Daily Kos

Yes, we voted.  Last Tuesday, October 30.  We were lucky enough to be able to go down to the county courthouse in the morning, wait in a (mercifully short) line, provide our identifying information and sign in, and then go vote.  And this time, we actually had the satisfaction of watching a properly-functioning ballot-tabulating machine do its job and record our votes.  

Not everyone is so lucky.  In fact, we weren't, in either this year's primary or the 2010 midterms, when we "voted" at our local precinct.  I put the word "voted" in quotation marks for a reason:  To this day, neither of us has any confidence that out votes were counted in those races - in part due to the utter incompetence of the poll workers, and in part due to the fact that the machines did not seem to work properly, and did not show an affirmative recording of our votes.

But around the country, GOTV is little more than an ironic slogan for too many voters who make up the Democratic Party base.  GOP efforts to suppress Democratic votes are rampant (and have been for well over a decade).  With three days left, we can expect a drastic acceleration of such efforts by Tuesday.  

And there are more mundane obstacles to GOTV efforts.  We were fortunate enough to be able to take the time to vote in the middle of a weekday morning, when most people have to be at work - hence the short lines and speedy process.  People who aren't self-employed generally don't have that option.  Hell, a lot of them can't even get time off during the hours the polls are open at all.  

Elders, and those with illnesses and/or disabilities (or who are caregivers to people with illnesses or disabilities) often have mobility issues that make it difficult to get to a polling place.  People living in economically depressed areas - and especially so in communities of color - often have fewer polling places (which may be open fewer days and hours, too), and may lack transportation options to get there.  And in places like many parts of Indian Country, not only have Republican officials done their best to deprive Indians of the polling options enjoyed by non-Indian populations, but they may face drives of 100 miles or more each way, with no public transit available and no money for gas.

So let me make a special plea:  For those of you who want another GOTV option besides those presented here, look around your area.  Do you have economically depressed communities? Rural or otherwise isolated populations?  Large populations of seniors or people with disabilities who will need help getting to the polls?  One or more communities of color that have been systematically isolated?  Do you live near an Indian reservation that could use help getting voters to the polls on Tuesday?

If so, and if you have the time and resources on Tuesday, please consider making driving Democrats in underserved areas to the polls a part of your GOTV efforts.  

More - many more - options over the jump:

I know our East Coast Kossacks are still reeling from Sandy.  I know the election is less than a week away.  I know people's minds, hearts, and wallets are focused elsewhere.  But on this, the first day of Native American Heritage Month 2012, I need to register a plea to remember our brothers and sisters in South Dakota.  

Because much of what the country is now seeing in the aftermath of Sandy?  That's every winter at Rosebud, Pine Ridge, and Cheyenne River (and too many other parts of Indian Country).  As I've had to note elsewhere, too many times, we are the Invisible People, the Forgotten Ones. And every winter, people die - from a simple lack of basic heat.

Too often, we don't know until it's too late.

Thanks to navajo's tireless efforts over the last three winters, for the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations, that is no longer the case.  So as we enter the fourth winter of her propane drive project to save the lives of Lakota elders and families, I'd like people to take a moment to stop and read.  Even if you're preoccupied with GOTV efforts, digging out from Sandy's damage, or currently placing your contributions elsewhere, please read, and file away this information for future use.  There may come a day this winter when your dollars may be the one thing that saves a person's life.

I know.  It's that time of year.

My ghosts aren't the kind dressed in an old cotton sheet, ringing the doorbell and holding a bag already half-filled with future cavities.

They aren't the wispy, ephemeral kind either - the Jacob Marleys made of smoke and fog.

They aren't even the kind that rattle chains and throw crockery.

But this time of year, I'm always haunted.  And never more so than on this day.

It was nineteen years ago this afternoon that Mouse, my big sister, my protector, Butterfly Woman walked on with the aid of a shotgun, wielded by a stranger, and left me behind.

Some years I handle this date better than others.

This is not one of the "better" ones.

The desert is not an easy place; every bit and breath of life here is hard-fought, hard-won.

And yet, it holds a stark and terrible beauty.  

We live in the desert.  We also live in - or, rather, just outside - an "arts colony" full of wealthy transplants who presume to speak for this place and its people, and who believe they know these high desert lands.  They don't.

But here at Daily Kos, there is a Kossack who does know these lands - perhaps because he's truly lived in them, in ways that people who return every night to luxurious homes will never comprehend.  I'm talking about desertguy.  And he is perhaps the best fine-arts photographer of desert life that I've ever encountered.

