Irma: a Powerful Moment of Wind and Water

The governor of Florida, Rick Scott, has said that protecting life is their government's top priority. I hope that that government will be sensitive to the lives of disabled/differently-abled people, homeless people, African people and other People of Culture/Color, indigenous peoples, women, poor people as they enact their internal ideas of what lives they will actually value and how. Not everyone becomes more compassionate in times of stress and devastation. Your isms do not disappear because you have a blue uniform on or drive a big red truck or fly a rescue helicopter.

Screen capture of CNN report

Florida government has as bad a record as any in how it doles out its life-valuation upon its citizens and other forms of life. The fact that Florida is not only a blight upon the indigenous populations there, the health of the animal world, the wetlands ecosystems, oceans and beyond tells us that heroic statements are often comforting (to many...or some) as we stand in wait as Mother Nature creates healing and balance for Herself, expressing Her wisdom in ways that will now not only challenge our mortality, but call us to take this time, especially those of us outside of direct danger, to think more deeply about how life is validated and sustained and valued in a world where colonial powers, represented by the governor and the military personnel who stood beside him in his press conference, have cut deep wounds into the indigenous cultures, into the land and with great impunity to the waters and the balance of life itself.

After the projected successful restoration of safety and security, when the winds have died down and the waters have abated, will we still be in radical consideration of the value of all the lives that have been so devastated and marginalized by the tsunami of capitalism and colonialism, by misogyny, patriarchy and the exploitation of nature and the earth Herself? Will we have seen the tenderness, strength and resilience of our sister, brother and other human beings as the winds of change buffet the walls of systemic self-interest and the waters, in their energetic quietude, boldly, powerfully, unrelentingly bring us the opportunity of washing away our structural and pathological connection to limiting ideas of life, even as the source of all life on earth, the water itself makes itself known, not only in Florida, but Barbuda, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Cuba, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Texas and elsewhere.

If we are about that valuation of life, then how is it that we in the modern, industrial, capitalist world thumb raised and privileged noses to the indigenous, global activist and ethical scientific message (especially those voices of the former) that capitalist colonialist excess and exploitation figures into the creation of this, what will be yet a fleeting moment in the history of the earth?

What and who will Florida and all of us orient ourselves to when these Ancestor winds and Spirit waters pull their embodied, physical energies back and the sun returns to shine upon All That Is and All Who Are, equally, as it always has since the dawn of time before time?

How will we interpret, in our own interdependent minds and our expansive interdependent communities, the legacy of our humanity and systemic taking and loss of humanity on this earth, the sacred Earth Mother that meets us all at our feet together equally as a human family interdependent with a larger family of plant life and animal life and ecosystems and the stars themselves?

This moment, like all other moments small and large, is an opportunity for bravery, for insight, for compassion, for learning, for clarity, for love, that is not unlike every other moments before and hopefully the many moments that are yet to come. Let us not forget that the scourges of colonialism, European/white supremacy and racism have hit all too many citizens of the world like this "nuclear hurricane" and "rescue efforts" have been weak. Let us not forget that the lengthy storm surge of violent patriarchy has deluged the lives of women for centuries upon centuries to this day. Too many humans, devalued by militarism, exploitation and dehumanization carried in the shaky hands of other humans will be fighting anti-cultural winds and waves that press upon our lives and spirits long before Irma arrived and possibly long after her natural dissipation. Nature is, Nature knows balance in its simplicity and unfathomable complexity, knows life. What have we - interdependently - learned? We are in this particular moment, again, precisely because too many of us have not learned, have not remembered.

How will we move through these moments and how will we reorient to these moments, to each other? Katrina, Harvey and so many other similar moments have shown us, though many have refused to see, that pronouncements of egalitarian heroism are not nearly executed with the spirit or embodiment of egalitarianism.

