For Future Reference: I am I cried

part two

President Obama's words to as-Aribiya refuse to leave my ear hole:

"[I]f you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task."

When Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) Bishop Richard Williamson there was a swift and strident outcry. Williamson's denial of the Holocaust is unpardonable. Few could tolerate his statement: "I believe there were no gas chambers."

In the midst of the uproar his SSPX colleague Father Floriano Abrahamowicz, another of the four "traditionalist" bishops excummunicated by Pope John Paul II, told the Italian newspaper, the Tribuna, "I know the gas chambers existed—at least, for disinfecting—but not whether they caused deaths or not."

In response to Obama's recent words, there has only been shrill silence.

Even when I repeat his words to others the response has been, "Yeah. Right. What's the problem."

This is hardly the same.
No it isn't.

Recognize: 2., to know by some detail

The United States of America is a settler colony. The settlers moved in and continue to occupy our homelands. In response the Nations within (Indigenous Nations) have continued to assert three things: we exist, it happened here, and it is happening now. The details of America's history as a colonial power go beyond this writing.

Historically we, Indigenous People of the America, have failed to register as a people. Our history does not seem to bare weight. Our elders lack authority. We've spent the last 517 years simply asserting our existence.

Invisibility is a power many of our ancestors used to great strategic affect. This is different.

Recognize: 4., to acknowledge the existence, validity, authority or genuineness

The day after the oral arguments for the California case against Proposition 8 opened and closed, the San Francisco Chronicle was already reporting that the court seems to favor the validity of Proposition 8.

During the arguments proponents for Proposition 8 said that the weddings performed during the 5 months when same sex marriages were legal, would not be invalidated, but they would not be recognized.

Where is Duane Big Eagle when you need him?

Obama's election has been hailed as a turning point in the U. S. national consciousness, a day after of sorts, a moment in linear time reflecting an evolution of thought, a wholescale shift in character, a now to oppose a then.

We are flooded every day with words and images that deny our humanity and experience. On June 6 of 2008, in McLean VA, the USPS issued the new priority mail stamp. On Janaury first of 2009, additional postage was already required. Regardless it was my only option. I refuse to send an elder a SASE with the defaced Black Hills as postage. I asked for other stamps. The Postmaster said there were none. I can do math. So I asked for other stamps that would add up to the new rate. It took nearly 15 minutes and her constant sighing, but I left with a SASE that looked not unlike the image on the official USPS poster for suspect mail.

California AAA's western wonder page sports the "Mountain Men" this month. Sculpting of Gutzon Borglum's giant homage to four U.S. presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln—began in 1927. Fourteen years later, Mount Rushmore National Memorial stood head and shoulders above South Dakota's Black Hills. The magazine arrived shortly after my frustration at the post office.

These are trifles. Yes. But these trifles wear us down in a relentless assault on our souls, as we face our occupied homelands today, as we face an academic and popular insistence that we don't exist, we did not know who we were, or where we came from, and our conquest is complete and definitive.

Recognize: 9., to acknowledge as having the right to speak.

The most painful memory I have, in relation to homophobia, is the trip my wife and I took to Minneapolis to bless our nephew. His maternal grandmother introduced me to her mother as "This is Reid. We met her at the wedding."

I stood there, dumb. What do you say to that? How do you maintain your dignity in silence?

I was not even a friend, or a roommate. I was someone met at the wedding.

I am the oldest of the generation of "children" and my wife and I have been together the longest. We flew at great cost, to my health and our one income household. In a sentence I was reduced to no one of no consequence. And I stood there and swallowed.

Some say the Navajo philosophy is to walk around the rock.

My soul is tired and my feet not rested.

No matter how many times my wife and I marry there are many who will refuse to recognize our vows. My own Nation included. I understand that we are asking precisely for what they refuse to give: an acknowledgement of our humanity.

In the 3 years since my nephew's baptism I've developed a fetish for Nebraska, somehow convincing myself that if I could understand their minds I could somehow make a space within it.

