Onondaga Nation lecture series kicks off with full house

By Sarah Moses / The Post-Standard
February 08, 2010, 10:25PM
Photo: Lauren Long / The Post-Standard

Stephanie Waterman (second from the right) speaks of her appreciation and lasting influence of having grown up a member of the Onondaga Nation during the Onondaga Land Rights educational series kickoff tonight at Syracuse Stage. Panelists included Jeanne Shenandoah (right), Faithkeeper Oren Lyons (left), Chief Jake Edwards (far left) and Tadadaho Sid Hill (not visible.)


Syracuse, NY -- Leaders of the Onondaga Nation stressed the importance of unity and healing as they began a yearlong educational series Monday at Syracuse Stage. More than 300 people attended.

Tadadaho Sid Hill, the nation’s spiritual leader, opened the lecture series, titled, “Onondaga Nation Land Rights & Our Common Future II,” with the Thanksgiving Address, giving thanks to the all living beings on the Earth.

“We have a lot of work to do and we have a lot of knowledge to share,” Hill said. “We need to come together as one mind and really get things done.”

Click here for full article in the Post Standard.

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There will be transportation to all events in the series for the Wells College community and neighboring communities. If you would like a ride to the events, email me at vmunoz@wells.edu to reserve a place on the van.

Island residents sue U.S., saying military made them sick

By Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein,
CNN Special Investigations Unit
February 1, 2010 4:03 p.m. EST

Vieques, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- Nearly 40 years ago, Hermogenes Marrero was a teenage U.S. Marine, stationed as a security guard on the tiny American island of Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Marrero says he's been sick ever since. At age 57, the former Marine sergeant is nearly blind, needs an oxygen tank, has Lou Gehrig's disease and crippling back problems, and sometimes needs a wheelchair.

click for complete article

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) - A Tribute from Democracy Now!

Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove

Authenticity in a Community Setting - A Tool for Self-Reflection and Change

Authenticity in a Community Setting --- A Tool for Self-Reflection and Change

Hermana Haiti: Myriam Merlet, 1956 - 2010

"I look at things through the eyes of women, very conscious of the roles, limitations, and stereotypes imposed on us. Everything I do is informed by that consciousness. So I want to get to a different concept and application of power than the one that keeps women from attaining their full potential...The basis of my work with women is to open them up to other things, give them new tools, give them new capabilities...give women the opportunity to grow..."

"The More People Dream," by Myriam Merlet, excerpt from Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance.

Eve Ensler remembers Haitian Women's activist Myriam Merlet

Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I come this morning to my protest to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia, nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. This morning however I wish not to speak with Hanoi, the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings.

Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit.

I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.


Click to listen to speeches.

Onondaga Land Rights and Our Common Future II

Wells Co-Sponsors 2010 Educational Series
There will be transportation from Wells to Syracuse and back for students, staff, and faculty that would like to attend the events. Opening event is Monday, Feb. 8. Email me to reserve a space on the van. vmunoz@wells.edu

Power Paths - Trailer

For Cape Cod Wind Farm, New Hurdle Is Spiritual

SCIENCE / ENVIRONMENT
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: January 5, 2010
NYT

Two Indian tribes successfully argued that a wind-power project would impede their ritual greeting of the sunrise.

In seeking the historical designation, the Wampanoag tribes — whose name translates to “people of the first light” — said their view to the east across Nantucket Sound was integral to their identity and cultural traditions.

click for complete article.

Foto: Julia Cumes/Associated Press