Taino Wins Miss Indian World 2006-2007

See image at:

http://www.gatheringofnations.com/miss_indian_world/index.htm

Extract from:

Thousands attend Gathering of Nations Pow Wow

By Erny Zah The Daily Times

May 1, 2006

"One singer, Al Santos, took pride in the fact that the powwow lived up toits name this year, The Gathering of Nations.

"For him, the powwow did that in two ways: First, Otter Trail, Santos' drumgroup, won fourth place in the 'Southern Challenge' drum contest, and second, the new Miss Indian World, Violet John, is part Taino, an indigenous tribe that came from the Caribbean Sea islands.

"Al Santos is also a Taino. 'I about had a heart attack when she introduced herself,' Santos said. 'I thought maybe they said something other than Taino.'

"The recognition of a small tribe in the singing contest and in Miss Indian World means a lot, Santos said."

Post-Tribal Stress Disorder

In the Spirit of the Ancestors:
Reconciling Post Tribal Stress Disorder

by Patrisia Gonzales

Column of the Americas

© May 1, 2006

[reprinted in The CAC Review by kind permission of the author]
[the original article, and many others like it, can be found at: http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/]

I once heard an Ojibwa woman tell a group of Chicanos working on indigenous liberation that our ancestors did what they had to, to survive.

Our indigenous ancestors survived by passing as Mexicans or mestizos, or being defined away as mestizos by governments. And many married mestizos. As a result, the Mexican community is a pan indigenous community comprised of native peoples of both Mexico and North America. Indigeneity became private and individualized in families. They survived by hiding the indigenous knowledge so deeply that some of us could no longer recognize it. Some were taught to forget and to fear and disconnect from our place in the natural world and the power of nature within our own hands. There was no need for the Inquisition once forced conversion could be regulated by the community itself. Choctaw scholar Karina Walters says that part of historical trauma was established through forced conversion and separating people away from their original instructions, the ancestral agreements and covenants about how to treat each other and how to honor their responsibilities to the natural world.

I believe that among those defined as mestizos many suffer from PTSD or Post Tribal Stress Disorder. I use this term to refer to the suffering and afflictions that result from de-Indianization. Invariably, there is someone who remembers in their family that they are Indian. Or they will recount how one of their grandparents told them to never forget, "we are Indian." But like historical trauma, not all suffer the soul wound of de-Indianization.

Part of their historical trauma is the void where there should be remembrance of the names of our ancestors and nations. They are the other “disappeared” of the Americas, by the processes of social control. Some argue that mestizos are like a brown clay pot, emptied of a native spirit that was claimed by impositions. Others argue mestizos indigenized Spanish culture and that it is, in fact, only a shallow topsoil that covers indigenous Mexico, which is indigenous in the spaces also claimed as mestizo or urban. We are another kind of Indian that does not fit into the current boxes on identity.

Many scholars concur that Mesoamerica's indigenous legacy remains in traditional agriculture and Mexican traditional medicine - and protective factors against disconnection. Zapata asserted that the land belongs to those who work it -- Mexicans still work the land and have relationships with this natural world. But many are taught to deny their Indianness, to even hate it. A Kickapoo elder once recounted to me how a group of Mexican kids in Coahuilla, Mexico, got mad when he proclaimed to them, "you're Indian."

Those people identified as mestizo, Hispanic, or Latino suffer from a particular kind of historical trauma. They are told that they are both the oppressed and the oppressor. Many Mexicans are largely Indian by heritage and do not descend from Spanish colonialists, and when they do, it may be through rape or forced marriage, such as with one of my Kickapoo grandmothers. It is hard to determine who is the “we/they,” who of the relatives were/are the mestizos who benefited from controlling “the Indian.” The Mexican (read Bolivian, Ecuadorian etc.) community has been in a constant process of de-Indianization and each family has its own particular relationship to that process.

In my work, I identify some symptoms of PTSD:

1. Anehlos -- a feeling of longing and that something is missing.
2. Cracked mirror -- a feeling that something wants to break through, or break open and that your sight is refracted from cracks in perception, with some parts distorted and others clear.
3. Rejection -- feeling rejected by Latinos and mestizos as being too Indian and by some Native Americans as almost or maybe Indian, but then again not really (while others welcome you as cousins, brothers or sisters.)
4. Loss -- mourning the loss of ancestors, nations and the spiritual teachings that were wrested away and in which you had no say or control.