There's the rock. Walk around it.

When I was little I used to run the house singing Neil Diamond.

"I am," I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
"I am," I cried
"I am," said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still
1971 Prophet Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Some things are old. We feel them even when we are young. We do not know how. We do not always know why. But we know we do.

painting: Sitting Bear by Niki Lee

K'é: Heathens and Homosexuals

"We have yet to register with him as a people who matter."
-George-Kanentiio

AP Press writers Ben Feller and Christopher Wills begin their report on President Obama's recent ceremony to commemorate Lincoln's 200th birth date with the following: "President Barak Obama called on Americans Thursday to follow Abraham Lincoln's example of showing generosity to political opponents and valuing national unity—above all else."

Lincoln's "generosity to political opponents" clearly did not apply to the 38 men of the Dakota Nation publicly hung in the state that takes its name from their language, Minnesota. Their execution stands as the largest mass hanging from a single gallows to date.

The men were hung at Mankato on December 28, 1862, by the direct order of President Lincoln, who took the time and effort to phonetically spell out each of the warriors names so there would be no mistaken identities. Lincoln further went on to clarify the Dakota's position in respect to U.S. presence on their lands, degrading their position of being at war with the U.S. to his stand that there was no war; they were common criminals.

The U.S. has always criminalized Indian resistance to colonization, but Lincoln's order to mass execute the 38 Dakota reveals the power of language to manipulate reality, transforming 38 warriors into rats to be exterminated.

Lincoln's desire for national unity, at all costs, resonates strongly with President Obama, though he refuses to honestly appraise the divisions the U.S. faces today. After Congress agreed to pass his stimulus plan he spoke these words: "We are far less divided than in Lincoln's day [but] we are once again debating the critical issues of our time."

Black American Slavery was the Civil Rights issue of Lincoln's day.

Gay Marriage is the Civil Rights issue of President Obama's.

Many are reluctant to parallel racism and homophobia, afraid the specifics of their histories will be eclipsed by the large swaths of experiences that overlap. When community organizers use the language of Civil Rights to speak to the recent passage of Proposition 8 in California they are legally correct in doing so. Proposition 8 removes rights that existed for California citizens by a popular vote. My dear friend, the late, Deborah Dixon used to always tell me, "People would vote back slavery if it went to the polls."

The voting booth offers the protection of anonymity, and hate is easily expressed when people are spared accountability. When community organizers apply the language of Civil Rights to homosexuals they are treading tender ground, picking the scabs of wounds that have yet to heal and revealing one face hate wears today: homophobia.

Proposition 8 passed in the state of California in 2008, in the same election that earned President Obama his office. Indians and gays overwhelmingly supported Obama, many saying he "has our backs," he understands us and the unique nature of our lives. In full disclosure I never believed "he had our backs," he has made that clear in various speeches, but I did vote for him and against Proposition 8, simultaneously.

I refused to witness his inauguration when he chose Saddleback's pastor the Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural prayer.

National Center for Lesbian Rights Executive Director, Kate Kendell, said choosing Warren showed "how culturally competent Obama is on Gay and Lesbian issues. . .I think it's a reminder of how much work we have to do."

I have not been so understanding.

Warren, in print and at the pulpit, has equated gay marriage with incest, polygamy and pedophilia and while President Obama has framed his selection of Warren in the light of Lincoln's desire to bring north and south together after "freeing the slaves." I am not persuaded.

Maybe, like Lincoln, President Obama "wants us all to go back home and return to work on their farms and in their shops. . .That was the only way, Lincoln knew, to repair the rifts that had torn this country apart. It was the only way to begin the healing that our nation so desperately needed."

For First Nations and for homosexuals the very nature of our home life has been and continues to be attacked. Going home and getting to work, is often, for us, criminal behavior.

Indian country has taken issue with President Obama's inaugural address itself, specifically the lines: "For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus-and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

The primary issue has been with the language "the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve."