As I sit, pondering, high and dry, protected - currently, momentarily - I ask the Ancestors to not only continue to watch us, but to enact their assistance through us, those who struggle to see their challenging and redemptive legacies, to help us to save lives, but also to acknowledge, validate and value and sustain life immediately and long beyond the secession of these challenging winds and redemptive waters, both reflections of life beyond our mundane knowings and of radical possibility far beyond our shrunken and expansive conceptions.

Ancestors, protect us from the pain and danger of hurricane Irma and all other storms, meteorological and (hu)man-made, but keep us courageously open to the depth of the cyclical, revolutionary learning, growth and healing that your traditional relationships with Earth and Nature have powerfully illuminated.

#AllAncestors #Ancestors #womenwaterpeace #waterislife 

2016 into 2017: Water Reflects Fire

In the Dagara tradition from West Africa, 2016 is/was a Water year. The 6 is a feminine, receptive, internal marker numerologically.

2016 is not your problem as all to many people have suggested it was. 2016 has been your blessing. 2016 has been a time where we had opportunity to gain insight from deep-seated, deeply submerged, deep water issues that plague us. We got a chance to see, to resolve, to feel...deeply.

We were deeply blessed by the resistance of Africans and others to state violence against African people,the presence and emergence of African women creatively, courageously within that and related struggles, the resistance of women and indigenous people to patriarchal and colonial violence. We witnessed a sharp rising to the surface of xenophobia, racism, heterosexism, misogyny, great lack of political clarity and vision, retrograde narratives of discompassionate exploitation and disregard for humanity and Mother Earth Herself. It's as if our shit just rose from the bottom of our socio-political sewer and we could deny the stench no more.

We were...and ARE...blessed by the sacred work at and of Standing Rock. If you don't realize the fundamental history-resolving nature of that dynamic, then 2016 actually alluded you.  You missed 2016. We have been blessed by 2016.  

And we should not miss the fact that, celebrities aside, many many many people (and species) have crossed over to the Other Side, from Brazil to Nepal to Aleppo to Chicago and beyond.  Just take a moment to go inside, feel the ocean-heavy weight of what that means. Sit in the depth of that aquatic emotional tsunami waiting to happen. 2016 reveals itself to be sacred womb pregnant with gifts of spiritual Ancestral insight.

And if we have the utter bravery to do it, we will actually weep for 2016. We will weep its passing.  We will grieve what we found out about the diamond bright treasure of humanity at the same time we had deep water reflection into the distortions of inhumanity to peoples, water and sacred earth, to the feminine divinity that birthed and constantly rebirths us all. We will grieve the pain and the often latent joy of 2016, still flowing through us as we live....and breathe....alive to see the end, the death of it, the transformative cocoon-break of it, the dissolution of it, the absorption of it, the larger spiritual river flow of it.

And the Dead do not leave us...though they do change their address.  They are available to us. Corporeally. Communicatively. Actually.  Vibrantly. And we are called...if we say we love and miss Those that have passed over, this or any year....to consider how we will carry the blessing, the gift of Their transformed, transmuted lives in our minds, our bodies, our words, our works. If Those lives meant anything, how do we integrate the best of Them into the fabric of our social becoming so They then know beyond a shadow of a doubt that They have not been forgotten?

And 2017 is a fire year. And the Dagara have observed fire as the portal to the Ancestors. They reveal Themselves, Their wisdom through this powerful element that brings light, vision and incites our passions, illuminates our dreams. 2017 is an opportunity to explore the blessings that we have been given...on purpose...by our Ancestral legacies. And while fire allows us to reduce and burn away all that we do not need, it also lights the way toward seeing our path, sparking the impulse of life into a world turned upside down by exploitation, injustice and oppression, fear and self-loathing.

The 7 marks a feminine energetic.  And we know we must support and acknowledge the divinity and primacy of that creative force, that creation story. What lies in the pregnancy of human, spiritual existence waiting to be born? Who are we yet to grow into, gifted powerfully now by the newly Ancestored energies of our icons, loved ones and faithful and flawed relations?  Our Dead are in US. Their gifts waiting to be reborn...in and from us.  We are the composite treasure of their transmuted recent and ancient lives. We are Their sacred immortality. WE are.  We. Never broken, but reconstituted by the mortar of their now timeless existence, the constantly rebuilding dynamic foundation of Their every aspiration for our transcendent greatness.

