Author Archives: Maria

Who will protect the earth? – Western Shoshone Land Rights

By Creative Communities, Sovereignty

Two recent military style raids to confiscate Shoshone cattle are meant to intimidate the tribe into accepting money for their land. Elders refuse payment of 15 cents per acre for 26 million acres of stolen land.Others disagree. The US government plays hardball and tries to divide the Shoshone. Recorded at the Spring 2003 Gathering of the Western Shoshone
For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
code: N230 To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
code N230CD: $10.00

John Trudell – What it means to be a Human Being

By Sovereignty

29 second Preview/Promo Part ONE
30 second Preview/Promo Part TWO
This is a moving, thought provoking spoken word and poetry address by the Native American musician and leader John Trudell. He did not set out to be a writer. His poetic gift developed out of the remarkable, sometimes unbearable circumstances of his life.
Trudell grew up on and around the Santee Sioux reservation near Omaha, Nebraska. In 1969 he participated in the Indians of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz. From 1973 to 1979 her served as national chairman of the American Indian Movement. The government response to A.I.M. was swift Trudell said, “They waged a war against us. They hunted us down. They killed, jailed, destroyed by any means [ . . . ]

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Restoring a Forest – with Fire and Love

By Creative Communities, Environment

Dennis Martinez
code: N 315 $8.00
The forest at the Mountain Grove Center For New Education, near Glendale in SW Oregon was clear-cut in the 1930s and 40s. It has come back thick, young, and dark. When Indians cared for the land the old growth incense cedars and chinquapins were spaced widely, plants thrived on the sun-lit forest floor, and animals found shelter and food. Dennis Martinez knows about Indian forest practice and he is restoring this land. 60 minutes
CLICK HERE to download a 29 minute version.

Reclaiming Native American History: The Yuki of Thule Valley

By Sovereignty

code: N317   $8.00
The bronze plaque on the Historical Marker at the entrance to the Round Valley Indian Reservation reads: “This valley was discovered by Frank M. Asbill arriving from Eden Valley, on May 15, 1854. During the same year, Charles Kelsey from Clear Lake also visited it, …” What really happened on that day was that the Asbill brothers opened fire and killed 39 Yuki who had come to greet them. A year later the settlers returned and rounded up 30 young women and sold them as slaves to the gold miners.
TUC Radio brought a micropower transmitter onto the reservation to broadcast community meetings about re-writing of the historic marker. This program give a sense of the way [ . . . ]

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Frank Kanawha Lake

By Environment

code: N316   $8.00
When TUC attended an Indian wedding in the Trinity Alps four young men arrived with a gift of freshly caught salmon. Maria watched their cooking ceremony and learned from other guests that they are Native American graduate students at the University of Oregon, Corvallis, who work as a team. They study aquatic ecology, conservation biology and salmon runs while maintaining a knowing and respectful connection to their native traditions. They refuse to be confined to university labs and spend much of their time doing field work, learning from elders. They lead regular salmon camps with Native American youth. Frank Lake is a student as well as a teacher.
Go to A-Infos to download a broadcast [ . . . ]

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Ward Churchill – The History Of Cointelpro And The FBI

By Sovereignty

This is a passionate, scholarly, and far reaching analysis of the Counter Intelligence Operations of the FBI. Beginning with World War I, Churchill covers the Palmer Raids, the defeat of the Anarchists and of Marcus Garvey; the attacks on the Civil Rights Movement, the 1964 murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and the murders of Black Panthers. Dedicating his speech to Leonard Peltier, who by now has spent almost 30 years in prison, Churchill gives a detailed description of the FBI raid on the Pine Ridge reservation on June 26, 1975 and of the case against Peltier.
For years the FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs, BIA, had supported and financed a private army (the goons) of Tribal Chief Dick Wilson. Wilson [ . . . ]

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Ward Churchill: A Little Matter Of Genocide

By Sovereignty

Why did so many voters in the 2004 election agree with the Bush War on Iraq? And all the other wars against indigenous peoples before? This will continue, says Churchill, until we acknowledge our history of genocide here, in the USA.
Ward Churchill is Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a member of AIM. This is a very serious account – supported by a stunning array of new evidence – of the scope of the genocide of Native American Nations. 60 minutes, 1996
code: N 301 $10.00

