Against All Odds

Against All Odds Light Shines

An unbelievable procession of light in the gathering cold and darkness, all the way down Lodge Grass School Hill

The night before Christmas Eve my wife Bonnie and I left our house for our car. We were met with a wall of cold air.  Who could think of mounting a horse or a float and parading in this cold? No. They will surely call it off. We went because we were curious, having seen a facebook page from Bethyana and the young people of the Valley of the Chiefs announcing the daring event. Subconsciously I already knew, from being with the Lodge Grass Indians Band in three back-to-back state BB tournament wins, folks from the Valley of the Chiefs are keen on doing the impossible. I only was aware we could stop in with friends there as the inevitable happened. They surely would turn sensible in the cold, and call off parading.   

The sun set before we crossed the tracks by the store. We drove up school hill. I expected an empty parking lot by the school. But I couldn’t miss the heavy traffic. Once on top, through the frosted windows of our car we saw an amazing sight in the school parking lot.  It looked like the summer pow wow parade time gathering at Gas Cap Junction. Horse were being bridled and saddled, and decked with Pendletons. Floats were being loaded with antlers, greens, and boxes for seats, and there were bags of candy. But something was different. Christmas lights! On horses, pickups, floats, and even on people. We watched as horses stamped and steamed frozen fog. We watched children and adults pulling off gloves to tie on lights and decorations, and quickly replacing the gloves. When everyone began wrapping blankets and scarfs around themselves and mounting horses, floats and pickup cabs, we hurried to the bottom of school hill to catch a good view.

By then dusk had descended to velvet dark blue, and the horses’ breathing fogged enough to play with the lights coming down the hill. The visual effects were stunning, and hard to record with a camera. In my simple cell phone view I caught several images of a cross, a star, of the mingling of the fog, silhouetting horses and riders. It gave a visual impression of a choir of angels descending school hill to the town below.

As the procession wound through Lodge Grass, crowds of cars joined us with only a few people braving the cold to actually stand outside and watch.  My guess is that the size and strength of this parade has not been exceeded for a good while.

Everyone ended up in the warmth of the community hall. The enthusiasm and bond of love in the crowd of hundreds was celebrated. The victory of light in Lodge Grass was capped with hot chocolate, several pots of stew and a crisp party mix.  A large contribution of gifts ensured that every child got at least one present, with carefully orchestrated handouts, and a push dance special. What an amazing victory over cold and darkness. I won’t miss next year, after this first annual Lodge Grass Christmas Parade.  It was a miracle of light defeating cold and darkness. Thanks to these young people, and the families that support them!                                              --Dave Graber, band director at LG 1986-2001.

“English Only” cramps English learning for kids

Especially kids from non-English cultures. 

Mr Eschleman’s "simple biases" in the Big Horn County News almost always have insightful credibility, based on evidence. And his “join the melting pot” is welcoming in a way to all us immigrants­–or our immigrant grandparents.  But wait, he missed a crucial evidence step: the value of other languages in learning English well. Every child deserves the benefit and right to be learning at least two languages by age 6.  Almost every other nation’s parents now relish the educational foundation built by two languages early in life–something we’re improving on in Big Horn County as well with new immersion programs.

In the two years I lived in China, all kindergartens nationwide there were required to have English along with Chinese. This reversed a Chinese Communist edict where only the one dominant language was allowed in schools. I cannot forget visiting a tiny stone hut in western Sichuan guided by an old Buddhist monk. It was a school, looking like a child’s play temple. He showed me chinks in the mortar where children had hid their Tibetan language lessons from the Communist Red Guards 50 years ago. The current emphasis on two languages immersed in Kindergarten ended that bias for all children in China. He had been their secret teacher, and early advocate for two languages.

For the evidence missing in Mr. Eshchleman’s “Simply Biased,” look up “two language learning” studies and any of these authors: Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, Comeau, Mendelson, Genesee, Bialystok, Martin, Mechelli, McBride-Chang, Luk, Snow, Kang, Whitehurst, Lonigan. Also check out the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989.

Carnage and community healing

The shock and outrage of Las Vegas is simmering down to a useful conversation in Montana, even Big Horn County. If any regulation of ordnance weaponry happens, it will accompany a recovery of an old civics class concept I learned in my one-room country school in the early 50’s: “…That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The rise of military ordnance weaponry in citizen hands in the United States has been accompanied by a morphing of our nation’s proud principle into something sinister: our government gone awry. With alarming increase in mass shootings nationwide, our collective awareness has grown that we people have a government out of our control. Control of our government is at the center of many of us who would love to see America great again. What’s getting in the way?

I remember a hunting season in the 50’s when my father used proceeds from our custom sheep shearing to buy lifetime membership in a national citizen gun-owner group. My brothers and I got benefits: discount coupons for ammo, mailings on gun safety family promotion, a subscription to the American Rifleman magazine, and (get this) piles of targets on paper. I quickly graduated from a Benjamin BB gun to a single shot 22, and practiced as much as my dad’s dribble of coins to me allowed me to buy 22 shorts ammo at the Trenton General Store.

A few years later Dad revoked his life-time membership. It happened like this: One snow-bright December Sunday morning on the way to church, he had stopped our Studebaker at a bend in the gravel road. There in the snow beside the road was a large area of dark grey. A pile of dead rabbits and quail. “See that?” he asked. “Someone was using guns to go crazy. Guns have a purpose: to provide for the family table.” He alluded to our neighbor friend who had one of the new semi-automatic rifles and a Winchester revolver advertised in our magazine. “Guns like this lead away from God. We shouldn’t buy guns made to kill people. These guns are built not for good, but for evil.”  He didn’t know we had partially succeeded converting our friend’s automatic 22 into fully automatic. We had enough success to track the puffs in the snow right into a running rabbit until the gun jammed and we couldn’t fix it. This didn’t end my gun ownership, but it ended our fun shooting spree, and our fascination with that citizen gun ownership group. That group became a guns-for-people-killing industry in our nation. With it’s world record rise in citizen weaponry sales revenue has come our nation’s most rapidly rising incidents of mass shootings. 

Way back then, in the fifty’s, did my Dad know what he was talking about when ending his lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association? I suspect his only surprise would be how long it has taken to get to Las Vegas. When will we have the sanity to apply similarly sensible regulations for other lethal man-made materials like cars, pharmaceuticals, explosives, pocket knives, etc, to guns? A big difference is this: none of these other materials are specifically designed for mass killing of other human beings. How could our cognitive disconnect get so huge? How much money was poured into this disconnect over the last decades for whose profit?

