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A somewhat accurate map of the continent of Africa

Chief Thomas Little Shell

“We are a scattered tribe. We weren’t claimed by the whites. We weren’t claimed by the full bloods,” Lavenger said. “They used to call us persons with no souls. Now at least we have an identity.”


The problems began in 1892 when an Indian agent came to the tribe’s home, North Dakota’s Turtle Mountain Reservation. Chief Thomas Little Shell was away in Montana with 112 other families on a hunting trip. In their absence, tribal rolls were cut and a million acres of the tribe’s land was sold for $90,000. When he returned, Little Shell refused to take part in the deal, said Ed Lavenger, an elder with the Little Shell Tribe who lives in Billings. “He was protesting the dropping of so many names from the rolls,” Lavenger said. “It was all or none.”
With no land, the tribe scattered. In 1896, 600 of the landless Indians were captured by soldiers, put into boxcars and dropped off at the Canadian border. That winter, they walked back, living in squalid shacks in “Moccassin Flats” areas outside of towns along the Hi-Line and the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains, Lavenger said. “We are a scattered tribe. We weren’t claimed by the whites. We weren’t claimed by the full bloods,” Lavenger said. “They used to call us persons with no souls. Now at least we have an identity.”

A people without land
Not counting the Little Shell Tribe, Montana has 11 federally recognized tribes and seven reservations. Adjusting to life with the whites was tough enough, Lavenger said, but at least the other tribes in the state had their own land. Lavenger and his five siblings, including Gloria Williams, of Billings, grew up in the 1940s and 50s near Chinook in a 12-foot by 15-foot tarpaper shack. Lavenger’s father found seasonal work on cattle ranches. This meant the children were pulled from school in April and didn’t return until after the hoar frost. “We just traveled from place to place, living in shacks and tents,” Williams said. “It was really tough. I can remember going to school and having the kids tease me because I was Indian. If they brushed against me or something, they’d say ‘watch out now, you’re going to get fleas.’ They never trusted the Indians.” Families in the tribe continued to scatter. Divided, the tribe’s language and culture began to be conquered. But the tribe held on, Lavenger said. Tribal Chairman Joe Dussome held the tribe together for four decades. Members continued to hope that they would regain their status as a tribe. “We used to hold basket socials, dances and bingo games to raise money for (Dussome) to go to Washington to try and get to see somebody to help us with our cause,” Williams said. Other tribal leaders continued to fight for recognition, notably former Chairman John Gilbert. Petitions were filed. Lineages were traced. The tribe had to prove there was continuity over its 109 years without land. Federal officials kept postponing the decision. Burdened with a legacy of racism and a lack of jobs, the Little Shell struggled to find access to health care and higher education, Williams said. “I don’t have teeth,” said Williams, 59. “I couldn’t afford to get teeth. These other tribes get teeth, eyeglasses, medication, housing, all of that, and we get nothing.” The Crow Tribe made it a bit easier by donating medical treatment to the Little Shell, said Diana Grantham, of Billings. “The local tribes here have been wonderful. In fact we’ve been receiving health benefits at Crow Agency,” Grantham said. “If it weren’t for the Crow extending their hand, we would have had real problems,” Lavenger said. Williams said she was stunned when she learned that the government gave preliminary approval Friday for recognition of the Little Shell. “Thanks be to God,” Williams said. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. This is just a godsend. It is a dream come true. I can’t begin to tell you what this means to me. I’ve had so many people pass away waiting for this day. It means that now I can say I am a part of the Little Shell Tribe and my grandchildren can get help with schooling. We can probably get some medical help, too.” Williams said the ruling finally allows her people to rest their feet. “We’re somebody,” Williams said. “We’re not just this body floating around out there.”

Zimmerman said the federal recognition is important, but it is merely a confirmation of something that’s always been there. “I always said we shouldn’t be getting recognized, we should be getting re-recognized,” Zimmerman said. “We were always a tribe.”

DUMONT PART 2

Gabriel Dumont

Gabriel Dumont is best known as the man who led the small Métis military forces during the Northwest Resistance of 1885. He was born in the Red River area in 1837, the son of Isidore Dumont, a Métis hunter, and Louise Laframboise.

