Tag: Native Americans

No More Destruction of Historic Indian Villages (ONE of TWO)

By 2014

An over 20 year resistance to a 6 mile four lane freeway bypass through protected wetlands in Northern California took an important turn. A meeting was held in June 2014 between Native American tribal leaders who see their ancient village sites bulldozed – and environmentalists who for so long had worked in vain to stop or at least downsize the project by lawsuits, appeals to politicians and to the agencies empowered to prevent wetland and salmon stream destruction.
The gathering was held on June 8, 2014, across from the so-called Northern Interchange in full view of the wasteland that was once verdant marshes and ash groves. Even though Caltrans had been given archeological maps of the 14 Little Lake Pomo trading [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu TWO of TWO

By 2014

on ceremony, broken treaties, corporate theft and the relationship between salmon and water
It has been argued that no state or even country of comparable size has changed its water distribution as dramatically as the state of California. There is some truth to the worn out joke that the water from Northern California is pumped hundred of miles to fill the swimming pools of Southern California where huge cities such as Los Angeles were built in the desert. In the process of building reservoirs, pipelines, pumping stations and canals whole landscapes were destroyed or flooded, Native American settlements and cultures obliterated, and species such as the Chinook Salmon taken to the brink of extinction.
But the swimming pool reference is also misleading. [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Ward Churchill: A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE (ONE OF TWO)

By 2012

Holocaust and Denial in the Americas
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us we may be more open to an unflinching look at genocide and denial in America. Churchill compares the treatment of North American Indians to historical instances of genocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Turks against Armenians, as well as Nazis against the Poles and Jews. With one important difference. This genocide is unparalleled in term of the size of population killed and in the way it was sustained through time.
In this first of two parts Churchill sets out to prove that the numbers of how many Indians lived North of the Rio Grande were cooked – there appear to have been not one but 15 million Native Americans.
The [ . . . ]

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:02 — 19.9MB)