Lyla and Paige Traveling Through

Today is a special day.  Lyla and Paige are traveling through on their way up to Portland!  We had a dinner of vegetable stew and dumplings, Will's wonderful green salad, smoke salmon dip from Alaska from Katie, and corn bread finished by goatcheese and cherry frozen dessert -- like ice creme but doesn't make us sick.  We had wonderful conversations -- even while Lyla washed dishes.  Tomorrow before they leave we will go to Off the Waffle with Steve Morozumi.  Life is perfect!

Segorea Te

Corinna Gould, Ohlone leader, and good friend of Chief Caleen Sisk of the Winnemem Wintu, speaks here about the precious estuary and cove, called Glen Cove by the media, and Segorea Te by the Ohlone and their allies.  This is the very place where the Sacramento River goes into the ocean and where our salmon would go from the sweet river waters to the estuary to grow up and then to the salty ocean.

Injunuity: Buried from Adrian Baker Animation on Vimeo.

This is the area that people tried to protect with the encampment at Glen Cove for months over a year ago. They seemed to win the battle, but were tricked. All the indigenous medicine plants gone. It's like a lawn there. WRONG!!!! And this area will be gravely impacted if and when Governor Brown surrounded by bad advisors, even those who claim to know about tribes and the issue, builds the peripheral canal which diverts all the water of the Sacramento south. The bay, our salmon's estuary, here in this place Corinna talks about will be gone.

"Dancing Salmon Home" honored by SFAIFF

At the Awards Night of the 37th Annual San Francisco American Indian Film Festival, an old and respected film festival, Chief Caleen Sisk accompanied with family and tribal members accepted the Best Documentary Award for the film.  Will and I found out when we saw the almost real-time post uploaded by cell phone by nephew Jesse Sisk, our tribe smiling ear to ear with the Chief in the center holding a humongous sculpture fashioned by Rance Hood, called "Film Indian." 

"Will, you won!!" I screamed from the office (really it's Jesse's bedroom when he gets here to go to LCC Culinary School.)  He ran in from his computer in the dining room.  We were online because the tribe was uploading as they could -- scenes of the venue, the winner of the music video category, then the long silence.  "That must be why they weren't posting anything," I said as he bent over my screen to see what his brain could not process -- the big lump the Chief held in her hands.  Yep!  Film Indian!

He could not believe it, stuck as the film was at the festival on a Tuesday noon.  Bad slot, but made even worse this year because it was Election Tuesday.  But people had come, and stayed put through 4 hours of other films for "Dancing Salmon Home."  Will asked the Chief to come up with him for the Q and A.  Lots of interest.  Lots of new learning about what happened in California to the tribes during the recent Reagan Era.  Crime.

On Tribal Ground was present at the SFAIFF, and the Chief gave an interview.  They will probably upload photos and the interview on their link.

On Native Ground

I tried to post their link on my link faves, but for some reason it does not receive youtube links.  It's mostly visual.  But now I've decided to write and post a blog about "Dancing Salmon Home" and Will, filmmaker and husband.    Catch up on films, music, and interviews of entertainment in Indian Country.

I want to take a moment to talk about Will because he does not think to talk this way about himself.  He's pretty special as a filmmaker.  He literally sees himself as an extension of the equipment.  Not diminishing himself.  As he says it, he has skills.  There is no god-like view of a talented man who calls his artistry skills.  I'm here to attest that his skills include his perspective on himself and his gift he brings into the world.  The power of the film is that the people (English word is "subject") in the film are portrayed by skillful editing in full power, their OWN power.  All documentary filmmakers can make powerful films.  But you must see the film to know what I mean.  He catches on film, moments which make it seem he is invisible.  And he is.  I've seen him.  Or more, I haven't seen him.  He's there but unnoticeable.  And for the interviews, maybe it's because he has been with the tribe so long and been teased by the young ones so long, but even then he almost gets away with the camera unseen.  Most of all, he "follows the people."  He picks up on them more than he looks at himself.  When he says (what he says often) "It's their film" he is being very accurate and when he says it is their film, he is not distancing himself as filmmaker.  He is moving closer and following, and with abandonment most directors and filmmakers don't do, he gives to the people, to the spirit and humbly follows.  Nothing in the way between him and them -- especially his ego.  He is one with the equipment.

Grandma blessed his camera and him a long time ago at her fire.  And he has not wavered from the purpose the Fire and his first Chief gave him.

