3 NDN Women of Substance.

wrestler, Endrit Preniq‎  

Zitkala-Ša was a Dakota writer, editor, musician, teacher & political activist (1876-1938)

Winter Flower, Ramapo has African blood...

DREAMS OF IDEALS

Denise Richards, actress WILD THING

Dream in melanin

A Profound Love

I Love Ancestry

Mildred Loving
July 22, 1939 - May 2, 2008

Honoring Mildred Loving who crossed over on this day 6 years ago. (July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008). Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision.

Photo: Mildred Loving holds an early portrait of her husband, Richard Loving, in this photograph taken in 1979. Richard Loving died in an automobile accident in 1975 that left Mildred Loving blind in one eye. Behind Loving stand her three children (from left to right), Sidney, Donald, and Peggy, who holds her son, Mark. Richard and Mildred Loving were the appellants in the U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967), which struck down a Virginia law forbidding interracial marriage. REALTY CHECK! Alabama was the last holdout, finally repealing its anti-miscegenation law in 2000.

Born Mildred Delores Jeter, she was an amazing American woman of Rappahannock (mother), Cherokee (father) and African heritage who married Richard Perry Loving and were both criminally charged under a Virginia statute banning interracial marriages.

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Lovings filed suit seeking to overturn the law. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down the Virginia statute and all state anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional violations of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Loving met her husband a white man when she was 11 and he was 17. He was a family friend and years later they began dating. They lived in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where interracial marriage was banned by a 1924 statute.

When she was 18 she became pregnant, and the couple decided to marry, traveling out of Virginia to do so. She later stated that she did not know it was illegal when they married in 1958, but she believed her husband did.

They returned to Virginia and were arrested in the middle of the night by the county sheriff, who had received an anonymous tip. The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia after being banned from living together in their home state.

The case, Loving v. Virginia, was decided unanimously in the Lovings' favor on June 12, 1967. The Court overturned their convictions, dismissing Virginia's argument that the law was not discriminatory because it applied equally to and provided identical penalties for both white and black persons. The Supreme Court ruled that the anti-miscegenation statute violated both the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. This precedent-setting decision resulted in 16 states being ordered to overturn their bans on interracial marriage.

On June 12, 2007, Mildred Loving issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. Her statement concluded:

“My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry. Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the 'wrong kind of person' for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others; especially if it denies people’s civil rights. I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.”

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Photo by Don Rypka, February 11, 1979
Courtesy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Teach Your Spirit

Image is powerful and important a tool in unlearning. Unlearning is the first step towards understanding and embracing power, and power is fundamental focus of your intention to empower children, and with Power comes Clarity, and Clarity makes it easier to size and measure any situation as a warrior or a warrioress! - Gregory E. Woods 6.4.13

mother & child - Vanessa Williams, actress

I Love Ancestry

Radmilla Cody is of the Tlaaschii (Red Bottom People) born for Nahillii (African American).  Radmilla is a domestic violence advocate and founder of “Strong Spirit…Life is Beautiful not Abusive” campaign which addresses teen dating violence. Her previous recordings for Canyon Records include Seed of Life, Spirit of a Woman and Precious Friends.

Radmilla Cody is the 2013 Native American Music Awards (NAMA)

"The Creator has given me the strength to look forward in life, to embrace the beautiful and the positive. Now I truly walk in beauty." --Radmilla Cody

WE ARE WHO WE CALL OURSELVES!

Tanya Hayes
July 9, 2013

Alice Doll Tyson
July 21, 2013

Penny Gamble-Williams, elder & radio talk show host
January 1, 2013

BREATH AWAY into a mirror

 breath taking beauty of a mature Black woman...  

DIANE FLETCHER

I've always thought she was so fine. Always wondered what her voice sounded like, how her eyes moved. What penetrating depths must've been in those eyes of hers. How did she use silence in her communications? A lot of questions jumped out at me, as I am sure it does others. Questions we will never know the answers to like what was her smell? How did her hands move? Did she have a loving touch?, and so forth. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories 2.23.13

Diana Fletcher (1838?-?)
Seminole/African/Kiowa heritage

Diana Fletcher was the daughter of an enslaved African who ran away to seek freedom in Florida, and a Seminole woman who died on "The Trail of Tears," the forced relocation of American Indians to Oklahoma. It is said that she was separated from her father, once in Oklahoma, then adopted and raised by a Kiowa family.

