Don’t forget, Monday October 9th, is Indigenous Peoples Day. #IndigenousPeoplesDay pic.twitter.com/fh64qjeaL6
— Lakota Man (@LakotaMan1) October 5, 2023
Indigenous Peoples’ Day Proclamation:
"The story of America’s Indigenous peoples is a story of resilience & survival; of their persistent commitment to their right to self-governance & of their determination to preserve cultures, identities & ways of life"https://t.co/DxQ2hhodwJ— Chris Stearns (@chrisstearns47) October 7, 2023
Cherokee Nation supports legislation replacing “Columbus Day” with #IndigenousPeoplesDay ???
Learn more about the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Act that has been reintroduced in Congress: https://t.co/2uUy6rrlD2 pic.twitter.com/n8U45BAdPo
— Cherokee Nation (@CherokeeNation) October 4, 2023
Per Native News Online:
The bicameral Indigenous Peoples’ Day Act to replace Columbus Day as a federal holiday and designate the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day has been reintroduced in Congress.
The legislation was reintroduced by Representatives Sharice Davids (KS-03), Norma J. Torres (CA-35), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), and Suzan DelBene (WA-01), along with Senators Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM).
The Indigenous Peoples’ Day Act has garnered 56 cosponsors in the House of Representatives.
In the U.S. Senate, the legislation is cosponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Tina Smith (D-MN), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Brian Schatz (D-HI), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), and Cory Booker (D-NJ).
“Our country has long failed to recognize and acknowledge its dark history of erasure and harm brought upon the first inhabitants of the Americas,” Norma Torres (CA-35) said. “The Indigenous Peoples’ Day Act celebrates the 600+ tribes that inhabited the Americas for hundreds of years before the arrival of Western explorers. By designating Indigenous Peoples’ Day a federal holiday, we take a small but important step toward recognizing the injustices in our nation’s history and uplifting the vibrant traditions, history, and culture of all Indigenous communities – an integral part of the cultural fabric of the United States.”
Rep. Davids (Ho-Chunk), when elected in 2018 became one of the first women ever elected to Congress, said she is honored to join her colleagues in calling for the celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
“Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an opportunity to commemorate Indigenous peoples’ vibrant cultures and significant contributions to our nation — from before we became a union to today — and a day to acknowledge the persecution and discrimination that Native peoples have faced for centuries.” Davids said…
Have a great #IndigenousPeoplesDay pic.twitter.com/h7EZzax2CC
— Eugene (@Democracy1stE) October 9, 2023
What You Should Know About Indigenous Peoples’ Day pic.twitter.com/NJM8Wnn3S3
— Jerold Jackson (@Jeroldjax) October 4, 2023
On The Road – Albatrossity – Heading home from AZ
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Betty Cracker
Today is also my mom’s birthday. She would be in her mid-70s now if we hadn’t lost her to a bad heart valve almost 10 years ago. I’ll never stop missing her.
H.E.Wolf
@Betty Cracker:
May your mother’s memory be a blessing to all who knew her. We are fortunate to know her daughter.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
@Betty Cracker:
Hugs to you.
ETA: Your mom did good.
satby
@Betty Cracker: We’ll always miss them no matter how long it’s been. And mourn the time taken from us. But what @H.E.Wolf: said, so I’ll light a candle and thank your mom today.
Frankensteinbeck
As much as Columbus radically changed history by discovering for Europe the Americas, we should not celebrate a monster that evil. What a nightmare human being. Really set the stage for the genocides to follow. AND he was completely wrong and saved from his own stupidity by the Americas being where they are.
satby
In case anyone wants to celebrate the holiday in the time honored tradition of shopping, Etsy has a number of Native American craftspeople selling beautiful jewelry, crafts, and clothing (and a number of imitators, so check) and there’s a general Etsy coupon you can use for any purchase on the site. Support an indigenous artisan:
Get $10 off EVERYTHING. Min. $40 order. Ends 10/11. Code: YES10
FelonyGovt
May your mom’s memory be a blessing, Betty, and it’s lovely that you continue to honor her. My mom’s birthday was October7 and I’ll never stop missing her even though I lost her over 40 years ago.