Cuba Impressions

In 2009, Will and I went on a trip which changed us.  It put things into perspective.  When living here, one can easily slip into the idea that this is the reality.  However, less than 100 miles of the coast of the United States is an Island Country, Cuba, which still exists free of the colonization of Spain, France and the United States -- the latest being the sugar industry and mobsters turning Cuba into their playground.  Cuban people have seen the worst of the worst empires have to offer.  In the Sixties, I remember the Cuban Missle Crisis, hearing about it in my Government Class.  Later in the late Sixties, I began to study about Cuba.  It became a role model country as America began to reveal itself in the youth revolutions around the war in Viet Nam.  It was a role model because it successfully waged a revolution and freed themselves from the bonds of colonialism.  Cuba is intriguing to our generation.

In 2009, we learned through Steve Wake's Documentary Film about a Nikkei group which visits Nikkei in Cuba.  Check out "Under the Same Moon."  That is a Japanese phrase which alludes to family, or deep friendships, separated by miles, and the steadfastness and longing of that separation, to be together, gazing up at the moon, and comforted, and hopeful for reunion -- under the same moon.

Will and I are going to be talking about our Cuban experience and our Cuban familia in our friend Jim Garcia's class.  At the same time, our good friend Noboro Miyazawa, has invited us to Cuba in 2014 to celebrate with the nation the first Japanese to reach Cuba, 400 years ago before it was blasted open and forced to live in a Western dominated era. 

Here is Cuba Expressions, and if you peruse earlier blogs, I have written about Cuba with longing and love.

vimeo.com/9090821

Republicans Stealing Another Election Under Your Noses. No Shame!

I am pissed. So it begins. Election Night is never the end, Americans.   It's only the beginning. In our lifetime (some of you were babies) it began with dirty tricks on the DNC -- and Watergate which elected Nixon. Then we have Reagan's election where American lives were toyed with Iran Contra, giving aide to Iran privately to keep the US hostages in that situation so Carter's re-election could be sabotaged and the hostages coming home on Reagan's election day. Then we have the last Gore vs. Bush Florida poll fiasco and the"all to gentlemanly" Al Gore GIVING UP the election by conceding rather than fighting it. So THIS has to be fought! The Republican Party did not learn from Watergate any thing except they can get away with stealing elections and sabotaging the democratic process because the American public thinks that election day ends the work. It only BEGINS!!! Fight it now!

From America Blog:

“Glitch” wipes out 1,000 early votes in black FL neighborhood

11/1/2012 12:54pm by John Aravosis 32 Comments Print

Always Florida

There was a story over at NBC’s The Grio three days ago noting that at one Florida polling location, in a heavily black neighborhood, the number of people who voted early was suddenly “revised” from 2,945 to 1,942 – that’s a 34% decrease.
At first, polling officials blamed it on a “computer glitch.”  Uh huh.  And what glitch would that be?
The local supervisor of elections (SOE) didn’t inspire a lot of hope when speaking about another, smaller, change to the early voting numbers at another polling location:

spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

Broward SOE spokesperson Mary Cooney acknowledged that the Sunday totals were revised, and said she would look into why.
“I can’t tell you definitively now,” Cooney said, “but I queried the person who posts those numbers and the most significant number he told me he changed was an instance where 1050 should have been 1150 — the numbers were transposed.”

He transposed the numbers by hand? And this is how Florida tallies votes?
The Grio followed up on the story the next day, Tuesday of this week, and got a different answer about the 1,000 vote discrepancy: now they’re saying “human error.”

The SOE chief says the changes, particularly at a polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood where National Action Network chief and MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton and a group of pastors held “souls to the polls” rallies over the weekend, were the result of human error.
In a telephone interview with theGrio late Monday, Snipes said the SOE’s office runs two tallies — one manually calculated at the precincts by adding up the total number of voters swiped through an electronic voter identification system called EVID, which was purchased from a Florida vendor, and a second, electronic tally conducted at the Supervisor of Elections office after the polls close each day. The electronic numbers go directly to a database.  Snipes said the woman who tallied the votes at the E. Pat Larkins Community Center, which had its vote tally revised downward by 1,003, simply added the numbers incorrectly.
“The woman made a mistake,” Snipes said. “That was absolutely an addition error. The actual numbers are 1942 not 2945, so she made an addition error.”

