Happy Solstice

For this, my last blog post prior to the holiday, I continue my holiday tradition of bringing you something completely different.

For the past few years I have been pushing––albeit not that hard since I'm a day late––to have the Winter Solstice declared a national holiday. Just think, this calendar event that falls within days of Christmas, Hanukah, and Kwanzaa, could finally put an end to the holiday wars. No need to worry whether retail workers should wish you a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday. No letters to the editor about creches on courthouse lawns or whether the addition of a menorah makes it okay. No worrying whether companies can throw an annual Christmas party. No pressuring schools about what songs kids can sing at holiday concerts or what decorations they can hang in the halls. All decorations and songs would be limited to those that deal with winter like snowflakes and Jingle Bells and, yes, trees that despite all the hoopla is not really a Christian symbol, with some new Solstice songs thrown in.

Those determined to celebrate a religious holiday have nothing to fear. There is no reason to end Christmas or Hanukah or any other holiday, religious or non, falling around this time. It's just that the national holiday, the one everyone would celebrate––religious or non-religious–-Christian or Jew––would be the Solstice.

No doubt certain fundamentalist types would go all ballistic about replacing good Christian holidays with a pagan holiday. Thing is, historically, it's the other way round. Long before it was given a name, humans recognized Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Everyone from the Norsemen to the Romans had some kind of celebration involving light, warmth, and greenery around the longest night of the year. There is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December let alone a way to pinpoint December 25 as his birthday. Like our Founding Fathers here in the US who attempted to discourage all celebrations linked to Merry Old England, Christians found it impossible to suppress the celebration of festivals like Saturnalia. So they gave it a Christian meaning.

That isn't to diminish the solemnity of the Christian holiday in its symbolism. However, much of what we engage in as celebration of that day––eating, drinking, spending lots of money, not to mention the assumption that snow somehow adds perfection––has little to do with the birth of the baby Jesus and much to do with ancient Solstice celebrations. My Jewish friends also tell me that Hanukah is actually a lesser holiday on the Jewish calendar, often blown out of proportion as a way to celebrate at the same time of year as everyone else.

So why do we continue to fight it? Why not just make December 21 our national holiday that we celebrate together, giving gifts and making merry, and return to the other holidays the religious significance they deserve?

In the Spirit of the Season,

Happy Solstice to all,

and to all,

a long night.

Native American Heritage Day

Here in the US, November is Native American Heritage Month, and, last year, the government proclaimed the day after Thanksgiving as Native American Heritage Day. Those of you who know me or have followed this blog from its beginnings are aware how strongly I feel about how little most US citizens know about the descendants of the first inhabitants of our continent. Among most of us American Indians are seen, at worst, as just another ethnic group trying to get an underserved leg up on the white population, and, at best, as a quaint relic of our nation's past. Native American issues receive scant (and usually no) coverage in the media except for local outrage when a nearby tribe has applied for federal recognition and/or expresses an interest in starting a new gaming operation.

Last November I recommended some fiction by Native American Writers. This year I'd like to recommend some nonfiction, but first a little quiz. These questions and answers are based on Journey to Understanding, An Introduction to North Dakota Tribes, compiled and distributed by the North Dakota Department of Human Services, a copy of which I received a couple years ago on a trip with the American Indian College Fund and which used to be available on the department website, but I can't find it there now, and The Rights of Indians and Indian Tribes by Stephen L. Pevar, New York University Press, 2004. See the bottom of this post for correct answers.

Quiz

1. Indian Reservations represent tracts of land that were given to tribes by the US Government. True or False
2. Who holds the most power in regulating Indian affairs? a) The tribal government b) The governor of the state in which the tribe is located c) The president of the US d) The US Congress
3. Most members of federally recognized tribes living on reservations require approval from the federal government before selling, leasing, or willing their land to another individual or company. True or False
4. Are tribal powers limited by the US Constitution? Yes or No
5. American Indians don't pay income tax. True or False

See answers at the end of the post.

Recommended Readings

The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty

This tells the story of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), part of FDR's New Deal and also gives a good overview of where American Indian tribes stand viz a viz the US Government.

Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands and How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier

If you still labor under the misconception that American Indians were militarily defeated and that is how they lost most of their land, these two books may surprise you.

Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee

If what you know about AIM comes from books like In the Spirit of Crazy Horse or documentaries like Incident at Oglala, on this 40th anniversary of the occupation of Alcatraz you may be surprised at the student movement origins of the fight for American Indian rights.

Po'pay: Leader of the First American Revolution

If you think American Indian history is a history of victimhood or that Indians were just a bunch of primitive hunter/gatherers waiting for the superior European machine to roll over them, you need to read about the Pueblo Revolt in the 17th century when the Pueblo Indians overthrew Spanish rule and held them off for more than a decade.

Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull (Bison Book)

If you think of American Indians as those austere and stately individuals staring out from old photographs I highly recommend this depiction of the everyday life of a plains warrior, including plenty of humor.

Again, this just scrapes the surface of my too-many-to-count library, but it's a start.

