TIWANAKU, Bolivia - In Bolivian President Evo Morales, an Aymara Native was elected. This election was significant for two reasons. One is that it's the first time one candidate wins a great majority of votes and the second that it's the first time an indigenous candidate got elected.

After the end of the USSR many church groups targeted Siberian Natives trying to covert them to their churches. This is still an ongoing process.

There have been complaints by Natives that the missionaries desecrate Native sacred sites and act and speak offensively towards Native cultural and spiritual values. There have also been reports by various missions claiming that they converted large numbers of Natives. However the actual statistics show otherwise.  Detailed reports of abuses filed against the missionaries remind of Medieval Europe’s church practices. (Photo: Missionaries at a site sacred to Buryat Native.)

The Bible League reports Shamanism being widespread among Siberian Natives and gives it as a reason for establishing churches and bible courses among Natives.

"As for the missionaries, they claimed me a "personification of the Devil’! Sounds like thunder!" Shaman Akkanat says.

Buryat Natives' Plead:

Oppose Religious Intolerance

In many parts of the world people associated with organized religion have intentionally dishonored or desecrated sites sacred to indigenous people. Here is the desecration of the Shaman Rock on Olkhon Island by members of a Pentecostal congregation from Irkutsk. This place, where the white-headed eagle is believed to have descended from Heaven to become the first shaman, is one of the most sacred sites in Mongolian shamanism. Here the missionaries pose proudly over their inscription of "Jesus is Lord" on this holy rock. - http://www.buryatmongol.com/

When People Stop Caring Greed And Envy Take Over This was a couple of days right before 2006 new year's. George Henry an elder from the Chippewa of the Thames was vending at the mall. I brought his the greetings from our elder Akkanat from the Sibirga Nation. George was very pleased. I had with me the story of  Yasha and the t-shirt with the design I made from that story. We were sitting down and looking at the Story of Yasha. Then he said that at a meeting with some elders someone asked what could be the reason people get jealous and greedy. We know when they get greedy that's when they start to envy, why does he have and I don't have that. So they start getting jealous and are prone to doing very bad thing. One of the elders said, quoting George, it's because they stop caring. George then explained to me just like in the story of Yasha. The envious don't  care, they want power and they get  a father to shoot his son with an arrow. Then the mother because she is caring resolves the situation. It's interesting to look at the story of Yasha from that angle. There is another similar  OjiCree story, longer and  with much more detail. It's the story of Iyash. It's worth looking at. Here are the links to both: www.geocities.com/storyofyasha www.geocities.com/storyofiyash

I had just learned a few new phrases in Ojibway and I went down to the  Urban Native Centre to see what Herald and Tony are doing. They were at that time involved with helping out people with legal issues. It was a sunny day and around noon so everyone was on the lunch break. Herald, Tony, Roy and another fellow can't remember his name were in front of the building sitting around one of those picnic table bench things you find in parks. Sure enough I joined them. In the course of the conversation I mentioned that I noticed that if you talk in Ojibway to the Canadian wild geese over at the park by the  river  they won't run away as usual and they look at you curious. Tony  smiled, he's an elder he knows about that. Herald then told me about his grandfather.

Herald's grandfather would go out into the bush and meet with a bear. They would sit together and share a dialog. You would say  how can a bear talk and how does a man talk to a bear. Well think about it people always talk to their pets. The dogs bark or  make some sort of noise when you have them as pets and have them respond to your calls. Well Herald's grandfather was a traditional Anishinabek man and he knew all the skills and traditions his ancestors passed down to him. He was a man that lived with  Mother Earth caring for it. The bear was a part of that. When he saw the destruction done to Mother Earth he knew what was going on. He would go into the bush and sit with the creatures there, a bear would come and they would have a dialogue. We still have bears and we have the bush but not around here any more.

