Silflay Hraka

Okay. I’ve been dwelling on the Unholy Lands article lately. Let me give you the gist of the article:

Let?s say that a couple of years from now, descendants of the dispossessed Cherokee ? members of a nationalist movement to return to their ancestral lands in Georgia ? managed to convince large numbers of people who have traces of Cherokee blood to move back to Georgia and take up residence.

Through lobbying, the new Cherokee get the president of the United States to issue a declaration that Western Georgia is the ancestral homeland of the Cherokee; but the president hedges his bets by also declaring it the homeland of the Georgians who live there now.

Later, the Cherokee win a U.S. Supreme Court victory restoring Georgian lands to them, including the city of Atlanta, as a sovereign Indian nation. The United Nations gets into the act and confirms the decision.

Fifty years later, a full-scale civil war is going on in Georgia between the Cherokee and the latter-day Georgians.

Obviously, I am trying to make an analogy to the current situation in Israel between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs. If I were writing this as a science-fiction novel, I would fill it with analogic events including population movements, religious and cultural intolerance, terrorist bombings ? the whole business.

I’ve heard/read/seen several other comments relating the current Israeli-Palestinian situation to the plight of the American Indians in the U.S. Most of the comments suggest that, much like the Palestinians, the U.S. would never give up land to restore the Native American nations.

I’m here to suggest differently. I think it’s high time we DID restore Native Americans to the land that was their birthright for thousands of years before Europeans came to North America. Now, I don’t think we could restore ALL the tribal lands to all the tribes that are/were in the U.S. I am not suggesting that we even try. I am suggesting that we restore, arguably, the most “famous” of the Native American Peoples to their lands. That’s right. I’m suggesting that we give North and South Dakota back to the Great Sioux Nation.

Think about it. Who’d miss North and South Dakota? Nobody. OK, you ask, what about all the people that LIVE in those States?

Well, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, NOBODY really lives there! According to census figures, the population of South Dakota was approximately 756,600. There’s 75,885 square miles of South Dakota. That makes for roughly 9.9 people per square mile. It gets even better for North Dakota. In 2000, there were only 634,448 people in 68,976 square miles of State, making for 9.3 people per square mile. The population grew a measly 0.5 percent from 1990 to 2000, and was actually in decline in 2001. Compare this with our most populous state, California. 34,501,130 people, 155,959 square miles of land, and 217.2 people per square mile. Hell, if the folks in the Dakotas don’t want to live in Native American territory, relocate them to Montana (pop. 904,433, 145,552 square miles, 6.2 people/square mile).

So, what purpose would this serve? For one, wouldn’t you just love to see the return of the horse cultures of the plains to North America? Dances with Wolves and all that crap? Wouldn’t you love to restore the thundering herds of Bison? Alright, maybe it wouldn’t be like the Native American cultures of the past. For one thing, you’d have a hell of a lot of casinos, more than likely, but I bet tourism to those states would triple. And it’s not like we need those states anymore. The only reason American settlers drove the Sioux from their land in the Dakotas was for gold. It’s not like we really need those mineral rights any longer. Hell, we don’t even have to give up both states. The Sioux population is probably too small to occupy both states, so we’d just have to give up North Dakota.

For another, it would show the Palestians, the Israelis, and the Arab world that we’re willing to pony up to the table and admit that sometimes others might just have some claim to the land that we’ve occupied for a while. It would show that we’re big enough to give just a little bit, and maybe that would start a chain reaction in which the Palestinians and Israelis admit that maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to share the land you’ve lived on or lay claim to with another culture, a culture with a rich history and traditions not necessarily your own.

I, for one, am willing.

Sleep Patterns I

I’m 10 years old. It’s a January night, and it’s cold. And I’m lazy, way too lazy to actually get out of bed and get another blanket. What I do have, close at hand even, is the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. Mother was trying the “let the child live in his filth and he’ll eventually get sick of it” theory. She’d been an adherent for a little over a month, so it was a pretty good pile. I supported the theory that before you went to bed each night, you stuffed the day’s attire into the crack between the bed and the wall. When the clothes appeared on the other side of the bed, they were clean.

