White force on NDN lives.

Not every Colored man was not from a tribe. Many Native men and women had to make a choice in the early 1900's between what kind of 'nigger' they were to be. Many Indians, even centuries earlier amongst the 13 colonies, chose to be mistaken for Negroes.

A sad piece of history. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories Nov. 22, 2016 

Negro men, some Indian. Early 20th century.

African-Native Americans: We Are Still Here!

Kaiyentowah Rose, Cherokee/Shinnecock

African-Native Americans

Many people believe racial and ethnic groups in North America have always lived as separately as they do now. However, segregation was neither practical nor preferable when people who were not native to this continent began arriving here. Europeans needed Indians as guides, trade partners and military allies. They needed Africans to tend their crops and to build an infrastructure.

Later, as the new American government began to thrive, laws were drafted to protect the land and property the colonists had acquired. These laws strengthened the powers of slave owners, limited the rights of free Africans and barred most Indian rights altogether. Today, black, white and red Americans still feel the aftershock of those laws.

In order to enforce the new laws, Indians and Africans had to be distinguished from Europeans. Government census takers began visiting Indian communities east of the Mississippi River in the late 1700s and continued their task of identifying, categorizing, and counting individuals and "tribes" well into the 20th century. In the earlier days of this process, Native American communities that were found to be harboring escaped African slaves were threatened with loss of their tribal status, thereby nullifying their treaties with the U.S. government and relinquishing all claims to their land.

Despite the restrictions imposed by the U.S. government, Indians and Africans still managed to form close bonds. Some Native American communities ignored the laws and continued to aid fleeing African slaves. Some free Africans aided displaced Indians. Sometimes the two groups came together in "prayer towns" -- European communities that welcomed and protected converts to Christianity, regardless of race. Sometimes, Indian women married African men when the number of men in their own communities was decimated by war or natural disaster. Some Native Americans listed themselves as "Negro" or "mixed" in order to retain ownership of their land.


DID YOU KNOW ???

At the time of Columbus, the subcontinent of India was referred to as Hindustan or the Deccan. The European term for indigenous peoples all over the world was "Indians" from the Spanish "In Dios" meaning "God's people".

Some Native Americans refused to sign the census rolls during the 18th and 19th centuries, some refused to register with the Bureau of Indian Affairs or to allow themselves to be "removed" to "Indian Territory" in Oklahoma during the 1800s. As a result, many of their descendants grew up in urban environments instead of on reservations. This isn't the image of Native American experience most people carry in their heads but, in this part of the country, it is quite prevalent.

There are no villages tucked away in Suffolk county -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- where people live in teepees, hunt with bows and arrows and cook over open fires. Our lives reflect the same diversity as any other cultural group in America. We are wealthy, middle class and impoverished. We are educated and ignorant. We are employed and unemployed. We are Americans.

What sets American Indian cultures apart from many others is our attitude toward life. Simply stated, we believe we were not born ON this Earth, we were born OF this Earth. In other words, the Earth is our mother and we would no sooner mistreat her than you would the woman who raised you. This is the primary ingredient in the cultural glue that holds us all together.

Hollywood has taught us to associate the facial features you see here with red skin and sweeping Southwestern vistas, yet these people have skin tones that range from coffee to cream and most live in the New York metropolitan area. They are of African descent but they are also Blackfoot, Canarsie, Caribe, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Lenape, Matinecock, Mohawk, Munsee, Ramapo, Shinnecock, Seminole, Unkechaug, Taino. They have spiritual names in addition to the names that appear on their birth certificates; they dance at powwows wearing full regalia; they have naming ceremonies for their children. Some of them speak indigenous languages, some fast on the full moon in accordance with ancient religious beliefs, and all are extremely proud of their mixed heritage. They embody the intertwining of two of America's most stalwart and dynamic ethnic communities.

DID YOU KNOW ??? The first slaves in the "New World" were Indians. However, colonists found them difficult to contain -- they knew the surrounding countryside and those who had not been captured often organized successful rescue efforts. For a time, slave merchants continued to raid Native American communities along the central and southern shores of the Eastern Seaboard and to encourage local warriors to barter captives they would otherwise kill for European trade goods. The women and children the merchants acquired were sold alongside Africans to buyers in the north while the men were shipped to plantations in the Caribbean.

"AFRICAN-NATIVE AMERICANS : WE ARE STILL HERE" is based on an exhibit, curated by Ms. Eve Winddancer and with photos by Mr. Louis B. Myers, at the William and Anita Newman Library, 3rd fl.

