Owing Henry

I'm in study circles. Study circles was designed by Euro-Americans and the topic of study and discussion is racism, specifically "white privilege." I've always resisted it, but now it is run by Henry Luvert, and he's a friend I can't say no to. He doesn't say no to me, even when he did not know me at all. I remember the night I met Henry Luvert -- new young "Angry Black Man" in town. I say that with tongue in cheek because that's how some people refer to him when they feel his strong personality. He's got a lot of things to be angry about, but within a short time fresh from Chicago, he had made his connections, alliances, extended family. He became so networked he could help and would help many people. And a man does not build those expansive networks with anger. He does that by caring and being keeping his word.

Back in the day when I didn't have a teaching job, I worked in a small closet-sized office coordinating the all volunteer Multicultural Education Committee, a group of committed Black and Brown teachers promoting a safe climate, inclusive curriculum and "liberation pedagogy" at a grassroots level. We had a tiny tiny budget. I was working for $100 a month. That's right. A month. That was bad, even in the 80's. The Assistnat Superintenden, Robert Newell, had let me know the school board was going to be discussing my budget at the board meeting that night -- that's right, they had not let me know. I should be there arguing to keep it was his advice He knew they were thinking of cutting it in half.

Robert Newell is someone I would like to write to thank him for all the times he stepped outside his responsibilities to check on me. He cared about multicultural education. He cared about our small volunteer committee. He cared about the right thing to do. And he didn't have to. I started typing away on the Smith Corona. He came by my cubby hole again to look at what I planned to say and made some suggestions. I took them all. I sent the word to the Multicultural Committee to come support the budget but being so last minute, when the board meeting came, I sat alone at the time our agenda item came up. I looked up -- way up -- at the board, all white men and then Jonathon West. Jonathon was a professor at Lane Community College and the only African American (make that person of color) on the board. And Jonathon was the only one familiar to me. I don't remember a word I said that night. I just remember that afte I stopped speaking, Henry got up, new in town and let the board have it. I looked at the board who looked unhappy, except for Jonathon, who had his "let's wait and see" look. Then a young mother stood up and in her quiet voice she said she had come to the board tonight to let them know what had happened to her son at school since the first day of school. That morning, she walked in to the bathroom and saw her son with scissors in his hand, bloody lipped, trying to cut it off with a pair of scissors. She had just barely stopped him from doing real damage. Every day at school her son was being teased for being Black. Every day he was being called "monkey" by his classmates, not by his name, and his teachers, no one, did anything about it. Her son said, "Mommy, I don't want to be Black anyore" and he was going to do something to himself to stop the teasing. She told the Board, "I came to you tonight to ask, what are you going to do for my son. I don't know where else to go. Who can help my son?"

One thing, you can always tell what white people are feeling because their color changes when they are really upset. The board no longer fidgeted. Each person sat stock still. Silence permeated. I will never forget their waxen faces, shocked into whiteness. I will never forget that sight. All the color was drained from their faces.

No one comforted Jeanne Drew (I remember her name). The went immediately into the business at hand, and doubled my budget. That was that.

As I look back, of course it's troubling that no one had a word of comfort for Jeanne. But back in the day, the silence was almost expected. It was the action which said everything. That night felt like a bitter victory -- once again at the sacrifice of a young boy and a Mother who brought the image of his self-mutilation to the board that night. I did go up and talk with her and also Henry another network connection for the long work ahead of us all. The work is far far from complete. Which brings me to Henry's request for me to join Study Circle and my not being able to say no.

It wasn't until yesterday's study circle that I found out that Henry had invited Jeanne to come with him to the board meeting. He was going to rile things up, and he needed someone to tell them a truth that would cut through the facade. Henry Luvert had been in Eugene only a short time, and he knew more about what was happening in the classrooms to Black children than the principals and teachers of the buildings in which they were being abused. He certainly knew more than I, the multicultural coordinator.

In my mind, I owe him and Jeane Drew, and Bob Newell "yeses" whenever they ask. If they ask me to step up it's for a good reason and I don't even ask "WHY?" I just say alright, I will. I could do no less than the Mother who was caring for a hurt and abused child to take some of her precious time to come to a meeting to speak up for a program which might be doing some good even if no help came her way during her time of trouble.