What was predictable then was and still is preventable. But it takes all of us citizens to return to our nation’s greatness, repeating the words of Abraham Lincoln, “… government of the people, by the people, and for the people...” 

TIME TO DREAM

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Time to Dream

By Dave Graber, revised, written originally for “Spirit and Dust” blog 2015.

Too many of our students are suffering. Many of us know the suffering of our own past. Some of us have found a healing path. Those of us walking this way are here because we were gifted with someone who stood by us while we looked for our way. So today we choose to bring our students onto that healing path. Some of us through our life time, I’m 73, have seen an increase in children’s suffering. Let’s dream of building resilience with all of us who have suffered childhood adversity, so that our families, schools, religious centers, justice systems and workplace become sanctuaries for healing and learning.  Bringing that dream into reality, by Creator God’s help, is the most important reason for us to be alive today.

Across this nation an amazing movement is igniting in communities where people thought such change was impossible.  Minds are changing. Hope is growing. More people are daring to dream that real change is possible.  In two states, Washington and Massachusetts, Parents and children coming to a health center for care are almost as likely to have a five-minute Adverse Childhood Experience assessment as blood pressure and weight. Young people caught up in the juvenile justice system are given tools that allow them responsibility for their own healing. Behavioral health professionals, handling dysfunction, addictions, and gutter thinking now have backup systems and tools in wrap around care that really give traumatized people hope. Educators trying to facilitate learning with the growing numbers of troubled, disruptive or violent children in schools across our nation, are now being trained in giving tools of responsibility to troubled children.  

It’s about Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. New evidence says that a whole package of dysfunction, addictions, health problems, and early deaths is predictable, that much of it originates in childhood trauma, and is therefore preventable.  

MY STORY I started teaching in 1965, moved to Busby in 73, to Kansas in 78, was called back to Montana (still our home) in 1984. I taught music, English, and band in Lodge Grass 1986 to 2001. That year we left the country. Bonnie and I went to China to teach at Xihua University near Chengdu, in Sichuan, the center of the historical trauma brought on by Chairman Mao and the Chinese cultural revolution, exterminating some 40 million people.  And we saw the same impossible dream there. We came back and I taught at Crow School until three years ago, having learned loads about dreaming.

I learned from Oliver and Elizabeth Risingsun, who told me in the old days Cheyenne children were never spanked. And from Lee and Gladys old mouse, who told me not to raise my voice against a child. And John Killsontop and Ernest King, and laura Rockroads, who sang songs and told stories. These were the stories they said children should be learning from their elders instead of watching Gunsmoke or Hee Haw or other stories on TV. And I did this because teaching EE II EE II YO songs to my students at Busby School and Lame Deer didn’t connect like the Plains Indian heya heya songs. It took me a long time to learn this. I had to get desperate for help.

And I dreamed if–onlies.  If only my students’ parents would prepare them emotionally for school. Three decades later, In China, I dreamed if only Chairman Mao’s evil would have been stopped before 10’s of millions died, then our Chinese student’s parents would have parented better. (We’re are flying back to China for a three weeks visit next week!, if only there are always two pilots in the cockpit), Just four years ago, I left teaching at Crow School. I was then still thinking, if only we could get these parents to care properly for their children.  I’m still thinking, if only our criminal justice system would work better for restorative justice—the kind of ancient systems in place among the Cheyenne (See the book Cheyenne Legal Jurisprudence).  

My impossible dream
Until 2014 about this time I was pulling back from such an impossible dream.   five years ago I had retreated back into my childhood, starting to farm again, after leaving my home in Iowa to go to college.  I began writing a column for the Big Horn County News five years ago, trying to get my history, my head and my heart together with my if-only experiences in Big Horn and Rosebud Counties.  see my blog greenwoodback40.  So now we have a small farm with heritage turkeys and organic heritage corn and hay. At least my own grandchildren can do stuff with their hands, dirty stuff, that helps them, the plants, and the critters grow.  It was a distraction from my disappointments that this dream seems so impossible. But I still had hope.

in late 2014 it came together.  It took me 45 years in Montana to finally come around to reality. Earlier that spring I attended the first ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences summit in Billings along with some 300 folks across Montana.  It was time to dream again.

I realized the power in understanding two simple things: 1) the power of the predictable becoming preventable.  I learned that adverse experiences in childhood predict outcomes.  The suffering and dysfunction in later years, including caregiver child abuse and neglect, clearly often does have an origin in adverse childhood experiences.    2) I learned that the power of self-healing is still carried forward in the heritage, language, songs, dances, games and family life of Cheyenne and Plains Indian traditions especially in mother, baby and child care, and also compassionate tough care for plants and animals and others of our species, human beings, the earth and the whole universe.  

And I remembered my desperate search for Indian songs to teach. I didn’t care what tribe.  I ordered an Indian Songs collection of LP platters recorded by Lewis Ballard in the late 60's to play on my school turntable stereo. I started teaching an Eskimo Ice Cream song, celebrating Ice Cream made with whale blubber and snow. The women elders in the kitchen heard me singing from the kitchen. In the lunch line Gladys and Ernestine Two Moons asked me “Where did you get that song you’re teaching?... That’s not a Cheyenne song!”  “Why aren’t you teaching our Cheyenne children Cheyenne songs in Cheyenne?” My classroom was not private.  I kept my door open. They heard me.  They said, “Quit teaching our kids other tribes songs. Teach them Cheyenne songs.”

But I had them Aha!. I said, teach me some and I’ll teach your grandkids. They said, "Go find the old people. They know the songs and have time. We work." The first person I went to was Coco. Coconého’éhohe. The late Corlette Teeth. He was young as me then. He often came to my classroom to help me with drumming and singing. He was lead singer of the "White Buffalo Singers" in Busby. I showed him a book I found in the library, “The Indians’ Book.” It had some 20 Cheyenne songs. I tried reading the songs in that book Natalie Curtis wrote down in the 1910’s. She went from nation to nation convinced these people would cease to exist soon, and she should, in the name of basic human decency, help preserve a few of the awesome songs, stories, and dances in case some might survive the pressure to turn European. I tried singing some of the songs written. Coco said “Quit trying to sing in Cheyenne. I can’t understand a thing. Use your flute.” I performed several, and came upon one on page 180, titled “Swinging song” written as sung by Three Fingers. I was amazed Coco knew it. He corrected my pronunciation and helped me learn it. The kitchen crew of course heard this, and said it was an OK song.