Eve Winddancer Young is an artist, advocate, and independent producer in NYC.
Louis B. Myers is a Freelance Photographer in NYC. In addition to the current exhibit, he has done two additional ones for the Newman Library, Latino Entrepreneurs in New York City and African American Entrepreneurs in New York City.

Dawn Wolf in ceremony in Washington DC 2015

 

The DOGS

The Dogs: Keeper of the Stories by Gregory E. Woods

Just one glance into the recesses of one's memories are the many times the presence of good and evil, of a sacred and divine flow of energetic particles seem to flow along the contours of the fiber of our being from a core. Every life has felt it. What a thinking person does with it is their decision. It is unknown how these things occur, but accepted child-like with the reverence gratitude instigates all becomes magical feelings, and a thinking stops thinking as a primary way of absorbing the world of sensory perceptions. More often than not it becomes magic of a kind that is comforting or probing.

Animals don't think about these things to the degree people do. The four-legged People's thoughts are voices without sounds, pictures of the deeper things that convey mystery language to the sense of knowing and belonging to the whole. 

One morning when I was a young father, my brother-in-law, Scotty, carefully shook me awake just after the sun cracked an eye open in the east. Grumbling, I followed him downstairs outside. I had left my machete in the house. I was clad in jeans, barefoot. The early birds were flying circles above the street looking down at people standing on cars, or braced to run in terror from a pack of wild dogs. The dogs formed a half-moon shape from the leader against the backdrop of the forest at the end of the road. Their menace was thick in the air. I relaxed into the moment recognizing the leader and a dog here and there I'd met over the months stalking them in the depths of the forest searching for their dens.

The leader looked deep in my eyes, and I in his recognizing what was important to know in each other. These assessments can be long, or short exchanges. We knew each other. Out of habit I'd readjusted my weight to balance against attack, but they were too far away, and only the leader was calling the shots. I was telling my story of who I was that day, and he his story came full and possessed with hunger tinged menace. I thought of killing. He thought of tearing flesh. In the end we knew the dance for that moment.

With an almost imperceptible nod from the leader to me the other dogs turned without a sound and filed into the tall grass, and slithered between the hardwood trees without a sound. I looked after them awhile sad, and glad to see them go. The people on the cars were staring at me with fear wondering what happened, and how. Under my breath I told Scotty, “Go to work.” and went back to bed.

People remember the power of one when the whole is threatened. In turn the community ideal is to complete the circle aiding the one. This circle binds us together as a community. This is my story.

Gregory E. Woods
Keeper of Stories (Dawn Wolf)
2.16.15

published by Indian Voices
March 02, 2015

Dawn Wolf in ceremony sharing a Medicine Wheel teaching

 

REDSKINS? It's Entertainment!!

Hangisi Güzel on a covered wagon

Dump the Redskins Movement 

I got a phone call from a good friend and fellow Rotarian who was looking to give away two tickets to the football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington team. I am not a sports fan meaning I like sports, but cannot suffer through watching sports on television, in particular football. It is such a violent sport from the perspective of the fans. I don't trust the union between competition, white men, and beer which is served at football games. I never know when, or if fans will break out into a rage placing my wife in danger. That's why I don't go to football games. But, this one was special. My wife, a life long Dallas fan, had never seen them live in all the years she has lived in D.C.and my son assured me there would be no such threat.   

"Why did God create white men and beer and put them together?" I expressed to the Black lady seated next to me at the game while racial tension and team rivalry was showing itself in the rows near us. Yes, I went to the game. When I got off the phone with Guy I was thinking about combinations of family members who'd like to see the game, but my wife was firm. We were going to the game, and that was that! 

Just before we left for the game my phone rang. An elder, a Native elder was on the other end asking me if I was participating in the protest march against the Washington team? I chuckled. "No. I'll be there at the game myself with Jan." Well, that was a short conversation, and it wasn't the only conversation that day about the team. In the middle of the third quarter the Black lady to the left of me in a conspirator's tone of voice complained. 

"You know there are people outside the stadium protesting the name of the Redskins. Ain't that some shit? We got bigger problems. They killing our young men in Ferguson, and all over the country. We got bigger problems than a name! What d'ya think 'bout dat?" 

I had not planned to discuss any serious issue at this game. I thought about answering. I also thought about the cow farm that used to be here before the stadium, and the serene peace the land held for decades before Jack Kent Cooke, the former redneck owner of the team, purchased the land and leveled the surrounding forest digging up the earth for the team. I remember ten acres of the land outside of the stadium grounds where stands a plantation home of the slave owners who owned vast acreage that includes where the stadium is and miles beyond on Brightseat Road in Landover, Maryland now owned by Jericho Baptist Church. Today the once noble house is insignificant against the visual backdrop of an old folks home and parking lots. The slave church with its small grave site not far from the plantation house sitting on Central Avenue came to mind because of its insistence on remaining a testament of a harsh past in a tiny pastoral setting facing a busy avenue. 