Although I resisted Study Circle for years, I go every week and sit with a group of European American people around a table at their work place. Study circles had been a volunteer only circle of people who came from many places, some retired, some students, some working people, some parents and they would talk. I stayed away. It felt like sort of a sick relationship to me, people like me spilling our guts to others and then what?

But when Henry and his wife Arbrella took on Study Circles, they took it to institutions and convinced those institutions to involve every layer of their organization, group by group, to engage in the conversation of "white privilege." And in the six week program, the final week is dedicated to "so what can you do about it?" That answered the "then what?"

From the first day one thing that becomes very evident is that our country is truly divided by a color line. Two very different Americas. For example, it is hard for me to write America with a "c" because that America went up in a puff of smoke, or tumbled like a house made of playing cards as lie after lie -- lies for no reason which served no good -- was exposed. As the historic lies, the foundation of America tumbled, then the work stood out clear in front of us -- Black Brown and anti-racist White. It's hard for me to say "our" country because at home Grandma and Grandpa or even my mom's generation referred to white people as Americans. That is the message immigrants with black hair, in dark skin, Asian eyes get. If you're not white, you aren't American, ever. It's hard for me to say "our country" because as a Winnemem, the land, the earth, is demarcated by lines formed by the true landlords of this land -- the salmon, the great Canadian geese, the deer -- marked by their rivers and mountains and unbound as the skies.

A question is asked on the first day of study circle, "when is the first time you encountered racism." It becomes so apparent that some of us encountered racism on our first day of school, our first time out of the protection of our home, when we were just little children. The other half, when they left town, the protection and control of their families, for college or for a new job, they may have witnessed racism if they were around people of color. And for they most part, it left them feeling ashamed and powerless. Others testified that when they visited Asia or went to Honolulu they felt discomfort because they were the only white person and people stared. Some may have mistakenly gone into a Black bar in Texas and left quickly.
(I can't help breaking here to say that Henry testified when he went to Japan, because he stood a bit taller than Japanese, the hundreds of Japanese coming out of the subway, that he was a head above everyone and all he could see was all this black hair like waves around him -- and looking out on the mass of black haired heads, he got sea sick. Please, give me a break!)

But is being the only white person anything like how it is to grow up in Amerika? If it were merely being stared out and standing out, that is one thing. Racism is deeper than that.

Study circle continues from that point, story shared after story. Stefan's experience as an African American at Sheldon High School where even his close friend can sabotage his day by calling him the N word showing off to the other friends. And learning to be tough "so people would respect him." Or Abas talking about when he went to school in Chicago as a youngster on foot, that meant he crossed three turfs and he'd have to fight his way through them to get to a day at school. Or Snake being asked to speak and in his understated way describing how it is to grow up in a small town, that when you saw a cop car it came from 30 minutes away from the city of K Falls and everyone knew as they saw the police cruise in, they were there to get Indians. Or to hear Paulette talk about her children not wanting to be Black and that day to even hear young Stefan when we were all tho share what it is about our race which we liked. Stefan said after a long pause, "I have nothing to say." Uncle Henry did though and Stefan was there to hear it "Black people endure -- no matter what, no matter if we're poor, if everyone is against you, we endure."

I am caught off guard every time at first at how differently people think coming from the two sides of America. The Euro Americans hear the same story and they feel very sad. Some cannot control their tears. They feel alone and somewhat anxious that now they know and they'll have to do something about it.

People of color hear the story and they feel mobilized. They feel the emotions too but it puts us on our toes to act.

During the confession of guilt because of inaction, I turned to one of our study circle colleagues and said "you never do it by yourself. There's plenty of people who you'll be doing the work with together. Your voice is necessary. Some people will listen to it when they won't listen to an of us. No one can do it alone."

That person felt such relief. It never occurred to him and others also agreed that they would not have to do it alone. White privilege is taught as individual power. It's about ME and doing it alone. I never thought how individualism keeps racism alive. I told my colleague, "You can call anybody here and say, 'This racist thing happened. I need some words.' " That rocked his world.