Fortunately, there are numerous native elders working with, or in, these communities as people resist de-Indianization, particularly the more recent indigenous migrants from the southern hemisphere. Some people argue that mestizos and Latinos should accept their historical conditions, that they have no right to renew or strengthen their indigeneity. Yet, that goes against the spirit of self-determination. If we could hear them speak in the spirit world, would they not ask for their children to return? to fight? to renew knowledge in the spirit of their ancestors? To do otherwise, is to accept colonization, something no community, native or not, can justify as an acceptable human condition. To proclaim their Indianness, someone once said, is the biggest paradigm shift since the Spanish debated whether Indians had souls.

© 2006 Column of the Americas

XColumn@gmail.com

- 608-238-3161 or
Column of the Americas, PO BOX 5093 Madison WI 53705.

Our bilingual columns are posted at: http://hometown.aol.com/xcolumn/myhomepage/

"Canada": The Name of an Invasion

Assaulting Mohawks on their Land

On April 20, 2006, near Caledonia, Ontario, a force of heavily armed police invaded lands belonging to the Six Nations Mohawks who were peacefully demonstrating in defense of their legal land rights and against the invasion of a private company, Henco Industries, which claimed to have legally purchased the land in order to build another tribute to Western civilization: 250 condominiums at Douglas Creek Estates. Faced with unarmed prostesters, police pointed automatic assault rifles mere inches from the faces of the prostesters.

For weeks prior to this assault, Mohawk spokespersons had warned of this possibility, given their intimate knowledge of how different arms of the state are quick to respond with violence against any demonstration by First Nations in Canada. The Montreal Gazette, in a shameless editorial of April 21, was quick to denounce not the use of illegitimate and immoral force by the state, but the Six Nations demonstrators who were occupying their own lands. Likening the traditional owners of the land to thugs and criminals, the "newspaper," owned by one of Canada's largest media congolmerates, did not hesitate to proclaim the Mohawk hold on their own lands as illegal, and also complained about the overly generous nature of court judgments on native land title cases, when it is widely acknowledged that such cases, when successful, are resolved in a little over a generation, at the soonest.

On behalf of the members of the editorial board of the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink (www.centrelink.org), a small working group of indigenous and non-indigenous scholars and activists, I am writing to express our unqualified support for the Six Nations demonstrators protecting their lands in Caledonia, Ontario, and to ensure that we help to get the word out, further afield, amongst our Caribbean and Central American partners, so that the world is reminded of the anti-indigenous injustices perpetrated by a Canadian state which still seems intent on conquering indigenous territory on the behalf of capitalist corporate interests.

It is not with shock or surpise, but grief, that we witness the forces arrayed against the Six Nations: the forces of state-sanctioned violence, media disinformation, internal collaborators and racist attitudes that continue to be exhibited by both the Euro-Canadian residents of Caledonia and, unfortunately, across Canada. It seems that many of the colonial residents have resented the Mohawk presence as a nuisance--"the Indians are in our way", "they ['the Indians'] are disrupting our lifestyle" (this is a statement rich in ironies), or, "this needs to be over", without bothering to reflect for a moment on the foundations or effects of their presence in someone else's home.

The land in question (a question more for the imperial authorities) belongs to the Mohawks. They never "lost" it and they never gave it up. As they have explained time and again, this land is under the protection and jurisdiction of the women, according to Wampum #44 of the Kaianereh'ko:wa. The Women, hold the land in trust for their future generations. No alienation is legally valid. They filed this objection with the Crown and others. Moreover, the British Crown made a commitment to the Mohawks in 1784 when General Haldimand promised to protect their right to occupy a stretch of land for six miles wide on both sides of the Grand River from its mouth to its source. This includes 800 square miles of every body of water within the Beaver Hunting Grounds for natives to hunt, fish, trap and collect medicines for all time to come. Since then the British government and its colonial agents did not keep their word. Most of their land has been stolen through illegal transfers and squatting.

