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They took part in Apache ceremonies. Their schools expelled them for satanic activities | Native Americans | The Guardian

five people stand together for a group picture

The way the school saw it, it was devil worship.

In October 2019, three teenage girls were punished for participating in a spiritual ceremony. Their Arizona school expelled two of them, and let the third off with a warning, citing their attendance as a violation of school policy and grounds for expulsion.

Caitlyn, now 18, says she and her friends were disciplined for participating in a Sunrise Dance, a traditional Native ceremony at the core of White Mountain Apache culture.

The Monday after the dance, Caitlyn’s parents told her to stay home that day. They had received a call from East Fork Lutheran school telling them not to send their daughter in. She didn’t know why. Then around noon, her mom got another phone call. The principal wanted to meet with Caitlyn, her parents and the local preacher. The principal and preacher also invited the two other girls and their families to their own private meetings with school leadership.

At the start of each meeting, the families were chastised for participating in the dance. Caitlyn remembers her mother telling the principal and preacher how hypocritical they were to say the Apache people were not praying to God. “In the Bible, God himself says to come to me in all sorts,” she argued. “The dance is also a prayer; it’s another way.”

The leadership of the school, on the Fort Apache Reservation, disagreed with that interpretation and used pictures of the event posted on Facebook as evidence for their expulsions.

The other two girls were immediately given letters of expulsion. Caitlyn was just given a warning. “I knew that I was already one of the principal’s favorites,” she says. “I think they just gave me a second chance, but they gave me a strong warning not to have a dance.”

At the time, her private school’s teachers were mostly white people who would often discuss the satanic nature of Apache traditions. When Caitlyn was in fifth grade, she was given an F on an art project for drawing the White Mountain Apache crest and including an eagle feather. An “A” student, she was devastated to be chastised this way. As Caitlyn remembers it, her teacher smiled and explained that this kind of project wasn’t allowed because it denoted “pagan worship”. Her father was furious but the family couldn’t do anything about it. It was what the girl and her family expected from the white people who worked on the reservation.

But these expulsions felt different. Watching other girls get publicly exiled from their school community meant that fear soon took root, cracking the foundation of Apache pride her family had worked to build beneath her.

Caitlyn finished her eighth-grade year at East Fork Lutheran school and then moved on to a school off the reservation, but the damage was done. For the next four years, Caitlyn struggled to integrate into her Apache culture. She explained: “I didn’t allow myself to engage or talk about my culture,” she says. “Even after I graduated, I had that paranoia that I would get in trouble for talking about or participating in it.”

…Just last year, the youngest of her three children attending the school came home from East Fork and asked: “Mom, did you know that when you go to Sunrise Dances, you are worshiping false idols?”

Maria was shocked. “Who told you that?” she asked.

“My teacher. She said watching the Crown Dancers is worshiping Satan.”

To hear this – and for her daughters to be told such insulting falsehoods – was mind-blowing. “Our ceremonies are what we were blessed with, our language, our everything,” Maria said. “Those are the things we were blessed with to be Apache people. So I try to explain it to them in a way where they understand: no, we’re not doing anything bad here. We’re not.”

Maria described feeling powerless – like she was hitting a wall in speaking to church leaders. (The Guardian received no answer from Wels after asking about Maria’s experience.)

All the while, her kids were wading in uncertainty about the nature of their cultural identities. Were they evil if they participated in ceremonies, or was it permitted? Who was right?

“I felt like the longer I kept them at the school, the more confused they were,” Maria said.

Still, she hoped to keep them there because the classroom setting was good. The student-to-teacher ratio was small. They received guaranteed attention by their teachers and a thorough education.

When it came time for registration, Maria did not receive any notification from the school. It finally notified her two weeks before the school year started that her children would not be invited back. She had to move them to the public school. “Now that they’re in a public school, and they’ve adjusted to it, they are more proud of their traditions or culture, they’re more proud of who they are,” she said.

