South Dakota commits shocking genocide against Native Americans » peoplesworld
Genocide is not too strong a term for what is now happening in South Dakota. The huge, shocking violation of legal and human rights being carried out by the state is tantamount to genocide against the Native American nations, the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Sioux, residing within its borders. It is the abduction and kidnapping by state officials, under the cover of law, of American Indian children.
This is a gross violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978. Further, these abominable kidnappings are being upheld by the courts of that state.
The best approach to this crime against humanity is by the following initial checklist:
- Over 700 American Indian children are removed by South Dakota state officials from their homes every year.
- These hundreds are sent to white foster homes or group homes.
- Many are adopted by white families.
- Indian children account for 13.8 percent of the state’s child population, yet they represent 56.3 percent of the foster care population.
- Of the hundreds of Native children in foster care in 2011, 87 percent were placed in non-Indian homes while Native foster homes went empty.
- Because of its targeting Native children, South Dakota is currently removing children from their families at a higher rate than the vast majority of other states in the U.S.
- Once removed, the state’s courts routinely keep Indian children from even seeing their families for at least 60 days.
- The state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) workers warn Native children that if they become emotional during a visit with their parents, the visits will be discontinued (this is incredible!).
This is genocide as defined by the United Nations General Assembly’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This Convention (Article 2) defines genocide as follows :
“… any of the following acts commit with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”South Dakota is committing blatant and flagrant genocide against the Sioux people in violation of subsection (e) of Article 2 by transferring Indian children to white homes, and also of subsection (b) amid allegations of sexual abuse and drugging of Native children in DSS foster care. Those responsible need to be brought to justice in an international court of law in addition to the lawsuit already filed in U.S courts (see below). This is a most serious case of ethnic cleansing.
One Indian mother had 62 hearings and was never allowed to present any witness testimony, never even allowed to see the petition filed against her. This is a huge violation of long established U.S. due process. Also, the Indian Child Welfare Act mandates that Native children shall first be placed with tribal relatives, non-related tribal members, or members of other tribes before non-Indian families can be considered.
South Dakota has taken a step back into the late 19th century, when thousands of Indian children were forcibly removed from their homes by U.S. soldiers and sent to boarding schools - allegedly for education, where the motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” In some of these schools the motto was more akin to simply “Kill the Indian.”
This journalist has heard numerous accounts from families across Indian Country who had lost at least one child to the boarding school system in the 19th century. They were told that their child or children had run away from the school and could not be found. In other cases they were informed that their child had died from illness.
For the Lakota people this has been a continuation of a 100-year history of child abduction. This began in the 1880s under the U.S. government policy of forced assimilation (genocide); children as young as 5 years old were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to boarding schools hundreds of miles away. Now it is happening again, this time under the mask of state-run foster care. Over the past decade over 5,000 Sioux children have been removed from their homes. According to a recent report by the Indian Child Welfare Act directors in South Dakota, 740 Lakota children are removed to foster care each year and 90 percent are placed in white homes and institutions.
A vigorous campaign is currently being waged by the Lakota People’s Law Project to secure the return of over 2,200 Lakota, Dakota and Nakota children illegally taken from their homes by DSS.
Among the results of the LPLP efforts was the recent Great Plains Indian Child Welfare Act Summit held May 15-17 in Rapid City, South Dakota. The summit was held in an atmosphere that has been characterized by the Oglala Sioux Tribe as a “child welfare emergency.”
The summit also had as a backdrop a federal class action lawsuit that was filed on March 21 by the Oglala and Rosebud Sioux Tribes and tribal members, challenging the continued removal of Native children in Pennington County, South Dakota, from their homes.
South Dakota DDS has asserted that it had authority to remove children by tribal court order or tribal council agreement. The states have no authority over such youngsters; the tribes have exclusive jurisdiction over Indian children residing on reservations.
However, investigations by LPLP found that South Dakota’s assertions are blatantly false.
Typically, DDS would receive a false report of child neglect on a given reservation and without any legal authority would snatch the child in question without any notification to the child’s relatives. In one such instance DSS abducted a young boy when he left his relatives to use the restroom while family members were attending a high school graduation ceremony. It was weeks before his family found where he had been taken.
Aside from the genocidal racism involved there is a financial motive on the part of the state. South Dakota receives $79,000 from the federal government per year per child for every Native youngster it removes, but provides only $9,000 to a white foster home. The remaining $70,000 is deposited in state coffers.
The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and other Natives feel that the ICWA lawsuit is for greater fairness for all families, regardless of race, including whites. But, it must be remembered that white youngsters are not being sent to non-white homes; for whites, genocide is obviously not an issue. The humanity of Indian people, particularly in the face of the racism they have endured is truly poignant and moving. This becomes a movement not just for Indian people, but for all, led by long-suffering, grieving Native families.
