http://64.38.12.138/News/2009/015278.asp

via Indianz:

Nearly three in 10 Native youth believe they will die young, according to a study being published in the July issue of Pediatrics.

The rate was the highest among other youth in the study. One in four African-Americans and one in 10 Whites expected to die young, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota. Youth who expect to die young engage in more risky behaviors, the study said.

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People ask us ‘When did the Indians all die?’ They don’t realize they’re still around. The importance of Keeping the Tradition is that it lets people know Native Americans are still here, that they have a lively culture and that they have many traditions still going strong.

Andy Sawyer, site manager of the Sun Watch Indian Village in Dayton Ohio, explaining why they have a yearly powwow at the archeological park.

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Peru’s indigenous people win one round over developers

The Shawi indigenous people in northeastern Peru have many reasons for bitterness, Pizango, who is apu, or chief, of the group, said last week at a roadblock set up a few miles west of Yurimaguas to protest government policies.

“It’s been a long trajectory of abuse,” Pizango said. “We got tired of it.”

He and others had blocked the main road leading to Peru’s interior with tree stumps and rocks and set up makeshift tents with plastic sheeting along the highway shoulders. The surrounding terrain of Loreto province was a rolling green moonscape that long ago had been clear-cut by loggers.

Then, in a development celebrated as a victory for indigenous groups, Peru’s Congress last week voted to revoke two laws enacted last year to further open the Amazon to mining, oil and timber development. The measures had enraged indigenous groups and led to a bloody confrontation June 5 in Bagua that officials said left 10 civilians and 23 police officers dead, with one officer missing and presumed dead.

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Death of Custer – A dramatic portrayal of Sitting Bull stabbing Custer, with dead Native Americans lying on ground, in scene by Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show performers. c.1905

Was Custer Outgunned at Little Bighorn?

via Neatorama:

The Battle of Little Bighorn happened 133 years ago today. George Custer and his men were certainly outnumbered, but their defeat may have also been assured by the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors’ superior weaponry.

If the Indians were, in fact, better armed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer may have contributed to the situation by declining to include Gatling guns in his van. Because he was setting off on what amounted to a search-and-destroy mission, he argued that the Gatlings were too cumbersome and would only slow him down.

At the point where he was surrounded and outnumbered by a ratio as high as 9-to-1, he probably regretted making that choice. In such a dire situation, the Gatling gun would have considerably reduced the enemy’s numerical advantage and may have even proven decisive in turning the tide.

The Lakota and Cheyenne warriors did join the battle with a number of Henry and Spencer repeating rifles, which provided a higher rate of fire than the single-shot Springfield Model 1873 carbines carried by the cavalry troopers.

In the end, several factors led to the deaths of the 197 men under Custer, each stemming from his underestimation of his adversaries. Link

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Briefcase, Room 306, the Lorraine Motel

King’s neatly packed, monogrammed briefcase in his room at the Lorraine. “That is Dr. King’s briefcase, just as it was. His brush. His pajamas. That’s a can of shaving cream there on top. And you can see his book, ‘Strength to Love,’ peeping from the pocket.”

via LIFE EXCLUSIVE! The Day MLK Died

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aWhAIWLpua_I&refer=latin_america

Colombia’s biggest guerrilla group said it executed eight indigenous people because of their involvement in the deaths of rebel fighters, Anncol news agency reported.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said in a statement posted on Anncol, a news agency sympathetic to the FARC, as the group is known, the people were killed Feb. 6 because of their participation in the 40-year conflict.

The FARC didn’t say if the eight executed were part of 27 members of the Awa tribe that Antonio Navarro Wolf, governor of the southern Narino province, said were killed earlier this month. The bodies of the 27 have not been found.

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The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, which did not release precise information of its count, came in response to the Sunday killing of Raúl Mendoza, indigenous governor of the Peñón reservation.

These are “crimes that typify the genocide that we, Colombian indigenous people, are subjected to,” he said, according to Spanish news agency EFE. “Not even one criminal has been charged with these crimes.”

The news agency did not include a government response.

Some recent victims include two residents of a small community near the Ecuadorian border—which the army said were killed ‘accidentally’ during a nighttime pursuit—and six people massacred in the Chocó department.

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