In the future, they’re only going to report the electronic result, which still begs the question of which result is really correct, and what else do they do that might result in human error?  Not to mention, why did they first say it was a computer glitch?
And why is it always Florida?  Why always in a heavily Democratic precinct, and why do the errors always help the other guy?  Remember that Florida is already dealing with a widespread GOP voter fraud scandal.  From my earlier post of a month ago:

We reported last night that a firm doing business with the National Republican Committee and the Romney campaign was being investigated for voter fraud. The firm has done $2.9 million in business with the Republican National Committee this year alone, and another firm run by the same did $80,000 in work for Romney.
And, as I said last night, harkening back to all the faux outrage from Republicans claiming that ACORN was trying to steal the election: “Republicans accuse us of doing what they are, and we’re not.” AP has more:

What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has now spread statewide, with election officials in at least seven counties informing prosecutors or state election officials about questionable voter registration forms filled out on behalf of the Republican Party of Florida.

Lux said there have been forms that listed dead people and were either incomplete or illegible. He met with local prosecutors on Friday, but added that his staff was still going through hundreds of forms dropped off by Strategic employees.
Lux, who is a Republican, said he warned local party officials earlier this month when he first learned the company was paying people to register voters.
“I told them ‘This is not going to end well,’” Lux said.

Always Florida.

The Danger of a Single Story

This is a wonderful speech told by an author who I am now very interested in reading.  Chimamanda Adichie talks in personal narratives about how a single story narrows a readers' mind, a nation's mind against others.  Adichie also shows how power and stories -- who writes them, who they are about, what they say -- intersect.  Writing is still so relevant.  Start a blog!  I invite you to check out my favorite blogs.  Three are news.  One is Angry Asian Man with whom I check to check my perception.  For example, when a newly published book slandered Richard Aoki, former Asian Black Panther, as an FBI snitch, I immediately went to Angry Asian Man and was comforted with his similar reaction, pissed, worried about the vulnerability of Richard's legacy since he died last year, and wondering what would happen.  Much to my relief, the Panthers stood by Richard.  Representatives responded by saying that these allegations have been leveled at many Panthers through the decades and is a tactic to break alliances.  Richard represents a cross cultural alliance.  The Panthers and APA community in Oakland held an event to make it more public.  I appreciated that, realizing it is not only the reputation of a good warrior, but it is the alliance of what we called Third World Peoples which was so precious to us.

Three of my favorite blogs are by people a good generation or two younger than I.  There is Racialicious, which is delicious discussions about race intersecting with pop culture written by many people.  "Latoya Peterson (DC) is the Owner and Editor (not the Founder!) of Racialicious, Arturo García (San Diego) is the Managing Editor, Andrea Plaid (NYC) is the Associate Editor. You can email us at team@racialicious.com. The founders of Racialicious are Carmen Sognonvi and Jen Chau. They are no longer with the blog. Carmen now runs Urban Martial Arts with her husband and blogs about local business. Jen can still be found at Swirl or on her personal blog. "

Another blog is written by my young friend Marc Dadigan.  His parents are exactly my age.  I met Marc, in the MA program of creative writing and journalism at the UO.  When he graduated, he had no job, and had to get out of his apartment.  He embedded himself at the Winnemem Village in a little trailer, found a job working with mental health clients, and now is a great advocate for their human rights.  Not only that, he has become someone my friend Marcus Amerman calls a "super hero" -- an ordinary man who has unusual powers.  Marcus calls him "The Crusader."  That's because Marc's super power is his honesty in the face of the toughest challenges.  Crusader also suits him because he is fearless if the cause is justice.  He is writing a book about the Winnemem as well as what someone described as "carry water chop wood."  

The third blog which is new is by Monica Christoffels, a young Asian American woman, Filipina, who writes passionately, with such a true voice about taking action.  The first of her blog I've read is about her experience standing with those who are fighting tar sands in Toronto.  She takes the photos and writes the story so we can be right there with her -- this time with the powerful words of First Nations Women, always on the front lines for the Earth.

These two blogs have something in common.  They are told from the front lines, from the ground, from being there, from doing.  No armchair reporting.   I think that is why I am the most drawn to these blogs.

Grateful for the many stories people who show us the true picture of humanity, the true expression of real power.  As Chimamanda Adichie said, "A single story can break a person, but many stories can heal the break."  Read Marc Dadigan and Monica Christoffels and you will not pity the oppressed; you will embrace resistance!  It will take the veil from our eyes and make fire up our blood.

"Hozho" by Lyla Johnston

  I'm thinking that a measure of a successful life might very well be to have met Lyla, to stand in Lyla's loving light and to understand Lyla's poetry. To be 67 and all these things, I'm feeling pretty good today.  I wonder, if I need to say, Lyla loves.  Lyla loves every being, every thing.  To be satisfied to be loved by Lyla just might be the perfect State of Being.  Don't you think?