Showing posts tagged important
How To Identify Crisis Pregnancy Centers
Crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers, disguise themselves as medical facilities, but usually have no licensed doctors, nurses or counselors. They often appear under “Abortion Alternatives,” and may have names similar to abortion clinics nearby in order to confuse patients into entering their buildings instead of the real clinics.
Once you enter a CPC, their mission is to prevent you from getting an abortion at any cost. They will use misleading language, delay tactics, emotional manipulation, intimidation, and outright lies to either persuade you against abortion or to make you miss your appointment. The worst part? It’s all completely legal and funded by federal dollars.
CPCs do their best to appear as legitimate abortion clinics, so how can you tell which is which? Here is a list of red flags for CPCs:
- The words “crisis” or “resource” appear in the center’s name
- Their ads use language like “Pregnant & Scared?”
- They offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds
- When asked if they provide abortions or contraception, they will not give a direct answer
- The waiting room has biased pamphlets, sometimes with graphic pictures labeled as abortions
- They attempt to make you feel guilty about considering abortion
- They offer baby items, such as diapers and formula
- They downplay the effectiveness of contraception and emphasize abstinence
- They emphasize the dangers of abortion (Fact: fewer than 0.3% of patients experience complications requiring hospitalization)
- They discuss the false connections between abortion and breast cancer, infertility, or mental illness, often referred to as post-abortion stress syndrome
- Regardless of how you talk about the pregnancy, they refer to “your baby,” the “preborn child,” “post-abortive women,” and say that you are “already a mother.”
Crisis Pregnancy Centers: An Affront to Choice
A list of licensed abortion clinics in the United States can be found on the Abortion Assistance Blog.
RAPIST/SEXUAL ABUSER ALERT FOR ORLANDO, FL, LAKE MARY, FL AND SEATTLE, WA
JORDAN WERTHMAN FROM LAKE MARY, FLORIDA
21 YEARS OLD
ATTENDS SCHOOL AT UCF @ ORLANDO
WILL BE A JUNIOR DURING THE 2013-14 TERM
MAJORING IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING
WILL BE ATTENDING A GOOGLE INTERNSHIP IN SEATTLE, WA THIS SUMMER (HE IS IN WASHINGTON RIGHT NOW)
Jordan Werthman sexually assaulted/attempted to rape a friend of mine in April, another student at UCF. He waited until she was intoxicated and attempted to penetrate her, despite him saying himself that she was “not interested at all” and “kept asking to leave”
After the assault, Werthman proceeded to text her repeatedly, even after she told him to leave her alone, asking “what he did,” despite clearly knowing exactly what he did.
He has also said that “all men think about rape.”He proceeded to stalk her, and went into her dorm building (which he does not live in) to slip a letter underneath her door, asking how he can “make it up” to her.
Afterward, my friend filed a police report and a police officer called Werthman to tell him that he is a rapist while he was celebrating his birthday with his family. However, my friend went out with some of her friends later that night and suddenly, Jordan was on the way ‘just to say hi,’ even though he was alerted he could be arrested if he came near her.
He has also allegedly attempted to assault or rape at least one other person. He has previously been reported to police at UCF for stalking a freshman.
PLEASE SPREAD THIS AROUND, THIS IS A DANGEROUS BOY WITH NO REGARD FOR THE PERSONAL BOUNDARIES OF WOMEN
JORDAN WERTHMAN FROM LAKE MARY, FLORIDA everybody!
Beatriz wants to live. She’s 22 years old and the mother of an infant, but the 18 week pregnancy she’s carrying is killing her — right now as you read this — and the government of El Salvador has refused to permit an exception to their abortion ban to save her life.
The fetus Beatriz is carrying is anencephalic; it has no brain and won’t survive birth even if her health allowed her to carry to full term. More to the point, Beatriz has lupus, worsened by a kidney malfunction, and it’s very dangerous for her to be pregnant. But under El Salvador’s abortion ban, both Beatriz and any medical staff involved in providing a therapeutic abortion would face criminal charges, carrying penalties as high as 50 years in jail for her and 12 years in jail for her doctors.
Both El Salvador’s Minister of Health and Attorney General for Human Rights support allowing an exception to save Beatriz’ life, yet the Supreme Court has delayed making this literally life and death decision. Now this impoverished young mother has entered early stage renal failure as her pregnancy steadily destroys her kidneys.
Sign now to stand with Beatriz’ husband and infant son today in asking the Salvadoran government to allow her doctors to save her life and their future together as a family.