This is a situation that is all too familiar, and painful, to many indigenous communities in the Caribbean who retain not a stitch of land to which they have recognized rights. As a direct descendant of Caribbean slaves, who should be painfully aware of the miseries wrought by oppressive colonial regimes, the Governor General of Canada, Michaelle Jean, should be speaking out on this issue forcefully. As a Haitian, and official head of state of Canada, chief representative of the British Crown which was party to the original commitment of 1784, her continued silence on this issue shows moral weakness and an abdication of legal responsibility. When the Canadian fish starts to rot from the head down, nobody should complain about the stink that ensues.

We would like to affirm our support for the courage of the Six Nations in defending their territory against further armed and illegal invasion. We call on the Canadian state, at all levels, to avoid any further violent assaults. As for corporate and other squatters, we ask that they withdraw from indigenous territory. To those Canadian citizens who continue complaining about, ridiculing, and insulting the traditional owners of the land on which they erected their homes, we pray that they will achieve their own decolonization and reformation before it is too late. We are all watching and we all have long memories.

Readers, please send your objections to: Henco Industries Ltd., Fax (519) 442-3461; City of
Brantford: Fax (519) 759-7840 mhancock@brantford.ca; Corporation of Haldimand County: Fax (905) 772-2148 mayor@haldimandcounty.on.ca; Oxford County info@city.woodstock.on.ca; Onondaga: Customer Service Fax (519) 758-1619; South Dumfries: Customer Service Fax (519) 448-3105; Dufferin County: Fax (519) 941-2816 warden@dufferincounty.on.ca; Kent County, Michigan: Mike Cox, Attorney General Fax: (517) 373-3042; Waterloo: sken@region.waterloo.on.ca; Innisfil: bjackson@barint.on.ca; Attorney General: Fax (416) 326-4007 Media Relations Brendan.Crawley@jus.gov.on.ca ; Governor General: Michaelle Jean Fax (613) 998-1664 E-mail: info@gg.ca; Chinese Consulate in Toronto Fax: (416) 324-6468; Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace; Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty Dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca; Canadian Prime Minister Hon. Stephen Harper, pm@pm.gc.ca.

For more information, and to receive regular updates on the situation, contact:
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com

New Book on the Amerindians of French Guiana

Editions Chandeigne
10 rue Tournefort – 75005 - Paris
Tél : 01 43 36 34 37 - Fax. : 01 43 36 78 47
www.editions-chandeigne.com

sortie le 14 avril 2006

LES INDIENS DE LA SINNAMARY
Journal du père Jean de la Mousse en Guyane (1684-1691)

Introduction, transcription & notes de Gérard Collomb

Le père jésuite Jean de la Mousse arrive à Cayenne en 1684 comme missionnaire, quelques décennies après l’installation définitive des Français en Guyane. Pendant une dizaine d’années, il parcourt les villages sur la côte pour entreprendre l’évangélisation des « Sauvages », dont il apprend la langue. Chargé de la conversion des esclaves africains de l’île de Cayenne, il est le témoin de la naissance d’une colonie qui prend forme sous ses yeux. Avec lui s’ouvre véritablement en Guyane l’entreprise missionnaire jésuite auprès des Noirs et surtout auprès des Indigènes, qui se développera quelques années après sa mort avec la création des missions de Kourou et de Sinnamary. Son Journal, qui relate également le voyage qu’il effectue aux Antilles et aux îles du Cap-Vert, est aussi un regard inédit sur l’histoire de la traite des esclaves, objet d’une concurrence entre les puissances coloniales européennes.

Relié
Collection Magellane – 320 p., 25 € - isbn : 2-915540-09-8
diffusion & distribution : Belles Lettres
Editions Chandeigne
10 rue Tournefort – 75005 - Paris
Tél : 01 43 36 34 37 - Fax. : 01 43 36 78 47
www.editions-chandeigne.com

sortie le 14 avril 2006

Le père jésuite Jean de la Mousse est né le 30 novembre 1650, d’une vieille famille de la petite noblesse bourbonnaise.. Il est ordonné prêtre en 1682, puis part pour Cayenne en 1684 comme missionnaire, quelques décennies après l’installation définitive des Français. Il séjournera en Guyane pendant une quinzaine d’années. Il revient en France en 1698, malade, et meurt au collège jésuite de Moulins le 3 février 1699, âgé de quarante huit ans.