H.E.Wolf
“indigenous has too many hard consonants” – World Famous Art Thief
“Indigenous” has the same number of ‘hard’ consonants as the commonly used name “Elizabeth”; the same number of syllables; and a very similar arrangement of vowels.
I seem to be missing World Famous Art Thief’s point here. Was it meant to be a parody of racist complaints?
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Stupid slow continental drift.
Gin & Tonic
Not meaning to be difficult, but how long does it take to become “indigenous”? Those we refer to as indigenous in North America came from Asia; those we refer to as indigenous in Australia came from New Guinea, IIRC. So, yes, those populations predate European settlement, but they did not evolve there.
I guess this is an argument for “first nations” as opposed to “indigenous” or “native.”
satby
@H.E.Wolf: I think he’s wishing we had opted for the Canadian style “First Nations” nomenclature; but as he said, he calls people by the names they choose. Nothing more sinister.
H.E.Wolf
On a less peevish note: I appreciate the change to Indigenous Peoples’ Day! I expect we’ll eventually have an official name change – and a corresponding change in focus – to the holiday.
RandomMonster
Am I the only one questioning the need for possessive punctuation in Indigenous Peoples’ Day?
Ajabu
Good Morning Everybody!
On topic –
I’d like to add that a whole lot of Black people have a mix of Indigenous blood. During and after slavery in this country there was a hell of a lot of mixing and marriage between both groups of oppressed peoples. Lots of Black people have Native Tribal registry. And fuck Columbus…
Off topic –
Yesterday Watergirl put up a post (MishMash/HodgePodge) where she included a lengthy comment on my current status after the recent financial crisis that nearly derailed me until I was bailed out by the incredible generosity of the in-house Balloon-Juice GoFundMe.
She posted at 11:00 am and, as usual, I didn’t even see it until after 3:00 pm. I responded at 3:23 pm…
So I’m very concerned that very few saw my response and my CD offer.
To make sure I get a wider audience I’m posting again now with the link to my post from yesterday where I express my unending gratitude to you guys and make my offer.
Please take a minute to hit the link below and once again, Thanks for being such a wonderful extended family!! Love you all!
Here’s the link:
https://balloon-juice.com/2023/10/08/mishmash-and-hodge-podge-post/#comment-8984592
Baud
How come there’s no Ingenious Peoples’ Day? Ingenuity built this country.
#LosingPlotCompletely
H.E.Wolf
I agree! (And well said!) The main points were very supportive, which was why the pronunciation mini-complaint rang a little odd* to my ear.
*possibly because I have a relative who “can’t pronounce” the names of non-white people. :-/ But that’s a whole other discussion.
Sasha
My personal preference? Rename Columbus Day to Immigrants’ Day and establish Indigenous Peoples’ Day in August.
H.E.Wolf
@RandomMonster: Am I the only one questioning the need for possessive punctuation in Indigenous Peoples’ Day?
Nope! I questioned it myself before including it. :)
I have the same dilemma with Presidents [‘] [?] Day….
Ken
@H.E.Wolf: Mothers Day, Fathers Day, … We have something of a tradition of confusion in this area.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve mentioned before that in my very R old people building, Mr DAW and I hang out with a secret cabal of Ds. One of them recently read an article saying it takes 200 hours of being together to build a friendship. She’s taking 200 hours as a serious project and suggested that she and I meet for coffee this morning, just us. So I’m leaving in 10 minutes to meet her.
I admire people who take action to have human contact. I behave as if it will just happen naturally, but mostly it doesn’t.
Does time on BJ count?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ken: I think it an attributive rather than a possessive, so no apostrophe.
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: Good morning!
@Betty Cracker: I hope your mom’s memory brings a smile to your face before a tear to your eye. Big hugs to you.
Frankensteinbeck
@Gin & Tonic:
I like ‘First Nations’ partly for that reason, but they were here for one Hell of a long time before anyone else, so they’re pretty ‘indigenous’. I mean, we’re all from Africa in the original human ancestors sense.
