Dreamcatcher Workshop & Kwanzaa Celebration Announcement

The photos below are uploaded from my phone and were taken at a Dreamcather Workshop I attended tonight on campus in honor of Native American Heritage Month (November).  Shame on me for not sharing with all of you all the fantastic events that were going on this month! Many of them conflicted with my work travel or prior personal engagements so this is the only event I was unable to attend and it was the last one offered.  Here is a link to all the events that occurred on campus.   NCSU Native American Heritage Month events

The Dreamcatcher workshop tonight was a fun, creative event and we learned that Indians believed that all bad or evil dreams would get tangled up in the dreamcatcher and only good dreams would go through the center hole and travel down through the feathers to the dreamer.  The workshop was hosted by Sigma Omicron Epsilon, Inc. (Native American sorority) and has been an annual event on campus for nearly ten years.  I was expecting a small intimate group of about 15-20 people but was surprised to find the entire Witherspoon Multipurpose Room full of "dreamweavers".  About 60 people attended and the result was a sharing of culture and alot of creativity.  It was an uplifting and positive environment with everyone encouraging and complimenting each others' creations.  I attended along with two of my colleagues, Admissions Counselors Tia Bell and Rachel Ensing (from the Haliwa-Saponi tribe of NC).  At first we struggled to figure out how to weave our dreamcathers but with a little coaching by the hosts, we figured out the pattern and had a blast.  I can't wait to attend this workshop next year!  I hope you will watch for these events next year and plan to attend!

Since I was slack about getting the word out about these events, I'd like to promote that tomorrow evening on campus there is a Kwanzaa Celebration on campus from 7:00 to 9:00pm in Witherspoon Cinema.  The event will highlight traditional Kwanzaa rituals, storytelling, and food and will feature Donna K. Buie (aka) Mama Koku, African American Master Storyteller and Writer.

Should be a pretty neat cultural event!  Perhaps I'll see you there!?

Wal-Mart: super center or super offender?

We're always hearing in the news about Wal-Mart not paying their employees well or providing benefits at an affordable cost to their employees.  As if the hard-working, underpaid employees of this super-center chain aren't disgruntled enough, now they have yet one more reason to be frustrated. Wal-Mart stores all over the US opened their doors at 10pm Thanksgiving day this year forcing employees out of their homes and into work their vacation day.  According to this story on CBS:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57553714/walmart-workers-protest-wages-benefits-on-black-friday/
several dozen protests occurred across several states.  The protests were organized by United Food and Commercial Workers Union and a group called OUR Walmart and they were protesting unfair labor practices and low pay.  Although Walmart employees are not unionized and Walmart does not recognize these union groups, UFCW had anticipated 1,000 protests across the nation.
Not as many protested as they had hoped, but walk-outs and protests did occur by both employees and consumers.  The article portrays a mix of opinions of the protests from various employees; some who are satisfied with their job and others who are very frustrated.  One story I watched on the local news last night interviewed one Walmart employee who stated "It's not right that I work full-time and still have to live off of food stamps!"   Another man is quoted in the WRAL article:   http://www.wral.com/wal-mart-protests-grow-amid-black-friday-shopping-frenzy-/11805567/    
explaining that he can't afford the health benefits provided by Walmart because if he paid for those, he couldn't afford his home.

It's unclear to me whether more employees didn't protest because they fear losing their jobs if they did or if they're satisfied with their income, benefits, and working conditions.  I couldn't truly know without surveying Walmart employees.  However, one thing seems clear to me based upon the frequency that this same topic pops up in the news media......many Walmart employees feel underpaid and can't provide for their families on the salary/benefits paid by Walmart.  Sometimes the voices of few aren't heard until they're united together.  Consumers are the ones that could be most influential in creating change in this situation.  It's our presence and our money that keeps these stores in business and it could be our lack of presence and purchases that could really make them listen to the needs of employees if we stand by them and agree not to patron stores opening on Thanksgiving Day.  Despite efforts by protesters, Walmart sales this Black Friday were reported to have been the highest yet.  It's pertinent that these employees not go unheard and that the massive profit of these stores trickles down to the people who are working hard to operate these stores everyday.  Although this Black Friday has past, this new trend of Thanksgiving-day sales will surely continue.  Please stand with me in support of these employees and make a decision NOT to shop at Walmart on Thanksgiving Day.  