Pendant une dizaine d’années, il parcourt les villages sur la côte de Guyane pour entreprendre l’évangélisation des « Sauvages », dont il apprend la langue. Chargé de la conversion des esclaves africains de l’île de Cayenne, il est le témoin de la naissance d’une colonie : avec lui s’ouvre véritablement en Guyane l’entreprise missionnaire jésuite auprès des Noirs et surtout auprès des Indigènes, qui se développera quelques années après sa mort avec la création des missions de Kourou et de Sinnamary.

Son Journal, qui relate également le voyage qu’il effectue aux Antilles et aux îles du Cap-Vert, est aussi un regard inédit sur l’histoire de la traite des esclaves, objet d’une concurrence entre les puissances coloniales.

Jean de la Mousse a été un fin observateur du monde amérindien dans lequel, peu à peu, il lui a fallu apprendre à vivre, et sur lequel il a jeté un regard sensible, curieux. Nombre de ses observations sur la culture Galibi, tout comme celles que livrent à la même époque un Antoine Biet (1664) ou un Jean Chrétien (1718), sont proches des ethnographies plus récentes. Elles apportent un éclairage passionnant sur un univers indigène encore peu éloigné du monde précolombien, qui est certes déjà profondément marqué par l’Europe et par le fait colonial mais qui ne s’est véritablement transformé que brutalement et, somme toute, assez récemment.

Bien différent des textes calibrés et convenus des Lettres édifiantes et curieuses qui accueilleront au XVIIIe siècle les écrits d’autres pères de Guyane, le récit de Jean de la Mousse, dont nous proposons ici la première édition, est un témoignage qui fait droit à l’émotion et à une soif de connaître véritablement moderne, dessinant l’image d’un humaniste qui excuse plus qu’il ne condamne, et qui s’efforce de comprendre plus qu’il ne juge.

Gérard Collomb est anthropologue, membre de l'équipe Enseignement et Recherche en Ethnologie Amérindienne du CNRS. Depuis plusieurs années, il conduit des recherches sur l'histoire des sociétés amérindiennes des Guyanes, et sur les transformations sociales, culturelles, politiques dans lesquelles elles sont aujourd'hui entraînées. Il a publié de nombreux articles, notamment dans le Journal de la Société des Américanistes, Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, Ethnologie Française et Socio-Anthropologie. Il est l'auteur, avec Félix Tiouka, de Na'na Kali'na, Une histoire des amérindiens kali'na en Guyane, paru en 2000 aux Editions Ibis Rouge.

New Book on Taino Culture

From Sebastián Robiou-Lamarche:

Me permito informarle la publicación de mi libro Mitología y Religión de los Taínos (ISBN 0-9746236-4-4, 100 + xiv p., ilustrado) con presentación del Dr. José Juan Arrom. $20.00 con gastos de envio a USA. El libro comienza a circular en Puerto Rico. Agradecemos su difusión.

Sebastián Robiou-Lamarche,
Editorial Punto y Coma,
P.O. 19802,
San Juan,
Puerto Rico,
00910.

Dr. Roi Kwabena: Indigenous and African Heritages

Introducing you to a friend of the CAC:

Dr. Roi Ankhkara Kwabena was born in the Caribbean island of Trinidad. He is a cultural anthropologist who has worked with all age ranges in Europe, Africa, Latin-America and the Caribbean for over thirty years. His positive cultural advocacy has engaged him in a variety of specialist projects addressing wide ranging issues such as functional and cultural literacy, therapeutic harvesting of memories by elders and young people (including cross generational dialogue) anti-racism, community cohesion, social inclusion, cultural diversity, redefining the heritages of indigenous peoples plus confidence building for prisoners, excluded and traumatized students, refugees, etc. Dr. Kwabena is renown for using critical analysis to examine the historical roots of racism and to assess the direct relevance this has on our lives today. Dr. Kwabena is also the editor of the journal Dialogue. That journal specifically addresses issues relating to indigenous cultures and their impact on the post modern world. He maintains a varierty of websites which can be found at:

http://nefertamu.tripod.com

http://www.ankhkara.blogspot.com

http://www.roikwabena.blogspot.com

http://www.roikwapoetry.blogspot.com

http://www.lulu.com/roikwabena