Ken
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think I agree, but we’re fighting at least half of the signage industry. Of course they’re the same people responsible for the greengrocer’s apostrophe.
Matt McIrvin
@Gin & Tonic:
While this is correct, it’s also politically touchy since many Native Americans don’t believe consensus scientific accounts of their origins and see them (understandably) as attempts to nullify their claims to sovereignty.
I figure I’m no more obligated to believe in their creation stories as I am the one in the Bible, and I don’t. But I do think that some of the people more inclined to be pedantic about this, especially on the political right, do have suspect motivations.
E.
@RandomMonster: The day does not belong to indigenous people, it celebrates the existence of indigenous peoples.
H.E.Wolf
@Ben Cisco: Hello to you and to Mama Cisco!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@satby: Thank you!
Rand Careaga
My first visit to the Midwest occurred fifty-four years ago this past summer when I helped my brother and his wife move to Indigenous, Ohio, where he was about to enter grad school at Indigenous State University.
satby
@Frankensteinbeck: I like it because they were nations. They had civilization, systems of government (and not all the same), and cultures that differed between the tribes. They weren’t just plopped here waiting for Europeans to arrive.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
satby
Boy, it better!
Gin & Tonic
@Rand Careaga: Isn’t it THE Indigenous State University?
Gin & Tonic
Timely and on topic:
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: Anyway, it is a word that doesn’t have one and only one definition–most usually it refers to the first known inhabitants of a region, and that is certainly applicable to indigeneous people in the New World regardless of anybody’s origin stories.
There were multiple migrations from Asia (evident, among other reasons, by multiple non-related language families) and the time period for the earliest keeps getting pushed further back. Hopefully we won’t end up trying to determine who was really first.
BellyCat
@Betty Cracker: Wishing you a day filled with great memories of your mother. From your tales shared, she was a remarkable woman and she ‘done good’ with you!
Eunicecycle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think it counts double!
zhena gogolia
Re last tweet: I thought the idea was to honor indigenous peoples not just in the US.
Anonymous At Work
Why the HECK isn’t Lisa Murkowski, formerly the Alaskan-Native write-in “Independent” Senator from Alaska on the list of co-sponsors???
Geminid
The Pueblo, Colorado newspaper had a funny article about that city’s 2021 Columbus Day celebration. It was titled, “Lauren Boebert shakes up Pueblo’s Columbus Day celebration” (Pueblo Chieftan October 11, 2021).
In addition to the celebrants, there were demonstrators calling for the removal of Pueblo’s Columbus monument, and wary police officers watching them. Speakers mainly kept to a theme centered upon the contributions of Italian Americans to the nation and the world.
Then the local Congresswoman spoke. After a couple perfunctory remarks about Christoper Columbus, Boebert started babbling about socialism in China, border issues in Texas, masks in public schools etc. etc. etc.
Onlooker Patty Consentino, whose grandfather helped build the monument and whose WWII veteran father had been honored there, was not pleased:
BellyCat
@H.E.Wolf: Due to the small type displayed on my phone, I originally read this as too many “bad” consonants and spent a few seconds wondering which consonants were good and which were bad and whether my education was even more incomplete than imagined. LOL
SiubhanDuinne
Economist Claudia Goldin has won the Nobel Prize in Economics. I’m not familiar with her or her work, but I reckon that’s going to change soon. Her work deals with the role of women in the workplace, male-female pay differences, etc.
Here’s a WaPo gift link.
BellyCat
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Excellent! What’s the ‘200 hour’ article? Would love to read it.
Frankensteinbeck
@satby:
Yes. It communicates a much more accurate and less degrading image of the pre-Colombian civilizations than most Europe-descended North Americans were trained to imagine.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Locally, this ad ran well into the 90s. It been dropped, but, well, damn….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kMNLMZb8P1A
NotMax
A slice of White House trivia.
