for the right-of-way — usually paltry sums forcing them into court battles over valuation — or, as it has done in many places, performed gymnastics to employ the U.S. government’s controversial land-grab policy of eminent domain.

While the Enbridge pipeline obviously already sits on Bad River Band property — making the comparison a bit of apples and oranges — the fact it runs through reservation lands provides the members of the sovereign nation greater muscle in such decisions.

As the statement explains:

“With over 7,000 members, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians is located on an over 124,000-acre reservation in an area within Ashland and Iron Counties on the south shore of Lake Superior (known by the tribe as Gichi Gami). The Ojibwe people have a long and rich heritage throughout the Great Lakes region and at Odanah on Lake Superior prior to European traders, missionaries and settlers and continuing to today. Treaties signed by eleven Ojibwe Tribes ceded territory in the region, including what is currently the upper one third of the State of Wisconsin.”

As this resolution just passed in the later hours on Thursday, a response from Enbridge had not yet been released.

Standing up to Big Oil — thanks to opposition in Standing Rock — has become a national and international movement to begin the necessary move toward renewable forms of energy production.

Constant spills, leaks, and explosions — many with disastrous consequences — go mostly unnoticed in headlines simply for their frequency.

For the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa council to sound a collective halt to Big Oil’s dominance of their land is an admirable — if quiet — act of resistance, indeed.

Jane Fonda Preps for Long Stay in Standing Rock, Donates Housing and Holds Massive Feast

Cannon Ball, ND — Longtime activist and award-winning actress Jane Fonda — a sharp critic of the government’s failure to honor treaties with Native American First Nations — will join a delegation of 50 people serving a feast to Standing Rock Sioux and other water protectors at the Oceti Sakowin camp on Thanksgiving Day.

Amid increasing awareness of genocide and centuries of exploitation and oppression perpetrated against Native Americans by the U.S. government, a feast slated for the problematic annual holiday could easily but needlessly be misconstrued.

Indigenous rights and local food advocate, Judy Wicks — former owner of Philadelphia’s White Dog Cafe, which annually serves a traditional Native American dinner on Thanksgiving for Native Americans — wanted to do the same for water protectors opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“We would recognize them and thank them for the many foods in our contemporary diet that they originally cultivated,” Wicks explained to Civil Eats, a news daily focusing on sustainable agriculture as an economic and social solution, of those annual celebrations.

Wicks, who lived in an Alaskan Eskimo community in 1969, wanted to ensure such a feast would be welcome and appropriate from an Indigenous standpoint, so she consulted with friend, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Bob Goldtooth, for his opinion.

“He said, ‘absolutely,’” Wicks told Civil Eats of their conversation. “He told me most of his friends at Standing Rock celebrated the American holiday,” she said, adding Goldtooth felt anything drawing more attention to effort of thousands opposing Dakota Access would be appreciated.

“Our purpose is to give back to Native Americans – the Standing Rock Sioux and representatives of over 300 native tribes from throughout the Americas who have joined them in support,” Wicks told Native News Online.

Immediately she summoned a group of activists, chefs, and volunteers to join her in North Dakota next weekend, where the group also plans to lend a hand in the construction of a straw-bale community center, called Makagi Oti, and planned by tribal leaders.

“The Magaki-Oti or Brown Earth Lodge is being designed as a place for Protectors who need shelter during the coming winter months with gusty winds and temperatures in the minus 20s or lower,” Bob Gough, Secretary of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, stated in a press release.

Called a Wopila Feast — the Lakota term for a broad statement of thanks — Wicks, Fonda, and the group will serve locally-sourced, traditional fare to some 500 water protectors at the Oceti Sakowin camp.

Fonda, in addition to joining the group, plans to donate four much-needed Mongolian yurts and five butchered bison. Yurts — round, semi-permanent tents reinforced with framing and usually equipped with a heat source doubling as a stove in the center — are traditional housing used by nomadic cultures for centuries as defense against the elements for their ease of portability.

Water protectors, dedicated to remaining in several encampments near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, close to the banks of the Missouri River, face a potential humanitarian crisis with a winter predicted to be even harsher than usual. With a centralized heat source, and ranging in size from that of a large ordinary tent to over 300 square feet, these yurts could provide life-saving protection from the elements — particularly the notoriously strong winds of the northern plains.

Camps have already experienced frosty temperatures, but daytime highs in Fahrenheit are not expected to escape the teens many days in January, with wind chills dropping far into negative digits — so the yurts, construction of the community center, and the responsibly-sourced outdoor banquet will be most welcome ahead of frigid conditions.

With Energy Transfer Partners — the conglomerate of companies responsible for constructing the pipeline — planning to forge ahead with the project if and when the Army Corps of Engineers grants the necessary easement, water protectors feel camping to block Dakota Access is an absolute obligation. Volunteers planning the feast see it as a prime opportunity to call attention to the cause, especially amid a veritable blackout — or, worse, mischaracterization — by mainstream, corporate press.

“I’m very excited about being of service in this exact way at this exact time,” Jeremy Stanton, owner of a sustainable butcher shop and fire-roasted catering business in Massachusetts, who will bring his core staff to assist with the feast, told Civil Eats.

“We’re talking about 500 years of oppression; we’re talking about taking a stand and saying, ‘We’re not doing that anymore.’ You can’t just plow your way through this land because the Army Corps of Engineers said you could.”

Wopila Feast volunteers plan to serve dishes with traditional ingredients, including squash, sweet potatoes, wild rice, ground corn, and cranberries, among other items. Evincing activism’s myriad forms, Stanton’s food expertise offers him a chance to help in the way he knows best — providing nourishment for the water protectors.

“This is about being an activist in the way that I know how to be an activist—by feeding people,” he told Civil Eats.

For her part, Jane Fonda has already participated in an arts education program at Solen Middle School in the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation earlier this year. Indeed, the activist and actress is no stranger to the American Indigenous rights movement — in 1969, she supported the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island, intended to garner attention to continued treaty rights violations and the need for Indigenous sovereignty.

For Fonda, Wicks, and the others involved in serving the Wopila Feast, volunteering was never a question.

“To me, this is about a life-or-death struggle and the native people are on the front lines,” Wicks told Civil Eats, adding she felt it was the least she could do. “I’m going to honor the values they’re demonstrating—non-violence, cooperation, generosity, respect for mother earth and for others—even in the face of these armed riot police. So bringing them this dinner is a small token of my gratitude.”