(Source: action.rhrealitycheck.org)
#CISPA #privacy remember when you had a wedgie over Instagram’s “terms of service” update? This is like an update to THE INTERNET’s “Terms Of Service.” Understand?
literally no one paid attention when i posted about it yesterday so here it is again.
Damn. I got an email about it this week. I know it must be hard to get people to care/pay attention with the Boston situation. This is important, too, however.
![newsweek:
What BP Doesn’t Want You To Know About The 2012 Gulf Oil Spill
“It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.”
That’s what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, the workers were tracking the gunk inside on their boots. Griffin, as chief cook and maid, was trying to clean it. But even boiling water didn’t work.
“The BP representative said, ‘Jamie, just mop it like you’d mop any other dirty floor,’” Griffin recalls in her Louisiana drawl.
It was the opening weeks of what everyone, echoing President Barack Obama, was calling “the worst environmental disaster in American history.” At 9:45 p.m. local time on April 20, 2010, a fiery explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had killed 11 workers and injured 17. One mile underwater, the Macondo well had blown apart, unleashing a gusher of oil into the gulf. At risk were fishing areas that supplied one third of the seafood consumed in the U.S., beaches from Texas to Florida that drew billions of dollars’ worth of tourism to local economies, and Obama’s chances of reelection. Republicans were blaming him for mishandling the disaster, his poll numbers were falling, even his 11-year-old daughter was demanding, “Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?”
Griffin did as she was told: “I tried Pine-Sol, bleach, I even tried Dawn on those floors.” As she scrubbed, the mix of cleanser and gunk occasionally splashed onto her arms and face.
Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. “My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades,” she says.
Then things got much worse.
Like hundreds, possibly thousands, of workers on the cleanup, Griffin soon fell ill with a cluster of excruciating, bizarre, grotesque ailments. By July, unstoppable muscle spasms were twisting her hands into immovable claws. In August, she began losing her short-term memory. After cooking professionally for 10 years, she couldn’t remember the recipe for vegetable soup; one morning, she got in the car to go to work, only to discover she hadn’t put on pants. The right side, but only the right side, of her body “started acting crazy. It felt like the nerves were coming out of my skin. It was so painful. My right leg swelled—my ankle would get as wide as my calf—and my skin got incredibly itchy.”
[Photo: Benjamin Lowy/Getty]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/705ef3e02b7b954bb9539d01e65fdc81/tumblr_mlnznszc2w1qzs5cqo1_500.jpg)
What BP Doesn’t Want You To Know About The 2012 Gulf Oil Spill
“It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.”
That’s what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, the workers were tracking the gunk inside on their boots. Griffin, as chief cook and maid, was trying to clean it. But even boiling water didn’t work.
“The BP representative said, ‘Jamie, just mop it like you’d mop any other dirty floor,’” Griffin recalls in her Louisiana drawl.
It was the opening weeks of what everyone, echoing President Barack Obama, was calling “the worst environmental disaster in American history.” At 9:45 p.m. local time on April 20, 2010, a fiery explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig had killed 11 workers and injured 17. One mile underwater, the Macondo well had blown apart, unleashing a gusher of oil into the gulf. At risk were fishing areas that supplied one third of the seafood consumed in the U.S., beaches from Texas to Florida that drew billions of dollars’ worth of tourism to local economies, and Obama’s chances of reelection. Republicans were blaming him for mishandling the disaster, his poll numbers were falling, even his 11-year-old daughter was demanding, “Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?”
Griffin did as she was told: “I tried Pine-Sol, bleach, I even tried Dawn on those floors.” As she scrubbed, the mix of cleanser and gunk occasionally splashed onto her arms and face.
Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. “My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades,” she says.
Then things got much worse.
Like hundreds, possibly thousands, of workers on the cleanup, Griffin soon fell ill with a cluster of excruciating, bizarre, grotesque ailments. By July, unstoppable muscle spasms were twisting her hands into immovable claws. In August, she began losing her short-term memory. After cooking professionally for 10 years, she couldn’t remember the recipe for vegetable soup; one morning, she got in the car to go to work, only to discover she hadn’t put on pants. The right side, but only the right side, of her body “started acting crazy. It felt like the nerves were coming out of my skin. It was so painful. My right leg swelled—my ankle would get as wide as my calf—and my skin got incredibly itchy.”
[Photo: Benjamin Lowy/Getty]
Project Unbreakable: Stories of Surviving Sexual Assault
“It’s time to talk about it,” is 20-year old Grace Brown’s message. “Sexual assault isn’t talked about. It’s not brought up.”