Steeplejack
@Ajabu:
I hope your situation continues to get better! 🍀
narya
@SiubhanDuinne: I read some of her stuff a long time ago and liked it.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Gin & Tonic:
My wife and daughters are direct descendants of Williams, which is kind of cool.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Hugs to you in memory of your mother.
Chip Daniels
Here’s a good article in the LA Times describing how researchers created maps of the indigenous people in Southern Californis:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-10-09/researchers-map-ancient-tribal-villages-of-los-angeles
Ben Cisco
@H.E.Wolf: Hello!
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That is great! Go have coffee!
Ben Cisco
@Anonymous At Work: b/c she’s a Republican, duh
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Frankensteinbeck:
He was pretty monstrous, but I’ll add that the plagues that devastated indigenous Americans along coastal New England from Massachusetts to Newfoundland predated his expeditions and there is some thought that Portuguese sailors were occasionally landing during the course of chasing cod, probably sometime in the 1470s.
eclare
@Frankensteinbeck:
I like to say we are all cousins. If you go way back.
satby
@Anonymous At Work: probably because Murkowski is not Native American?
Murkowski was born in Ketchikan in the Territory of Alaska, the daughter of Nancy Rena (née Gore) and Frank Murkowski.[1] Her paternal great-grandfather was of Polish descent, and her mother’s ancestry is Irish and French Canadian. Wikipedia
Another Scott
@satby: “First Nations” does have a lot going for it, but it has one fatal flaw (as you mention) – it’s Canadian. We have to be different (and first) when compared to them. I think it’s in the Declaration of Independence somewhere.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
Supposedly advertisers have a list of “sexy” consonants (X, Z, maybe V?). But, like Jessica Rabbit, that doesn’t make them bad.
satby
@eclare: me too 😉
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Plagues would have happened regardless of how good or bad a guy Columbus was.
Suzanne
As an American of Italian descent, I will note Fuck Christophorus Columbus.
If the Italian-American community wants to have a day to honor the contributions made by immigrants from that fine part of the world, and to remember the discrimination they faced, I’m all for that. But it doesn’t need to be tied to Columbus.
Ladyraxterinok
@Frankensteinbeck:
Did any of you see head of Catholic League Bill Donohue claim Indians were real savages. And that they were NOT NATIVE but came here from Asia
Blog joemygod.com reported his claim and then quoted a passage in one of Columbus’ letters praising how cheap it was to buy 9 or q0 year old native girls
So who were the real savages??
Ohio Mom
@BellyCat: I just googled “200 hours to build a friendship” and there are lots of articles describing the original study.
I am guessing the original study is in some academic journal behind a pay wall but I think secondary sources are good enough for our purposes.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Hugs to you, my friend.
NotMax
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Related: why no Americapox?
Betty Cracker
Thanks for your kind comments! Now that she’s gone, Mom’s birthday is a bittersweet day, but mostly sweet. If she could, she’d absolutely forbid moping! ;-)
BellyCat
@Ken: What’s sexier than an X-Ray? 😂
This list surely explains Musk’s folly with Xitter. Undoubtedly, soon his cars will be rebranded as “Vexla”, which would seem appropriate.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: We all love you, Betty!
Ladyraxterinok
Blog joemygod.com reports head of Catholic League says we romanticize American Indians That they were real savages. And that there were NOT NATI E to Ameruca but came here from Asia
The blog then merely quotes a passage from one of Columbus’ letters bragging that it is very cheap to buy a 9 or 10 year old Indian girl
So who were the real savages?
Ken
@eclare: There is of course an XKCD for that.
BellyCat
@Ohio Mom: Will try google-fu. One wonders if ignorance would not be so prevalent if academics deigned to share their research with the unwashed masses?
— Former Acolyte Academic Who Lost Similar Arguments with Tenured Academics
Another Scott
@BellyCat: @Ohio Mom: Made me look.
I think this is something similar – Friendship in Later Life: A Pathway Between Volunteering Hours and Depressive Symptoms – Emily Lim, MS, Changmin Peng, MS, Jeffrey A Burr, PhD:
It is indeed behind a paywall.
