Native Organ Donation (health)

View of organ donation shifting in Native culture

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) – Jerry Clown knows that asking for help can be difficult when it means asking someone to make a sacrifice on your behalf.

In Clown's case, that sacrifice is the donation of a healthy kidney.

A member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Clown was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease in 2001 while living in Eagle Butte. He has been receiving chemotherapy ever since. The disease, known as Wegener's granulomatosis, also triggered the onset of diabetes and caused his kidneys to fail in 2008.

Clown has been on dialysis for about five years now, and is patiently waiting for a kidney on an Avera transplant list.

Despite his condition, he makes a point of avoiding asking his friends and family members to consider being a donor.

“It's really hard for me to ask someone to be a donor, because it's a big sacrifice that they have to give up,” he said.

It's also difficult for Clown and many other Native Americans suffering from kidney disease to ask for help because in Native American circles, donating an organ is often viewed as not only a physical sacrifice, but a spiritual one as well.

EMPHASIZING EDUCATION

Living organ donation in Native American communities is a current topic of research by Nancy Fahrenwald, an associate professor at South Dakota State University's College of Nursing.

Since 2003, Fahrenwald and a team of researchers, tribal elders and health care professionals have been working to bridge the gap between the decline in Native American health and living organ donation by distributing culturally relevant educational materials.

Fahrenwald's latest research will focus on collecting information from Native American dialysis patients on three reservations in South Dakota and providing educational materials about the process, benefits and risks of living kidney donation. She'll also focus on how to have a conversation about organ donation with family members.

“There are many people on dialysis who could still benefit from a transplant who have never talked to their family about considering being a living donor, or even about the possibility of getting a donor,” Fahrenwald said.

Her research will be funded by a five-year grant awarded to Sanford Research by the National Institute on Minority Health and Disparities. The grant will also bring health care professionals and tribal communities closer together with the establishment of a Collaborative Research Center for American Indian Health in Sioux Falls. Fahrenwald will serve as a principal investigator for the center's research on, culturally targeted education on living kidney donation.

TRADITIONAL BELIEFS VS. CURRENT NEEDS

“Culturally, Native Americans believe that when we leave this life and go onto the next, we need to have everything with us,” said Karla Abbott, nursing professor at Augustana College. “But with the increase in Native American health disparities – kidney disease, obesity, renal disease, and hypertension – we're going to need more organ and tissue donators.”

Abbott is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux, and as a part of Fahrenwald's research team, she has a unique perspective. Abbott has taken special notice of the declining health of her people from the viewpoint of a health care professional and an enrolled tribal member.

More than 112,000 people are on the organ transplant list, and a disproportionate number of those are Native Americans, according to Fahrenwald. Chronic kidney disease is a major health problem in Native American communities, and compared to the county's white population, Native American's are 2.8 times more likely to experience End Stage Renal Disease related to diabetes, according to 2010 U.S. Renal Data.

“Some of this is due to genetics, but a lot of it is change in lifestyle,” Abbott said. “Colonization changed our whole way of life. We were a people that lived by the water. We were very active. But all of those (environmental) changes have really led to our health demise.”

During past research projects, Fahrenwald and her team used traditional storytelling and educational media to present the idea of organ donation to Native American communities in a respectful way. They reached out to native college students with technology-based media and spoke with tribal elders about what kind of messages they wanted to convey.

Fahrenwald consulted traditional healers, who acknowledged that diseases that lead to kidney failure are very real in their communities. The healers concluded that through prayer and ceremony, the spirits of the people who chose to donate or receive an organ could be at rest.

Storytelling was used to encourage Native American people to help each other through the Lakota virtue of generosity. Abbott said that in the old days, one's place in society was not determined by what you owned, but by what you gave away.

“For a successful organ donation, you have to have a good match,” Abbott said. “In order for Native Americans to have successful kidney transplants, you need Native Americans donating organs and getting tested. This isn't just limited to kidneys, but renal disease is our biggest problem bay far.”

These past research projects have helped set up Fahrenwald's new work – talking to dialysis patients to gather their opinions about what needs to be improved in the realm of education and what information they would find useful.

“It takes time to build relationships. I'm not a tribal member, but as a researcher, I need to honor tribal members' time and not conduct research for the sake of research,” Fahrenwald said. “We need to conduct research that makes a difference for the tribe.”

So far it seems that her research has indeed been making a difference. Fahrenwald's previous study with Native American college students resulted in 20 percent of all participants registering as organ donors.

The goal of her research in 2013 will be to bring resources to dialysis centers on reservations that lack adequate patient and family education. Normally patients like Jerry Clown would have to travel to larger cities like Bismarck or Rapid City for that kind of information.

Clown hopes that more education will help people understand the process of being a donor. Until then, he has yet to find a donor match.

“I would really appreciate if a lot of people were donors, because people that are on dialysis, they want to live longer and keep living,” Clown said. “There's hope when someone says, `I would like to get tested, Jerry, what kind of blood type are you?”'