And here we stand at a precious nexus like every nexus, every crossroad presents us with space and motivation for enlightened contemplation and powerful healing choice, pondering the meaning of a myriad deaths, of painful loss and continuing mortal struggle to keep the rest of us here in love, safety, validation and compassion to finish our sacred duties upon this blessed earth, this embattled earth buttressed by the bones of our Ancients, their blood now fused with the dust of time.  

Breathe that in.

The Dead have left precisely to carry us through to our next shining moment, here at the sparkling mountain spring of this new baktun, clean cold river rushing down to bring life to All, flowing like fluid gems of sacred healing clarity...incessant...unrelenting....

Find your feet.  Keep them on the ground. Ask Them how to continue your good walk on your path of life.  Ask those who have done it before you.  And as we stand here at the juncture of 2016 into 2017, here at the anniversary of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee at the hands and Hotchkiss guns of the USAmerican colonial cavalry, remembering still that a woman gave birth to a child at Standing Rock, the greatest unification of indigenous nations in modern memory, as Africans born of brutally displaced indigenous African Mothers and Fathers struggle for meaning and liberation and peace and ujamaa in Kwanzaa, at the present moment of the continuing destruction of lives in Aleppo, in Palestine, in Congo, we are reminded that we have much to do...and much that we have been given....and that there is a wealth of wisdom in the Ancestral genius of those that have come and fought and lived and loved long before us.  

2016 was not in and of itself a problem. It was our greatest gift as we stand here in the midst of our problematic challenges, pathologies, crippling privileges and passions. Even on the largest and largely unseen level...we all got here...together...troubled...fighting...bent and broken....healing...resisting...triumphant and transcendent.  Together. Our Ancestors birthed us all into this moment.  Now.  Here.  Present...holding the blessings of the sacred water of 2016 as we see in it the growing sparkling inner reflections of the fire of 2017.

Asante, Wakale.

We walk forward.

Modernity is High on Itself: Visions from an Airplane

Now above the earth, hurtling through the sky, all too fast for my own ancient soul's ability to keep up, I look down at my Mother and see more clearly how we have insidiously imposed ourselves upon her sacred Body. As Boston gets pulled beneath me like a tablecloth leaving only dirty plates and silverware, I see the glut of houses and building, the endless scab of highway and avenue, the cutting wounds of an adolescent and unwell society carved painfully into her deity.  I see the networks of electrical firestorm that so recently turned the indigenous spirit night of peace into a constant blaring din of constantly hungered day. 

From this lost and lofty place, I can see the, I can feel the, I can smell the shitstorm of body refuse, industrial disease and anti-cultural soulid waste coursing its way through toxic veins back to the oceanic heart of the world about to arrest us off the face of Her.  It, this modern endeavor, looks so inert, but feels so overdone, so wrongly complex (like a bad website!), so powerfully arrogated. Why does everything a thoroughly modern human makes look so very much like it doesn't belong in the world of sacred life?  What happened here? And why am I so high in the air, going so fast?  Really, why?  Since when was how fast you moved through space and time the trump card to how well you moved through space and time?

Clouds smoothly step in to obscure my view of the scene of the crime, carrying the peace of Kuon, the purification of Sapla, spirits of water humbly teaching me, reminding, again, reflecting, again, the proximity of the energetic cure.  Water is the baptism from the addiction to fire...still constantly burning globe, cultural sovereignty, land,  forest, tree, grasses green, the easy possibility of hope.

Modernity is high on itself.

We have harmed Home, our home, our mother, The Mother...