Then they helped me find Ernest King, John Killsontop, Laura Rockroads, Teddy Risingsun, and others. A variety of people sang other songs for me. I gave children gestures to choreograph the meanings of songs. One song, Vohkoheso,  Rabbit. Became my my first Cheyenne name. I’m glad I wasn’t named Matahetane.

Teddy’s story
But I remembered this song, because I sang it and asked people what it meant. Matahetaneo’o Enestonevaotsemeno.  Ernest King sang it for me, after I tried. He told me the woodsmen coming were really “wood rats.” He said the children were expected to dance and sing in the tall grass to matt it down for the tipis, and the wood rats, what we know today as pack rats, would come out of the grass. The children and the dogs could then catch them. They made delicious food. And the children were safe from predators as they were occupied with matting down tipi sites and hunting meat instead of wandering from the encampment. They had a job to do, as their parents and elders hunted for game for food and the women set up the camp. That’s the right story, I thought.

Then one day I was driving Ted Risingsun and Stamper White to Lame Deer. I sang that song again and started telling Ernest King’s story. Teddy stopped me.  Here’s his story as I remember it.

"My brother and I were playing in the dust by the house. Nearby my grandpa and grandma were cutting meat to dry. They told us to stop raising the dust. We didn’t quit. They didn’t tell us again. After a time my grandpa disappeared. He came back with a drum and began singing and drumming. He told us to dance. We didn’t want to. He said danger was coming. We needed to dance to keep out of danger. And we need to do it RIGHT AWAY. Then he said “Ohtah! Look out behind you!” There was the most fearsome monster we had seen. It’s huge head and jaws with sharp teeth were set on a furry body.

"We were both panicked and started to run, but he grabbed us. Grandpa said we had to dance so the monster would not catch and eat us.  We danced, and the monster danced too. We danced a long time. Every time we stopped the monster would growl and Grandpa would say dance more. So we kept on dancing and got tired.  Gradually the monster’s voice turned less fearsome. I don’t remember how Teddy said they learned it was their uncle. They did, I think by recognizing his voice. By that time our sisters and aunties were out of the house, and everyone laughed. We learned that day, something more valuable than we could learn in school."

I was also visiting Wesley Whiteman for songs and stories. I sang this for him. He told me a very different story. If you pay me 50 bucks I’ll tell you that story too, you know stories don’t come cheap. Just kidding, I'm a white man and get a lot for free here. But I don’t want to take more time.

Recently Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician in California, has produced a TED talk on this subject, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNk . The following is an adaptation from her talk on this subject.

Adverse Childhood Experiences study confirms that trauma that’s really serious, repeated without processing with trusted adults, or continuing too long, does actual damage to brain development.  This is at the heart of the training I began last spring with Elevate Montana, in the Center for Disease Control study called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. It’s something that everybody needs to know about. It’s also something that needs all of us together to solve.  The first ACEs study was done by Dr. Vince Felitti at Kaiser and Dr. Bob Anda at the CDC, beginning in the early 90’s.  Together, they asked 17,500 adults about their history of exposure to what they called "adverse childhood experiences," or ACEs. Those include physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; physical or emotional neglect; parental mental illness, substance dependence, incarceration; parental separation or divorce; or domestic violence, but not dressing up to scare little kids.

For every yes, you would get a point on your ACE score. And then what they did was, they correlated these ACE scores against health outcomes. What they found was striking. Two things: Number one, ACEs are incredibly common. Sixty-seven percent of the population of those 17,000 mostly white, middle class, successful people had at least one ACE, and 12.6 percent, one in eight, had four or more ACEs. The second thing that they found was that there was a dose-response relationship between ACEs and health outcomes: the higher your ACE score, the worse your health outcomes. For a person with an ACE score of four or more, their relative risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was two and a half times that of someone with an ACE score of zero. For hepatitis, it was also two and a half times. For depression, it was four and a half times. For suicide attempts or reality, it was 12 times. A person with an ACE score of seven or more had triple the lifetime risk of lung cancer and three and a half times the risk of ischemic heart disease, the number one killer in the United States of America.

Well, of course this makes sense. Some people looked at this data and they said, "Come on. You have a rough childhood, you're more likely to drink and smoke and do all these things that are going to ruin your health. This isn't science. This is just bad behavior and common sense."

It turns out this is exactly where the science comes in. We now understand better than we ever have before how exposure to early adversity affects the developing brains and bodies of children. It affects areas like the pleasure and reward centers of the brain. It’s been implicated in substance abuse and dependence. It inhibits the  brain’s capacity for putting the brakes on impulses.  If developed properly, it controls our executive function, a critical area for learning and for planning and decision making. And on MRI scans, we see measurable differences in the brain's fear response center. So there are real neurological, or brain formation, reasons why folks exposed to high doses of adversity are more likely to engage in high-risk behavior.

Now that's important to know, and understanding heritage and language strategies deep in the fabric of Cheyenne culture remembered by trusted elders is a huge healing resource to defuse with humor or other strategies the panic of a traumatic event. That’s what makes for strong children with grit and courage and determination. And we thought it was important that we protect children from all trauma and stress. No; it's actually damaging to withdraw from engaging with them with unconditional love when they encounter life's inevitable stresses or even trauma.  Much more important is what we adults do with our children when they are traumatized, frozen, or fighting, or attempting to flee, from danger.

But it turns out that even if you don't engage in any high-risk behavior, you're still more likely to develop heart disease or cancer. The reason for this has to do with the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, the brain's and body's stress response system that governs our fight-or-flight response. (This is explained by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. Find her on "youtube" or "ted talks.") Sometimes it’s called the limbic system. How does it work? Well, imagine you're walking in the forest and you see a bear. Immediately, your hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary, which sends a signal to your adrenal gland that says, "Release stress hormones! Adrenaline! Cortisol!" Your heart starts to pound, Your pupils dilate, your airways open up, and you are ready to either fight that bear or run from the bear. And that is wonderful if you're in a forest and there's a bear. (Laughter). If the bear attacks and we can’t get away, our brain’s alarm systems are often activated at the highest level.