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Information from: Pierre Capital Journal, http://www.capjournal.com

VAWA & Rape of Native Women (news)

Cantor: Rape is less heinous to some women

According to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) rape against Native American women is a less heinous crime that doesn’t deserve protection.

Cantor has been working lately with Vice President Joe Biden on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) after it expired last year. Neither camp publicly let on it was talking to the other until Wednesday, when Cantor said the two are in negotiations.

But Cantor wants to strip from the bill a key protection for Native American women.

VAWA, which has been reauthorized consistently for 18 years with little fanfare, was, for the first time, left to expire in Sept. 2011. The sticking point has been new protections for three particularly vulnerable groups: undocumented immigrants, members of the LGBT community and Native Americans.

The additions are supported by Democrats and opposed by House Republicans, who are calling them politically driven. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill in April with the additional protections, and House Republicans passed their own bill in May that omitted those three provisions. Since then, the issue has gone nowhere.

The rate of sexual assault on Native-American women is more than twice the national average. And according to Amnesty International, 86% of Native American women who are raped are attacked by non-Indians—who are beyond the reach of tribal authorities. As a result, “we have serial rapists on the reservation—that are non-Indian—because they know they can get away with it,” one native American activist told Salon.

So some House Republicans proposed a measure to fix the problem, by allowing tribal courts to try non-Indians in such cases, while still letting the defendants move the case to a federal court if they felt their rights weren’t being protected.

But Cantor—who’s seen as influential with the conservative wing of the House GOP caucus—is blocking the proposal because he doesn’t want to give added jurisdictions to Indian tribes. And he may end up killing the VAWA re-authorization over the dispute.

In other words, for Cantor, limiting the authority of tribal courts is more important than making sure rapists are prosecuted and women are protected from domestic violence. And now that the elections are over, and the GOP received the message that they need to do a better job of appealing to women and minorities, is good to get that clear.

Natives Unite (idle no more)

full story at: http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2013/01/native-people-unite-across-the-continent/
Andre P. Cramblit and Julian Lang, both Karuk Tribal members, beat to the rhythm of Native Self-Determination. Tia Hummingbird Oros Peters of the Zuni Tribe, Executive Director of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, stands far right./Photo courtesy of Mary Jane Risling

By LISA MOREHEAD-NEUNER, TRT Contributing Writer

At any given time during shopping hours, in any given shopping mall in the world, you might be hearing a drum beat these days. Over the sound of teeny tunes, over the sound of ringing cash registers it beckons steadily.

“Oh, yeah,” started the young hairdresser Michelle Sanus, a Cow Creek tribal member, who was at her place of work at the Medford Rogue Valley Mall when the drum began to beat on Sunday, January 5. “My mom was talking about this. She’s a singer and drummer, and she said there was going to be something going on. I forget what she called it…”

Was it “Idle No More?” Yeah, yeah, she thought so.

Ancient Navajo develop in a modern culture (language)

FARMINGTON — "Ya'at eeh," George Werito says, greeting thousands of radio listeners across the Navajo reservation in their native language, Diné.

He has callers on the line, waiting. People want to tell him about road conditions, chapter meetings, and church functions.

If you tell him your bit of news, he will report it, but in a fun way. He throws in trivia, games and that sort of thing.

Werito, a radio personality at KNDN AM radio in Farmington, is considered the Jay Leno of the Navajo Nation, according to some of his listeners.

Access full article below: 

Summer Camp (language)

http://bit.ly/XMIqLK

Tribal language programs nationwide have begun summer program preparations for a range of community language immersion and teacher training opportunities. Among Cultural Survival’s advisor programs, the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project and Euchee (Yuchi) Language Project, will offer multi-week language camps for youth focused on building conversational skills and ceremonial vocabulary to engage students as future community cultural leaders. During Summer 2012 Cultural Survival helped sponsor daily youth classes at the Euchee House in Sapulpa, OK, and the first annual Euchee Language Bowl competition. On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Cultural Survival’s Endangered Languages program co-sponsored the Summer Turtle Camp for three dozen students who participated in traditional tribal fishing, clambake, and other food ways, along with crafts, and daily language lessons including songs, prayers, and performances for their families—and the Governor of Massachusetts on the final day of camp. This summer Cultural Survival is again seeking donors to co-sponsor these invaluable summer youth language and ceremonial training opportunities which are creating new generations Indigenous language speakers and future community leaders.

Cultural Survival also helped sponsor two language apprentices’month-long attendance at summer language teacher training sessions at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Alberta in British Columbia, Canada—at the renowned American Indian Language Development Institute and Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute.

Language educators nationwide once again have the opportunity to attend the biennial Washington, D.C. based Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages sponsored by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Endangered Language Fund, and National Science Foundation. 

Continued Opposition (environment)

Continue Opposition to Tar Sands Pipelines (Keystone XL, Enbridge Northern Gateway)

(excerted from http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com and http://www.350.org)

On January 15, 2013, eighteen of the nation’s top climate scientists released a letter to President Obama today urging him to say no to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  Back in autumn, the $7 billion Keystone XL Pipeline raised its controversial head on the eve of the first presidential debate.