I saw abstracts of other, similar, papers that said the effects are different between men and women.
Jeffrey Burr’s Google Scholar page may have something that isn’t behind a paywall.
My hot-take is that one likes spending time with people one likes, and doesn’t like spending time with people one doesn’t like. So, being forced to spend time with people one doesn’t like is likely to have more negative effects than not spending time with them at all. I’m sure that hot-take trivializes the findings. ;-)
HTH a little!
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker: Your Mom was terrific. May her memory be a blessing.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: 200 hours? That’s very good to know. I’ve shed quite a few friends over the last few years – not due to politics; just diverging lives and interests. Every so often I meet someone and think I’d like to see more of them, but am never clear on how. (I’ve also gotten increasingly asocial these last few years.)
Chief Oshkosh
From TPM:
Given the physical realities, how is THAT not a policy for genocide? Sounds an awful lot like what the German Nazis did to some of the ghetto communities in WWII.
eclare
@Ken:
Oh that is precious.
I wish there were a date, when that was published.
BellyCat
@Another Scott: Thanks for looking. It is suspected that your ‘hot take’ is spot on, aided by ‘all the feels’ of volunteering in an area of interest with others doing same. Self selection apparently works. Hoocoodanoed!?!?
Ken
@eclare: The explainxkcd page for it says the comic was published April 18, 2022.
BellyCat
@Chief Oshkosh: J.F.C….
RandomMonster
Exactly.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BellyCat: I think it’s probably this article from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Geminid
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Some speculate that Basques were fishing the Grand Banks when the Vikings showed up.. The Basques likely put their finger to their lips to signal, “don’t tell anyone else about the good fishing here!” The Vikings probably nodded and threw in their lines.
The Basque might have gotten their sailing knowledge from Phoenician ancestors. But sailor talk gets around, and Columbus probably heard there was land out there.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Geminid: Italian Americans do or at least did take Columbus Day seriously. It was a way to prove that they fully belonged in the US just as much as any other European immigrants, back when they were considered second-class citizens. On the grounds that an Italian was the “first” European to set foot in the Americas so they belonged as much as any later European Immigrants.
In my home town of Grand Rapids, MI, Polish Americans have co-opted the weekend to celebrate Pulaski Days. There are a bunch of old Polish lodges (kind of local clubs) around town and they throw their doors open, hire a polka band, and sell beer and Polish food. They pretty much make their operating revenue for the year in that one weekend. It’s a fun time.
One of the things that highlights to me what an odd place the World is: If you want to tour the Columbus family chapel it resides not in Spain, or Italy but in…Boalsburg, PA. How it wound up there is an interesting story. I only know this because I’ve been visiting my cousin, who lives in Boalsburg, for about two or so decades now. I have toured the Boal Mansion and Columbus Chapel exactly once in all those visits. He was indeed a reprehensible human by today’s standards though I don’t think he, personally, should be blamed for all that came after vis a vis Indigenous Peoples. He certainly has enough to answer for in that regard all on his own but the mass genocide that came after shouldn’t all be laid on him.
The English, Spanish, and Portuguese (maybe Dutch too, IDK and also New Jersey was originally New Sweden so maybe even the Swedes are not blameless) were all guilty of the same atrocities to more or lesser extent and they should all take the blame rather than just laying it all on the guy who started the trend.
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks for the pointer. That’s certainly more on-point than what I found above.
I wonder about the methodology, though. I remember questionnaires in college about how many hours I studied – I never kept track and guestimated. Do people really keep track of how many hours they spend with others?? (I recognize that short of raiding FB databases, it’s probably the best that they can do.)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Anonymous At Work: Not every Senator will sponsor a bill even if they are going to vote for it. I expect that Murkowski will add her name if Alaska’s Native Corporations ask her too.
Along with organized labor, Native Corporations played an important role in Murkowski’s singular write-in victory. She looks out for their interests in ways more practical than this legislation.
Chief Oshkosh
@BellyCat: Educate me.