But the problem is what happens when the bear comes home every night, and this system is activated over and over and over again, and it goes from being adaptive, or life-saving, to health-damaging, and confusion and chaos. Children are especially sensitive to this repeated stress activation, the younger the more, because their brains and bodies are just developing. High doses of repeated adversity or severe trauma have a toxic affect on brain cells. This is especially true for children when trusted adults cannot or will not physically and emotionally comfort the child.  This is what damages brain structure and function, and can also affect the developing immune system, the developing hormonal systems, and right down to every cell in the body in the way our DNA is read and transcribed into our personality.

Two epidemiologists, doctors Felitti and Anda at Kaiser and the CDC, first studied in depth the whole spectrum of ten Adverse Childhood Experiences of those first 17,000. They then calculated an attributable risk factor for each of the outcomes of those experiences together.  They found adverse childhood experiences, often those the body remembers best, decades later may become behavior problems, health problems, and even violence problems, altogether some twenty outcomes.

Being predictable, it’s preventable. This is huge, and important for us here, because virtually all of the caring professions are just beginning to make assessments and diagnoses in the light of origins in Adverse Childhood Experiences that go back to birth, or even before.  Many in our caring community nationwide yet to this day are driven toward quick answers in drugs or remedial therapy, and locked in the European systems that say people do right because of fear of punishment.  Yet many in the caring profession right here in Big Horn and Rosebud Counties have already been trained in the use of ACEs strategies for helping people toward their own self healing capacity.

Most important, they already know real healing in this community depends on all of us. The evidence I have barely begun understanding needs to be delivered in a training. Bethany, the official with Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders, has been my co –trainer, we are two of 22 trained to deliver this evidence in Montana. Not to give you a program or method. Not to bring in experts to train you in how to do anything. Only to give you the evidence and share with you what is happening in states like Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and at least 18 more. She is already assigned to work on ACEs information delivery in Lame Deer and some other selected rural towns of Eastern Montana under her organization. You can ask her to help organize a training here.

We could do like the one planned at Ft Peck the end of May, and invite one of the CDC original trainers and researchers. I personally know Dr. Anda, because he was our main instructor in the two day training in Helena last October with the 22 of us who are to spreading this evidence around Montana. Or we can have smaller training sessions at schools, churches, health centers, or incarceration centers. I won’t do this planning for folks here, but I will support any attempt.  If I am requested to do the training, I will get free opi continuing ed credit for educators, and free Montana continuing ed certification credit for counselors. I will also see to it anyone of our team who comes to Lame Deer will do the same. We need at least two weeks commitment of location, time, and numbers of participants who want credit.

Last month NPR broadcast a series of four “focus on health” specials on ACEs. Lots of child abuse connection to ACE studies. This information is finally being noticed by national media. Email me and I’ll send you links to these four 15 min segments from National Public Radio. I can also send you links on upcoming training events and online information and news via ACE connect. graberdb@gmail.com

Hey, it’s time to dream the dream God places in our hearts and minds! Pray God’s blessing on his timely direction of these two doctors’ instincts for truth and compassion for children, and for the psychiatrists, teachers, care givers, therapists, judges and jailers who encounter children or their parents that self healing will become reality in our counties of southern Montana.

When troubled children grow up

Links and documentation to the Spirit and Dust column in Big Horn County News November 5, 2014 include the following:

Video of Felitti on origin of the ACEs study. Dr. Felitti and Dr. Anda from the Center for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Diego were partners in the first ACEs research there more than a decade ago. Dr. Anda was our main consultant at our ACEs interface training in Helena October 23, 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEFAI-2QoAc

This is Dr. Anda's presentation at National Institute for Safe Families, as keynote speaker, "Adverse Childhood Experiences in our society"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVJ5G9pGog8

"Childwise Institute what we stand for" Childwise Institute is the organization behind ACEs science information for Montana. Todd Garrison is the director, and organized "Elevate Montana," the ACEs program in Montana. He wants to focus on areas generally last to get useful recent scientific information, like right here in Big Horn County.

http://www.childwise.org/what-we-stand-for/

ACE research explained well here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-8IIWFpE_g

Resilience trumps ACEs, website especially for children, with tangible answers to “What can we do?” One important effect from ACEs research changes our responses to difficult encounters with human dysfunction from "What's wrong with you?" to "What happened to you?" 

http://resiliencetrumpsaces.org/

Published on Aug 14, 2013

"Research Panel - Six presentations on research in Adverse Childhood Experiences" at The National Summit on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) held May 13th and 14th 2013 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Speakers listed on this site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC9eV8-if5k

http://prevention.mt.gov/specialist/acedocuments/HO4.pdf

Questions used by Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in Montana in 2011 for adverse childhood experiences. BRFSS also was set up in other states in our region, with ACEs research connections.

http://www.acesconnection.com/topic/ace-and-native-americans

http://www.thesewardphoenixlog.com/story/2012/02/02/local/chugachmiut-takes-a-leaner-approach/020120121950601120877.html

Seward Alaska collaboration for health care IHS & FQHC

http://www.npaihb.org/images/resources_docs/weeklymailout/2013/may/week5/8%20THD%20_%20DeL_DeeBigFootSeries%20final.pdf

Series of lectures on ACEs and Oklahoma tribes IHS’ TeleBehavioral Health Center for Excellence

http://acestoohigh.com/

National clearing house for news and information access on ACEs

http://acestoohigh.com/?s=Dr.+Robert+Anda

Dr. Anda and risk factors of high ACEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp_9nLjRdDo

THE COLUMN "SPIRIT AND DUST" IN BIG HORN COUNTY NEWS  November 4, 2014.

     It’s time to make room in my life for new scientific evidence that children don’t “just get over it” after some kinds of adversities happen to them. For that reason I anticipate a temporary respite from writing this column for the Big Horn County News. Two events drive this new awareness and create my need to cut back.

One event was the Crow Day of Prayer October 30. I heard prayers offered in faith God will deliver the Apsáalooke Nation from the growing siege of so many premature and tragic deaths. The other event was the previous weekend. I participated in a training session with “Elevate Montana,” an arm of Childwise Institute in Helena on “Adverse Childhood Experiences," or ACEs.

I have been intrigued with the ACEs research for several months now.  It seems right on target with many of our ongoing health-related problems here in Big Horn County.  At the Elevate Montana training, we learned about Dr. Snow’s groundbreaking work in battling cholera during London’s 1854 outbreak.  There are many similarities between this story and new discoveries about the impacts of child trauma. 