The pipeline would transect Native lands, primarily areas within original treaty boundaries, and it has been the subject of tribal dissent, including opposition from some Great Plains tribes and from the National Congress of American Indians.
Tom Poor Bear, Oglala Lakota vice president, stated on October 2 that the pipeline “has to be stopped at our treaty lands”.  

The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council passed a resolution opposing the pipeline because it “involves accessing a 300-foot-wide corridor through unceded treaty lands of the Great Sioux Nation” as represented in the Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868. 

Other native advocates have called it a violation of prior and informed consent provisions of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Of major concern to society at large is the exacerbation of climate change that the pipeline would enable. 

What You Can Do

1. Join Sierra Club, 350.org, and tens of thousands of Turtle Island citizens in Washington DC on Feb. 17
http://act.350.org/signup/presidentsday

2. Keep an eye on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which is in the approval/disapproval process and will become even more prominent as an end-run around Keystone XL in the face of successful Keystone protest. “We have great concern about Northern Gateway and tankers coming through our traditional waters,” Frank Brown, of Heiltsuk First Nation in Bella Bella, told Indian Country Today Media Network in January 2013.

As hearings opened on January 14 in Vancouver, at least 1,000 protesters converged outside, rallying against the risks of Enbridge's proposal. First Nations and environmental speakers warned that a tanker accident or pipeline rupture would threaten the coastline, rivers and lands, and hurt those dependent on them. 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/01/25/enbridge-faces-rising-opposition-northern-gateway-pipeline-protests-arrests-147227


For More Information:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/10/03/keystone-xl-pipeline-faces-tribal-opposition-ahead-of-first-presidential-debate-137465#ixzz28xZNwvxY

The Great California Genocide

What do you think of when someone says “California”? Beaches? Sunshine? Hollywood?

How about the largest act of genocide in American history?

“The idea, strange as it may appear, never occurred to them (the Indians) that they were suffering for the great cause of civilization, which, in the natural course of things, must exterminate Indians.”
- Special Agent J. Ross Browne, Indian Affairs

California was one of the last areas of the New World to be colonized. It wasn’t until 1769 that the first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, was built in California at present-day San Diego. It was the first of 21 missions, which would become the primary means for the Spaniards to subjugate the natives. The leader of this effort was Franciscan friar Junípero Serra.

Franciscan friar Junípero Serra
Junípero Serra

Despite whatever the movies portray, the missions were coercive religious, forced labor camps. Through bribes, military intimidation, and the eventual onslaught of European diseases (that usually targeted children), the colonizers ensured that eventually sick and desperate indians would come to the missions for help. That’s not to say that they intentionally spread diseases, but there was a consistent, two century long pattern.
The indians that wound up there had their children taken from them, and harsh, manual labor was the rule. Beatings and filthy living conditions were common. The death rate at the missions was appalling. By 1818 the percentage of Indians who died in the missions reached 86 percent. Over 81,000 indian “converts” eventually managed to successfully flee the missions.

Soon there were indian revolts.
The San Diego Mission was burnt down in 1775 during the Kumeyaay rebellion. Mohave Indians destroyed two mission in a dramatic revolt in 1781. Military efforts to punish these indians and reopen the route to the pueblas of New Mexico failed.
San Gabriel Mission indians revolted in 1785, and suffered because of it. The Santa Barbara and Santa Inez Missions were destroyed in the Chumash revolt of 1824. Some time after 1810 a large number of guerrilla bands arose that raided the missions and kept them in a virtual state of siege. This led to draconian laws to restrict the movement of indians and forced them to carry papers proving their employment.

The Full Horror at:
http://obrag.org/?p=1412

Native Crab Bucket

Native Crab Bucket

A man had a bucket of Indian crabs. The crab bucket did not have a top on it.  Why were the crabs not able to escape? 

If there were only one crab in the bucket it would certainly escape. However, when there is more than one crab in the bucket, if one tries to crawl out, the other crabs would grab hold and pull it back down so that it would share the same fate as the rest of them.”

This is true with people. If one person attempts to better himself, other people will attempt to drag him back down to share their fate.

 

You must ignore the crabs if you want to be a success in life.

Chairman Passes (community)

Bear River Tribal Chairman Leonard Bowman, 71, dies
The Times-Standard

Posted: 01/25/2013 06:16:44 PM PST
Updated: 01/25/2013 06:23:08 PM PST

Flags are flying at half-staff for Leonard Bowman, chairman of the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria, who died today. He was 71. Bowman was starting his third term as chairman, and had served on the council for nine years, said Vice Chairman Dakota McGinnis, Jr.

”He's been the ambassador for the tribe, for us,” McGinnis said. “He made us proud. I respect the man -- he believed in me, even though we had our differences.”

McGinnis said it was too early to say whether a public memorial service for Bowman would be held.