Alison Rose
You can go here and type your address into the search bar to find which tribes’ land you currently live on. Just a good thing to be aware of, and you can learn more about them and perhaps find ways to support them.
Sure Lurkalot
@Frankensteinbeck:
And there’s evidence that humans have been on this continent longer than what was previously thought:
https://www.extremetech.com/science/fossilized-footprints-in-new-mexico-are-earliest-evidence-of-humans-in-america
satby
@CaseyL: Every so often I meet someone and think I’d like to see more of them, but am never clear on how. (I’ve also gotten increasingly asocial these last few years.)
I think a lot of us have, especially the introverted among us. I certainly have. One piece of advice I always relied on was to volunteer because you tend to meet people with similar values. Another, courtesy of jackal commenter middlelee, was to visit a Unitarian Universalist church (again, generally like-minded people if you’re liberal). And that has been the best advice for this stage of my life, because they include you even if you don’t officially join the church, since it’s not creed based. I’ve now got a loose community in a place where I really didn’t know anyone when I came here.
twbrandt
OT: McCarthy now says he is willing to return as speaker. The clown show continues.
Geminid
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: There is a Fort Pulaski outside Savannah, Georgia. I’ve passed it on the way to Tybee Island. I wanted to visit the Fort, but it’s a federal historic site and there was a government shutdown at the time.
Fort Pulaski was constructed before the Civil War, to protect Savanna. Then the US Navy deconstructed it in 1861. Historical markers say Fort Pulaski was the first masonry fort to be reduced by rifled cannon. The Conferderacy could boast of many such firsts in its four-year history.
cain
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: They made a national holiday with his name – so clearly someone believes that he was the original guy who started. Maybe he doesn’t get the entire blame but he set the attitude, and you can bet he’s advised the same for follow up excursions.
Regardless, the holiday should be changed to celebrate the first peoples.
Better just point to Columbus as to why there should have been closed borders. That should fuck things up. :-)
cain
@twbrandt: Perhaps he took magic mushrooms?
satby
@Alison Rose: I live on the ancestral lands of the Pokagon Band of the Pottawami. The tribe is pretty active here, has 4 casinos on their lands, which stretch from south of South Bend to Dowagiac, MI. Fascinating history, and fun bit of trivia: the Field Museum in Chicago is also on Pokagon land.
Geminid
@twbrandt: Not sure McCarthy is doing a good thing here. I’m like, how can we miss you if you won’t go away?
Brachiator
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October 12, 1792, when the Columbian Order of New York, better known as Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the historic landing. Many Italian Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage and not of Columbus himself, and the day was celebrated in New York City on October 12, 1866.
However, the first national observance of Columbus Day was in part to deal with troubled international relations between the US and Italy.
opiejeanne
@Alison Rose: I found Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla. There was a very local map that I saw recently that indicated that the Indigenous people who lived in the area didn’t live on the hill where my house is but it was part of their range. It’s a very big hill and was heavily forested with little access to water so I imagine that they hunted here and lived down near the Sammamish River.
satby
Just an FYI: anyone on Twitter may have seen John’s tweet last night that WVU will be announcing their staff cuts today. Keep a good thought for the blogfather.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
Not likely. His surviving letters suggest he never knew he hadn’t found India. Delusional dumbass who lucked into one of the biggest world-changing acts in history.
However, this all kind of makes the point. Other Europeans might have gotten there before him, but they didn’t come back and tell everybody else. For Europeans, Columbus did discover America.
Villago Delenda Est
@Betty Cracker: Betty, you never do stop missing your mom or dad, for that matter. Hugs and fond memories of classy people who raised classy offspring!
Mel
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It seems to get more difficult to meet like-minded people and make deeper, meaningful new friendships as one gets older, in my experience.
Maybe it’s fewer social opportunities, or more constraints b/c of health issues, less energy for outings and the caution necessary due to the pandemic, people relying more and more on electronic communications, etc., but I have noticed the difference.