Although unable to read or write, Dumont could speak six languages and was highly adept at the essential skills of the plains: horseback riding and marksmanship. These abilities made Dumont a natural leader in the large annual Buffalo hunts that were an important part of Métis culture. At the age of fourteen Dumont received his initiation in plains warfare when he took part in a Métis skirmish with a large group of Sioux at the Grand Coteau of the Missouri River.

By the 1860s, Dumont was the leader of a group of hunters living in the Fort Carlton area. In 1872, he took advantage of the growing traffic on the Carlton trail and opened a ferry across the South Saskatchewan River and a small store upstream from Batoche. In 1873, his position as a leader was formalized when he was elected as president of the short-lived local government created by the Métis living on the south branch of the Saskatchewan.

His leadership role in the South Branch community continued. In 1877 and 1878, Dumont chaired meetings which drew up petitions to the federal government asking for representation on the Territorial Council, farming assistance, schools, land grants, and title to already occupied lands. Dumont was also a member of the delegation which convinced Louis Riel to return to Canada and plead the Métis case to the federal government.

When a provisional government was declared in 1885, Dumont was named "adjutant general of the Métis people." He proved himself an able commander and his tiny army experienced some success against government forces at Duck Lake and Fish Creek. The Canadian militia, however, proved too large and too well equipped for Dumont's army, which collapsed on 12 May 1885 after a four day battle near Batoche.

Dumont avoided capture by escaping to the United States where, in 1886, he accepted an offer to demonstrate his marksmanship by performing in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. After visits to Quebec (where he dictated his memoires in 1889) Dumont returned to his old homestead near Batoche. He lived there quietly until his death in 1906.

http://library2.usask.ca/northwest/background/dumont.htm

फ्रैंक लित्त्लेस गरवे, बुत्ते मोंटाना

Vinyl Killers

Poster for The Melbourne Stencil Festival where I was one of the featured atrists.

I'll have 4 stencils up at this show at the end of the month!

2008 Melbourne Stencil Festival

2008 Melbourne Stencil Festival
Featured artists selected
Written by JD Mittmann
Sunday, 29 June 2008 13:32

Stencil Festival is celebrating its 5th anniversary, presenting Five Continents - Six Artists, an exhibition for which the following artists have been invited:

A1one (Iran - MiddleEast/Asia)

Klingatron (Scotland - Europe)

Daniel Melim (Brasil - South America)

Larry Cyr (USA - North America)

Kudzanai Chiurai (South Africa - Africa)

Ralf Kempken (Australia - Australia/Pacific)

Additionally, the Stencil Festival Group Show will present an ecclectic mix of works by 30 artists from around Australia and overseas. Expect some outstanding works.

"Harvest"

The Goodfoot - June 26th, Portland, OR

Stencil of a photo my buddy Tsvetan Tsenov took in Bulgaria

Darth in Victoria, B.C.

My wife and I saw this guy on a street corner in Victoria. Crazy Canadians

Second Annual Mayday Political Print Poster Art Show, May 2008 - Kismet Gallery, Troy, NY

Capitalism cannot meet the basic needs of the world’s people. Despite record profits for big business, half of the world – nearly 3 billion people – lives on less than $2 a day.

For the super-rich, capitalism is a bonanza. A few hundred of the richest people spend as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion.

Capitalism hits hardest women and the young. Women make up 70% of the 1.3 billion people in absolute poverty. Every second child in the world lives in poverty and 125 million children never attend school.

The environment is degraded by profit-driven capitalism. Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth's land surface are gone and desertification threatens nearly one quarter of the land surface of the globe. Scientists predict that continued global warming is likely to result in a rise in sea levels, leading to more coastal erosion, flooding and greater threats to human health.

Capitalism cannot take society forward. Millions live in abject poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Even the much vaunted ‘economic miracle’ in countries like India and China see the majority of the population left behind and inequalities widening. India has an average wealth of only $6,500 per person. The top 10% in China own 40% of the country’s wealth.

But even in the ‘rich’ West, inequality grows. The US has the widest gap between the rich and the poor of any industrialised nation. The poorest 60 million Americans have average incomes of less than £7 a day. The US and Britain, the first and fourth ‘richest’ countries in the world, are, according to a new report, the “worst places” in the major industrialised countries to be a child.

And all this during the so-called ‘boom’ years for capitalism!

Recessions and slumps will be even more catastrophic for working people. Recent big fluctuations on the financial markets show the world economy is fragile. Major convulsions will wreck the lives of millions of working families.