Wings and I thought we were going to have the opportunity to meet desertguy - otherwise known as Brian - today, as he pursued a temporary job opportunity in our area.  

But the harshness of life in our country's economic desert intervened.  And instead, Brian is fighting a double lightning strike:  a life-threatening health condition coupled with the loss of the money used for travel arrangements for his planned trip.

And now, opportunities have evaporated like the last runoff on a red-rock mesa in June.

Brian needs help, but he doesn't want what our society so derisively terms "charity" (what I think of as "being our brother's/sister's keeper").  He's been fighting financial battles for a long time now, and in the face of odds that would have broken many people, he's managed to maintain his ability to produce his art.  Stunning, haunting, soul-stirring art.  Images of life surviving and thriving against the desert's brutal odds.  All he needs is to be able to sell it.

Let's make it rain.

This is going to be quick, dirty, and direct.

I've written at considerable length about how severe the food shortages are generally in our Native communities.  About how many too reservations are food deserts (as, of course, they were originally intended to be).  About how lack of access to nutritious food creates disproportionately deadly impacts on our peoples' health.  About how such shortages compound the equally deadly effects of unimaginable financial poverty and destitution in places like the Dakotas.  I'm not going to rehash all that here; if you want a new appreciation for how blessed your own situation is, just read the information available via some of those links.

Today, I'm simply going to point out that last year, we were afforded an opportunity, by a warrior woman from the Cheyenne River Reservation, to do something about this.  Led by betson08, countless Kossacks stepped up, and helped Georgia Little Shield get the Okiciyap Food Pantry off the ground.  And last winter, people at Cheyenne River who might have starved were able to eat.

Then earlier this year, Georgia herself walked on.  Her sister, Cindy Taylor, stepped up and into the prints of Georgia's moccasins.  Helped again by betson08 (who is also responsible for me writing this diary), and in turn by innumerable other Kossacks who have been buttressing Okiciyap's efforts for months now, Cindy has kept the food pantry open and keeping Cheyenne River's elders, children and families fed.

Across the country, food banks are reporting shortages that are significantly reducing their ability to serve their clients properly.  There are a host of reasons for this, but the most immediate cause is the fact that the federal government is buying significantly less surplus food - the source of much of the food that gets distributed to food banks across the United States.

In 2010, the USDA purchased nearly 500 million pounds of surplus food for such redistribution; in 2011, it bought 421 million pounds (a reduction, true, but a relatively small one).  In 2012, however, USDA purchases have dropped to only 129 million pounds of food - roughly a quarter of what the federal government bought for food banks just two years ago.  

Nowhere is the need more critical than in Indian Country.  And yet, "Indian Country" isn't even on the radar in most states.

Ever feel like your whole life is underwater?

I've felt that way all too often.  And too many other Kossacks know all too well what that feeling is like.

But what happens when you're underwater not just figuratively, but also literally?  When plumbing problems flood rooms in your home, and financial problems swamp your ability to fix them?

That's how life has been for almost a month now for Kossack ramara.  I know a little bit about unpleasant living situations.  This is not merely unpleasant:  It has the potential to endanger her health.  And it really won't take a whole lot to fix it - but even the current estimate of $500 is out of reach for her right now.

I'd like to change that.

If you've been reading First Nations News and Views (a labor of love of incredible depth and breadth by navajo and Meteor Blades), then you already know the backstory:  The various Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota nations, collectively known as Oceti Sakowin, or the Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation, have a once-in-several-lifetimes chance to recover some of their most sacred lands.  

Pe'Sla.  The heart of everything that is.

A part of the Black Hills, Pe'Sla includes a 2,000-acre parcel that is currently "owned" by a non-Indian family named Reynolds.  I put the word "owned" in quotation marks because the Black Hills belong, under the Treaty of Fort Laramie, to the Oceti Sakowin, but, as usual, the lands were long since stolen by the government and outsiders.  [Meteor Blades and navajo covered this particular episode of shameful behavior at some length here.] A few weeks ago, the Reynolds family announced its intent to put the parcel up for auction and sale to the highest bidder.

A door opening to retrieving stolen sacred lands . . . or one slamming shut forever on any hope of recovery?

The Oceti Sakowin are working collectively to try to ensure that the door remains open long enough for the people to recover what is theirs - but time is short.  For a time, it appeared that all hope was lost, but the door remains wedged open.  We can help - but we have less than a week.

