via Indianz:

When my Native (SD) Sun News broke the story about the Custer figurine astride a motorcycle, packed into a McDonald’s Happy Meal, most Native Americans, particularly the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho, were not happy.

An extremely weak and calculated response from McDonald’s came to the newspaper in short order. It read: “At McDonald’s we value and respect people of all ethnicities, as well as their cultural history. The Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Happy Meal features eight toys portraying different characters from the film. As with all Happy Meal promotions, our goal is to provide families a positive experience that can be shared by all.”

Say what? A positive experience? Who are they trying to kid? The response was signed by Danya Proud, Spokesperson for McDonald’s USA. We would suggest that McDonald’s do a little more research into the history of the characters they feature in their Happy Meals. It is apparent by this historical gaff that someone at McDonald’s either didn’t know about the relationship between Custer and the Indians or was too stupid to recognize it. For the record, Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, gained notoriety as an “Indian killer” while commanding the U. S. Seventh Cavalry. It didn’t matter to him if the intended victims were men, women or children.

To him they were just “Indians” and by killing as many of them as he could, his aim for a high political office would be greatly enhanced. This is a historical fact that the researchers at McDonald’s failed to see, or worse yet, failed to grasp. Apparently the propaganda spread by Hollywood and by books was quite effective in making a killer into a man to be loved and admired.

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Hey kids!  Let’s play with Custer (better yet, let’s not)

via Buffalo Post:

McDonald’s is including a Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer toy in its Happy Meals.

Um, why?

Well, it’s all part of a promotion coinciding with the recent release of the movie “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.”

Um, did anyone at McDonald’s think that this might not be a good idea?

That would be a big “um, no.”

This story from the Rapid City Journal quotes McDonald’s spokeswoman Danya Proud as saying in an e-mail, “At McDonald’s, we value and respect people of all ethnicities, as well as their cultural history …. As with all Happy Meal promotions, our goal is to provide families a positive experience that can be shared by all.”

Some of the anger over the toy centers on the fact its nationwide distribution means that it inevitably will go to children on Indian reservations. Yeah, that’s pretty offensive – but so is the fact that the toy is going to children of any ethnicity. Poet Joy Harjo posted that “this is akin to giving away KKK figures or Hitler toys to children. Why don’t people get it when it comes to native people? … There’s such a blind spot in American cultural vision, or is it deliberate hatefulness?”

Sometimes, to me at least, it feels as though the sheer unthinking nature of a blind spot is almost worse.

(img via 4 Wheel War Pony)

from NMAI:

Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America
June 12, 2009–September 13, 2009
NMAI on the National Mall, Washington, DC

Ramp it Up celebrates the vibrancy, creativity, and controversy of American Indian skate culture. Skateboarding combines demanding physical exertion with design, graphic art, filmmaking, and music to produce a unique and dynamic culture. One of the most popular sports on Indian reservations, skateboarding has inspired American Indian and Native Hawaiian communities to host skateboard competitions and build skate parks to encourage their youth. Native entrepreneurs own skateboard companies and sponsor community-based skate teams. Native artists and filmmakers, inspired by their skating experiences, credit the sport with teaching them a successful work ethic. The exhibition features rare and archival photographs and film of Native skaters as well as skatedecks from Native companies and contemporary artists.

Actually, the liberal leftists are the worst things that’s ever happened to America, let alone [to] the Indian people. They are, supremely, extremely racist against Indian people. The liberal left is our worst enemy. It’s been the Democrats in Congress that have consistently for almost two centuries, that have put the most debilitating laws into effect that strip us, bit by bit, of our freedoms.

Russel Means in an interview discussing Property Rights and Natives.

This is an intriguing interview with Russell Means by Scott Horton of AntiWar Radio that follows the same theme as yesterday by asking the question, Who really owns Indian land?

Delta Foxtrot: Rebuliding America, one Neighborhood at a Time - Russell Means with Scott Horton

Russell Means in discussion with Scott Horton on topics from Corporate Farming, Establishing Neighborhood Power and the Mass Thievery known as Property Tax.  Among other topics in this thirty minute interview, they speak to the imperial laboratory of Indian Reservations and how tactics perfected there have been exported to other countries, and now brought back to America itself.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Saturday that $500 million in federal stimulus money would go to American Indian tribes across the nation for schools, housing, infrastructure improvements and job programs on reservations.

Mr. Salazar made the announcement at the United Tribes Technical College here.

He was in North Dakota to visit several places, including an energy center on the Fort Berthold Reservation and the Great Plains Synfuels plant to look at its carbon capture project.

He also planned to visit North Dakota communities that were flooded this spring.