On the verge

I am not a naturally rebellious person. In my teenage years, I didn’t rebel. I skipped that whole stage. And now, at 20, I am on the verge of rebellion. It has come to my realization that rebellion is almost necessary as a teenager. It should not be suppressed. It is a chance early in life to spread one’s wings, the chance that I have given up again and again and again.

Right now, at 20, I absolutely and solely need to spread my wings and fly by myself for a while. There has been an offer in my life, which I won’t delve into, that will give me that chance. However, I have discussed said offer with my most trusted sibling and it seems that I can’t get by the owner’s of my nest with honesty, something that is highly valued, alone.

I would like to be fully honest about said offer but that, apparently, is not going to cut it. I am greatly disheartened by it. My heart really needs to do this, for me. If the owner’s of my nest won’t let me take the offer, I’ll rebel with the magnitude of every little rebellion I didn’t have in my teenage years. I really feel good about the offer, I want to do it.

Question (to be answered in an @ reply to @starsintheskies):
Do you think a 20 year old should be allowed to do whatever he/she wants that is legal?

My handout for my presentation on Dennis Banks' book.

This is my handout for my presentation on Dennis Banks' book. It is just quotes but I feel that they are the strongest and most interesting quotes I found in the book, which is sourced below the quotes:

“The old boarding schools that Indian kids were forcibly taken to were concentration camps for children where we were forbidden to speak our language and were beaten if we prayed to our Native creator.”
- Dennis Banks (24)

“ ‘You always aim to do this and to do that. Why don’t we just call ourselves “AIM”?’ Clyde, George, and I came up with a number of names that had the word ‘movement’ in them. We finally settled on “American Indian Movement.”
- (Banks 63)

“The dark agony of a silent man was suddenly transformed into an issue an entire nation must face.”
- The Nishnawbe News (Banks 114)

“Among us were people from many tribes: Navajo, Ojibwa, Sac and Fox, Potawatomi, Iroquois, Lumbee, Shinnecock, Pueblo, Kiowa, Comanche, Ponca, and several more, including tribes from the north-west. About 65 percent of the people present were local Lakotas…Even some non-Indians had come to help us—Chicano brothers, young white men and women from the ‘60s counterculture, and a white doctor with a few nurses. We welcomed them all.”
- (Banks 165)

“By March 30, we were down to two meals a day. A week later it was one meal a day. And then a week after that, we had to get by with one meal every other day with a bowl of thin soup in between. On the day the occupation ended, the only food left was a forty-pound bag of dry pinto beans.”
- (Banks 188)

“From 1972 to 1976, Pine Ridge reservation was a killing field….More than three hundred people are reported to have met a violent end in this place of fear and suppression…Over 90 percent of the killings and other violent crimes were never investigated.”
- (Banks 294)

“The tribal president had a crude poster on the wall of his office that stated, ‘one of Russell Means’ braids cut off—five dollars, two braids—ten dollars, Russell Means’ whole head pickled—one hundred dollars.”
- (Banks 285)

“Dick Wilson had finally been defeated. He lost his bid for a third term as tribal chairman by a three-to-one margin. The winner was a former BIA superintendent and longtime Wilson opponent, Al Trimble. Unfortunately, Wilson had two months left before he had to relinquish his office, during which time he wielded absolute power.”
- (Banks 288)

“Never give up. That’s how I run my life. And I stay close to nature. During the sugaring time, it is important to recognize that one can’t take all the sap away from the tree. We have to leave enough so that the tree can survive and thrive, otherwise one might make a mistake and take the tree’s life force away. So we must think the Indian way if we are going to survive.”
- Grandpa Bijah (Banks 344)

“Life is like a circle
You walk and walk only
To find yourself at the
Place you started from”
-Henry Crow Dog, Lakota (Banks 348)

“Age brings wisdom—sometimes.”
- Dennis Banks(Banks 354)

“I thank the American Indian Movement for being strong. AIM will always be strong because it is a spiritual movement. Every day we receive calls of distress, and every day we offer tobacco ceremonies for those in need. Right now this earth, our mother, is in distress. She needs our help. Can we—all of us—respond? I don’t know, but I am convinced that if we don’t respond, we will be in peril and our future will lay in question.”
-(Banks 362)



SOURCE:
Banks, Dennis, and Richard Erdoes. Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. N. pag. Print.

Adventures in Hawaii Part 1 - Power Outage

Hawaii is a very dear state to me. Almost like a third home, since I've been there every year but last for anywhere from one to two weeks. That is 19 years in all. The islands I've been on are Oahu, Hawaii, and Kawai. From being in Hawaii that much, I've had several adventures. One I'd like to talk about in particular was quite fun, and President Obama was on the island somewhere.

The night started out normally, with making dinner. We were making white rice with some Americanized-version-of-Chinese-food dish, which I think was General Tso's but I'm not completely sure. All the ingredients had been chopped and everything was prepared. The rice was on the stovetop cooking. Abruptly, the power went off. Uh oh! We made a quick decision in what we would do. And we chose that the show must go on, rather the cooking must go on. So we did, but how?

We always stayed at a hotel with two grills, the ones with propane tanks on them, not connected to a gas line. Ergp, we transferred the entrée and the white rice to the grill. But, all the lights went out. How were we to see? We used out iPods, we would've used candles but our hotel did not allow us to burn candles, I guess it was something with a Fire code or something. Thank god for chargeable technology! We successfully cooked dinner that night. With all the dinner and rice cooked, we took the food to our room, a two bedroom, two bathroom room with a kitchen.

By then, we had had a cooler with ice (from minutes before the power outage) and cans of Hawaiian Sun's Strawberry-Guava and Pass-O-Guava nectars as well as some beers. We ate dinner to the very calming lights of five pre-charged Nintendo DS's and two pre-charged MacBooks, stationed perfectly around the room. After that, the power outage party began. Someone turned some Techno music on on their iPod touch very loudly. We broke out the Strawberry-Guava and Pass-O-Guave nectars, for the underagers (which included me) and beers. My brother had a camera that had the ability to shoot five frames per second, we used this as a strobe light. We all danced until we all were tired and went to bed.

The next morning, when the power was all back on, we learned that President Barack Obama was staying on the island and that his compound's power was also out. However, they used generators. It is so much more fun to use iPods, iPhones, Nintendo DS's, and MacBooks!

This happened late December of 2008.