By my reckoning, I had a week or two of “clean” clothes right there, far more actual fabric than any of the blankets in the distressingly distant linen closet. Up they came, to be spread over cold spots as they were detected. The night grew older, and colder, and eventually I piled 90% of a month’s worth of socks, shirts, pants and tighty-whitey underwear about my body.

The smell I awoke to in the morning was indescribable. It was….delicious. I reveled in my own stench like a dog who has rolled in a week old elk carcass. Bakeries had nothing on this elixir. Baking brownies paled to a thin, small ghost odor in comparison, quickly smelled and more quickly forgotten. I was encased in aroma. I didn’t smell anything this powerful until years later, when I caught my first whiff of Lauren, wafting off the Baptist minister’s daughter.

It lasted a week, until the night mother asked if I needed extra blankets to ward off the chill. I demurred, explaining my ingenious system with pride, and at some length. I highlighted the fact that not only was my underwear softer than the Star Wars comforter, in toto clothes were warmer and more easily arranged. She listened intently from across the room, where she had taken to sitting in the last few days.

It’s a pity that PowerPoint wasn’t available to me then, the visual impact might have made difference in the outcome of my presentation.

Perhaps my generation is made up of a bunch of slackers who prefer to hang out with their buds and slam some Schaefer?s instead of investing on Wall Street or working themselves into an early grave by chasing the almighty dollar. You call me and my guys slackers…………… okay, i guess……so..

Following this train of thought, although I can?t follow it for long since my beer is getting warm, I suggest that we tend to recognize and honor the wrong people in our society. As a society we tend to look up to people who work hard for their money, leaving a trail of bodies strewn across their path to success. People like Ted Turner, Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Bill Gates and Sam Walton are (or were in the case of Sam) revered and thought highly of simply because they put their noses to the grindstone and left innocent victims in their wake as they climbed the ladder of success. Again I say, ?So??

I am more impressed with those people who remain nameless yet still rake in a buttload of cash. Those people who had some lameass idea yet got other people to buy (literally) into it. Those crazes that lasted but a blip on the social radar screen, just long enough to buy a mansion, a rolls, a never ending flow of beer, a helicopter, a birthday party with Van Halen playing the tunes (with Diamond Dave and not the Extreme reject), an assorted group of hookers and a lava lamp. This list of people is short but impressive. The list includes, but is not limited to, the following people:

1. The creator of the cabbage patch doll (still blows my mind, papers????)
2. The owner of Ebay (build it and they will sell. I think I could sell a bag of poop on there, wait a minute, i actually bought a bag of poop on there)
3. The person who developed leg warmers (was it really that cold in aerobic studios??)
4. The pet psychic???? How can we ever tell if she is wrong?? Very smart woman, not to be toyed with.
5. The person responsible for all the “baby on board” signs (like we would see those and think “whew, glad I saw that. I guess I will angrily slam into a different yahoo’s car!”)
5. Kramer and Mr. Costanza for creating the ?Bro?, and FINALLY,
6. The guy who must have been high walking in the woods, picked up a rock, put it in a box and sold it as a pet. Thank God he used his powers for good and not evil. He is/was a genius.

I hear that anything worth having is worth working for, and that things mean more when you work hard for them. That is a great idea, but it would interfere drastically with my ability to drink with my buds whenever I want to. Is society really asking me to choose between my buddies and beer, or a life of buying stuff that is greatly shortened because of stress?

I choose beer. Just don?t ask me to choose between the beer and my buddies???.too close to call.

The South Knox IQ test.

link via USS Clueless

Ladies, it’s time to do your patriotic duty!

Link via Meryl

Woundwort didn’t have time to post this, so I will.

Indecent Proposal