Source: They took part in Apache ceremonies. Their schools expelled them for satanic activities | Native Americans | The Guardian

Journalist shot by Minneapolis police at George Floyd protest in hospice care | US policing | The Guardian

A woman wearing a black tank top wears an eye patch covered by her hair in a selfiePhotojournalist Linda Tirado was blinded in one eye after being fired on by the police when covering protests in Minneapolis in 2020. Photograph: Courtesy of Linda Tirado

A journalist who was shot in the eye by Minneapolis police while covering the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd has entered hospice care due to her injury, signalling that she is dying from her wounds.

Linda Tirado, 42, “is at life’s end and receiving palliative care”, the National Press Club said in a statement last week.

 

Source: Journalist shot by Minneapolis police at George Floyd protest in hospice care | US policing | The Guardian

Israeli hostages families express their anger after Netanyahu dismisses cease-fire proposal – YouTube

The viability of a US-backed proposal to wind down the 8-month-long war in Gaza was cast into doubt on Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would only be willing to agree to a “partial” cease-fire deal that would not end the war, comments that sparked an uproar from families of hostages held by Hamas.

Our, Not China’s, Kalayaan Islands – Color My World

 Jose Ma. Montelibano, The Inquirer

Jose Ma. Montelibano is a well-respected opinion writer for the Inquirer. This piece on our Kalayaan Islands Group was published on his column, ‘Glimpses’ , years ago on May 23, 2014, and reblogged here on May 27, 2014.

In several articles I have written, and group discussions I have joined, I keep repeating a message that should be part of our national psyche already but sadly is not. And I mean our land and our seas, the motherland, our home and the first source of our identity. I do not see myself stopping from giving the same message over and over again either, in many ways, to many audiences – especially the majority poor of our population who have never tasted that truth.

I have much to be grateful to China’s bullying. This giant of a country is making a ridiculous claim on land and seas that our forefathers have regarded, and used, as their own, as our own. A quick look at the map of Asia, especially Southeast Asia, shows how islands so near to our mainland, and so far from their Chinese claimants, would be unquestionably part of the Philippines. Even China, if it were not the giant it is, the military and economic power it is, would feel embarrassed about its 9-dash line. It is not about history. It is not about vision. It is about expansion by force. It is about arrogance.

China arrogance on full display (CNN.com)

Most Filipinos have never felt a deep connection with their land and their seas. How can they when they have been told in words and deeds that these land and seas did not belong to them. For a few centuries, the sense of ownership and intimacy between motherland and her children was cut off, by force first, then by force of circumstance thereafter, as is happening today.

Because the Filipino leaderships that followed Spanish, American and Japanese rule forgot history and apparently enjoyed authority and resources that were never theirs, it remains convenient to maintain that historical amnesia. The historical truth is a dangerous memory if revived because those in power and holding great wealth will realize that they inherited an unjust system and actually perpetuated it. The end result is not only massive poverty that has no place in a motherland so blessed with abundance of everything. Worse is the absence of a collective and reflective intimacy with whom we belong to and what belongs to us.

We are Filipinos who have only an instinctive relationship with our land and seas, forced by physical reality to feel the most shallow of kinship to them, not really loving country, just having no choice to be anywhere else. Inheriting poverty and living lifetimes of the same would surely prevent poor, landless Filipinos from developing an appreciative relationship with their own country. As such, few will readily want to fight and die for a motherland that has orphaned them.

But China’s bullying is starting to change sentiments a little bit. Today’s communication facilities spread the news at ultra high speeds and even the poor know that China is land-grabbing (as in Scarborough Shoal) and wants to landgrab even more (Ayungin et al). What is, at best, an instinctual bond with our territory and race can develop to be much more if the right provocation from an external enemy happens. And I am sure that the national leadership, in a face-off with China, will do its utmost to woo its own citizens to be rabid sympathizers.

China scorns the international courts. (zamoracartoons.blogspot.com)

Meanwhile, as the corrective measures to a lukewarm attachment to lands and seas they never knew was theirs have yet to be made, the Philippine government and the more passionate patriots around can begin to deepen our stake in our Kalayaan Islands. It is less for the suspected oil and gas beneath the sea but to assert our very identity which is absolutely anchored on our land and seas.

How do we do that? For one, if the Kalayaan Islands are truly ours and our government believes in that, then we have the obligation to develop our communities and facilities in all the inhabited areas. When other countries are so eager to risk everything for islets or reefs, we cannot show our own people, especially those living in the Kalayaan Islands, that our own government is incapable of strengthening and expanding Filipino life there.