Villago Delenda Est
Palestinianrein Gaza!
tobie
@Chief Oshkosh: Maybe Hamas can release all civilian hostages in exchange for the resumption of water and electricity. That would be a truly political negotiation. I don’t buy any take on this conflict that doesn’t recognize that both Israel and Hamas exercise agency. Whether they have the same capability to act is another question
ETA: I don’t recall the residents of Jewish ghettos staging massive assaults on Germans, killing scores of civilians, parading naked corpses, and kidnapping civilians. Please let me know if I’ve overlooked something.
Alison Rose
@satby: @opiejeanne: I’m on Graton Rancheria and Southern Pomo land. Graton has a big casino nearby and I remember when it opened, a bunch of people got all crabby because they think gambling is a sin or something, but I was like, if they wanna drain a bunch of dumb white people’s pockets, let them! It’s literally the least we can do.
brantl
@Betty Cracker: Take my word for w, you never stop missing the good onesm.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Betty Cracker: my condolences. My mom passed (lung cancer) in 2008. I was lucky to be there at the end. One of her last acts, of which she was joyful, was voting for Barack Obama. I wheeled her into the voting booth.
Karen S.
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Columbus was considered reprehensible by the standards of the time. The Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, had him locked up for his brutality. He was later acquitted when he faced trial in Spain, but the fact that he was thrown in prison to begin with says something about how awful he was and that at least some people knew it.
BellyCat
@Chief Oshkosh: Agreeing on these measures meeting the criteria for genocide.
The Middle East situation (not my area of expertise) is unsolvable until Israel ditches the hard right and possibly unsolvable even then.
A Jewish academic I know spent some time with the Palestinians, some 25 years ago, in an honest effort to understand their position (which he, at the time, disagreed with). He not only totally reversed his position, he spent every Saturday (for decades) handing out educational leaflets to the Jewish congregants in front of their neighborhood Temple advocating for restoration of Gaza Strip and Palestinian rights. As a result, he was exiled from his prior Jewish community, but remained fiercely committed to attempting to educate others.
The U.S. is in a tough spot. Who to support and how? Certainly, there are countless individuals in the Middle East who want to eliminate Israel entirely. That’s not tenable either. Some degree of compromise is badly needed among parties whom have no interest in compromising. It’s tragic and escalation is assured under these increasingly embedded conditions.
Ben Cisco
@Alison Rose: I looked – my family’s ancestral home is in a county that is named for the original inhabitants.
Sadly, no descendants remain in the area.
tam1MI
@Geminid: There is a Fort Pulaski outside Savannah, Georgia
There is as statue of Casimir Pulaski in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
BellyCat
@Alison Rose: This Native American mapping resource is amazing. Thank you!
Anyway
WaPo headline —
LOLOL!!!
tobie
@BellyCat: As someone who has relatives who’ve had to evacuate their kibbutzim and are dealing with missing neighbors and friends, I’m not impartial and don’t care to be.
They are all leftwingers, they all spent their summers engaged in protests against Netanyahu, they are outraged by thesettlers whom they rightly feel have endangered the country.
But one trauma that they mention again and again is that Gazans voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in 2006 after Israel left the territory in September 2005. Yes, you can argue about the way Israel left. Yes, you can talk about Fatah’s corruption, but this was still a huge step, achieved by Israel and Fatah with US and EU intervention. Gazans knew what they were getting when they voted in Hamas: continuous war. Israel’s right capitalized on this.
ETA: As I said to Oshkosh, there is a clear political solution for resuming water and electric service. Release all hostages in exchange for certain guarantees. Were Hamas to take this option, it would show that they acted with a political aim. Trying to eliminate Israel is not a political aim in the sense that there’s nothing to negotiate. Maybe cooler heads can bring both parties to the negotiating table.
opiejeanne
@Alison Rose: You’re in or near Rohnert Park?
@Alison Rose: We used to own a very old cabin in the San Bernardino mountains, in Blue Jay near Lake Arrowhead. Yuhaaviatam-Maarenga’yam (Serrano) region.
