Bless Up Rasta

"The Sage" - Rodolphe Ernst (14 February 1854, Vienna - 1932, Fontenay-aux-Roses) 

“The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

-Toni Morrison

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”

-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rudolf Ernst - also "Rodolphe Ernst” - (14 February 1854, Vienna - 1932, Fontenay-aux-Roses) was an Austro-French genre painter, printmaker and ceramics painter. Having traveled Spain, Morocco, Egypt, and Istanbul, Rodolpho Ernst was widely acclaimed during his lifetime for his accurate depictions of Eastern (Oriental) society, technology, and culture. Ernst was given prodigious opportunity from an early age. For example he was accepted as a guest student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna when he was fifteen. His father - an architect - is credited with encouraging and supporting Ernst to travel and study under different influences and teachers. Heavily influenced from studying art history Ernst travelled to Spain, Morocco, Egypt and Istanbul to study and document what he saw there. From 1885 onward - noticeably changed in his own lifestyle and spirituality - Ernst devoted himself exclusively to paintings with orientialist motifs; especially Islamic scenes, such as the interiors of mosques, or portrayals of everyday life in North Africa, based on photographs and prints as well as his own memories from his travels to the Black ruled world. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The study of the humanities must not be neglected, and the College of Arts and Sciences must be strengthened and encouraged to develop its studies. These are the subjects which contribute most to the understanding and growth of our cultural heritage, and so assist in fulfilling one of the University’s primary aims. These studies, which are concerned with human cultural achievements, human rights, and duties, human freedoms, will enable youth to develop the understanding and judgement necessary to the formulation of a sound philosophy of life, to the making of wise choices, and to understanding what is involved in these choices. These young people face a world beset with the most effectively organized programme of deceptive propaganda and of thinly screened operations ever known; they deserve the best that can be taught by their parents, by religious institutions and by the University, to prepare them for a wise choice among contending ideals […]" - Haile Selassie I , (Dec. 19th, 1961) - Convocation of Haile Selassie I University. [Selected Speeches of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, p. 19 - 27]

"Praying For Victory" - Rodolphe Ernst 

...

The Sioux have never accepted the validity of the US confiscation of Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore is controversial among Native Americans because it is located in the Black Hills . Members of the American Indian Movement led occupations of the monument beginning in 1971. Return of the Black Hills was the major Sioux demand in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee.

Due to a decade of intense protests and occupations by the Sioux, on July 23, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been taken illegally and that remuneration equal to the initial offering price plus interest— nearly $ 106 million—be paid. The Sioux refused the award and continued to demand return of the Black Hills.

The money remained in an interest-bearing account, which by 2010, amounted to more than $ 757 million. The Sioux believe that accepting the money would validate the US theft of their most sacred land. The Sioux Nation’s determination to repatriate the Black Hills attracted renewed media attention in 2011. A segment of the PBS NewsHour titled “For Great Sioux Nation, Black Hills Can’t Be Bought for $ 1.3 Billion” aired on August 24. The reporter described a Sioux reservation as one of the most difficult places in which to live in the United States:

'Few people in the Western Hemisphere have shorter life expectancies. Males, on average, live to just 48 years old, females to 52. Almost half of all people above the age of 40 have diabetes. And the economic realities are even worse. Unemployment rates are consistently above 80 percent.

In Shannon County, inside the Pine Ridge Reservation, half the children live in poverty, and the average income is $ 8,000 a year. But there are funds available , a federal pot now worth more than a billion dollars. That sits here in the U.S. Treasury Department waiting to be collected by nine Sioux tribes. The money stems from a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that set aside $ 105 million to compensate the Sioux for the taking of the Black Hills in 1877, an isolated mountain range rich in minerals that stretched from South Dakota to Wyoming. The only problem: The Sioux never wanted the money because the land was never for sale. That one of the most impoverished communities in the Americas would refuse a billion dollars demonstrates the relevance and significance of the land to the Sioux, not as an economic resource but as a relationship between people and place, a profound feature of the resilience of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.'

...

The relationship of economic development and Indigenous peoples in the United States is not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The collusion of business and government in the theft and exploitation of Indigenous lands and resources is the core element of colonization and forms the basis of US wealth and power.