In our memory and experience these words are words of warning and consequently the tribes of the nations within the U.S. have taken note.

President Obama's official statement was " President Obama was not referring to Native American tribes in this line of his inaugural address."

His response itself is indicative of the problem, as the co-founder of the Native American Journalists Association Doug George-Kanentiio pointed out, "we have yet to register with him as a people who matter."

President Obama's beatification of Lincoln as the freer of slaves, laying the foundation for his ability to become the first U.S. Black president ignores the fact that women and children of the Navajo Nation, which officially endorsed Obama prior to the election, were still being bought and sold into slavery by New Mexicans as late as 1868.

In his first interview given to the Arab press he makes the unbelievable claim that "as you say, America was not born as a colonial power."

His ability to over look America's colonial history paired with his unpardonable selection of Warren to deliver the inaugural prayer, and the consequent missed opportunity to stand for the Civil Rights issue of his day, does not tell me he doesn't get it. It tells me, many don't get him and what he accepts and consequently endorses.

His consistent framing of the U.S. as "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus-and non-believers" is what troubles me most.

Clearly the U.S. faces serious political and economic problems, but the religious divide has come to determine limits and possibilities for us all.

My life has been dogged by the word heathen since I was nine at Corpus Christi, where we bought "pagan babies" with the "Mission money" that was collected every morning. President Obama's constant use of the term non-believer is degrading and closely resembles sanctioned persecution, if only for it's refusal to recognize our beliefs as such.

The Navajo are not non-believers. In our laws people, plants and animals have their own rules, rules to be respected. Our indigenous knowledge is ancient, specific, and shaped by a people's experience of a particular place. Our knowledge defines our relationships and gives us direction, illuminating what we are and what we can become, by providing a moral code, an ethic, based on accountability, responsibility and honor for all life. This core has come down to us in part through our kinship system of K'é. Which details our clans as well as our relationship to our environment—people, plants, animals, earth, sky, water, wind and his companion darkness. The inter connectedness and appropriate behavior in light of those connections are explained by our philosophy of K'é. When we have violated those codes, as we have in previous worlds, the result has been chaos and destruction. For those reasons we must live according to K'é today.

When Johnny Navajo went to Washingdoon in October of 1969 he said, "it seems to me that not many people in Washingdoon even knew of the slavery in our part of the country. The truth is that we may not be too well known here. But it doesn't matter, Grandson, because we know who we are."

This is why and how we live in proper relation. We know who we are.

The mass execution of the 38 Dakota warriors, the passage of Proposition 8, the Diné Marriage Act of 2004, the selection of Warren, President Obama's words regarding the dissolution of tribes, and his indignant response that he was not referring to tribes (I didn't mean you) and President Obama's consistent use of the term non-believer all reflect a denial of our existence and our experience, as Indigenous people of the hemisphere and humans who love.

President Obama 's selection of Warren and his use of the term non-believer reveals his tolerance for hate is higher than mine.

Any language or action that denies a person's humanity, as heathens and homosexuals, that persecutes us for who we are and who we love, diminishes and negates our relationships, our beliefs, our warriors, our wives, our husbands, our families and supports hate.

In his interview on AI-ARIBIYA President Obama said any conversation in "the Palestinian-Israeli theater" needed to be founded on mutual respect and mutual interest. He said, "anybody who has studied the region. . ." I ask do these considerations apply to us, heathens and homosexuals.

During his campaign he went to great lengths to convince the public that "words matter." To AI-ARIBIYA he said he wanted to be "someone who listens and is respectful. . .People will judge me not by my words, but by my actions."

Standing to speak is an action he will be judged by.

To the Muslim world he has said, "you will be judged on what you built not on what you destroyed." Here in Indian country, among the nations of this hemisphere, he wants to build a monument to Lincoln. We of all nations (people, plants, animals, earth, sky, water, wind and his companion darkness) want good relations.