Dr. Snow was trying to counter the prevailing view that cholera was caused by bad air (miasma).  Public officials believed that the disease was spread through smells from less clean working people who were living together in crowded places.  Dr. Snow was convinced that cholera was spread through water.  Since people didn’t know about germs and microbes back then, water was seen as clean if it smelled, looked, and tasted good.  Snow challenged this belief, citing evidence of 500 deaths that occurred in a few short weeks directly clustered around a public water pump in the Soho district. Officials continued to ignore the role that the city’s system of cesspools, sewage drainage into the river, and contaminated wells played in the outbreak of this deadly disease. 

The controversy took a new turn when Reverend Henry Whitehead became involved.  His goal was to prove Snow wrong through active investigation.  An honest man, he slowly came to respect Dr. Snow’s passionate and accurate research into the problem. What finally convinced him was an interview he did with a mother who lived adjacent to that well. The woman had lost her baby to cholera almost the same day the 1854 outbreak started. She showed the Reverend how she had dumped water from washing her cholera-infected baby's diaper into a cesspool.  He saw with his own eyes how that waste water leaked into soil less than a yard from the well. The bricks lining the well were just not tight enough to hold back an unseen tiny seepage of contamination. He then joined Dr. Snow in spreading the word of something deadly in the apparently clean clear water of that well.

Like Dr. Snow and Reverend Whitehead in London, doctors from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and Kaiser Permanente in San Diego have been trying to find underlying causes for glaring health disparities. Doctors decided to go back to early childhood to see whether they could identify the most important precursors of poor health outcomes.  They researched childhoods of some 17,000 middle class successful people ages 18 to 85 in San Diego, California beginning in the 1990’s. They found remarkable connections between their stories of childhood trauma and decades-later illnesses, dysfunction, and early death. The science of this study has been shared and research confirmed now in some twenty states. Montana, with our children here ranking 49^th of all states in overall health, completed our ACE research (BRFSS) in 2011. Montana’s data was even more robust than the original studies, as it included more than just successful middle class people.

As a result of this comprehensive research, we have good science calling us to work together to reduce the effects of childhood trauma.  Informed leaders here and across our state are already beginning to access this science and bring the changes it calls for.  It will take all sectors of the community working together to really turn things around.  I’m excited to be part of a group who will bring information and support to our local towns (Crow Agency, Lame Deer, Hardin, Pryor) and families in our area.

There are several of us soon to be available in South Central Montana for group presentations. Our schedule will be handled locally by Big Horn County Best Beginnings, call 679-0424. For the state clearinghouse for ACE presentations by others of our group across Montana contact “Elevate Montana” online or by phone at the Childwise Institute in Helena, (855) 513-1177.

David Graber
Hardin, MT  59034
graberdb@gmail.com

The Big Lie

The worst damage from deception comes from truth that is slightly twisted. 

 

Thousands of us in Big Horn County will line up to vote in the midterm elections. Across the nation, hundreds of thousands will have more difficulty casting their ballots than they did two years ago. Why? Because powerful people don’t want them to vote. Of course, new voter ID laws do make the possibility of voter fraud slightly more difficult. But that truth is twisted around to cover the big lie. The true motive of powerful out-of-state people backing LR126 (on the ballot in Big Horn County) is to move away, not toward, the principles of democracy in our Constitution.

 

Our nation was founded on the principle of “one man, one vote.” At that time, John Adams and others meant a vote for rich (or at least financially self-sufficient), white men, only.  Yet, our constitution did vest power with people instead of with wealth (especially royalty in England).  More importantly, our constitution was designed primarily to limit the power of a few over many. That American experiment, however limited, set in motion amazing changes here that other nations’ kings and rulers watched in alarm.

 

It took a while to expand our nation’s concept of who should vote. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. This was quickly followed by successful efforts to limit the power of former slaves, including rights to own property, to obtain an education (now considered a property right), and to vote.

 

Equal access to voting rights in the United States has been a long and hard won crusade for many groups of people.  In Montana, our own Jeanette Rankin led a coalition eventually giving suffrage (voting and office holding) rights to women. Her efforts to expand these voting rights to sharecroppers and blacks were frustrated. Most southern states refused the new public school laws, citing Black inferior intellectual ability. But the struggle went on.

 

Then came the freedom schools in the South in the sixties. Black people learned our Constitution, found how to register to vote and filled out the papers. Many overcame the grueling obstacles to running for public office and to accessing polling places.  This was not an easy feat, as the voting process was set up, then, for the purpose of discouraging the Black vote.  

 

American Indians faced similar obstacles.  As recently as 2003, the right to citizenship of the  Tohono O’odham tribe in  Topawa, AZ was being questioned. Tribal elders told me about their reluctance to protest the practice bombing raids that were being conducted by the US military on their village.  These raids caused windows to break and livestock to abort .  Yet, the people were fearful of speaking out, lest their citizenship be revoked. Arizona politicians, knowing the Indian vote bends Democratic, argued that because many of their relatives live across the border in Mexico, the Tohono are not really US citizens. As the tribal elders said to  me, “We won’t risk our hard-won rights to citizenship in this great country.”

 

The seeds for democracy planted in our constitution should not be taken lightly.  The “blessings of liberty” are precious indeed to many peoples rendered powerless through circumstance of birth or heritage.  Our definition of access and fairness has rightly expanded over time.  Now we believe that even women, minorities, and those living in poverty  should have  access to the wealth created by their own labor.  They should be able to reap from the ground on which they live and to access the legal protections we all enjoy.

 

Now for the first time since our nation was founded we are backing down on these voting rights.  We are creating excuses to whittle away at people’s basic rights in order to engineer election outcomes.  States are redistricting and putting in all sorts of barriers to keep certain people from voting, with legislation written and disinformation funded by powerful interests fearful of losing their power.  This is the opposite of getting out the vote campaigns.  Once again, like in the 60’s, it takes vigilance to vote if one is poor. Be organized, plan ahead, work the right kinds of hours or don’t vote. This change is connected with a recent surge in virtual slavery in America (Michelle Anderson, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness).

 

Will we rescind our status as the world’s beacon for democracy, under pressure from the American Legislative Exchange Council and other so-called “conservative” new royalists? Here in Montana, even in Big Horn County, we have been deluged with their propaganda. Do we believe voter registration will somehow improve our voting process for Democracy? Research proves otherwise. It only serves the elites’ purpose of suppressing votes of the poor and less powerful. So, when we cast our vote on LR 126, let’s carefully consider what we’re really choosing.  Do we value expediency over fairness or do we value equal access to civil rights over the power of wealth?