....but her beauty will remain, will reflower, even after we walk silently off the precipice of industrio-digital ascendancy. Modernity seems to like high places. It's where it perceives its uber-mind to be, its G-O-Ds, its wrongly conceived as untouchable patriarchal and racial privilege.  It's how we know modernity is sophomorically upside down as those two embedded philosophical pathologies are exactly what, in part, will bury it soon far under the ground...unluckily for the Great Mother to have to accept the invasion of that last toxic gasp of man's worst faux-glittering, faux-shimmering, faux-sane, faux-sure anti-social escapade, now then far from yon dizzying heights of, flights of fancy.

Never leave Home...not when Home is Earth...and you are human.

I didn't say don't fly.  Just don't leave Earth.

(written November 2013)

Culture is Our Relationship to the Earth

Culture, in the modern context, often gets reduced to "arts" and literature and exoticized material production like clothing and spiritual items. This is limiting and dangerous as it allows those in the throes of modernity to sidestep equitable considerations of nature, land and people, allowing corporate control of lives and livelihoods, of land and commodified resources, making profane the sacred.

Culture is a dynamic of wholistic and integrated relationship between all things, between humans and their immediate environment, the land, nature and each other.  Modern industrial colonial society is anti-cultural and exploits and destroys the "naturo-spiritual (human) dynamic" that has defined human presence on Earth for over 3 million years. This is dangerous to all life as colonial capitalist control destroys earth and its ecosystems and organic human cultural relations.

Culture, to be progressive and positively transformative again, must be organic and based in right relationship to land, nature, peoples' basic and expanded human needs and All That Is.  Spirit is part of culture.  Animals and plants are part of culture. The Earth Her/Himself is part of culture. Any reduction, disintegration or dissolution of these interrrelationships is anti-culture, destructive and ultimately a negative expression of human potentiality.

Racism Is Not Prejudice + Hate

I was just pondering on the use of the word 'hate' with regard to racism. It always strikes me as incomplete as it refers to someone's feelings, not their ability to directly and negatively influence my life. Whether a person hates me is not the immediate issue.  Whether they can and do exert negative and destructive force and influence in my life, community and environment IS. 

Racism includes feelings in its vile mix, on the side of the oppressed and the oppressor, the marginalized and the privileged, the target(s) and the agent(s) of racism, but how we feel is not the primary element that affects the lives of people daily harmed by the effects and outcomes of  racism. 

Sitting in your house hating me is one thing. Sitting in your house while a group of police officers in militarized cars that you helped pay for out of the ongoing profit you extract from stolen land and resources looks for people who look like me (an African person) to harrass, detain and incarcerate is a whole other thing.

Racism IS a power dynamic, a control mechanism, a function of material and energetic exploitation that is de-energized when physical (police, military, technology) means of exerting power are pulled out of the mix, the complex of systems and structures that define this pathological and cancerous anti-social surreality...when European/white and male and other privileges and abuse are dismantled and consciously and exuberantly given up.

Racism IS prejudice plus power, not prejudice plus how someone feels about someone else.  Racism and sexism are structural, systemic, dependent on troubled and imbalanced people to actively (consciously or unconsciously) apply their life force to diminish the life force of others.

It may be ultimately appropriate to advocate for and promote the expansion of love in the world (also a work of systemic transformation, not just interpersonal romanticism ), but it is not directly helpful to continue to assert that we are in a battle with hate. We are in a struggle to observe, see, assess and transform interrelationships of power and control, of groups of people's ability and seemingly comfortable willingness to continue to exert destructive anti-cultural, inhuman "wetiko" (Jack Forbes) power and influence over other groups of peoples.

I was pondering that today.

#decolonize

Relearn to relate.

Racism at Home and Abroad: Julius Malema Draws a Line In the Azanian Soil Against White Supremacy

There is much here for Europeans, Africans and others in USAmerica to consider. To miss the possible linkages between racism and white supremacy in Azania/South Africa and the USAmerica would be to miss how racism works at all,  that it is not just a domestic issue between individuals, not just transient transactions of "hate". Racism works in a context of nationalized and internationalized/globalized power.