There are children growing up in this country who are going through and witnessing things no child should. There are other children whose parents use their privilege to prevent the truth to be taught their children mistakenly thinking they are keeping their children "safe" from having to see this discrepancy which white privilege causes. Then their children will grow up, get into the real world, and be angry at not knowing what to do. Some may be even more damaged and may never learn how to care about something humans can't help but care about. Some may even be so shut down that they don't know how to give a F*** really. No tools. But one thing, internally, they will blame and even hate the upbringing which kept them from the power of doing the right thing, from feeling for another person, from the creative power that comes from an expansive fully involved life.

This blog has a second Title besides "Owing Henry." It's "Study Circles: or How to Give a F***."

I'm stopping here for now. There is more to say. But I'll just say that it isn't mean to tell the truth. And truth will make us free.

Halloween in Ashland

Will and I took time off to go to Ashland to see a couple of plays and to watch the Halloween Parade we had heard about. Nothing prepared us for this annual Ashland community event. I suppose you could call it a parade, people in costumes coming down mainstream to the beat of drums and symbols led by two cop cars, lights flashing. But the similarity stops there.

For a couple of hours we saw people in costumes, all ages from those in baby rollers to elderly people going up and down streets not very different than from a high school hall at noon, back and forth, meeting in groups, excited to see friends in neighbors. Even when the cop cars with flashing lights and drum beats could be seen and heard, people continued to cluster and to take their time walking in the street to their destination, the starting place of the parade. Somewhere two streams met and became one, here and there along the route and became one flowing mass, about 14 across and about eight blocks long a continuous mass of costumes, some gleeful, some shy, some proud, some taking their parts seriously, some playing with the audience, high fives, growls. We spectators lined the parade watching, but as Will and I looked this way and that, we decided unless we wanted to stand out as turista, we definitely need to dress a bit for even watching a parade.

I counted about 18 ethnic stereotypes, Japanese kimonoed women winning hands down with 10. One was even Asian (poor thing. Finally something she could wear the yukata and happi her Obachan must have given her to something in Ashland.) Bumble bees were a clear favorite, with about 16. I didn't even bother to count dead people who came in all different categories. The knives, stakes, cleavers, swords etc through the heads were very popular. I liked the three Japanese guys costumed as their version of white tourists. I don't thing everyone understood their effort thinking they were lost and swept up by a parade just being themselves.

The parade was preceded by the runners who also came in all ages, many costumed -- a choo choo train trying to outrace a chef, followed by the bubbling sponges of the tv ad advertising shower and toilet bowl cleaner and a tailed, bright blue avatar.

The parade ended when the streets finally were made to be for vehicles, again signaled by two cop cars with lights going in both lanes down Main. But the festivities never stopped. All the shops were open giving treats out to trick and treaters, and we couldn't go anywhere without bumping into teens in costume circled up in cliques just like in the halls, with the same energy as they do in the halls. If you needed to get past them, you just had to make your way around sometimes ducking a hit or a trip meant for their friends but catching you instead.

It was great!

Halloween in Ashland is definitely something I'd like to do again!! The ex-hippy, retired middle school teacher in me loved it! Next time, bringing the costumes along!

Reality show got too real

I'm sharing my secret sin. At least one of them. I'm one of those people who watch tv and read for one thing -- entertainment. If I happen to pick up a book or sit in front of the tv for something informative, I will become engrossed, but if the channel changer were in my hand, I'm looking for a mindless reality show. So today I am blogging to say my last word on my former addiction, Project Runway.

And I am assuming that some of you know what I am talking about when I say GRETCHEN?????!? ARE YOU FRIGGING KIDDING ME?!!!!!

First I'll start out with the dead silence of our living room when Gretchen from Portland was chosen over the talented, bold Mondo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It descended like a blob of marshmallow. All the fun of watching something just fo pure entertainment and escape disappeared under it's goo. BLEAH! Racism is in my house. This reality show just got too real. I guess I got my Thursday nights back because I'm outta' here.

The words were popping out of their mouths all night and I should have known. Michael Kors said you couldn't tell if it was Chinese or Mexican . . . . WHAAAA? and Nina Garcia Columbian gatekeeper and sidekick did say to Andy that he had "over orientalized" his collection but still, . .GRETCHAN? REALLY? Hippy fashion, culture vulture, sage and beige Gretchen? Kors turned orange with passion arguing to keep the borders closed to the fashion elite domain calling Gretchen forward thinking, her finger on the pulse of fashion. Heidi and Jessica Simpson gawked at him. I imagine this idea was scary to them. Hide the body? Wear straw hats? And those panty shorts? Me?!!! This guy is telling women that they want to wear flowey, form hiding, burnt sienna hippy clothes which is meant to have a "tribal vibe"?