Details below the jump.

Just over a year ago, in July, 2011, the National Wildlife Federation issued a report, largely ignored by most of the rest of the country.  Even I didn't know about it at the time of release; like many other people, I was consumed with the immediate danger posed by the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and my focus was directed toward fighting that threat.

That was a mistake on my part - and on the part of every other environmental activist who didn't pay attention, but especially for those of us who belong to indigenous cultures.

Called FACING THE STORM:  Indian Tribes, Climate-Induced Weather Extremes, and the Future for Indian Country, the report is actually fairly brief:  a mere 28 pages, including covers and graphics.  But it packs a hell of a punch, and it complements a whole body of work being done by tribes and allied partners in recent years that goes too often unknown, unremarked, and unheeded.

One thing FACING THE STORM does really well - exceptionally so, considering that it's published by a non-Indian organization - is to refrain from telling Indians what they "must do," instead urging the rest of our society to listen to and heed the millennia worth of wisdom of our ancestors and elders.  It also places the deadly threats posed by climate change to the continent's indigenous peoples and lifeways squarely within the context of our nation's tortured and torturous treatment of tribal sovereignty issues.  And that's a topic that needs to be pursued, but it's far too complex for this diary.  Also, please note that while I'm painfully aware of this year's terrible heatwaves, drought, and storms that have affected much of the country as a whole, that is also beyond the scope of this diary.  Many other diaries in this week's series have addressed those issues, and addressed them well.  My focus today - in now way comprehensive; merely the briefest of snapshots - is on the myriad threats, direct and indirect, that climate change poses to Indian Country specifically, and to our peoples' cultural and physical survival.

Today's always a tough day for me.  It's the birthday of the elder of my two late sisters.  "Kaye."

She's been on my mind a lot lately, for a lot of reasons.  

I've written about her before.  If you read either of those diaries, you already know that she was murdered at the age of 43.  We're one year shy of the 20-year mark, as a matter of fact.

The mark of a permanent void in my life.  And the mark of the point at which our family began finally, irrevocably, to disintegrate.  Oh, her death wasn't the cause of that disintegration; that was a lifetime in the making, for all of us.  It was merely the point at which the domino, long balanced precariously on edge, finally tipped over.

But today, I don't want to think about how she died, or the subsequent fallout.

I simply want to remember her for a bit.

I've been getting flooded with requests for info, so this is just a quick update on Regina's situation as of the middle of the night.  It's good news!

Quick note:  I will have to hop offline this morning, so I won't be around to tend comments for very long.  However, I'm going to send Regina the link to this diary, so this would be a good place to leave your well-wishes, good thoughts, prayers, blessings, etc. for her - and for her husband, who has been to hell and back with her on this.

Details below:

I'm addressing this plea to Kossacks in the Pacific Northwest, particularly.  However, anyone who can offer concrete referrals, please do so.  This is urgent.

As many of you know, our beloved Regina in a Sears Kit House has been battling severe health issues for some time now.  Things have worsened recently - dangerously so - as Sara R has noted in her recent quilt diaries on Regina's behalf.  I've just gotten off the phone with Regina, and she has asked me to post this on her behalf so that we can try to get her the real medical care she so desperately needs.

Regina has borreliosis (incorrectly termed "Lyme disease").  She has dealt with this illness for a long time now, along with an array of autoimmune diseases.  I know a little something about how difficult this has been for her, having my own firsthand, long-term experience with multiple autoimmune disease with no resolution in sight.

I also know more than a little about the dynamics underlying these illnesses.  We had a lengthy conversation about some of the driving factors underlying her condition, and we know the sort of medical care she needs.  

She's not getting it.

More background below the jump:

If you are/have been in the path of today's storms, please drop a comment below to let us know you're okay - or whether you need anything.

Please note:  Please go to weatherdude's diary for status updates on actual weather and other important info.  This diary is purely for checking in and letting concerned folks know you're all right.  [Yeah, yeah - "concerned folks" also = me, since there are several Kossacks whom I dearly love who are in PA, NY, New England, and other affected areas.]

This is from last year, but it's roughly what things look like here right now:

No worries about us in this area.  Rain, thunder, a little lightning, occasional winds - all normal, and very welcome, at this time of year.  But other folks aren't so lucky, so keep 'em in your thoughts and prayers.

~ Aji