Racial violence
against Indigenous people reached a disturbing high during the month of July
2015. Our women and our spiritual leaders died under mysterious circumstances
in the Colonizer’s prisons. Our children received no justice in the Colonizer’s
courts of justice when drunken white men abused and dehumanized them. Our
mentally ill brother in anguish was offered no comfort and slaughtered by
police. Our homeless people were set on fire. Those seeking healing from the
spiritual poison of alcohol were gunned down. And most horrifying of all, our gentle
elders, following their original instructions to help strangers in need, were
gunned down in exchange for their kindness. All this cruelty and barbarity happened in one
month.
What is
even more disturbing than all this violence and hatred aimed at indigenous
peoples, is the media silence on the crimes of July. All of these hate crimes
received very little attention in the mainstream media:
July 6, 2015: Sarah
Lee Circle Bear of Clairmont, South Dakota died While in police custody. Her
complaints of extreme pain were met by jeers to “stop faking it” and later she
was found unconscious in a holding cell in Brown County Jail in Aberdeen.
July
10, 2015: Choctaw Medicine Man and Native American activist, Rexdale
W. Henry died mysteriously in his cell in the Neshoba County jail
.
.
July
11, 2015: Ruben Abeita, a homeless Native man, was asleep on the
curb at about 8 p.m. on July 11 when a couple hurled fireworks at him, causing
his clothing to catch fire. They brought their children with them to witness this
abuse of another human being who never did anything to them.
July
12, 2015: Paul Castaway, a Rosebud Sioux
tribal citizen, was fatally shot during an encounter with police. The police
lied and claimed he ran at them officers armed with a
knife. Later, video and eyewitnesseswhy at the mobile-home park where the incident occurred contradicted the police account and revealed that Castaway was actually holding the knife to his own throat.
knife. Later, video and eyewitnesseswhy at the mobile-home park where the incident occurred contradicted the police account and revealed that Castaway was actually holding the knife to his own throat.
July 18, 2015: A white man gunned down two Northern Arapaho
men, James “Sonny” Goggles and Stallone Trosper in Riverton, WY. Stallone was murdered after being shot in the
head while he was sleeping in a detoxification center. Another Native man, James
“Sonny” Goggles, Jr., is still in serious condition after also being shot in
the head. The man used a common racial slur for Native Americans and claimed he
was tired of "homeless" people causing problems in the city parks.
July 30, 2015: On the Crow Indian
Reservation near Pryor, Montana, two elders, Jason Shane, and his wife Tana Shane
were murdered for not having enough money to give to a man who tried to rob
them. Their daughter, Jorah was shot in the head and the back when she tried to
run away.