I thought of the mystical things I experienced on that old slaver's land miles away when walking on a dark road leading to our cars after a Commodores concert at the Capital Center. It was very dark and the night air felt different as if we (my buddies and I) were on the other side of air and moisture. After a long walk in the dark we walked right out of the woods to our cars parked on the side of the highway a couple miles away. We were amazed thinking about the road which seemed to be lined with spirits watching us. We began wondering why we didn't see this more direct route to the stadium when we'd parked our cars. When we all turned back to see where we'd come from there was no road; only the dark solemn forest looking down upon us.  

The spirits of the tribes who'd lived, prospered, raised families and died on this land always sound out to me in muted tones. At times a bony finger reaches out and touches my shoulder reminding me of their time on Earth, our Mother. I was also looking back into the long times ago Red skins, niggers and buffalo were commodities. So, talking about the protests outside of the stadium sank deep into my soul. 

I had an answer, but I didn't want to take away from her the joy of losing to the Dallas Cowboys so I said, I agreed with the protesters. She jerked back in astonishment. Expecting solidarity I gave her a simple commentary: "I understand the history of the name and what it means." 

That was all she could accept and take in at the moment. We had been trash talking and enjoying the immense energy of the stadium, and the endless up and down of emotions across the stadium. I enjoyed it all. I barely know the rules of the game, but it was fun digging the joy the crowd feels a game. Everyone, Cowboy fans or not were enjoying the game until it became evident the prophecies of the Native Elders was coming to pass again and the DC football fans began to leave the stadium early. 

That was my contribution to the protest. Being one's authentic self in every social setting speaks strong to the integrity of one's beliefs and assertions into the complex web spun by the need for expansion into a world meant for more than one group to prosper in as a dominant force to be reckoned with. As an Native man and an African man it felt good in the soul commitment to be myself in the proverbial belly of the beast!

Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 
Creek/African/Crow
1.04.14

Washington Redskin cheerleader by Zuma 

flag t-shirt worn by Kelly Brook

POSTPONEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT !!!!

July 12, 2014
To whom it may concern:


There is a long tradition amongst the many tribes of North America respecting the authority of tribal councils, and the power of a person's vision. A vision was born in Jay Winter Night Wolf that led from receiving the dream, to learning how and where to lay the vision from one of our Grandmothers, to the planning and the practical work involved in the manifestation of The First Gathering of the National Congress of the Black American Indians and “All Our Relations”!

In the last of the month of June 2014 the tribal council that was formed to make ready the First Gathering of the National Congress of the Black American Indians and “All Our Relations” made a decision and agreed to postpone the July 19, 2014 gathering, as advertised. We were not structurally ready, in the short time frame imposed by He Who Carried The Vision, to give an excellent gathering for the People.

I sit on that tribal council. We voted. I voted. Our chief had the last word.


Gregory E. Woods, Tribal Council member
Juliette Porter, Tribal Council member

Flag around Lisa Ann

Maitrieya Sandess dancing in the sunlight!

I CELEBRATE MY INNER ABILITY TO DEFINE MYSELF


The word "individuality" means un-dividedness from the whole-God. As individuals, we are reminded that we are inter-connected and inter-related. We are all expressions of the Most High Creator. With unique gifts and talents, we are equipped to celebrate the indivisible power and presence within us. Life is forever unfolding. The more we honor who we are, as well as the stories of others, the more we create a beloved community where all are fed, loved, and appreciated.

There is power in our oneness. When we serve from a space and place of oneness, everyone is empowered. As we celebrate our individuality, we draw all men and women unto us, creating a space for them to step into who they really are.

I am a divine idea of God. I embrace all my gifts and talents and joyfully share them with enthusiasm. As I celebrate myself and recognize the magnificence of others, I celebrate those who came before me and those yet to be born. I stand firm in my truth. I see God in my brothers and sisters. Together we are stronger. I commit wholeheartedly and with joy and thanksgiving to the reason I was created. Thank you, Understanding- in me, through me, as me, around me, through the Christ within. And so it is.