Under capitalism, wars and violence are endemic. Over 70 armed conflicts were recorded since the end of the Cold War. World military spending reached $1,001 billion in 2005, equivalent to 2.5% of world GDP. The US accounts for almost half of the world total, followed by Britain, France, Japan, China and Russia. Intensified competition between imperialist powers, in their desperate scramble for energy resources, profits, influence and power, will lead to yet more armed conflicts, in which working people and the young will be the main casualties.

OCCUPIED!

Vera Show Opening

Poster for Josh MacPhee's: Paper Politics: An Exhibition of Politically and Socially Engaged Printmaking

Waiting for work

11.5 x 14 on 1 and 3/4 inch concrete form

PREAMBLE TO THE IWW CONSTITUTION


The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

Poster for IVAW event

hysterical america

apathy is for the weak, militancy is the answer

Monday 10/1: Ghost Gallery Presents: Stencil Artist Larry Cyr @ Neumos FREE 9pm

The local art showcase curator Laurie Kearny is hosting an art showing at Neumo’s for the local stencil artist Larry Cyr, whose works are often different media images layered to create new striking political and socially conscious statements. If you don’t get a chance to attend the opening, you can still check out his work when you’re at the venue in the next few weeks.

Opening Show at Neumos

Neumos Show Monday October 1

Mia in Miami on our honeymoon

my wife and hero

Ira Hayes

On January 24, 1955, Hayes was found dead, face down and lying in his own vomit and blood, near an abandoned hut close to his home on the Gila River Indian Reservation. He had been drinking and playing cards with several other men, including his brothers Kenny and Vernon, and another fellow Pima Indian named Henry Setoyant, with whom an argument developed during which the two men scuffled. Shortly afterward, the card game broke up, and all but Hayes and Setoyant left. The coroner concluded that Hayes's death was due to both exposure and alcohol. However, his brother Kenny remained convinced that the death somehow resulted from the scuffle with Setoyant. There was no police investigation, and Setoyant denied any allegations that he scuffled with Hayes after all the players left for the night. Ira Hayes was 32.
Hayes is buried in Section 34 of Arlington National Cemetery. At the funeral, fellow flag-raiser Rene Gagnon said of him: "Let's say he had a little dream in his heart that someday the Indian would be like the white man — be able to walk all over the United States."

Facts About Child Soldiers
Today, as many as 300,000 children under the age of 18 serve in government forces or armed rebel groups. Some are as young as eight years old.

The participation of child soldiers has been reported in 33 on-going or recent armed conflicts in almost every region of the world. View the list of countries where child soldiers are being used.

Child soldiers are used by armed opposition forces, although many are used by government armies.

Children are uniquely vulnerable to military recruitment because of their emotional and physical immaturity. They are easily manipulated and can be drawn into violence that they are too young to resist or understand.

Technological advances in weaponry and the proliferation of small arms have contributed to the increased use of child soldiers. Lightweight automatic weapons are simple to operate, often easily accessible, and can be used by children as easily as adults.

Children are most likely to become child soldiers if they are poor, separated from their families, displaced from their homes, living in a combat zone or have limited access to education. Orphans and refugees are particularly vulnerable to recruitment.

Many children join armed groups because of economic or social pressure, or because children believe that the group will offer food or security. Others are forcibly recruited, "press-ganged" or abducted by armed groups.

Both girls and boys are used as child soldiers. In case studies in El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Uganda, almost a third of the child soldiers were reported to be girls. Girls may be raped, or in some cases, given to military commanders as "wives."

Once recruited, child soldiers may serve as porters or cooks, guards, messengers or spies. Many are pressed into combat, where they may be forced to the front lines or sent into minefields ahead of older troops. Some children have been used for suicide missions.

Children are sometimes forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors. Such practices help ensure that the child is "stigmatized" and unable to return to his or her home community.

Few peace treaties recognize the existence of child soldiers, or make provisions for their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Many former child soldiers do not have access to the educational programs, vocational training, family reunification, or even food and shelter that they need to successfully rejoin civilian society. As a result, many end up on the street, become involved in crime, or are drawn back into armed conflict.

Tower 6. Looking out into the al-Jazirah section of North Ramdi, Ar Ramadi, Iraq