 

http://sojo.net/magazine/login?nid=60071    November, 2014

“How to Suppress the Vote”

by Bob Smietana    IN THIS YEAR'S midterm elections, hundreds of thousands of Americans will have a much more difficult time casting their ballots than they did two years ago. And it won’t be because of rain, or early winter snows, or other acts of God. It will be because powerful people don’t want them to vote. Why? They stand to gain politically if the “wrong” people can be kept away from the polls. It’s the opposite of a “get out the vote” campaign—“keep out the vote” describes it better.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/13/the-disconnect-between-voter-id-laws-and-voter-fraud/

 

http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud

 

Michelle Anderson, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431

 

Have felons been proliferating at a rate we are afraid might dilute the rational vote of the rest of us? We should start looking at our felon factories. If this scares us to the point we want to deprive them of citizenship, we should ask what’s really happening and why, with a little scientific research. “Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action.” From Amazon’s reviews.   

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex

“The term "prison–industrial complex" (PIC) is used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services…”

 

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT

graberdb@gmail.com

Retreat from Common Sense

At some point over the past 50 years, the term gov’ment became a cuss word among the common citizenry.  I think most of us, including the media pundits, spend a fair amount of time talking about all the things that are broken in our country. I think that maybe the break-down of basic good sense accounts for people’s unhappy views of their governing bodies.  It may also explain some of the roiling party-based rhetoric that keeps us mired in bad policies. Let’s take a recent Supreme Court decision and compare that with some country critter conflicts. 

 

We have 30 turkeys and 40 roosters at our farm. We use corn to attract them to nearby roosts within pre-dawn capturing distance for the coming fall harvest. When the sun is hanging low, one of my grandsons grabs a bucket of whole corn and scatters it on the driveway. The roosters and turkeys battle each other for the kernels. But the battle is not fair or balanced. The turkeys are larger and their beaks longer and sharper. Sometimes a brave (or really hungry) rooster will stand up to a turkey, and the two will go all out dueling with flying feathers while slightly calmer members of both species snap up the kernels. It’s entertaining to watch. But then, when it’s over, they now find their way to the right roosts.

 

Our current Supreme Court reminds me of these quarreling birds. It is dividing the country again. Five justices are Republican. Four are democrat. All nine spout that their opinions are fully founded upon fealty to the first amendment of our constitution. But look. The five Republican appointees, alluding to their evolving new interpretation of that document, celebrate the concentration of money and power wrought by granting access to our public platforms commensurate with dollars instead of votes. As a result, the power of government we have learned to disdain is no longer vested in all of us, of the people, by the people, for the people. It has become government of, by, and for an elite few at the top.

 

Away from Washington D.C. many of us are becoming more bipartisan. Some 70% of us normal American citizens, regardless of political party, are fed up. We no longer support Citizens United. In spite of the patriotic sound of the phrase, Washington insiders, mostly Republican and some Democrats, are leading to the most demonstrably undemocratic outcomes since those cherished by King George before our 1st amendment became our law.

 

The writers of our constitution desired freedom from the yoke of British kings and corporations. Freedom to speak, practice ones own religion, and assemble freely as citizens were hallmarks of our new American democracy. It gave voice to the voiceless, protecting rights to address abuses by the powerful and wealthy British elite. Citizens United has dismantled already many of these freedoms, while using the language of citizen’ rights.  Their priorities for corporate domination remove the natural restraint of “one citizen one vote.” In a government ruled by common sense, big money would not be allowed to drown out the voice of American citizens, those real human beings who were once endowed with inalienable rights. 

 

In my hometown, there used to be the town square and fairground commons, where anyone with a yen to yell could do so. I remember mostly sellers of snake oil being the yellers. They could jump on their wagon or soapbox (height regulated) and shout out their message for a little money or attention. But since amplifiers were either forbidden or not yet available, every citizen's one voice attained fairly equal modulation from the Creator's own provision of vocal chords.

 

It’s time our supreme court reviews their history and uses a little common sense.   Meantime, we the people need to stop tolerating these turkeys telling us money can talk with the biggest megaphone it can buy (and that it needs 1^st amendment protection to do so). It’s not hard to figure out that what the elitists really want is to make permanent their absconding of our American form of government, replacing it with an aristocratic republic.

 

Unfortunately, money first and votes only secondly, make politicians successful. Without that money, votes simply won’t happen. Since the old “truth and fairness” and “equal time” policing of the media is long gone, moneyed interests have taken over the soapbox and grabbed all the corn.

 

I’m hopeful that it’s still possible to restore some of the good common wisdom of ordinary people into our government, if we can figure out a way to ignore the clamoring and sleight of hand tactics used to “inform” us today. There are lots of grassroots efforts evolving around issues of importance to us commoners. In the meantime, my grandson has orders not to let our turkeys rule the corn. He is to scatter the kernels as widely as he can, so everyone has a chance, and no one-percent turkeys can abscond with over half and squawk they have a constitutional right to that corn.

 

David Graber

Hardin, MT

graberdb@gmail.com

The Real Heroes

They say the recording of history is left to the victors. Those who conquer other civilizations are left to define the heroes and villains of brutal campaigns, and the innocents have no voice. Here in the United States, we are not immune from that tradition. In fact, when some school districts attempt to teach a balanced perspective on historical events, they are often accused of encouraging young people to “spit on the graves of their ancestors.” 

 

When I started school back in the 1940s, I remember being fascinated with the story of Columbus’ discovery of America.  The beautiful tale of bravery and exploration captured my young imagination.  I remember drawing pictures of the three ships with their names on the sails. Queen Isabel’s decision to pawn her royal jewels to finance his courageous voyage impressed me. Columbus’ courage to sail, uncertain he might fall off the edge of the earth, caught my fancy so much I started to draw an ocean precipice with the Santa Maria sideways tumbling off and sailors hanging onto the big sail. My teacher saw, and told me I should draw what really happened.

 

What did really happen?  Today, most of us know that many Europeans had visited American shores many times before Columbus arrived. Queen Isabel did not pawn her jewels. Columbus actually borrowed money from Spanish Royalty to finance his first trip. He promised a large profit to these powerful investors assuming the best, but was plagued with fear of debtors prison upon returning empty handed. Columbus did not find his quick route to the riches of the East. The gold he did find was mostly rumors. Desperate for a marketable commodity to repay his loan, he seized by force 1200 Taiwa Indians and crammed as many as he could into his ships to sell in the Seville slave market back in Spain. 