And now for the answers

1. False, reservations were not "given" to Indians by the government, the land was theirs to begin with and reservations represent the only parts not ceded.
2. The US Congress holds plenary power over Indian tribes including the right to terminate the tribe or all tribes as they attempted to do in the 1950s.
3. This is true in that under the Dawes Act of 1887 that divided communal reservation land into individual allotments, and later under the Indian Reorganization Act, most reservation land as well as much of the property of individual Indians is held in trust for them by the Federal Government. One benefit is that the land cannot be lost for taxes as occurred quite frequently before the IRA was passed, partly to remedy that situation. However, unlike the rest of us, individual Indians must gain the approval of the US government as trustee for transfers of trust land, which, as you can imagine, can get pretty cumbersome. Also, the government, as trustee, holds lease income in trust, the accounting of which has been badly bungled, leading to the Cobell case.
4. No. Indian tribes are sovereign nations and as such, for the most part, tribal powers are not limited by the Constitution, however they can and have been limited by Congress, which, as noted in #2, holds plenary power over Indian tribes.
5. False. This is a common misconception. Tribal businesses, such as casinos, run for the benefit of the tribe, do not pay federal taxes, just as states do not pay federal taxes. Individual Indians are subject to income tax like anyone else. Individual American Indians do not pay state or local taxes because Indian tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the US Government, just as states do.

I hope these questions and their answers will whet your appetite to learn more. American Indians are not just another ethnic group. Tribes are sovereign nations within the US which puts them somewhere between a foreign nation and a state. If you don't quite grasp that, you are not alone. What exactly that means is constantly evolving, and not always to the benefit of Indian nations.

Healthcare Reform

You probably noticed the new widget at the top of my blog. Normally this is not a political blog, but I take healthcare reform seriously, and it's not just because my husband and I, who are self-employed, pay over $1200 per month, not including the "miniscule" $165 we pay for our daughter who works three jobs, none of which provides benefits. We made our choices knowing what we were getting into, and while it is a stretch and the costs did triple since we started out 11 years ago, we can still manage.

I support healthcare reform because of the 48 million people who have no healthcare at all and in most cases didn't have a choice. I support healthcare reform because of the unknown number who are under-insured and end up paying for insurance they can't use because of huge deductibles. I support healthcare reform because, frankly, I can't see how anyone with an ounce of humanity wouldn't.

The biggest obstacle to the healthcare reform we need and deserve in this country is––and I can't think of any nicer way to put this––the lies we are being fed by our politicians on both sides of the aisle. I worked in the fields of medical insurance and employee benefits for many years, and I know a little about this. So let's debunk some of those lies right now.

The US has the greatest healthcare in world so why mess with it?
The US has an infant mortality rate higher than any other industrialized nation. We also rank 27th in life expectancy. Those that outrank us have some form of universal healthcare.

Competition is better
This one's a no-brainer. We have competition now. It ain't working. Large corporations are not human beings. They have no conscience and they serve no one but their shareholders. Cutting expenses to increase profits might work well in manufacturing. In heathcare it means turning sick and dying people away or providing shoddy care.

The American people want choice
Right now if you are fortunate enough to have employer-paid coverage, you have no choice but to take it, whether it's an old fashioned indemnity plan or an HMO. If you don't have employer-paid insurance your choice is between an expensive plan that covers next to nothing, an extremely expensive plan that covers more but will find an excuse to terminate your coverage once you actually get sick, or nothing at all.

We can fix it with tax credits
This is the Republican plan that proposes minor reforms to the current system and an annual tax credit of $2300 per individual/$5700 per family to pay for healthcare benefits. If you read my first paragraph you know how ludicrous those amounts are. However, mark my words, companies currently struggling to provide healthcare benefits for employees will use that credit as an excuse to drop healthcare all together or require individuals to pay that much toward employer plans.

Managed care is the problem
No, it is not. The problem is care managed by for-profit companies. Make no mistake about it, the mess we are in now began back in the 70s and 80s (and I was there) when doctors started overcharging insurance companies that provided health insurance to employers as an inexpensive add-on to more lucrative life insurance policies. Oversight should be by professionals with no profit motive, but without oversight costs will go even further out of sight.

All we need is a public option in addition to private insurers
This is what the Dems say because most of them are just as beholden to the private insurance companies as the Republicans only they got into office promising to do something for the 48 million uninsured. They've got it wrong too. A public option will provide immediate relief for many of the current uninsured. Over the long-term it is a recipe for failure. Without a way to contain costs, a public option will become untenable in very short order. In fact, I'm surprised Republicans aren't behind this as it will eventually lead to an "I told you so" moment that drives them into the majority once again.

I know what you're thinking. She's listed all the things that don't work, so how about telling us what will. What will work, and the only thing that will work, is a single-payer (government-paid) coverage for everyone––like Medicare––but we also need a healthcare system. Yes it would be––gasp––socialized medicine. We have two problems in healthcare today: lack of coverage and costs increasing at twice the rate of inflation. A public option competing with private ones solves the former, but without the latter it will fail, and there is no way to control the latter without a government regulated system. The details of that can get pretty boring unless you are truly interested, let's just say if you are interested in my thoughts, feel free to contact me