In north America we must acknowledge and struggle for alliance with the indigenous peoples whose lives were/are so seriously affected by European colonialism and the racist structures it developed. The ongoing genocide and oppression of indigenous peoples is central to the empowerment of European/white supremacy and racism in Canada, the USAmerica (and Hawaii), Mexico and beyond. In Azania, Africans are the indigenous people. This is an important distinction, not an inert nuance. We must be able to see how racism obscures the struggle to understand the negative and the liberating relationships to land and culture.

Here, Malema calls racism out and draws a line that must be drawn everywhere....if we are serious about freedom and justice. Notice the similarity in the European reactions/responses to strong statements of self-determination by Africans in South Africa or Africans and others in USAmerica,  i.e., Black Lives Matter etc... Racism/white supremacy has global intentions and global effects.

From the article:

""We will never tolerate white supremacy, racism. Down with racism, down!”

Malema is the only party leader in South Africa thus far who has boldly spoken to and challenged the ongoing problem of racism in our society. His call for the dismantling of racist institutions and practice in South Africa is a promise to people who have been directly affected by pervasive white supremacy that this issue is high on their party’s agenda.

“We will not be speaking this reconciliation nonsense, which only perpetuates white supremacy,” he assured the masses of largely economically disenfranchised followers gathered in the streets of Sandton.

Many white people responded to Malema’s anti-racism utterances on social media by denying being white supremacists or racists.

They said Malema is irrational and aggressive and he is speaking only about the right wing supremacists that are aggressively racist towards Black folk in South Africa but painting all whites with the same brush. Instead of seeing his utterances as pro-equality, they said his discourse is “anti-white” and claimed he was being unfair to them.

Except he is not. Malema’s forthright challenge to white people about personal lateral and systemic racism is the truth that resonates with those on the receiving end of it.

This should not be overlooked by white South Africans.

Instead it should be seen as an opportunity by us to examine how racism and whiteness are intertwined and how this has thwarted authentic transformation and egalitarianism in South Africa."

http://www.africanglobe.net/africa/malema-whites-south-africa-join-struggle/

Rescinding the Doctrine of Discovery - Resources

Indigenous Leaders Want Pope Francis to Rescind Papal Bull Justifying Colonialism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-doctrine-of-discovery_56058eb9e4b0dd8503076c17

 

"Pagans In the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Discovery", Steven Newcomb

"Pagans in the Promised Land provides a unique, well-researched challenge to U.S. federal Indian law and policy. It attacks the presumption that American Indian nations are legitimately subject to the plenary power of the United States. Steve Newcomb puts forth a startling theory that U.S. federal Indian law and policy are premised on Old Testament narratives of the chosen people and the promised land, as exemplified in the 1823 Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. McIntosh, that the first "Christian people" to "discover" lands inhabited by "natives, who were heathens," have an ultimate title to and dominion over these lands and peoples. This imporant addition to legal scholarship asserts there is no separation of church and state in the United States, so long as U.S. federal Indian law and policy are premised on the ancient religious distinctions between "Christians" and "heathens."

http://www.fulcrum-books.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=5923

 

 No Saint Junipero: Ending the Doctrine of Discovery

http://www.nostserra.com/

 

Eleventh Session of the Permanent Forum

7 - 18 May 2012   UN Headquarters, New York

Special Theme: "The Doctrine of Discovery: its enduring impact on indigenous peoples and the right to redress for past conquests (articles 28 and 37 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)". 

http://undesadspd.org/IndigenousPeoples/UNPFIISessions/Eleventh.aspx

‘Doctrine of Discovery’, Used for Centuries to Justify Seizure of Indigenous Land, Subjugate Peoples, Must Be Repudiated by United Nations, Permanent Forum Told

http://www.un.org/press/en/2012/hr5088.doc.htm

Papal Bull Rescission Committee - Loretto Community
http://www.lorettocommunity.org/mission-work/justice-and-peace/papal-bull-rescission-committee/

The Call To Rescind the Doctrine of Discovery - National Catholic Reporter
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/call-rescind-doctrine-discovery