The Lord God is my strength, for he has made my feet like hinds' feet, and made me stand on my high places that I may sing his praise. Habakkuk 3:19


Daily Thoughts from the Hill
Copyright: Hillside International Truth Center, Inc.
Dr. Barbara L. King - Founder Minister/World Spiritual Leader




Porn-Stars Hub

Lisa Ann wrapped in American flag
October 9, 2013 

"Being an American citizen requires a lot of thought. On Independence Day the African and the American Indian within me are more sensitive to what it took to become a citizen of the United States of America!" - Alowan Chanteh Inyan Wichasha 7.4.14

OUR POET

“Negroes —

Sweet and docile,

Meek, humble, and kind:

Beware the day - They change their mind.”

— Langston Hughes 

Langston Hughes at the typewriter. An important man, and mind during the Negro Renaissance period of our history, and fundamental to the Negro of the 20th century. Langston Hughes was deeply proud of his Indian blood, but given the nature of thinking around mixed blood Indians that abounds in Black consciousness that is a little known fact.

Lioness Daiba Sala

MR. ROGERS

"Strange cat Mr. Rogers." I thought of him when my children were little things. 

As wholesome as his image was sold I was not a white father, and the images entering my children's minds were going to be seen, examined for authenticity, cultural relevance, and measured by the guidance I received from the insights the ceremonies I performed for them at birth dictated to me from them, and the Creator of their lives. With a clear mind and conscious awareness I could not follow a tradition and simply give my children away from themselves and their true spirit to an identity crisis sure to come from allowing white people, and the images they deem important to dominate the things going into them.

Jesus said it wasn't what went into a man that fouled him it was what came out of him that corrupted a man. I understood both sides of what that looks and feels like to a child before a child is consciously aware of the depths of his or her lives. What I needed was to inject as much purity into the children as possible, and control the environment(s) they were in, and around by being present on each level of awareness I was cognizant of. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 11.22.12


a 1912 8th grade exam

NDN STORIES TOLD

Wayne Duncan - Black American Indian 
Shinnecock and African heritage

There is a saying among some tribes that means as much then as now. "It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story." This is a glimpse into a way of seeing an incident and telling what happened from every conceivable way so the listener hears the truth through the veil and the knowledge he or she sees the world they live in. - Alowan Chanteh Inyan Wichasha, Keeper of Stories 2.15.13

THE SHINNECOCK INDIANS OF EASTERN LONG ISLAND.

The Shinnecock Nation is a federally recognized Indian Nation, located on the East End of Long Island adjacent to the Town of Southampton. Federal recognition was achieved October 1, 2010, after thousands of years of documented history on Long Island, and 32 years of struggle with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As the 565th federal tribe, its banner has taken its place among other tribal flags at the U.S. Department of the Interior, BIA, Hall of Flags, Washington, D.C.

I Love Ancestry

Roberta Hunter Cuyjet And daugther Sienna
Shinnecock and African heritage

"Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins. --Cheyenne proverb

"Do not wrong or hate your neighbor for it is not he that you wrong but yourself." --Pima proverb

REAL TALK

Chris Long Haired Wolf

Trace your walk...feel satisfaction in knowing
the end of the rainbow you have looked for can
be found at the toe of your moccasin after
realizing who we are...and what we have."
~John "Eagle Spirit" Campbell, Chief

"With a large bird above me, I am walking
around the sky. I entrust myself to the wind."
~Anishinaabeg dream song

Three Worlds - Chumash

There is this world in which we live, but there is also one above us and one
below us. There are two serpents that hold our world up from below. When
they are tired they move, and that causes earthquakes. The World above is
sustained by the great eagle. He never moves, he is always in the same spot.
When he gets tired of sustaining the upper world, he stretches his wings a
little, and this causes the phases of the moon. When there is an eclipse of
the moon it is because his wings cover it completely. And the water in the
springs and streams of this earth is the urine of the many frogs who live in
it.

From the Archives of Blue Panther

Here I am, Dawn Wolf on a porch in Anacostia Washington DC
across from the Anacostia museum.

I have always been Crow. My grandfather taught me the first six years of my life. It was a deep merging of a grandfather's life teaching and way into his grandson. It defined me. It set me apart from Black Americans during the height of the Civil Rights movement and brought me closer to the essence of the movement. Living in Africa was not what I expected. I was more Indian than African, less American and better at becoming myself. Returning to the US left more of the African in me.

As the years of growing continued my energies have become matter. My grandfather released me, years after his death, to talk about my life. I can now share what the Crow and the African have become within my essence, my manhood, my work. Being African and Indian in these times and this country requires thought and deep introspection. It is a bold act of power to be Indian in the context of Black life in American for obvious and not so obvious reasons.

I have long resented being defined by government. I never got close to getting a card. It is bad enough having a social security number. If I am going to be a part of a corporation, the USA, I want control of my definition, my perception and interpretation of who I am. ~ Gregory E. Woods (2007)