Herald's grandfather is in the other world as well as the  bear and the bush is destroyed. The memory of the bear and Herald's grandfather and the bush along with the days that Herald's grandfather would remember are maybe forgotten. I painted a bear on a dead maple leaf turned upwards in honor and  memory of Herald's grandfather and the bear and all the bush with all the creatures that lived in it. A leaf upwards means wind blows as in a storm and represents bad news. A leaf downwards would mean good news. Not to forget  that the bear is a very powerful symbol. -  M Sonny

Hawaii Natives and the Apology Law   In 1993 US president Bill Clinton signed the so-called "apology law," a joint congressional resolution formally apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the illegal overthrow of their kingdom in 1893. Native Hawaiians are working to set up a government of their own. "The cause of Hawaii and independence is larger and dearer than the life of any man connected with it. Love of country is deep-seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station."  - Lili`uokalani, Hawaii's last Queen

Who is a Niiji    A young man walked into the room and said to his friend "Hello Niiji." The word Niiji was a new word for most of the English speaking people in the room. Then the two young men started talking. The young men appeared to be aboriginal and their conversation faded blending into the numerous conversations between everyone in the room. A Siberian aboriginal young man translated into English a letter from his father to an aboriginal elder in Canada. The letter said: "Greetings to all the Niiji people." In his reply the elder wrote Niiji before his name. Similarly to the question about a craftsman what his nationality was the people that knew his said he was a Niiji. One cannot but stop and ask who is a Niiji. After looking into dictionaries and language books a Native person came and said Niiji means friend in his language. He was from the Anishinabek people. The word Niiji means friend but it carries more than just that meaning in our time. When it gets confusing and complicated to explain that a person is called an Indian but not from India yet a Native American and when then things get really tangled up if the person is not an American but from Canada or Mexico, the five letter word Niiji solves it all. Aboriginal people on the continent of North America who are known as Indians are Niiji.

An Indigenous Assessment     by Katheleen Kern for Mennonite Weekly Review dated August 3, 2005 Kathleen Kern, of Webster, N.Y., serves with Christian Peacemaker Teams. The July 7 bombings of the London subways and bus coincided with my having recently listened to several audiobooks on the history of indigenous peoples in North America, or “Turtle Island” as some indigenous communities refer to it.   As I listened to people make generalizations about Islam — based on the violence of Muslims claiming to be Al Qaeda operatives — I found myself thinking about what generalizations a 19th-century indigenous historian or political analyst might have made about Christianity.   Based on indigenous peoples’ encounters with Christians, the commentary of the indigenous scholar might have read like this:   “Although apologists for Christianity claim their spiritual chief, Jesus Christ, commanded his followers to show compassion to allies and enemies, the Christian invasions of Turtle Island show that Christianity is a genocidal, deceitful and larcenous religion.   “The Christians’ disregard for human life was evident when they arrived on the eastern part of this continent and found that an epidemic had wiped out several nations. Did the devout ‘Pilgrims’ weep for the lost Wampanoag, Patuxet and Massachuset civilizations? No. One of their number, John Winthrop, noted with satisfaction in his diary that ‘God hath hereby cleared our title to this place.’   “In 1637, residents of a Pequot village on the Mystic River ran to its banks to greet a raiding party of Puritan Christians with, ‘What cheer, Englishmen, what do you come for?’ The Puritans burned the village and slaughtered its inhabitants. William Bradford described the massacre: ‘Those that escaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others run through with their rapiers. . . . It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemies in their hands . . .’ “John Underhill, who commanded the expedition, wrote later, ‘Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. . . . We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.’   “Several decades later, in 1675, Puritans trapped 600 people of the Narragansett nation in their longhouses and burned them alive. A Puritan priest, Cotton Mather, referred to the massacre as a ‘barbecue’ in a sermon celebrating the event.   “More recently, Col. John M. Chivington — a Christian priest of the apparently bloodthirsty Methodist sect — perpetrated the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapahoe civilians at Sand Creek while their warriors were away hunting buffalo. Prior to the bloodbath, he proclaimed, ‘I long to be wading in gore’ and ‘I have come to kill Indians and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.’ The 900 soldiers and vigilantes under Chivington’s command slaughtered 163 women, children and old men.     “One soldier said later, ‘It looked too hard for me to see little children on their knees begging for their lives [having] their brains beat out like dogs.’ A pregnant woman was cut open and her unborn child thrown to the ground. The Christian soldiers and paramilitaries mutilated the corpses and cut the men’s and women’s genitals off for trophies, attaching them to their hats and saddles.   “Despite the denunciations of these atrocities by moderate Christian leaders, history teaches us that militant Christianity poses a threat to peace-loving peoples everywhere.   “Moreover, dialogue with the Christian invaders seems fruitless, when one considers that they have never honored a single treaty they made with any of the nations on Turtle Island.”