GOP Chairman in Maine

Oh my goodness!  There are so many things about politics and the views of conservatives that are so ignorant that they're laughable.  It's sad and the injustice with blocking the vote needs to stop.  It is every person's Constitutional right to vote.  The conversations on this topic in the news media, online, etc......have been endless and now that the vote is over and Obama has been re-elected, the GOP is trying to find reason to blame losing the election and some of the things they're coming up with are far-fetched to say the least.  On Friday night I was watching Al Sharpton's Politics Nation and they showed clips of Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster:

I tried finding the exact clip from Politics Nation but couldn't find it.  Al Sharpton showed that when asked about these comments, Charlie Webster responded that he is not racist, he knows black people, and that he plays basketball with a black guy every Saturday!  Really?!

To speculate that the Democrats are busing in people to vote in different regions is absurd.  What these comments say to me is that these rural communities clearly don't care about the black people in their communities if they didn't even know they existed.  It could be that the two populations are very segregated because the black people haven't felt comfortable or welcomed into the environment but to claim that they're mysteriously showing up to vote is ridiculous.

Although this major election has passed, there are always future elections and your vote and voice do make a difference.  I hope everyone is registered and goes out to vote; don't let the attempts of the ignorant prevent you from finding your voice.
#RockTheVote

Tribal Mascots

Every year for ten years I have traveled in the fall
for the purposes of recruiting students to the university or college where I work.  I've worked in admissions & recruitment at NC State now for over seven years. I've never been more acutely aware until this year of how many high schools still use Native American imagery or symbols as their mascots.  Some people I've discussed this with are often of the opinion that they don't understand why it's offensive and why American Indians don't take it as a compliment to be commemorated as a symbol of strength and as strong warriors.  Yet many American Indians will tell you that it's offensive and hurtful and that it dishonors them. My own high school in Pennsylvania were the Millersburg Indians and still are.  I was a cheerleader throughout all of middle and high school and can remember the words to some of our cheers making specific references to Indians.  Looking back on it now, I can see how these cheers could be personally taken offensively; especially when being spoken by non-Indians who have no idea what it means or meant to be Indian in the US and to have historically had your ancestors' land, language, and culture stripped of them and their loved ones killed.....

So in my travels this year to Pennsylvania specifically, I noticed many high schools in the western and eastern parts of the state whose high school mascots are still Indians, Warriors, Redskins, etc...... at the time of these travels I didn't yet have an iphone and my dinky little flip phone wouldn't take good, share-worthy photos so I was unable to capture what I was seeing in these high schools but I did come across this transcript  (below) this week as I was reading applications for New Jersey.   I'll admit that this is one blog I started writing in my head weeks ago but realizing how much extra research it would take I didn't proceed with writing the blog.  I am now but am not fully satisfied that I don't know the history of this land.  I don't know which tribes once occupied this region or if they occupied it at all.  What is the reason so many schools in this region still have Indian mascots?  Are there still American Indian populations inhabiting this land?  I did some online searches but didn't come up with much to answer these questions.  Perhaps our final Call To Action presentation on Monday will have insight on this topic or I can at least ask if they've seen research on this or government mandated motions to change names.  I know there's been a concerted effort in North Carolina to change the names of many schools' mascots.  I'm not fully aware of who mandated these changes but I'm certain that the eight tribes represented in North Carolina were vocal in pressing forward on making these changes.  I'm sure even more mascots have been changed by now but in 2010 State Advisory Council on Indian Education Report to the NC State Board of Education, Appendix A on page 109 indicates that "in 2002, 73 North Carolina Schools in 43 school districts had an American Indian mascot or imagery.  As of May, 2010, 33 NC schools in 20 school districts were using American Indian mascots.  This is a decrease of approximately 59% over an 8-year span."  This is great progress for American Indians in North Carolina!  I'm just wondering why it isn't being done in other states too?  Perhaps it is and I'm just not aware of it?  Please feel free to share articles or federal mandates I may be unaware of.   Thank you!

Confession....

So blogging isn't the easiest thing in the world to me which is probably evident by my lack of posts.  I've never been a blogger and really the only blogs I've ever followed were friend's personal blogs about their travels or family events/children's photos so I've never really noticed the true impact they can have when used for building awareness and advocacy.  Although I'm not in the Social Work program, I'm trying to train myself to think more like an activist for the purposes of this blog and it seems each time I hear a story on the news or read an article that I think would be great to blog about, I'm preoccupied and don't have time to stop and write something.  When I do have time, I realize that the blog I'd like to write requires further digging and research so I actually have some depth and content for my entry and then I get discouraged and end up not writing.  Excuses, excuses but it's all true.  Probably the same claims we could all make but the rest of my classmates seem to be coming up with some great content.  So....I just wanted to take a moment to apologize that I've been slacking on this whole blogging thing.  I'll do my best in these two weeks of class to be more tuned in to this and challenge myself to continue this blog beyond this semester in an effort to continue spreading social awareness of injustice and empowering others to create change.