 

Thus began a 500 year campaign of greed and lust on the part of Europeans. The subsequent extermination of people and long-standing civilizations is one of the saddest chapters on human history. 

 

Our own community is a testament to the power of myth. For many decades, Custer was hailed as a hero, praised for his martyrdom in spreading civilization and religion to indigenous peoples.  We see that differently now, also.

 

Yet, there are some real heroes from Columbus’ time our youth could emulate.  One example is Bartholome de Las Casas. He was there on the streets of Seville the day Columbus arrived back in Spain with his first cargo of Indian slaves.  He would have seen the hundreds of survivors, some his own age of 8 years.  Instead of seeing these people as chattel, he saw them as sorrowful and blameless human beings in chains before Queen Isabel and the citizens of Seville. On that day he may have locked eyes with a Taiwa child, and begun building a child’s empathy for fellow humans. This was the day that God placed upon this young man the makings of a true hero.

 

Bartholome grew up to be an influential scholar, historian, and social reformer.  Back in the mid 1500’s, some of his writing went viral. He had a part in overturning the theology that indigenous people of the Americas lacked redeemable souls. In addition, his early theological and legal arguments against slavery spread eventually to the United States, helping inspire language in our own constitution. His ideas helped build our Abolitionist movement and inspired our civil rights movement, centuries later.

 

It’s interesting that we don’t learn more about this influential figure in American history. Here is an example of a real hero who could inspire school children to consider the impact of our actions and join in the fight for the same justice issues at root in our Revolutionary War.  Not as flashy as Columbus’ ships falling off the edge of the earth, but perhaps a little more realistic. 

 

When the revisionist history around Columbus’ Day is addressed, like it often is now across classrooms in Big Horn County, celebrations previously justifying the evil of empire could become truly inspirational. We could use this holiday to examine our own roots and religious heritage for real heroes to emulate.

 

The following is not included in the Big Horn County News column:

Columbus’ criminal rampage in our hemisphere should not be taught in our elementary schools. Along with the Jewish holocaust, this is material to encounter in high school at the earliest. We have plenty of real heroes to honor, people who committed their lives to our freedom and peaceful safety: Florence Nightingale, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Betty Williams, and Jesus and his disciples in Bible times. These were people who discovered what is best in the human soul, not an island in the Caribbean. Mass murderers like Christopher Columbus, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte do not belong in a place of honor in our schools.

 

Columbus left a contingent of troops in a stockade built from one of the ships to guard the remaining captives. Eventually, the residents of Hispaniola roused from their peaceful ways, stormed the stockade, killed all the Spaniards Columbus left behind, and freed their loved ones. When Columbus returned with a larger contingent, the slaughter of the Taiwa began in earnest. Their daughters were raped, children, fathers and mothers separated, and massive numbers enslaved until they died digging for gold in the mountains. Columbus’ frantic search soon turned from gold to humans. The word got out, and American nations turned from their relatively peaceful ways to fight off the Spanish conquistadors. But without guns and swords to balance the conflict, it simply brought on more atrocity. Eventually, the genocide may have exceeded that of Hitler, but since no one took account of Indian deaths there is no proof.

 

If he were alive today, he would almost certainly be awaiting execution. His reign of terror throughout the islands between Yucatan and Florida was so horrific it exceeds the level of crimes against humanity even of Saddam Hussein. Some three million people were put to death over three decades, many with horrendous pain, unspeakable cruelty, and slow agonizing torture. He was a criminal, inviting or forcing his men into unspeakable acts against the children and adult citizens of the nations beginning with Hispaniola.  

 

We still have in Big Horn County a revisionist history in Columbus Day. Our rich mix of culture and religion in Big Horn County provides the right context to remedy this. The false lessons about Columbus Day popularized for political gain almost a hundred years ago are being understood with an honest investigation of the documents.

 

We were visited in Big Horn County once with a little Columbus named Custer. The history of that encounter was similarly revised to make him a hero. For years, he fought and subdued Indians in their own homeland, slaughtering their children and elderly when encountering opposition to his greed for gold, land, and political power. It became then, in our national conscience, manifest destiny. But it has changed. We have seen the light. Blessed with descendants from both sides coexisting right here now in Big Horn County, our impetus for peace welling up from the spring of our religious diversity here has overcome much of the hostility. We fortunately ended up memorializing the event that happened on Last Stand Hill, rather than honoring one of those who died there.

 

Unlike Jesus, or even heroes like Martin Luther King, Custer and Columbus were both shedders of human blood. Columbus was simply the first European Christendom representative to explore this hemisphere. His purpose, far from spreading Christian faith, mutual gain, or even good will, was to extricate gold and human beings for export and sale back across the Atlantic, enhancing the power and wealth of Spain.  Custer was simply, we hope, the last. The 500 years of greed and lust by powerful Europeans, started by Columbus, backed by European guns, germs and steel against the nations of this hemisphere, should now be over.

 

There is a real hero from Columbus’ time our youth could emulate: Bartholome de las Casas. He was there on the streets of Seville the day Columbus arrived back in Spain with is first cargo of Indian slaves. There had to be some reason God placed upon this young man the makings of a true hero.

 

Back in the mid 1500’s, some of his writing went viral. He had a part in overturning the theology that indigenous people of the Americas lacked redeemable souls. In addition, his early theological arguments against slavery spread eventually to the United States, helping inspire language of our constitution. His ideas helped build our Abolitionist movement and inspired our civil rights movement.

 

Casas' first book prompted an investigation by the Catholic church of practices of slavery and genocide in the new world beginning with Columbus, "The Only Way."

 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bartolome-de-las-casas-helen-rand-parish/1120012863?ean=9780809103676

"Bartolome de las Casas (1484-1566) is the key to the quincentenary debate--should we celebrate or should we weep? His was the main cry against the tragic fate of the Indians, the main cry for reform. Until now, he has been known only from incomplete sources. This book begins his rediscovery in 1992.