Looking back from here, I bet Michael Kors must have itched where he can't scratch when he saw the final lineup and sacrificed Michael C to retain Gretchan. Three BROWN gay men and HORRORS! they had already sent all the white people home! What to do?! So Gretchen got to stay. This explains it for me because before I was wondering, they sent Michael C., Mr. Effortless Chic, home and chose hippy dippy culture vulture clothes? They chose sage and beige? hopsacking over silk? but lined up on the stage like that, Michael, Mondo and Andy must have made Mr. Swimsuit design squeal inside like a little pig who sees the shadow of the ax.

But the last straw . . . when Mondo and Andy came back from their two weeks home with their lines, worst nightmare. Both announce they were inspired by their heritage, that each of their lines came from their heart and soul. Beautiful clothes. Exciting fabric, design. As Mondo said, he touched every piece -- the head gear, the bags, the outrageous WOW factor clothes. Andy's structural work, his fabric choice was flowey with an edge. One never knows how Andy sewed mere fabric to do what it does under his fingers. To me he is like Rumpunzel without the magical help, creating unimaginable beautiful garments. The judge's reaction? "orientalize" "Mexican/Chinese" as if we're indiscernible from each other, as if it were a bad thing? Doesn't it sound like Kors has "border issues"?

So Gretchen whom I referred to as culture vulture leaves with the $100,000 which is appropriate in its own way. Mondo and Andy already said their designs came from their heart. And they left with their hearts intact. Gretchen I am convinced came for the cash and the title, looking to the left and right to snatch a bit of this and that and finally with the help of Kors and Garcia, was finally able to snatch the title. She called her line "Walking through Thunder" (GAD! New Agey culture vulture to the max) and looked to her idea of tribal designs, deserted her original style which worked in the beginning, the clean simple lines and voila! She wins. Winning was her one goal, so I guess it had its own symmetry, dissatisfying as the evening turned out to be.

Kors argued until his blood vessel popped out of his head that Gretchen was the future. But the blog reaction that next day certainly says differently. She may be "in" last night but it seems the woman may already be out.

MARSHMALLOW!!

Kors and Garcia, you may have protected the borders of the fashion elite Thursday Night.

But Mondo, Andy and Michael C. had already stormed the walls and they have already secured a place inside. Your time has passed!

My evil twin is finally finished ranting about this tv show. I will find other guilty pastimes and go back to keeping them my secret.

Second Step: WRITE

It's been days since I began to balance my Facebook use and return to blogging. I a staying away from Facebook until I have blogged to my heart's content.

This is October 29, just a few days away from Election Day. In Oregon, we mail in our votes. Today is the last day to mail in because postmarks do not count. This is the first year that I'm going to election center. As a volunteer for Basic Rights of Oregon, we did phone banks for Governor Kitzhauber I like him. He's the governor known to have actively pushed the salmon plan before leaving office. I talked with my friend Bob Tom the other day. I didn't realize how the governor designed his plan. First step, he brought together the tribes and other stakeholders. That is the group who worked together to design the plan.

Governor Kitzhauber runs against Chris DUDley, one of the "nouveau Republican crazy people." No shame. No boundaries. I suppose on a national level they are called the Tea Party, with three second bytes which may sound populist -- "the education candidate," "for the working people" but they stand for the extreme opposite -- anti-government, profit based, wild reactionary unchecked self-interest and greed.

Then we have the usual measures, one by Oregon's Kevin Mannix trying to sneak his agenda in -- profit for the prison industry at the expense of schools.

It's good to be back!

And in California where our Winnemem family live they are voting on a very important race. Congressman Herger (25 year incumbent) is finally being challenged by a candidate within Shasta Lake (Herger's town) a lawyer named John (?) Reed. If he defeats Herger, he defeats THE block keeping the Winnemem from restoration of their tribal status. The State Legislature have already passed the joint resolution agreeing that the tribe should be restored. All that needs to happen is for the Congressman of their area to champion them. My opinion is that Herger must hate the Winnemem. He not only refuses to carry the bill onto the floor but he threatens that he will stop any movement by Boxer or Feinstein should they be moved to sponsor the bill in the Senate.