Photo Credit: Jesus Saves Liquor and More, 3rd and Townsend, San Francisco by Reid Gómez

For Future Reference: This is About You

We left the Castro just before President elect Barack Obama began his acceptance speech in Chicago's historic Grant Park. We listened on the radio as he said:

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

I was divided; overwhelmed with happiness that we had elected our first non-white President, a Black man, a man with a Kenyan father and white American mother, and this man could name me, a gay disabled Navajo Indian in his speech. Especially when race in this country is consistently framed in black and white, and gays and lesbians are considered dirty secrets, at best kept private.

This is not the Castro I was raised with. This is not the San Francisco I was raised in. This is not the California I was raised in. People were dancing in the street, even while the early numbers for 8 were being posted. "Oh, Obama, he has our back."

This is not about Obama. This is about you and the fact that Californians saw absolutely no problem immediately casting a yes vote on Proposition 8 immediately after they cast their yes vote for Obama.

Obama's campaign placed a great emphasis on unity. He prioritized thoughtfulness, articulateness, and people coming together for a greater purpose, call it community or call it pragmatism. He spoke against the divisiveness that characterized the last eight years. His actions were considerate and measured—a salve on the bitter ill will that has come to shape relations between people. He asked us to refuse the categories that encourage and allow us to dissociate from one another—red/blue, black/white, male/female, Christian/Muslim/Jew—and to work together on a larger project, best defined as a human project, a global project.

Many were moved when he offered a hope not hate based project. Many see his victory as a civil rights victory, a long overdue triumph over the racism and bigotry on which this country was founded and continues to thrive. God bless America. A new day has dawned. We're going forward. "Oh, but not you. You stay here."

How can over 5, 344, 012 people vote yes on Proposition 8? How can 70% of the black vote and 50% of the Latino vote yes? How can Christians and elders overwhelmingly support 8? If this is purely a question of Christian values, how can the same voters split on proposition 4?

Maybe I hold the wrong assumptions about my fellow Obama supporters. Perhaps I relate to easily to people I don't identify as—white, black, asian, heterosexual, Christian. Maybe it's a simple consequence of having my entire existence, my priorities, my values negated daily in the media, in social relations, buying groceries or renting a movie.

My grandparents taught me that first and foremost I was human, where their arguments went from there I was expected to keep up with, but never to lose sight of one fundamental truth: we are all related.

In its simplest terms proposition 8 eliminates a right that already exists. On May 15, the California Supreme Court voted to overturn proposition 22; affirming the right of one individual to enter into a contract with another.

Prejudice and fear trumps these simple terms. Prejudice determines who you can relate to and why. Hatred of others, and feeling completely, utterly and fundamentally disconnected from them is a consequence of not being able to relate. I'm not like you and this isn't about me are both statements that reflect an inability to relate.

Proposition 8 exposed Californians’ notion of precisely who is a person deserving rights and exactly what rights you have access to if your personhood is suspect.

Recognizing another soul as a sentient being is a philosophical question the elders have debated since time immemorial. The United States Government itself has taken up this question; famously in African American history and less widely remembered in a case dealing with the Ponca.

Standing Bear et. al. V. Crook: Standing Bear was a Ponca. The Ponca are Those Who Lead. In May of 1879 the federal court in Omaha Nebraska began hearing his case. Standing Bear was a Christian, an Episcopalian. Early in 1877 the Ponca were told they were being removed to Indian Territory. They had never fought against the U.S.. They farmed and had moved from their Earth Lodges into their own, hand built, log homes. As an old man Standing Bear lacked the resources necessary to resist the U.S. soldiers and over three days he brought his household, his wife, their three children, two grandchildren and son in law to the agency for removal. His household assets—valued at over $4,000, in "buildings, land, stock, goods and chattel"—were confiscated and either destroyed or sold off. He received no compensation. On their stormy walk to Indian Territory his daughter was among those who died and his son was among those who became ill. A devastated Standing Bear promised the youth he would carry his bones home to the ancestral ceremonial burial grounds, ensuring that Bear Shield would not face the afterlife wandering the earth alone.

