Red Lake - Ojibwe Nation/Minnesota

I could not write about Red Lake the other day; I was in shock, and it's still hard. Aside from the other, much older, little-examined yet pertinent realities of living your average American mixed-race/tri-racial (African + American Indian + European mixed for the past 300 years) Black American life, I also lived half a decade in Minnesota - in the Twin Cities. I worked in both public and commercial radio and TV while I was in journalism graduate school. In grad school my research was on the development of American Indian public radio - in particular First Person Radio in Minneapolis, and KILI-FM radio not far away - on the Pine Ridge reservation (where the 1890 massacre was committed at Wounded Knee) in South Dakota. I've written articles for the American Indian press, such as The Circle based in Minneapolis. Their website says due to budget cuts they don't update it anymore. I have Indian friends who have close family and other ties to Red Lake and to the "Red Lake Band" of the Chippewa - the Anishinaabeg or Anishinabe - the Ojibwe. Then just the other week, the first time in years, I "accidentally" heard from Laura in Minneapolis. And on the very day this tragedy happened last week, before I heard of it, something prompted me to call A. in Mpls (Minneapolis). He was out of the office, and now I wonder if he'd already gotten word of what was happening up North at Red Lake. All the time, everywhere I go, I talk about Black and Indian people in the USA. It is us - who we are, and our history, our role and presence in the USA (and almost everywhere in the Americas) - that the system as it currently exists refuses to value. I know I sound like a broken record. One of the things that hurts most is realising no one really cares. People - including those who've been in the US all of 2 weeks - are still blabbing about an American dream while few if any want to notice the nightmare that many Native people and people of African descent are living in the USA (and disproportionately in the U.S. prison system) - and throughout the Americas. Then there are also the people - including some international NGOs and other groups - who take sides: they are "for" Indians or, less often, they are "for" Blacks. I really can't think of any major NGO initiative that is actually funded for both of my groups - Blacks and American Indians - to work together. In fact some projects - intentionally or not - have been absorbed in activities that in effect keep Indian and Black people ignorant of each other and in denial about our historical connection. Yet before Red Lake, before that day last week, virtually no one cared if I or anyone else was writing about the lives of American Indians - about who they/we are. Virtually no one knew a community called Red Lake exists or that Minneapolis, Minnesota has the largest urban Indian population in the United States - a reality that contradicts our average American & European, and even Asian, 'everyday racism' of depicting Minnesota & much of the USA as lily-white when it is not and never has been. You don't have to believe me; read Sinclair Lewis' 1947 novel Kingsblood Royal, set in small-town Minnesota. It's about a white Minnesota banker who... read the book. Almost no one knows or appreciates that the American Indian Movement - AIM - started in Minneapolis in the 1960s and 70s partly (or wholly) as a reaction to the brutality (human rights violations) of then mostly white local police toward Indians and other people of colour. And more of us should link and read some new sources for news and information - like News from Indian Country, or the website of the MIWRC - Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center - whose Mission Statement reads: To assist American Indian Women so they can enjoy a better quality of life for themselves and their families.  It's just that simple, and the need is that real.

Comments

[L K Tucker]

You may be interested in a site about a conflict of physiology. The Cubicle is a tool to prevent mental breaks caused by the conflict of physiology.

Weiss may have accidentally created the design problem in his home computer installation. He was on a home bound program. In cold weather and with little to do he could have easily spent enough time on the computer and been exposed to stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

If there was repeating detectable movement sufficient to cause a peripheral vision reflex in the room that would have caused the problem and eventually led to a mental break.

Read The Everquest Connection at VisionAndPsychosis.Net.

The Demonstration page allows you to experience the phenomenon.

The basic explanation is given in psychology lectures where college students hearing for the first time don't believe it.

This normal feature of human physiology of sight is so strange that almost no one believes it.