Tonight was Colin's ballot party at our house. Colin is the new Eugene staff of APANO, an Asian Pacific Network for social justice. Not many people came. But there is an idea that those who are supposed to come are who show up. Tonight made a believer out of me.

One of the people who came was Rita, Colin's mother. She is Chamorro of the Marianas Islands, one of the peoples whom Magellan encountered. You remember the Mariana Islands. I think that was his last trip. They call the area she her ancestors are from Guam, the last US territory. We talked about everything. She is concerned about immigration, about invisibility of Asian Pacific Island peoples in this country. She is very concerned with the political climate. Somewhere in our conversation Rita mentioned she's going to New Zealand, two thumbs up and excited. She's going with her friend who is Maori, living here in the States. That led to our telling her about our trip to New Zealand and since there was some time before others came, showed her the film Will made of the Winnemem trip to New Zealand http://vimeo.com/14870939.

She and Colin were quite moved by the story. By the end of the evening, Rita and Colin are now part of Winnemem Support Group of Oregon and maybe going to ceremony. The Pacific Island people are the most recently colonized. The ancestral memories are still fresh. The spirit still burns bright in the parent's and the youth, three and four generations since conquest.

I am sorry that more people did not come to the ballot party, but as for the beginning of a new friendship, I feel this is a very special day. Rita is the first person I've met in the API community who I can talk without editing myself, and more than that, can listen to to get more insights on this system we live within but do not belong to.

AHA moment, First Step

This morning, typing away and reading FACEBOOK, I realized the true reason I have not blogged. Facebook is sucking my brains out! Facebook, at the very least is eating up my time. After some intervention, I shall return to Outside the Belly.

Apologetically, Misa

October 15, BLOG ACTION DAY

My friend Marc Dadigan just blogged. Today is Blog Action Day. I am printing his piece today because it moved me and expresses what I believe is the most important
action to take today:

“Why don’t they understand what keeps the rivers clean?”

The Shasta Dam, 600 feet tall, destroyed the McCloud salmon runs when it was built during World War II

“Why don’t they understand what keeps the rivers clean?”

Caleen, the spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu, asked me this last night as she drove us back to her village outside Redding.

We were returning from Sacramento where NOAA had held a public meeting to solicit input on its salmon restoration plan for California’s Central Valley. Only about 15 people attended, and Caleen and Mark, her husband and the tribe’s headman, were the only tribal people there.

The Winnemem spoke, in part, to try to build support for their unorthodox plan to return salmon to their river, the McCloud, by importing eggs from New Zealand’s Rakaia River salmon.

But the meeting was a frustrating experience for Caleen. NOAA’s lead coordinator for the project, Brian, showed graphs that depicted how the Pacific salmon populations had precipitously plunged over the past 50 years. Of the 18 historical wild salmon populations that once existed, only three remain.

“These are the patterns,” he said of the graph, “that are consistent with species that eventually go extinct.”

He said this matter-of-factly, and Caleen clenched her jaw and her eyes started to glisten.

When Caleen saw those graphs, she didn’t just see numbers. She saw her relatives dying. In the tribe’s genesis story, it was salmon that gave the Winnemem, mute and helpless at their birth, the ability to speak.

Brian continued to talk about NOAA’s plans to conduct cost-benefit analyses to validate the economic value of saving the salmon, and he also spoke about collaborating with power companies, water districts and other stakeholders. It was only so long before Caleen had to interject.

“How long do you think the salmon are going to wait for you?” she asked him, her voice shaking. “You’ve only got three salmon runs left, and people are dragging their feet. The creator put the salmon in the rivers for a reason.”

Caleen expected NOAA to have more power to force this plan into action and was disheartened it didn’t.

Later during the drive home, Mark was sleeping in the backseat, and Caleen posed her question to me, wondering why no one valued salmon’s vital role in upturning rocks, keeping the river clean and, after it dies, seeping back into the soil as nutrients.

“To be honest,” I told her. “Before I met the Winnemem, I just figured a river was clean if we didn’t dump any crap into it.”