Diana learned traditional Kiowa crafts from her step-mother: sewing, cooking, tanning buffalo hides, making tepees  and basket weaving.

When the members of the tribe raised enough money, they built a small school and hired a teacher. The Black Indian schools were operated by what were known as The Five Civilized Tribes: the Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Seminole. Some sources say Diana taught fellow Native Americans.

Diana's main accomplishment was valuing and preserving her family's history, culture and values, while, at the same time, learning to adjust and adapt to white American society. Because of ignorance, prejudice and racial hostility, the U.S. government attempted to force American Indians with African heritage, as well as all Native Americans, to reject their heritage. Because people like Diana maintained their traditions, we can now learn about their important contributions to the history of America.

The Hampton government boarding school was opened for Black students in 1868, with the intent of educating by training "the head, the hand, and the heart" so pupils could return to their communities as leaders and professionals among their people. In 1878, the institute opened its doors to American Indians. The following year, in a grand experiment led by Capt. Richard Henry Pratt, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania  was opened as a way to assimilate Indians into "civilized" society, although without the intent of returning graduates to their communities. - I Love Ancestry

Radmilla Cody is a Navajo/African-American woman. In 1997 she was Miss Navajo. It was an astonishing accomplishment. That event required a thorough knowledge of the tribe's language and customs. It was much more than a beauty contest. It was an expression, a continuation and enhancement of the nation's identity. Who won would represent the culture. 

Radmilla was raised by her Grandmother. The beauty of that is a powerful indictment against the African American community.  Had she been raised in most Black American families her Navajo lifeway would have been shoved into a bitter corner to spoil. So deep is the disdain for the other bloodlines it begs for analysis in horror. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2.24.13

Jerry Eaglefeather

I'm one of the main people responsible in America for the "Acknowledgement of Black Indians" And in '79 I began a trek to wake America up about Black Indians. I had the first web site and have been awarded in many states by congressmen for being the pioneer of our heritage. There were no book out and no articles before I began to wake America up about our heritage. I will post some of these awards. And my family is the ones who got Native Americans recognized in the state of NYC [Chief BlackHawk San Carlos} my father and (Distar Tay) Mohawk My Grandmother posted in my photos. Not New York I said NYC for the Day of the Native American. I have a web site BlackIndians.com and it has been around since then. The first Black Indian Association and the first Tribal group in American a we are called Binay. It stands for Black Indians And Intertribal Native Americans Association. BIINAA. Pronounced Binay. William Loren Katz jumped on the band wagon and contacted me and then published the book Black Indians. And others followed. This was not a time of acceptance and I received thousands of hate mail from everyone. But I was a living proof and I would not deny myself. And while there were others many where afraid to speak out. And most of our Pow wows and gatherings were private affairs and closed to the public.

In those days many Natives hated black Indian people they felt threatened and felt like there was no such thing. And they didn't have much as it was. Yet the many so called white natives flocked to the reservations with their money after Dances with wolves came out and they paid there way to tribal rolls. Many of them had learned from the white man how to hate and this was a very sad time. But I continued at the Pow wows and continued to share our heritage and our culture had to be refined and we needed a place. In those days I was ostracized. And I continued to persevered through it because I was told to do this by our Creator. And I continued to preach love and unity and acceptance and I do so now. We are one. To accept one another and tell everyone that we did not chose who we are. Creator did. And we are like Creator each and every one of us. You did not chose you. And since this is so, then we are all a special part of Creator so that if we hate anyone of us then there is part of our Creator that we hate. We must not hate Red, Black, Yellow or White for those are our Sacred colors and in the sacred hoop our vertical line connects us to Creator and our Horizontal line connects us to each other and we are all in the Circle which is Mother earth for this gives us balance. Hatred has no place. We are who we are by the grace of God.

Kai-YenTuwa Rose

 I use to date her, Her name is Kai-YenTuwa Rose. She is Black Shinnicock-Cherokee. She is an excellent Fancy Shawl dancer. And we have done many shows and events together. Including the big production "The Giving Of Thanks to the Native Americans" In NYC. - Jerry Eaglefeather 

a FEW YEARS IN THE LIGHT

Aaliyah Dana Haughton   was born Jan.  16, 1979 & died August 25, 2001 the day after I was married, and a couple of weeks before the attack on the US. 

