Red Town Radio

Guest John Lee Soap, Jr., Cherokee, and hostess Brenda Golden discuss grief and coping with loss.  Tragically both have lost children in recent years and will share what it means to grieve, what is grief, is there a proper way to grieve, and most of all how to cope with grief.  John has attained higher educational degrees in Counseling while working full time.  He currently works as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor.    

Children are not supposed to die...Parents expect to see their children grow and mature. Ultimately, parents expect to die and leave their children behind...This is the natural course of life events, the life cycle continuing as it should. The loss of a child is the loss of innocence, the death of the most vulnerable and dependent. The death of a child signifies the loss of the future, of hopes and dreams, of new strength, and of perfection. - Arnold and Gemma 1994, iv, 9, 39 

Death is an experience that is common to all mankind, an experience that touches all members of the human family. Death transcends all cultures and beliefs; there is both commonality and individuality in the grief experience. When a loved one dies, each person reacts differently. A child's death, however, is such a wrenching event that all affected by it express sadness and dismay and are painfully shaken. 

Both John and Brenda are part of a White Bison recovery group.  The Wellbriety path does not compete with A.A. or any other pathway of personal recovery, but instead enriches those pathways by embracing them within the web of Native American tribal histories and cultures. http://www.facebook.com/groups/117525848259894/

http://www.athealth.com/consumer/disorders/parentalgrief.html

Join Guest Nicky Michael and other invited members of Standing Our Ground to discuss the movement, the goals, the needs and the objectives of this vital group.  What started as a Facebook page to support Dusten Brown in his quest to keep his baby daughter Veronica following an unjust SCOTUS ruling, has now evolved into a full blown effort to make courts follow ICWA. 

Standing Our Ground demands Justice for our children and their right to be raised by natural families and within their culture. Stop unethical adoptions.  Founded in July 2013, Standing Our Ground is a worldwide movement demanding justice and protection for our children. 

http://www.facebook.com/standingRground

http://www.standingrground.com/

Guests Sarah Adams Cornell, Bob Davis and Roberto Mendoza from Idle No More Central Oklahoma will join us to discuss the movement one year after its popular beginnings.  Idle No More Central Oklahoma is an inclusive, peaceful, grassroots movement committed to positive change through education, conservation, solidarity and reciprocity, acting by consensus.  INMCO is an active group with many ideas and many great members. 

At around this time last year, the hashtag #idlenomore was just starting to make it’s rounds on Twitter. Then the phrase hit Facebook, blogs, news sources and the rest is history. Next thing you know, there are friendly Round Dances in malls and streets around the world.  Is there a future for Idle No More? I have the feeling that all our better tomorrows may, in some sense, depend on it.  Happy birthday, Idle No More. Welcome, Nations Rising.   http://www.aaronpaquette.net/?p=3164

Look for Idle No More Central Oklahoma on Facebook at:  http://www.facebook.com/groups/INMCentralOK/

Guests are Hickory Ground Warrior Wayland Gray, Suzan Shown Harjo of Morning Star Institute, Rob Trepp of Tulsa Indian Art Festival.  The Poarch Band Creek of Indians desecrated a sacred site.  The Poarch Band has a $246 million casino expansion project underway and dug up almost 60 sets of Muscogee ancestors during the ground preparation. Gray and two other Muscogee Nation citizens and a Cherokee Nation AIM member were arrested last February by Poarch police and charged with criminal trespassing when they tried to access the site to conduct a ceremony.   Gray was also accused by Poarch police with making a “terrorist threat”—a charged that was dropped in May after a Grand Jury found no evidence to support it. The trespassing charges against the other three men were dropped in June. But Gray declined an offer to plea bargain.

Hickory Ground (Oce Vpofv) is a parcel of sacred land located at Wetumpka, Alabama, which includes a ceremonial ground, burial sites and individual graves belonging to ancestors of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. After Hickory Ground was obtained with federal funds under the pretense of historic preservation, approximately 60 sets of human remains and funerary objects were exhumed in violation of federal law and in violation of lineal descendants' rights under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.  In 2010, the descendant members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma requested their ancestors to be reinterred where they were excavated.In April 2012, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, exhumed the remains, and reburied them elsewhere, to construct a $246 million casino at Hickory Ground. The initial opening of the Casino occurs on December 17th. 

http://www.savehickorygroun

International Director of the LPDC, David Hill (Oklahoma Choctaw), and invited guests, will update us on the latest efforts of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.  Mr. Hill has worked tirelessly for the release of Leonard Peltier for over 30 years by organizing horse rides, demonstrations and speaking publicly.  Now listen in as he talks about what the Committee is doing now to gain Peltier's freedom.  