Every St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River is dyed green with unknown chemicals

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a city with a river that was reversed to send sewage toward St. Louis. Chicago also used to dye the river green every St. Patrick’s Day with fluorescein, a chemical that’s been documented to cause many health ailments including sudden death from anaphylactic shock. Today, the city uses a secret formula it claims is safe.

The Winnemem revere the water and see it as living. They were, in their creation story, born from its womb, a bubbling spring on Mt. Shasta.

On the other hand, I come from a community that shows a lot of disrespect towards its water, a disrespect that stems from ignorance.

In the schools I attended, I learned next to nothing about hydrology, the importance of a clean river to the local ecosystem or even, as Caleen knows so inherently, what a clean river is supposed to resemble.

Before I moved to the West Coast, subconsciously the idea of a clean river was nearly a foreign concept to me. All the rivers I’d known were dirty, polluted and not much different, in my mind, than a roadway, a mode of transportation that could be painted green like we might paint a billboard.

Caleen has wondered why kids aren’t taught how many rivers in their state are polluted or how many dams there are. And it’s an intriguing question. I wonder how this lack of education plays a part in our widespread abuse of water, especially in California.

There is probably no resource more valuable and paradoxically treated and used with such recklessness. We’ve sucked up underground aquifers, flooded sacred lands with dams and reduced powerful rivers to a trickle. And we are all ignorant about the damage we’re causing not only to ecosystems, but to the supply of freshwater we need to survive.

Today, Oct. 15 is Blog Action Day, and bloggers across the world are blogging about water. My hope for today, and every day after, is for all of us to spend some time educating ourselves about our local waterways. Learn about the rivers or lakes in your community. Are there dams on that river? Are the flows anywhere close to where they’re supposed to be naturally? Have invasive species disrupted the river’s ecology?

These are questions that we should all have the answers to, and yet almost nothing has been invested in teaching us about water.

By 2025, the U.N. estimates that two-thirds of the world will be facing water scarcity, and it would be dangerous to assume this won’t apply to anyone in the United States.

So take some time today to learn about your water. It’s not only the Winnemem’s womb, but the world’s.

We can no longer afford to be so ignorant about something so precious.

On Oct. 11, Caleen gave a speech at the University of Oregon’s Many Nations Longhouse about the importance of salmon, water and water education.

Listen to it here.
October 15th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | One comment

"Outside the Belly"

I haven't had the time to sit down and blog. Since my last blog we have gone through two strong ceremonies, and in between time we've had friends and family come to stay awhile. Since my last blog, I retired from one more longtime commitment -- the Rites of Passage Summer Academy for Pan Asian American students at Lane Community College -- and since my last blog we've demolished the kitchen which I found spreads throughout the whole house. No area is left untouched. I am also doing the nitty gritty paperwork involving a severely damaged car door of the Prius. I backed out without closing it. I am dealing with all my teeth and vision work and filling out all the paper I need to in order to transition from insurance to medicare through my retirement system. So I have not had time to introspect, to write. For me, I need a settled place, and settled time to write, and that is not going to happen until October.

But to those who follow "from Outside the Belly" I need to say that outside the belly has been a good place to be these two months! Out of the belly with the Winnemem people in ceremony! A short summary follows.

*Balas Chonas, or Coming of Age Ceremony, despite all the potential and risky problems, carried on smoothly. Someone in the National Forest System was doing their job and sent staff to monitor the river for safety. While Forest Supervisor Sharon Heywood turned her back and did nothing and while the NRA Ranger of the Shasta Forest Kristi Cottini continued to break ties made over decades with the Winnemem Tribe insisting that all past agreements regarding their freedom of religion disappeared with the death of the past chief, Florence Jones, and that there no longer was any ties between the Winnemem Tribe and the Forest Service, some other entity of the National Forests decided it would be foolhardy to sit by and allow racist recreational boaters and drunks run over the Winnemem youth as they swam over to join their friends and families on the fourth day of the ceremony. And they watched the river, talked with the leaders and in the end shut down the river for safe crossing.

