Harjo: 2006 Mantle of Shame Awards
(Complete article appears at: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414231
Susan Shown Harjo, a reporter with Indian Country Today News, has chosen her Mantle of Shame Awards for 2006.
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Meth carriers and other violent offenders
PFor infecting and enslaving Native peoples with this new plague.
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Legal-fiction writers
PThose, or those who help others, invent laws, histories and loopholes that allows others to keep or sell stolen Indian lands, waters, resources, ancestors, rights and reputations.
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Defilers -
PThose, or those who help others, defile, desecrate, commodify and disrespect sacred places and ancestors.
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Deniers - All who deny the following:
PGlobal warming and climate change threatening our world.
PSubjugation and inhumane treatment of any people.
PThe Holocaust, when the Nazis killed 1/3 of the Jewish people.
PMilitias who are wounding and murdering black people in Darfur, Sudan.
PInvaders who drove many Native people to extinction and left their survivors to deal with open wounds, injustices and racism. [Editor's note: This continues across the world.]
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Department of Energy -
PFor not completing the containment facility at Washington's Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington. The unfinished container is meant to hold 2 tanks of 53,000,000 gallons of waste now seeping into land and groundwater, threatening the entire Northwest.
P For allowing radioactive waste to come within 12 miles of the Columbia River.
Congratulations to the Yakama Nation for using the U.S. - Yakama Treaty of 1855
to force environmental protection and restoration of the entire site. *
Team Abramoff -
PFor the same reasons they swept the 2005 Awards:
PTaking Native Nations' monies,
PUndermining Indian rights,
PInsulting their tribal clients
PGreasing their pals' palms.
PThe responses by Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon and Ralph Reed to legal complaints by the Tigua, Alabama and Coushatta tribes. The three men denied their plan to deceive Indians or take their money.
PTo their faithful Indian companions and scouts who cashed in on the Abramoff scandal.
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Ex-Reps. DeLay, Foley, Ney et al.
PFor their behaviors that led to a Republican loss and Democrat win in Congress. Important roles were also played by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, White House staffers, Interior officials, Michael Brown, Vice President Cheney and Iraq.
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Senate Republican leaders
PFor failing to act on most funding bills passed by the House, even though they had sufficient time.
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''Indian-fighters'' - Those who fight Indians to
PAvoid accounting for Indian trust monies;
PTo undo Indian preference;
PTo keep from hiring Indians;
PTo diminish Indian programs;
PTo cut Indian services;
PTo wipe out Indian budgets;
PTo prevent more Indian presence within any branch of federal, tribal, state or local government.
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''Indigena-fighters''
PFor those who are suppressing, kidnapping, and killing indigenous peoples in Oaxaca, Mexico, and targeting those who document it.
Respect for
Zapotec Filmmaker Damian Lopez-Castillo who taped footage which aired at a New
York Film Festival. He praised the indigenous women who took over a public
station in Oaxaca, broadcast the first news from the communities, and encouraged
people to document what was happening. *
''Indigenous-fighters''
PThe African Union, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, U.S. and others who worked to delay the United Nations' adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is long overdue for passage.
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''Indian Fight Club''
PThose who fight Indian peoples over fictional ''Indian'' sports mascots and references;
PThose who fight Native peoples in court and Congress to keep ''honoring'' us with disparaging names, imagery and behaviors.
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''Indian giver'
PThe University of Utah, which begged the Ute peoples for permission keep their ''Ute'' sports references, then broke its promise to give scholarships to Ute students.
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Retro Dartmouth Review -
PFor its full front-page ''cartoon'' of a scalp-waving ''Indian on warpath;''
PFor its continued effort to bring back the Dartmouth College's ''Indians'' sports references, which was dropped over 30 years ago;
Kudos to the Native Americans at Dartmouth for handling this with dignity and to
the administrators and faculty members who backed them. *
Director/actor Mel Gibson -
P For demeaning Mayans, Jews , and women;
PFor not accurately representing the known history, culture and reputation of past and present Mayan people;
PFor Disney and ''Mad Mel'' using the Cabazon pow wow and Chickasaw casino to promote support for this anti-Maya movie.
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Potty Mouth Hall of Famers -
P Sen. George Allen, Author Ann Coulter, Actor/comedian Michael Richards, Sen. Conrad Burns, Comedians Larry the Cable Guy and Drew Carey;
P One Nation United's lobbyists and supporters who remind us that bigotry isn't below the surface.
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Actor Russell Means
PFor going to the U.S. Supreme Court to undermine the jurisdiction of the Navajo Nation after he was charged with beating his wife and an elder. (Means lost).
PFor mocking the Cherokee Nation, Keetoowah Band and Muscogee (Creek) Nation to prove their citizenry after they questioned Ward Churchill's claims of being Cherokee and Creek.