Because he was an Indian, by law, Standing Bear the Ponca leader was a ward of the nation and consequently not allowed to leave the reservation. Standing Bear was a father. With his son's bones, and his small band, he left the reservation. He was arrested on the Omaha reservation. They too were Indians, by law, and he was trespassing on federal lands, even though they were relations and had offered him and his band refuge. In fact, he had come to their reservation at their invitation. As wards they lacked the authority, the propriety, necessary to offer such hospitality to their cousins.

Standing Bear sought redress, but the question before the court was could he? Did he meet a simple qualification? Was he a person in the eyes of the law. On this point they argued. The DA maintained that he and his fellow Poncas had no recourse to Habeas Corpus and "regardless of what they said they were still Ponca Indians, due to their ancestry and place of birth, they could not cease being Ponca Indians because they said they were no longer Ponca Indians."

Standing Bear's council maintained that "an Indian who has severed his tribal relationship and sought to live as a citizen was entitled to protection under the law." There was precedent. Habeas Corpus had been applied to the insane, to children and to slaves irrespective of their citizenship, so unless the court wanted to decide that Standing Bear and his band were beasts, they were human beings, and consequently entitled to protection under the law.

Sympathies were with Standing Bear and his band but Justice Dundy reminded everyone "in a country where liberty is regulated by law something more satisfactory and enduring than mere sympathy must furnish and constitute the rule and basis of judicial action."

He ruled: "An Indian is a PERSON within the meaning and ways of the U. S. and...Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation, as well as the more fortunate white race, and have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so long as they obey the laws and do not trespass on forbidden ground."

He was a person, but was still not free to stay with his relations, the Omaha or even the Ponca. In the eyes of the law he had severed those relations. Once he set foot on any reservation land he would be arrested, again.

Bear Shield's bones still had not been returned to mix with those of his ancestors.

Personhood is incompatible with tribal identity. Standing Bear could not be a person and a Ponca simultaneously. He had to relinquish one in order to assume the social-legal position of the other, a distinctly different position, not even an separate but equal position. He was granted humanity, but not allowed the specific details of his humanity.

In Standing Bear's case the difference in positions was racialized. The idea seems to be that with the election of Obama as the 44th President of the United States we have moved past these categorical inequities and government sanctioned bigotries.

As every American Indian knows, Indianness is still incompatible with American personhood. Even the briefest glance at our sovereignty movements reveals this contemporary fact.

The U.S., historically, has sought to extinguish those people seen as somehow unfit for personhood. In 1962 the Ponca of Nebraska were abolished by an act of Congress and their 800 acres of land were confiscated. Their status as a People was not reinstated until 18 years ago, the lifetime of a voter coming to age.

When it was impractical or impossible to extinguish the unfit the U. S. has, historically, sought to confine and contain them.

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving married in the District of Columbia in June 1958. When they returned to their home in Virginia they were arrested. She was black. He was white. Their marriage violated the states anti miscegenation laws. In 1959 they plead guilty and were convicted to a year in prison. In lieu of serving that year the trial judge offered them a suspended sentence, for 25 years, contingent on their leaving, and not returning to, Virginia.

In his opinion, delivered on the Day of the Kings, he stated: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

These arguments, these sentiments, are the same; they are founded on a narrow notion of the normal and feign a concern for potential harm to children (mongrel offspring or not). They are familiar to anyone following the debate surrounding proposition 8, as is the insidious invocation of "Almighty God."

The Lovings’ took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Warren delivered the court's opinion, stating:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

These convictions must be reversed.

It is so ordered.

Up until 1974 same-sex intimacy was a crime in California.

The question for Homosexuals, at this point, seems to involve two issues. Are homosexuals people under the law, entitled to equal protection, and under which law should these cases be decided: U.S. or Biblical?