Origuy
A lot of organizations and events include land acknowledgements in their websites and public announcements. It’s a way to recognize who was here first, although it’s not unanimously approved of by indigenous people. For my orienteering club’s big international event in July, I pulled together a set of land acknowledgements for the areas we had competitions in, plagiarizing shamelessly from various other sites. Here’s what we had on our website:
We run in the footsteps of those who came before us. CalOFest acknowledges the indigenous people in whose ancestral lands our events take place. Golden Gate Park and Presidio National Park are on the unceded homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. Morgan Territory Regional Preserve is located within the traditional homeland of the Volvon, one of five Native American nations in the Diablo area who spoke dialects of the Bay Miwuk language. You may see the evidence of their presence in the stones where they made mortars to grind acorns and constructed their village. For thousands of years the Wasiiw, now called Washoe, lived in the Lake Tahoe area from snowmelt through summer. The Washoe still live in their ancestral lands today. The valley’s creeks and marshes provided game and forage for the Wasiiw, who knew this land intimately and worked with it wisely. We recognize and honor their history, traditions, and care.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: I think that Columbus had reason to believe there was something out there before he sailed, and just misidentified what he ended up finding.
But Columbus was in ways a real estate promoter, so maybe he wanted people to think that Hispanola was adjacent to fabulously rich lands like Cathay, even though he might have suspected differently. As it turned out, it was adjacent to two fabulously wealthy empires, just not Asian ones.
Geminid
@tobie: The Qataris are probably already talking to the Israeli government and to Hamas about a ceasefire. They mediated the ceasefire that ended the 11-day war in May of 2021.
Qatar does not have formal relations with Israel but still serve as interlocutors between that nation and Hamas. Egypt and Turkey have diplomatic relations with Israel and they could help also.
Egypt controls Gaza’s southern border and has an uneasy relationship with Hamas. Turkiye actually hosts some of Hamas’s leadership, but that has not prevented Israel from patching up their frayed relations with Turkiye over the past three years.
Israel badly needs mediators whom they can trust and are trusted by Hamas. They’re not going to get those hostages back with bombing and a blockade. Hamas knew what it was getting into when they launched this attack and decided they and the other Gazans would pay the price.
The Israeli government made a huge mistake thinking their air power would deter an all-out attack from Hamas. They did not ask themselves, “What if Hamas chooses not to be deterred?” Instead, Netanyahu let political arsonists Smotrich and Ben-Gvir start fires that are now out of control.
As former Knesset member Einat Wilf posted Sunday, “Some nations can afford occasionally to have incompetent and weak governments. Israel cannot.”
RevRick
This past summer my wife and I took our granddaughter to the nearby Museum of Indian Culture (museumofindianculture.org) . It’s in a small stone structure, but it’s jam-packed with information and displays, with a concentration on the Lenni-Lenape who lived in the area until William Penn finagled it away. And in August I was part of a delegation of United Church of Christ clergy and laypeople who visited the Carlisle Barracks to see what remains of the infamous Carlisle Indian School, whose avowed purpose was to “Kill the Indian and make the man.” Needless to say, the Army wasn’t thrilled.
BellyCat
@tobie: So many innocent parties harmed by bad faith actors of all stripe over decades. I weep for the innocents and wish for lasting peace while being painfully aware that the way to achieve peace is unclear and seemingly elusive.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
As one gets older friends seem to move away or fade away. I’ve got a very good friend I’ve known for 5 decades but we now live 50 miles apart and neither of us is all that enamored of driving any more. We FaceTime at least a couple times a month, sometimes more but while I used to jump in the car and drive anywhere anytime, not so much any more. And he’s 3 yrs older than I am and seemingly even less wanting to drive. Other friends have past away or moved away. I do know a few people in the seniors apt. complex I live in but the get togethers are mostly playing bridge. My closest relative lives a solid 2 hr drive away, the rest of the extended family lives 1500 to 3000 miles away.
Chris T.
@H.E.Wolf:
As for me, I can’t pronounce “Smith”—it keeps coming out as “Throat-Wobbler”.