"It is amazing how little time she lived, and how short was the time she was a famous singer, and how the impression of her passing through our lives on TV, and vinyl has left a legacy of light upon millions. The way light works will always be a source of fascination for me." ~ Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2.24.13

What WE SAY

African Native American girl in regalia by Ngaronoa Taki

November 5, 2011, I invited Adruma to attend a Black Woman's conference at Bowie State University. I was doing the opening ritual, and wanted him to assist with his drum. During the conference some things, as I look back, stuck out. The women elders, who spoke, and the younger women who spoke passionately from their center space collectively brought into what should have been a circle, but the rigidity of conference rooms leaves the circles to the imagination, and one's capacity for visualization and the awareness of each of the women's wombs carried into the sacred space ceremony created.

Four things came into the center of the discoveries:

1. Play
2. Innocence
3. Surrender
4. Return to childhood

Adruma Victoria shared an insight with me the day after the conference.

"The planet is one where the creatures who possess the highest potential to crown existence with joy vibrate in the realm of false ambition. The surrender to the original will heal the collective family dysfunction." 

All that could be expressed afterwards was in the attentive silence that fell between us. 

- Gregory E. Woods, 

Keeper of Stories 6.1.13

when i was 30 yrs. old

Faye Caldwell Moore

Beautiful Faye Caldwell Moore - circa 1945
1914 - February 2009
Cherokee & African heritage

Contrasts in Courage 2

Cherokee 

Contrasts in courage are unique ways of being bold about a thing unpopular in the face of potential criticism. Popular culture is fickle, and easily changed by sob stories, intimidation or subtle insinuations bled into the sensibility of being ‘hip’. For a woman of a larger frame, ‘big bone’ as we say in the lexicon of Black Americans, typically in a dress store has had to endure the indignities of clothes made without care, or imagination for her body type. To counter that attack two things have been done in the Black communities I am aware of: take charge of your own identity, or go further and make your own clothes! Washington DC is the Mecca for big bone women. Here and West Africa I learned from watching, being around, and talking to big Black women and absorbing the personal powers they wielded.

In the states I've been to amongst white communities poorer whites have a sound appreciation for the evolving forms of their mothers, wives, and girlfriends bodies, and Central Americans, including Mexicans, enjoy their women’s bodies growing with food, fun, baby carriage, and age. It is the same in Indian country. Perhaps the powerful movement to obsess over weight, and look down upon big women is based on the evolving pretense of women with money and education, and the dance of fashions coming out of Paris, and Milan, and New York City that make those women feel good about being aloof, or better than others.

Perhaps the whole premise of insisting petite women remain the ideal, and anorexia and bulimia as a means to get there is based upon supremacy? I am speculating, of course. Is there any meat, or substance to the course of thought I am riding upon? © Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2.9.13

Richard Sanchez's Photography

CERTAIN THINGS

thigh of Cherokee asks the questions one man should ask himself debating the choices certain women present to a certain type of man.

MARILYN Vann

Marilyn Vann, An amazing Cherokee Freedwoman.
Support her fight to retain tribal status. If you support her, you support us all!

>> VERY IMPORTANT NEWS - 12/14/2012 <<
Cherokee freedmen ruling in D.C. case is overturned!


Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee freedmen spokeswoman and plaintiff in the case, said she will push forward with the lawsuit.

"We're going to continue until our rights are thoroughly vindicated," Vann said. "This brings us one step closer to us being able to have a court say - hopefully once and for all - that these are the rights of these people and they are what the parties agreed on in 1866, and nothing has happened to change this."

The Cherokee freedmen, descendants of African American slaves owned by citizens of the Cherokee Nation during the Antebellum Period, were first guaranteed Cherokee citizenship under a treaty with the United States in 1866.

This was in the wake of the American Civil War, when the US emancipated slaves and passed US constitutional amendments granting freedmen citizenship in the United States.

In 1988, the federal court in the Freedmen case of Nero v. Cherokee Nation held that Cherokees could decide citizenship requirements and exclude freedmen.

On March 7, 2006, the Cherokee Nation Judicial Appeal Tribunal ruled that the Cherokee Freedmen were eligible for Cherokee citizenship. This ruling proved controversial; while the Cherokee Freedman had historically been recorded as "citizens" of the Cherokee Nation at least since 1866 and the later Dawes Commission Land Rolls, the ruling "did not limit membership to people possessing Cherokee blood". This ruling was consistent with the 1975 Constitution of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, in its acceptance of the Cherokee Freedmen on the basis of historical citizenship, rather than documented blood relation.