It is common knowledge that the Christian right, along with the Mormon Church, are the primary funders of the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. And the popular appeal for the Yes on 8 campaign has been to religious sympathies. Many of those polled said they were compelled, as Christians, to go to the polls specifically to cast their yes vote on 8, while voting for Obama, especially the 70% of Blacks polled.

Darryl Scott, a father, a black man, and an Obama supporter voted yes on 8 because "He has no hatred for gays but was raised to believe marriage is between a man and a woman...people should do what they want to do, but it shouldn't be forced on others."

Ignoring the backward logic of voting to eliminate the opportunity of people to "do what they want to do," while "forcing [it] on others" it is essential to note his reasoning relies on his religious sympathies and as Justice Dundy reminded the nation in 1879 "something more satisfactory and enduring than mere sympathy must furnish and constitute the rule and basis of judicial action." Presumably that is the law.

One of the two largest individual donors to the Yes on 8 campaign has admitted, in print, "my goal is the total integration of Biblical law into our lives."

Evangelical fundamentalism gains its strength, numerically, politically and financially by exploiting the lonely, the poor, the isolated and the uneducated. They have masterfully manipulated the fear and alienation people have from and with each other, to the extent that even their salvation is an individual salvation, their spirituality shaped by a private relationship with their Father God. Though the super churches clothe themselves in the drag of community their message is divisive.

The Nebraska Ponca were being forced at gun point to ford the surging Niobrara River during a fierce storm. Women and children of the three villages wailed. The men unloaded their 72 wagons and 500 horses, struggled through the high waters. On the other side they reloaded their goods. The women and children wailed. In the midst of this organized effort the United States's troops were swept from their mounts. The current was too swift and strong. Ponca men dove, immediately, into the waters and rescued the soldiers.

Why?

They were men.

And the Ponca's are those that lead.

K'é: Validity and Recognition

Proposition 8 reads: ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT. Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

If Prop. 8 passes we—people— will be denied the right to accept legal responsibility for one another. We—people—will also be allowed to side step our obligation to acknowledge the full scope of each other's humanity—and consequently a full expression.

Hiding and denying who you are and who you love results in fear, indignity, degradation, self hatred, shame and self destruction, for those hiding as well as for those whom require that deception .

There are many issues involved in this proposition: legal protections, financial protections, real and powerful class issues and some will argue largely in those terms. If marriage is a contract then any two parties should be able to enter into that contract, the same contract, not a modified and watered down lesser contract (civil unions/domestic partnerships), but the charge of homosexuality changes the very nature of the contract, for some, and these are my thoughts as to why.

"My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you."

These are the first words of what has come to be known as Harvey's Hope Speech. He continues: "Like every other group, we must be judged by our leaders and by those who are themselves gay, those who are visible. For invisible, we remain in limbo—a myth, a person with no parents, no brothers, no sisters, no friends who are straight, no important positions in employment. . .The only thing they [young gay people] have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be alright. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up."

Harvey asked people to examine the inequities around them and to assume a personal responsibility for righting them. I am asking the same, that each of us personally address hunger, poverty, illness, loneliness and isolation. In short, that we address our relationships to each individual around us—in our homes, our neighborhoods and our work places.

The people of this land, each had an intricate system for assessing relations and proper behavior between individuals. This knowledge was organized in a kinship system. Some of us have our kinship systems intact, and some show the strong bruising of colonialism (ie., the recent passage of the Diné Marriage Act of 2004). The early colonials exchanged their own kinship systems for a social contract protecting them and their property from one another. They also set about destroying the kinship systems of the Indigenous nations they came in contact with and required all subsequent immigrants to relinquish their ties home. Outsiders, virtually unknown to each other, they agreed on a set of laws providing what they saw as essential safeguards and ensuring their safety in this land where they were strangers. Today we all face the legacy of their estrangement.