Romero Institute
http://www.romeroinstitute.org/projects/petition

"Acquiring Empire By Law"
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.academia.edu/437323/Acquiring_Empire_by_Law_From_Roman_Doctrine_to_Early_Modern_European_Practice&usd=2&usg=AFQjCNE2ET36M3wqB4Zj467pwPbpe6_apQ

Mennonite group working on dismantling DoD:
"For more than five centuries, the Doctrine of Discovery and the laws based upon it have legalized the theft of land, labor and resources from Indigenous Peoples across the world and systematically denied their human rights. This Doctrine originated with the Christian church in the 15th century.  It is now the church’s responsibility to undo it."
http://dofdmenno.org/

Text of the Papal Bulls of 1452, 1455, 1493 that form "rationale" for Doctrine of Discovery  (facebook Notes w/ URL links)
Dum Diversas 1452:  https://www.facebook.com/notes/ukumbwa-sauti-med/papal-bull-dum-diversas-18-june-1452/10153704284042704
Romanus Pontifex 1455: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ukumbwa-sauti-med/papal-bull-romanus-pontifex-nicholas-v-january-8-1455/10153704359727704
Inter Caetera 1493: https://www.facebook.com/notes/ukumbwa-sauti-med/papal-bull-inter-caetera-alexander-vi-may-4-1493/10153704365327704

CNN, Colonialism and the CaNoNization of Genocide

Watching the Catholic News Network, CNN, "report" on the pope's unethical visit to Turtle Island. jernalissed Chris Cuomo has done more roamin catholic grandstanding in the last hour than the papacy did in 1492.  Constantly stating how people who are present at his circus parade are blessed because they are in the "shadow of Peter". Chris Cuomo just stated that he was a catholic after shouting "Papa Francisco!!" and "Pope Francisco!!" from his "professional" video setup.  This is horrendous reporting.  This is not journalism.  This is not truth-telling. This is validation of colonialism and brutality and conquest. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa

This is not only complete disrespect and dismissiveness of Native Americans and indigenous peoples, but also every African affected by the African holocaust and European slavery trade given blessing and support by the papal bulls of the vatican.  We are raising our voices that #BlackLivesMatter today precisely because the roamin catholic church, papacy and vatican created the fantasy of religious and cultural superiority, codifying the religious and European privilege that would usher in the most heinous wave of brutality and exploitation that would ever sweep over the earth. 

Now, as I watch the "faithful" yell and scream (even the giddy CNN reporters) and reach for his clothing a la the British Invasion of the Beatles, my heart breaks that this society is truly doing no better now than when it began.

 We hear and see the effects of evangelization and missionary work and introducing the "European God" (as one reporter clumsily, but truthfully stated) to people who never needed that god and then were summarily subject to genocide and holocaust and we have no moment of grief, no moment of insight, no moment of compassion for a people whose voice has never been silenced, but severely diminished. 

We have no general moral outcry about the abuser narrative that pope Francis represents, a retraumatizing visit to all the victims of roamin catholic molestation and abuse, a patent disrespect to the legacies of predation that the roamin catholic missionary evangelization process/colonialism represents, the dismissiveness for Africa and Africans in the ongoing circus horror show of papal criminal permissiveness...every enslaved African was branded with a red hot cross.

How much time will Catholic News Network/CNN give to the voices of indigenous peoples and Africans whose narrative crushes the lie of the sanctity and righteousness of evangelization and the vaunted, martyred noble missionary and the universal, nay globalized, "moral good" of the roamin catholic papal criminality to dust.  We listen less to the liberating voices of the indigenous peoples, who are still under attack by the papally blessed colonizers of past and present, less to the voices of Africans struggling dutifully to have our lives validated and secure albeit on the lands of those that the roamin catholic papacy gave brutal colonial and genocidal conquerors holy, "sacred" permission to steal and exploit.