 

Las Casas was barely 18 when he came to America in 1502, spending the next decade as a planter in the West Indies. He befriended the natives, but saw them cruelly massacred and exploited by conquistadors. In 1514 the mounting shock turned him into a defender of the Indians from then until his death at 82. As a priest-colonist, a Dominican friar, a bishop, he fought at court in the New World for their full human rights, using his first book, The Only Way, to great effect. The earliest version produced a papal encyclical on behalf of the Indians, the second motivated an emperor to issue laws protecting them, the third taught a generation of Spanish scholars. Sullivan's translation of The Only Way to Draw All People to a Living Faith lets us hear Las Casas in full at last. The familiar horrors and denunciations are all there, but so is a gentle voice filled with compassion and yearning for peace. For centuries, the treatise influenced mission theory and practice in many lands; modern writers studied its missiology and its relation to his own mission experiment. But this new version--the lost opening reconstructed, the massive proof texts banished, the original form restored--reveals the doctrine that guided Las Casas' career. In it, he pleads for the way of Christ: evangelization by peaceful charity and respect not by "fire and the sword." Sullivan has given us a brilliant rendering of the powerful central version Fray Bartolome composed at Oaxaca in 1539 to change the conscience of Christendom. The work makes the same appeal to conscience today.”

 

A thoroughly researched documentation on Columbus and Casas is "Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography," by Lawrence Clayton 2012. See the Amazon description and reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/Bartolom-e9-las-Casas-A-Biography/dp/1107001218.

 

Helen Rand Parish may have done the most over the last decades to uncover the revisionism in the history of Columbus with her research and writings. See the information on Casas in Wikipedia:  

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas

 

Other resources on Casas:

 

http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/bartolom%C3%A9-de-las-casas

 

http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?action=read&artid=444

 

 "the indigenous population of Hispaniola, the island where Columbus landed, reduced from 250,000 to 15,000 in two decades due to the war and forced labor.  This genocide called the attention of those theologians like Vitoria and Las Casas who were concerned with the morality of the conquest. Nonetheless, as Brian Tierney states:  “In the end, all the writings on behalf of the Indians did little or nothing to ameliorate their plight.  The battles that were sometimes won in the debating halls of Salamanca and Madrid were nearly always lost among the hard realities of life in Mexico and Peru.”"

 

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511521447&cid=CBO9780511521447A012&tabName=Chapter&imageExtract=true

 

Dispossessing the barbarian: the language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the property rights of the American Indians

 

Sepulva was Las Casas’ opponent in a debate using law and theology to decide whether Indians in the New World were worthy of Christian protection.  Here is Sepulva’s writing: "Just War Against Barbarians," by Juan Gines de Sepulva

 

https://www2.stetson.edu/secure/history/hy10430/sepulveda.html

 

Bartolome de las Casas traveled with Columbus and was prominent in advocating for the survival of the population in the Americas being enslaved at that time. His book, "The Tears of the Indians" is available free online through google books. Unfortunately, it's the 1870's translation and the typesetting, as well as vivid descriptions of obscene abuse, makes it a tedious read:

 

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Tears_of_the_Indians.html?id=I6IWAAAAYAAJ

 

Another book by him, “History of the Indies,” is a much larger work, a current translation available in print, consists of documents and narrative of his largely failed advocacy of full human rights for indigenous citizens of the Americas.

 

Another summary of his life work is THE DEVASTATION OF THE INDIES: A BRIEF ACCOUNT by Bartolome de Las Casas 1552. This is posted online by the Anchorage School District in Alaska:

 

https://www.asdk12.org/staff/bivins_rick/HOMEWORK/216236_LasCasas_TheDevast.pdf

 

Where did this revisionist history come from? The real, original story of Columbus in this hemisphere beginning in1492 lay dormant in the archives of the Catholic church, basically ignored until recently. Our American Knights of Columbus began looking for an American hero kids could look up to. Through lobbying, and no careful investigation of historical sources, Congress agreed in 1934 to honor this courageous explorer. Or so I was taught in Montgomery School in the 50’s.

 

For information countering the Columbus Day revisionist history accepted as standard history for almost two centuries in America, see 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html

 

There are problems with this: Columbus was clearly not the first to set foot on Western Hemisphere soil. Leif Ericson was probably the first European to venture here. And decades before Columbus, the Chinese explorer Zheng He is said to have led more than one expedition to this hemisphere. But even more important is the arrogance of it all. It’s almost certain that peoples who first became “Native Americans” arrived here thousands of years ago via Alaska. And then there is the DNA evidence of Polynesians arriving on the west coast of South America long before Columbus and the Vikings. 

 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/1421-the-year-china-discovered-america/

 

Following his father’s example, Bartholome de Las Casas sailed to the New World. In Cuba and other Carribbean islands, he was successful in all he did. He was rewarded several times with land tracts, always including the inhabitants as slaves. But his success did not cloud the compassion and sense of gross unfairness apparently implanted in his conscience as an 8-year-old.  Such is the interpretation of some historians trying to explain how Las Casas, the first and for many years the only one of the Spanish conquistadors, soldiers and priests to raise a voice in protest against this gross inhumanity.

 

A very successful soldier in the New World, he was awarded tracts of land with title to inhabitants as well. But he refused to enslave them or kill thim. He used his university education in at least one recorded legal debate against the atrocities in which he was immersed. He addressed successive royalty to promote a better way than that of the conquistadors to convert American nations to Christianity. He even attempted to carve out a separate nation in the vicinity of modern Venezuela to show how indigenous peoples and the invaders could coexist. Finding little or no success in these efforts, he resorted to writing. This was natural, since he was the primary editor of  Columbus’ journals. He wrote several books, in his later years recording in grossly atrocious detail his experiences. This made his writing off limits to children. This and the United States’ revisionist history leading to Columbus Day celebrations may explain why his writings have so long been so obscure. Thankfully, we have history teachers here in Big Horn County who know and honor this great hero whose determination to follow God’s commands for the nations would influence our nation’s origin.  

 

Where did this revisionist history come from? The real, original story of Columbus in this hemisphere beginning in 1492 lay dormant in the archives of the Catholic church, basically ignored until recently. Our American Knights of Columbus began looking for an American hero kids could look up to. Through lobbying, and no careful investigation of historical sources, Congress agreed in 1934 to honor this courageous explorer. Or so I was taught in Montgomery School in the 50’s.

 

There are problems with this: Columbus was clearly not the first to set foot on Western Hemisphere soil. Leif Ericson was probably the first European to venture here. And decades before Columbus, the Chinese explorer Zheng He is said to have led more than one expedition to this hemisphere. But even more important is the arrogance of it all. It’s almost certain that peoples who first became “Native Americans” arrived here thousands of years ago via Alaska. And then there is the DNA evidence of Polynesians arriving on the west coast of South America long before Columbus and the Vikings. 

 

--
David Graber
Hardin, MT

graberdb@gmail.com