Our traditional kinship system provides us with a set of ideals, which we aim our lives toward as well as a set of parameters delineating what is acceptable behavior, and what emphatically is not. Any severance between kin, the generations and ancestral/traditional knowledge leaves people vulnerable. Severed relations leave everyone isolated and disorientated. If we are left only with consumption and wealth accumulation as a means of addressing that isolation and dislocation we will perish.

These are the same issues the early settlers faced; all immigrants face them when they are forced to assume an assimilated position as a U.S. Citizen. First Nations communities, Indians, know this story. We've fought absorption in the United States and continue to fight for our autonomy today. Standing Bear, the great Ponca chief, went to the U.S. Supreme court simply to be recognized as "a man" defined by U. S. law. In exchange for his rights as an individual of consequence he was forced to relinquish his membership in and rights as a Ponca.

We as First Nations have refused to give up our conception of ourselves, our place in this world and our expression of our unique humanity. We have seen considerable success and considerable failure from ourselves, our leaders and our nations, but we fight. Today, we do not surrender.

As every parent, Aunt or Uncle knows, life cannot be a series of what a child cannot do, but must be an overflowing experience of what they can do and consequently who they are.

A world that votes NO on Proposition 8 asks you to know me and to relate to me as a human being.

Our K'é system places us very specifically within a very large and complex system of relationships—earth to sky, mother to child—and requires us to have a strong grasp of the fundamental workings of those relationships, physically and metaphysically. Laws serve notice to a community. They are declarations of acceptable behavior. As declarations they shape the way we act toward each other, intimately. K'é is Navajo Law. Failure to comply with a law bears consequence. Sometimes those consequences are punishments administered by the state, but more often than not they are social and the state simply exacts those punishments because it knows it can. On some level the public agrees.

Laws stand because enough people agree to their validity and accept the shape they provide. Just as hunger, poverty, illness, loneliness and isolation exist because people accept their presence, either as a necessary tool to motivate "the masses" or because somehow and for some reason those afflicted deserve their afflictions—as well as bear sole responsibility for those afflictions.

Every position in a society is a result of negotiation and agreement, and a consequence of shared responsibility, whether that fact is acknowledged or not.

Oppression happens when we fail to recognize each other's humanity and "I am like you" is twisted into "you are not."

San Francisco was the first city to permanently recognize the gay victims of the Nazis. At the intersection of Castro, Market and Upper 17th Streets, facing the Harvey Milk Plaza stand 15 granite pylons, placed in remembrance of the estimated 15,000 gays who were incarcerated, castrated or killed during and subsequent to the Nazi regime. Together the pylons form one large triangle set on the hill among pink rocks, forming another triangle, and a small walkway and garden. Artists Robert Bruce and Susan Martin were commissioned by the Eureka Valley Promotion Association to design the monument. Their hope for people who come to the Pink Triangle Park and Memorial, is that they: "Respect each other as this sculpture respects the site. Contemplate the softness of the plants and the firmness of the granite. Locate the softness and the firmness within themselves. Remember that gay men wore pink triangles, lesbians wore black triangles, gypsies wore brown triangles, Poles wore blue triangles, social democrats and other political prisoners wore red triangles, and Jews wore yellow stars. [And] Think about how persecution of any individual or single group of people damages all humanity."

Respect. Contemplate. Locate. Remember. Think.

We, the Diné, are taught to address each other by relational terms: my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my daughter, my son, my spouse/companion. When we lapse into personal names it indicates a change in feeling, a lack of respect, a distance that can only be described as "I no longer care for you." More than being out of favor, being called by a personal name, indicates a very serious loss of position, equivalent to "I don't know you."

Our relational terms manifest as well as illuminate the inextricable link between knowing and caring for each other. Relational terms recognize not only who a person is, but that a person is—connecting their soul to yours, whether closely or at a distance, acknowledging as well as celebrating that connection. Relational terms declare to yourself and to others that your births, your origins, your destinies and fates are intertwined by the precise nature of those entanglements.