I ask people of good conscience to take this moment in history, this moment in European-led settler colonialism on Turtle Island, as a European classical music ensemble plays a rousing Serra anthem to his unethical canonization as a colonial pope totters up the steps of a catholic university cathedral to commit a spiritual misdeed in front of the whole world, to take this profane moment as an opportunity for insight and contemplation, not discompassionate adulation of some distorted status quo.

Are we truly unaware of the glaring dissonance, contradictions and tragic colonial retrenchment of exploitation in one of its worst expressions?

"RESIST The Unist'ot'en's Call to the Land"

Please watch this half-hour video produced by Simple Matters Films to support the Unist'ot'en camp's work to protect the land and waters and their people's national and international security and sovereignty.



And another where the Unist'ot'en kick out TransCanada crews who did not get proper authorization to be on their land, about 2 min.:


For more info, visit: UNISTOTENCAMP.COM

from www.unistotencamp.com

Canonizing A Predatory Missionary: Validating the Genocidal Mission System of Junipero Serra

This September 23rd, 2015, roamin catholic pope Francis is scheduled to canonize Junipero Serra, a predatory missionary that is gaining increased ire from indigenous peoples across Turtle Island, especially those like the Kizh whose Ancestors were directly and mortally impacted by the violence and brutality of the likes of Serra, other christian missionaries and the Spanish conquistadors.

 The catholic cable tv channel, Eternal Word Television Network/EWTN and the Knights of Columbus have been running promotional programming to support the roamin catholic church's plan to canonize Serra and to promote his great legacy of evangelization, as they like to call it (the Knights of Criminal Columbus said the same about Criminal Columbus on their website in the past, but that statement has seemingly been removed from their website).  EWTN is currently running a documentary over five days in half hour segments called “Serra: Ever Forward, Never Back”,  an arrogant fantasy of small screen cinematic proportions.  The Knights have posted a short, but equally misleading and culturally insulting promotional video entitled, “Blessed Junipero Serra: Apostle of California, Exemplar of Evangelization”.


Click link to see KoC video:    https://youtu.be/lhl9ePF8Gy8


Organizer and activist, Toypurina Carac, has been answering the roamin catholic church’s validation of indigenous genocide by creating and sharing a powerful statement in the form of a moveon.org petition that is very near its goal of 10,000 signatures to convince the vatican and pope to reconsider their (in)sightless and discompassionate plan.  Ironic that the vatican is calling the papal visit a “Mission of Love”.  If you were to speak to those who are the offspring of those who were brutalized by Serra’s predatory mission system, they have a much different story to tell.

From the petition:   http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/urge-pope-francis-to   
 (please share widely; organizers are planning protests in DC and NYC)

“Urge Pope Francis to abandon the canonization of Junipero Serra

To be delivered to His Holiness, Pope Francis 

Pope Francis is coming to Washington, D.C. to canonize Junipero Serra as a Saint. It is imperative he is enlightened to understand that Father Serra was responsible for the deception, exploitation, oppression, enslavement and genocide of thousands of Indigenous Californians, ultimately resulting in the largest ethnic cleansing in North America.” 

Tweet the Knights at @KoC, EWTN at @EWTN and the pope at @Pontifex to let them know your perspectives on this important issue.

 

 
UPDATE:
The petition was sent to pope Francis today Sept.17 at about 12noon. Toypurina Carac and others have organized and will speak at two press conferences in NY and Washington DC on the 21st and 22nd of Sept. respectively. Please let your networks know so that we can be of substantial support during the press conferences to help send a powerful message of support to our indigenous sisters and brothers and their blessed Ancestors who suffered tremendously at the hands and whims of Junipero Serra and his brutal system of land theft, exploitation and slavery.

New York, Monday, September 21, 2015,
10:00 am- 12:00 noonSaint Peter’s Church…619 Lexington Avenue, NY 10022-4610. www.saintpeters.org
Balcony Room

Washington D.C., Tuesday, September 22, 2015
11:00 am- 1:00 pm
Plymouth United Church of Christ, Washington D.C.; 5301 North Capitol St NE, Washington, DC 20011