SecondMoonAtlantis

AS LAKOTA MEDICINE MAN JOHN STANDSYEAR SAYS :

ONLY CREATOR OWNS THIS LAND,

WE ARE ONLY LANDLORDS ...

Do not tell me you have Indian blood, that you are one quarter ... Don't tell me one of your grandparents was an Indian, or hand me a piece of paper from a corrupt government, with colonized laws and rules about who is and who isn't an American Indian !!! This I have dealt with many times on here, Insulted, because I have no paper ... Stop it ! That's how our Ancestors kept records, their stories ...

Come to me with straight eyes, and say proudly that you are an Indian ... No one else in America needs paperwork to prove what race they are, only the rightful owners of this land ...

Come to me and show me who you are !!!

Your blood, relatives or a piece of paper does not make you an Indian. You must be willing to live with honesty, integrity, courage, respect, and always remain unselfish towards your neighbors ... For these are the things, that makes you an Indian ...

By Dee Nighthawk Robinson ... ✊🏼❤️

[T]he Broadback Forest has never been logged or known the incursion of roads. The forest floor is coated in moss, with scarves of lichen draped over tree branches. The Broadback River, full of fish, bends through the forest as it jogs toward Rupert Bay, at the south end of James Bay. The forest is a sanctuary for wildlife such as migratory songbirds and at-risk woodland caribou, and it provides sustenance and meaning for the Cree. “In the Cree identity when you say Cree you say Eeyou. And then when you speak about the Cree territory you say Eeyou Istchee,” says Gull […].  But the Cree say logging could expand into the southern portion of the Broadback forest this year [2020], under a five-year forestry plan that proposes a harvest of six million cubic metres of wood in Waswanipi territory

To reach the Cree community of Waswanipi, […] you drive north from Montreal for eight hours on a trip […] “not for the faint-hearted,” especially in winter. You can’t miss Waswanipi; you’ll cross a long green bridge over the Waswanipi River and the community of 1,700 will be on your right, ringed by the boreal forest and further away, like the expanding ripples from a skimmed stone, by logging cut blocks. In Cree, Waswanipi means ‘light on the water,’ a reminder of the days when torches were lit with pine tar and sturgeon several metres long were […] caught at the river’s dark mouth. […] Whapmagoostui [is] on the Great Whale River at the shore of Hudson Bay. Great Whale, as the town is often called, is the most northern community in James Bay Cree territory, accessible only by boat or plane. Waswanipi, more than 600 kilometres away as the crow flies, is the most southern […]. In between the two communities […] lies a dense forest of mature spruce and pine called the Broadback. […]

Like many Cree, most of Gull’s diet consists of country foods […]. In Chibougamau, she’s been out picking wild blueberries. She brews medicinal tea from Labrador tea bushes, often found in swamps and bogs, and from pink fireweed plants. […]

For almost 20 years, the Cree have been working to protect the primary forest in the Broadback watershed from logging and other development such as mining and road-building. The Broadback — with its carbon cache and abundant wildlife — is one of the few remaining areas on Waswanipi Cree territory untouched by industry. Ninety per cent of the territory has been impacted by industrial development, Gull says, and close to 30,000 kilometres of forestry roads criss-cross through her homeland. […] “The Broadback is a big part of that connectivity because it spans right across the territory,” Gull says.

The Broadback Forest is one of the few remaining large tracts of intact boreal forest left in Quebec. It stretches over more than 1.3 million hectares, an area considerably larger than Cape Breton Island.

The Cree call the Broadback watershed Misigamish, meaning a large body of water. Almost two decades ago, following extensive consultations, they developed a Broadback Watershed Conservation Plan to protect key areas for culture, carbon storage, clean water and biodiversity. […] But the Broadback’s remaining rare primary forest, which includes white birch and trembling aspen, is open to industrial development such as logging and mining. Among other values, the unprotected Broadback Forest connects the Assinica and Nottaway caribou herds […]..

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*signal boost for indigenous solidarity #nodapl  see more details on how to help here

support an Indigenous photographer here, working hard to document the Great Sioux Nation’s protests in North Dakota. 

Photo #2: Ula and Tim Tyler. This Eastern Shoshone couple have been married for 54 years and experienced reservation life before there was electricity or running water.

Photo #4: Ishkoten Dougi. Ishkoten is an artist from the Isleta Pueblo Indian Reservation in New Mexico. He is portrayed in his studio, surrounded by his artwork that represents some of the atrocities inflicted on Native Americans.

Photo #5: Evereta and her Mustang. When Evereta Thinn, 30, entered college as the only Native American in her English 101 class, it was at that moment she realized that she needed to speak up and not be that stereotypical “shy” Indian who keeps to herself. She works as an administrator at the school district on the Navajo Nation and aspires to start a language and cultural immersion school for the Diné (Navajo) people.

Photo #8: Fast Eddie (left), a pow wow dancer, is pictured with social media celebrity, Two Braids.

Photo #10:   Jarrod after the rodeo. Jarrod Ferris, Eastern Shoshone and Arapaho from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, has been bull riding since age 6. He hopes to one day win the title as world champion so that he can buy his mom a new house.

*Photo #13: Crisosto Apache, from the Mescalero Apache tribe of New Mexico, is an activist for LGBT rights in the Native community. He explains that there is no word for “gay” in any Native American language, but is referred to as being “two spirited.”