Further, the young women and young men of the tribe really stepped up and took leadership roles. Babers who had the first Balas Chonas in 2006 with confidence and heart taught all she had learned of the traditional knowledge to the young initiates taking an important place alongside the elders. In fact, because she was the first to go through puberty ceremony since the 1920's, she knew more than her aunts' generation. Puberty ceremony was not allowed during their time. The Hoopa tribe's Kayla Brown was right there assisting and lifting spirits. The two of them, Kayla and Babers (Marine) forged the strong ties between their two families and two tribes for the next generation. The young men on both sides of the rivers fulfilled their roles as protectors and keepers of the Sacred Fire. A new team of cooks not only assisted the treasured chef of the Winnemem, RT, but they brought experience, and a strong commitment to keep coming back. The women followed the young women's example to strengthen their bonds of relationship. As the Chief said, a tribe is only as strong as their women's bond with one another.

This bond was made even stronger because all the women who could at that time bought their basket hats, and went together with the young initiates to Colchima Salwal, a sacred spring, to do ceremony, washing their hats in the waterfall which tumbled down past sugar pines and yew and thanking the waters there for the hats and making a commitment to the water, to the salmon, to the sacred places. These hats, Caleen says, will help us think better, think right. These hats, like the acorn, will bind us to these sacred lands and to the ancestors' responsibilities to nur, to mem, to all that is sacred.

There were so many allies at the Coming of Age Ceremony. Environmental Justice for Water, Winnemem Support and AIM West -- from Portland to L.A. The circle grew larger and stronger.

And when the protectors, the assistants, the fire tender and the two young women -- Jessica and Winona -- swam across the river, there was a large and emotional crowd who met them. Each young adult who was part of ceremony and swam across to join the supporters were smoked up as each one came out of the river, new, and ready to join the adult circle. I looked at them. All of them Winnemem, and most of all, all of them from the Village. I remembered when I started coming to ceremony. The fire tenders traveled to be there. And there is just a difference now that the center, the core of the tribe live together. They are stronger. It is as Granny always dreamed of. And she is there so strong in spirit with her family. This is not to trivialize the travelers because those who travel all have large commitments and even though they live far from the village, they do Winnemem work and pray and keep that Fire alive wherever they live. The heart of the tribe, the Village, is very strong, though, the main fire which has been burning for over a year, the main village where we all call Home, the leadership.

I will come back to blog sometime soon. I will blog about both ceremonies. I just want to thank you for all your support with postcards to Barb Boxer. She did respond. It just did not do any good with Krisi Cottini. And for those of you who still want to support Winnemem, so much work is happening and your support is appreciated. The tribe is doing whatever is necessary to bring the salmon home. Steps are being made. New Zealand is ready and willing. Mark and Caleen are speaking with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ) and NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) (on the salmon) as well as the DFG (Dept. of Fish and Game in CA. The lawsuit is still happening.

The United Nations Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples is being discussed for ratification. Please send your letters and ask your organizations and tribes to write or email supporting the US adoption IN FULL the UNDRIP WITHOUT ANY RESTRICTIONS OR LIMITATION OF THE ARTICLES to S/SR Global Intergovernmental Affairs, US Department of State, 2201 C Street N.W., Suite 1317, Washington D.C. 20520. Or email, declaration@state.gov

When our Chief went to the meeting regarding the UNDRIP joining representatives of federally recognized tribes (although not invited since she was chief of an unrecognized tribe -- like 300,000 tribal people of 90 percent of the tribes are in California -- this time she was allowed to speak anyway. She also was allowed to speak the second day to the Non Governmental Organizations assembled (NGO's). She even was able to talk with Obama's person, Cherokee. All of this is first time. She has asked for them to come to California and call all the tribes who were de-recognized in the 1980's together and listen.

The people assembled at the UNDRIP were complaining about the acronym and some talked about the name being changed. The Chief spoke up that UNDRIP might be the perfect name and talked about water as a central issue for indigenous nations as well as the strength of water, one drip at a time cutting through mountains, forming the land, providing a home to the nur, giving life to all beings -- one drip at a time.

The Winnemem are out of the belly people, unfazed and undigested by what the "Monster" offers -- profit and paper and the power to destroy all of life -- and watching from the outside the vulnerable belly, still following the sacred -- the waters, the salmon, the great mountains and ancestral spirits -- as all their ancestors before them did. The drip of water joining others is the image I carry with me during these difficult almost daunting times. United (UN) we can carry on and with such leadership as shown by Winnemem and side by side with the leaders among the young adults coming up after them, and with the support of the leaders of past generations who still surround them. Into the future, we shall always carry on.