Winona LaDuke: White Earth

By Environment, Sovereignty

code: A 110 $8.00
Winona LaDuke received a standing ovation for her keynote speech at the Environmental Law Conference. She is a member of Mississippi Band Anishinabeg, founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and author of the novel Last Standing Woman. She talks about the meaning of White Earth, the plight of the buffalo, and toxics on Indian land. 50 minutes

Uranium on Indian Land

By Environment

code: N302 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Manuel Pino lives within the 30-mile radius of the Grants Mineral Belt, which was the most intensely mined area of North America for uranium ore from the 1950s to 1980s. Eighty percent of the Native American workforce worked the mines or mills, including Manuel’s father, uncle, and cousins. Today we see the impact on humans – widespread respiratory illness and lung cancer. 60 minutes

DAWN Mill and Midnight Mine

By Environment

code: N303 To order a copy click here: $8.00
Behind the poetic names of the DAWN Mill and the Midnight Mine lurks one of today’s most extraordinary environmental disasters. Situated in the center of the Spokane Indian reservation, the now-defunct Midnight Mine provided uranium for nuclear weapons. The resulting pit has filled with acidic water that is eroding the pit walls and releasing uranium from the rock. The DAWN mill on the border of the Spokane, Wash., reservation once processed the uranium for the Midnight Mine. Left behind are the enormous tailings impoundments into which radioactive residual rocks from the mining process were dumped. The groundwater below is radioactive and a plume is moving toward the Spokane river. Everyone [ . . . ]

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Gold and the Myth of the ’49ers

By Environment

code: N305 To order a copy click here: $8.00
The gold rush was devastating to the California Indians. In just 20 years, their numbers were reduced from 150,000 to 31,000 by disease and outright murder at the hands of the miners. The gold rush was also the first large-scale assault on California’s mountains, forests, and rivers. 60 minutes

Big Mountain Trilogy (2 tapes)

By Sovereignty

code: N 306/307 $16.00
Forced relocation of Native Americans is one of the darkest chapters of US history, yet few people are aware that the relocation policy continues to the present day. The Dineh from Big Mountain in Arizona are being moved for the expansion of the Peabody coal mine in today’s equivalent of the genocide of the past. Big Mountain Trilogy is a 2-hour documentary recorded at Un-Thanksgiving 1997 and during the historic visit of the United Nations investigator on religious intolerance in February 1998. From the crossing of the Painted Desert to the arrival at Camp Anna Mae, you hear the voices of the Dineh elders, their supporters, and sheep herders. An image slowly emerges of an [ . . . ]

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The Western Shoshone – The Dann Sisters of Crescent Valley and the Timibisha Shoshone of Death Valley

By Environment, Sovereignty

code: N 312
The Western Shoshone never ceded their land that extends from the Snake River in Idaho through Eastern Nevada into Death Valley, California. Currently  (June 2000) a bill is being prepared in Congress to force the Shoshone to accept 15 cents per acre for the land they were never willing to sell. Ranchers in Crescent Valley in Northern Nevada, Mary and Carrie Dann have resisted the confiscation of their cattle  by the Bureau of Land Management. The Shoshone Nation is fighting the transformation of the Nevada test site and Yucca Mountain into nuclear waste deposits, and they are trying to protect the remainder of their land from open pit gold mining that poisons the water and land.
Recorded at the [ . . . ]

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Native American Oral History: Coyote is the Government

By Environment

code: N 313  $8.00
Mr. Willard Rhodes received this story from his grandfather and grandmother who saw the future before it had arrived. I met Mr. Rhodes, a retired heavy equipment operator, at the summer camp of the Indigenous Environmental Network on the land of the hereditary chief of the Ahjumawi. This amazing story predicts that the third destruction of this world, after ice and floods, will be caused or prevented by us, not the Creator. We could be the ones to set the fire, either by heating up the planet or by releasing nuclear explosions.
The Pit River Indians oppose a geothermal development at Medicine Lake, their sacred lake. They are also deeply saddened about the expanding tourism on [ . . . ]

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Voices from the Nevada Test Site: Free Radio Newe Sogobia

By Environment

code: N 314  $8.00
A micropower radio station was broadcasting at the May 2000 peace camp at the Nevada Test Site. It was a community bulletin board that also reached staff and armed guards inside the site. Here are Helen Herrera, Apache; Jody Dodd from WILPF, Alex from Scotland, and Dee Dominguez whose Southern California Tribe connected with the Uwa from Columbia when they found they had the same corporation, Occidental Petroleum, drilling on their lands.
CLICK HERE to listen – or go to A-Infos to download a broadcast quality 29-minute version.