Her way of talking about rape is Project Unbreakable. Brown has a Nikon D90 DSLR camera and a desire to put the spotlight on a problem which is still too common. At high school, Grace had considered becoming a sexual assault counselor. In her last year at school, she began to take an interest in photography. “I went through a lot of guilt; photography was shallow in comparison to therapy,” she confesses. In her first year of college, Grace combined the two.
“
(Reblogged from barackobama)
In Emilia’s case, we finally found a hospital that could treat her. A month after her thirteenth birthday, she got an artificial hip. Today she is fully recovered, but like the doctors said has a whopper of a pre-existing condition. Before her surgery, though, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—which means that she won’t have to go through what my parents went through. My daughter can now live anywhere within the borders of our great country, or will be able to after 2014.
Romney is running on a program that, as far as I can tell, will result in re-imprisoning Emilia.
Romney is running on a program that, as far as I can tell, will result in re-imprisoning Emilia.
Charles C. Mann for 90 Days, 90 Reasons: “If Mitt Romney is elected, insurance companies will continue to discriminate against Americans with pre-existing conditions.” (via barackobama)
“
(Reblogged from soundboardkittens)
I don’t really care what you tell your adopted daughter. Why don’t you just tell her the same thing you’ve been telling her the last eight years?
- Mitt Romney, in response to lesbian woman named Julie Goodridge who asked what she should tell her daughter about why her two moms won’t be allowed to marry under Romney’s plan. [source]
It’s worth noting that he called her daughter “adopted” directly AFTER she’d told him about the complications she had GIVING BIRTH TO HER DAUGHTER and how her partner wasn’t allowed to see her in the hospital. There’s no excuse. (via ipomoeaandthestarstealers)
I posted the link to the article this is from this morning. This is some seriously fucked up shit.
(via theoutboardechelon)
32%: Celebrities (other than Chris Brown) who have committed violence against women
In 1988, Sean Penn tied then-wife Madonna to a chair and beat her with a baseball bat.
Charlie Sheen was arrested for violently assaulting adult film actress Capri Anderson.
Roman Polanski raped of a 13-year-old girl before fleeing the country.
You don’t know much about sharks, do you?
I don’t need to know crap about sharks to know they have no point to life but to eat things. So I don’t really care about anything else. .. .
Actually they have plenty of point in life. They keep the populations of species lower in the food chain in check, ensuring only the healthiest, strongest animals survive to breed. They pretty much shape the evolution of other species. They themselves are also important food sources for some orca populations.
And they are intelligent, curious creatures that get a bad rep because people don’t know crap about them and refuse to learn. It’s fear of the unknown.
Did you know you are more likely to die from being crushed under a falling vending machine than you are to be killed by a shark? Did you know elephants and tigers kill more people per year than sharks? Did you know that several of the species listed in the image above have never killed human beings?
Sharks are heading for extinction at the hands of human beings. They are persecuted by the ignorant. Our oceans provide more oxygen than all of Earth’s rainforests combined, and wiping out the top predator from such a delicate ecosystem is going to result in our own extinction in a very short period of time.
So you should damn well care.
It still shocks (and mostly just disappoints) me how SHOCKED people are when I tell them that it is 100% legal to be fired simply for being gay.
They look at me like I’m lying and say things like “nooooo, that can’t be right?”.
I have been fired twice (in Ohio) for being openly gay.
I have been asked:
- to not wear my wedding ring
- Not acknowledge my wife’s existence
- To “just say you have a husband”
- To just not answer “yes” when people ask if I’m married because “you’re not REALLY married”
- To not bring my wife to the company FAMILY Christmas party
- Let people just assume we’re sisters
- Just make it easier on everyone and “just say you’re divorced”
These were not requests made from some Mom and Pop shop, I was a corporate executive for a large chain of high volume restaurants. My boss was the Director of Human Resources, and she would walk into my office and say the most ignorant things you can imagine.
People in America need to be educated on the reality that is life as a gay person in this country.
It’s not all gay pride parades and appletinis.
We need a leg to stand on.
We need people to wake up and educate themselves on the rights we are denied.
We need people…gay, straight, and in between, to open their eyes, stop ignoring what doesn’t directly effect them, and educate themselves.
“
The method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.
Paul Ryan defining rape as a “method of conception” (x)
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
“If you’re a conservative woman and you believe in small government, then Barack Obama is your candidate because he’s keeping the government out of decisions that should remain between you and God and you and your own conscience.”
Republican women talk about their history with the Republican Party and why they’re voting to reelect President Obama in November.
This is an excellent video. It’s only 2:37, so please take a couple minutes & watch.
I think everyone should watch this. Republicans and Democrats alike.