Native American activist Leonard Peltier has spent nearly 40 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Prosecutors and federal agents manufactured evidence against him; hid proof of his innocence; presented false testimony obtained through torturous interrogation techniques; ignored court orders; and lied to the jury. People are commonly set free due to a single constitutional violation, but Peltier has faced a staggering number of Constitutional violations has yet to receive equal justice.

Leonard Peltier Statement of 11/11/13:  "Forgive me if this seems a bit lengthy but the future of my involvement is very important to me and when you get to be 69 years old, one day could be a lifetime.  In saying this I want you to understand why we are gearing up to do everything as soon as possible.   I don’t know what else I can say to get you to better understand this situation at the moment but again I want to say I appreciate all your efforts,  all the things you have done, and for the indigenous people of the United States I want to echo the words that they say over and over again in their own way.  WE ARE STILL HERE. This is our home, this is our past, this is our present, and this is our future."  http://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/

http://www.campaigntofreeleonardpeltier.co

Join in to hear guest Denise Lobell and hostess Brenda Golden discuss discrimination in the workplace, filing complaints with the EEOC and how to keep a discrimination complaint alive.  Ms. Lobell has endured several years of an administrative process with the EEOC in which she single handedly kept her Title VII complaint alive and received a favorable outcome.  Ms. Golden worked at the Oklahoma Human Rights Commission for four years as an Investigator of discrimination cases.  Together these two will talk about what it means to be discriminated against in the workplace and what you can do to both stop the discrimination and to get the situation corrected. 

No one should feel like they are unworthy or less than an equal in order to work.  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act states that no person shall be discriminated against in their place of employment based on race, sex, national origin, color, or religion. 

http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm

A weekly recap of the happenings in Indian Country along with commentary by the hostess.  Call-ins welcome!

Federal US policy has not changed over the centuries. By purpose or effect, Indigenous Peoples of the United States continue to face economic and socially discriminatory treatment leading to an economically coerced removal from their ancestral lands and to assimilation by the dominant culture. This radio show will discuss current events and historical perspectives as it pertains to the Indigenous Peoples of the world

Guest Sarah Adams Cornell (Choctaw) will talk about the Land Runs and why the Land Run Re-enactments are harmful to our Native American children. 

Sarah has been making progress on her goal to stop Land Run Reenactments in Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS). She met with the principal of her kids' school who promised they would no longer do them. She has met with the director of Native American student services at the OKCPS and she was very supportive. The principal wants her to draft a one page informational sheet about the land runs and also include her daughters perspective of what it's like to be involved in a reenactment. The director and she will have a meeting with the administrator of elementary schools and the director of curriculum to speak with them and express why she wants it to change, present them with alternative curriculum to teach and offer native presentations for schools, as a fun activity.

Sarah is active in the Oklahoma City Choctaw Alliance and Idle No More Central Oklahoma.  You can find her on facebook at   www.facebook.com/sarah.adamscornell

For more information on the Land Runs in Oklahoma see:

http://crescentok.com/staff/jaskew/TAH/OK/landruns.htm

Ben Yahola is a long time activist in the Native American Community.  He is well known nationally and internationally for his stance on saving Mother Earth, Food Sovereignty, and Sacred Sites.

Robin Carter Mayes is a Career and Technology Education instructor at Ryan High School in Denton Texas. He received both a BS and an MS degree from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, his birthplace and hometown. After working in the steel-construction industry for 15 years, Mayes began his teaching career in 1993.

Candidate for At-Large Council, Mayes has lived half his life inside the Cherokee Nation and half of it outside the historical boundaries, having alternated back and forth several times. He has lived in several other states, including Oregon, California, Louisiana, Florida, and now Texas.

“From the time I was a small child, my Cherokee family told me the stories about our ancestors who served the Nation and suffered injustice along with others in our tribe,” said Mayes, who is a direct descendant of Principal Chief John Ross.

Mayes has proven his commitment to the Nation through many years of activism and political participation. He has served as executive director of the WhitePath Foundation, chairman of the Cherokee National Party, political cartoonist for the Cherokee Observer newspaper, chairman of the Cherokee Nation of 1839 Board of Governors, was instrumental in the formation of the Cherokee Elders Council, and has brought legal actions in the Cherokee courts when he saw injustices that needed correction.

He states: “My goal for the office of At-Large Council is to close the gap between Cherokees who live outside the historical boundaries of the Nation and Cherokee citizens at home,” Mayes said. “There is often too much strife and distrust between us, and that is not right. We’re family.”

http://www.facebook.com/robin.mayes.54