On March 3, 2007 a constitutional amendment was passed by a Cherokee vote limiting citizenship to Cherokees on the Dawes Rolls for those listed as Cherokee by blood, Shawnee and Delaware. The Cherokee Freedmen had 90 days to appeal this amendment vote which disenfranchised them from Cherokee citizenship and file appeal within the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council, which is currently pending in Nash, et al. v. Cherokee Nation Registrar.

On May 14, 2007, the Cherokee Freedmen were reinstated as citizens of the Cherokee Nation by the Cherokee Nation Tribal Courts through a temporary order and temporary injunction until the court reached its final decision.

On January 14, 2011, the tribal district court ruled that the 2007 constitutional amendment was invalid because it conflicted with the 1866 treaty guaranteeing the Freedmen's rights.

:: BREAKING NEWS 12/14/2012
Cherokee freedmen ruling in D.C. case is overturned!


Photograph by Rick McCormick 
Courtesy Marilyn Vann

Marilyn Vann

NATIVE AFRICAN WOMEN

Winter Flower - Ramapo 
African & Native heritage

A Beautiful African And Native American woman from The Ramapough Mountain Indian Nation (also spelled Ramapo), also known as the Ramapough Lenape Nation or Ramapough Lunaape Munsee Delaware Nation.

Gya Watson

African & San Carlos Apache heritage

"Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives." - John Wooden Leg, Cheyenne

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

POWERS IN OUR MEMORIES

"Man has responsibility, not power." 

--Tuscarora proverb

Ernestine Sheppard

 was of Occaneechi, Tuscarora, Cherokee & African heritage. I Love Ancestry

AFRICAN RED WOMAN

“The transposition of the theme of African womanhood is embodied within African-Native American women throughout the Red Diaspora. The thematic thrust of her meaning in the worlds of mankind is majestic and colorful. It is as contradictory as an assertion of power into worlds that deny Mother’s power yet yearn for it and need its force upon consciousness to shift and change. The music of African Red women of the Red Nations is multi-themed, singular in its devouring appetite for recognition, truth telling, and stories for her children and children's children growth. All of the Red nations who married African women bear her resemblance and her blood is their bloodlines. It is in you. It is in me.” ©Gregory E. Woods 

Michelle Sujai (seated) & Miccusukee Indians in 2010

AFRICAN NATIVE AMERICAN model

Traci Bingham elegantly clad

artist Serinity Knight in her words. . .

Serinity Knight

Serinity Knight is a professional artistic muse who works as an all media fine and performance artist, sculptor, writer, photographer. She was a fashionista at one time but now Serinity Knight has become a diva warrior, visionary working practically as a diversity training specialist. She is by her own definition an artistprenuer, a metaphysical healer, a truth teller, and deeply engaged in the work of social justice and hate crime legislation.

I know her only through her heart expressed in words on various subjects on Facebook, and through her art displayed on her page I have been moved by the force of her connection to her womanhood, her sense of being African, and as a recipient of spiritual powers. She says, "I was raised with a strong emphasis on self empowerment and self-determination through education, sports and the arts. I was encouraged to not follow the trail of others but to create my own path. Often laughing within myself wondering how I might have turned out if I had followed the others into mediocrity?

My childhood was adventurous and fun... I took my dolls to the back yard and built whole cities for them. I brought peace to every school room entered and as a tom boy did not like wearing dresses to school or anywhere else. Then grew up to travel around in the fashion and beauty industry... I know how to build a real house from scratch - yep from the ground up... can fix any car too - just don't ask me to install electrical wiring or a gas line.

But I also have the same blood line as Edmonia Lewis I am the daughter in the dust of Louise Nevelson - the sister of Frida Khalo, cousin of Elizabeth Catlett and the niece of Audrey Flack. As a child I used to play and sit on Alexander Calder in front of the court house as the unquiet river city of my birthplace (Michigan) is still rolling on it's grand rapids. Now I live in a strange city in a condo apt. and create art by assembling random finds, chance encounters. I long for that big spacious house I used to know...then company can come in and have a place to sit. I make beautiful things from clay; new things from discarded goods, bronze, glass,. paper,. metal,. bones,. leather, wood, and what ever else I can find ....trying to listen so they can speak thru me."

Serinity Knight, in her words, has traveled all over this world as a woman, as an artist who happened to be born BLACK. That is my inheritance and my birthright...

artist Serinity Knight's mixed media colored pencil & ink drawing of two heads