China has one sure formula, and that is to build structures and facilities in every land mass it grabs in contested territory, including what is ours. It matters little not whether these are inhabited or not; the China will build as it becomes next to impossible, whatever legal outcome the world may come out with, to take Chinese presence out. There is no reason why we cannot show even greater commitment and determination for our own territory when China is more than willing to do so.

China plans to develop an airport here at the Mabini (South Johnson) Reef. (Johnib.wordpress.com)

In fact, the aggression of China has already enflamed many a patriot’s heart. I am aware that many citizens are more than willing to handle the strengthening and expansion of communities and facilities in the inhabited parts of the Kalayaan Island. The Code of Conduct governing claimants of the concerned islands and reefs to which we are a signatory says no one can occupy and build on uninhabited territory but does not prohibit the same activity on already inhabited islands. We have communities in several of these islands, and we should pour our resources, and our patriotism, on them.

Developing our inhabited islands in the West Philippine Sea can mean putting up airstrips and ports. We can also connect the dots by establishing commerce and tourism between them, and them as a cluster with the rest of the Philippines. If we believe that these islands are ours, if we value their inseparability to the Philippines as a whole, then we must affirm that value by embracing the development and expansion of the Kalayaan islands. And I know many die-hard Filipinos will.

Confiscated from Chinese poachers, near extinct giant turtles. (ucanews.com)

From the national leadership, from the Philippine government, we need only for them to appreciate what many Filipinos want to do, and bless their courage and love for country.

Source: Our, Not China’s, Kalayaan Islands – Color My World

Petit Gateau: A Sobremesa Francesa que Encanta Paladares : Linkezine

Petit Gateau: A Sobremesa Francesa que Encanta Paladares

O petit gateau, que significa “pequeno bolo” em francês, é uma sobremesa clássica e irresistível, perfeita para qualquer ocasião. Com sua massa fofa e um recheio de chocolate derretido e cremoso, é uma delícia que conquista a todos. Preparar essa iguaria em casa é simples e rápido, precisando de apenas 15 minutos e 6 ingredientes básicos. Para um toque especial, sirva o petit gateau com sorvete de creme. Confira a seguir a receita completa e o passo a passo detalhado.

Ingredientes

  • 200 gramas de chocolate meio amargo
  • 2 colheres de sopa de manteiga sem sal
  • 2 ovos
  • 2 gemas
  • Meia xícara de chá de açúcar
  • 2 colheres de sopa de farinha de trigo

Source: Petit Gateau: A Sobremesa Francesa que Encanta Paladares : Linkezine

Violência Doméstica – Pensamentos.me/VEM comigo!

” A violência contra a mulher é um problema de todos nós!”

É importante ressaltar que, vivemos numa sociedade machista, onde temos que lidar sempre com questões que tem resquícios desse machismo muito presente em nosso cotidiano. Embora a lei seja necessária para combater o problema, as dificuldades que encontramos ainda são inúmeras. Hoje, temos o dever de agir juntos, diante dessa realidade e, não achar que só a mulher deve denunciar. A verdade é que, campanhas, órgãos e muitos profissionais que atuam juntos, para trazer respostas que queremos no sentido segurança à mulher é importante. Mas, de modo geral, a ideia de segurança que temos, ainda é precária. Por isso, quanto mais lúcida é uma sociedade seja cobrando respostas, denunciando e agindo como nesse caso, mais se entende que, como indivíduos, estão fazendo valer os seus direitos.
Todos podemos fazer a nossa parte. Neste caso, denunciando, ao invés de ser conivente. A violência é um problema de todos!

Marii Freire. Violência Doméstica

https://Pensamentos.me/VEM comigo!

Imagem: Autoral

Santarém, Pá 24 de junho de 2024

Source: Violência Doméstica – Pensamentos.me/VEM comigo!

Study: Medication abortion without ultrasound safe – UPI.com

Mifepristone is used in a regimen together with misoprostol to end a pregnancy less than 70 days in duration. Adobe Stock/HealthDay
Mifepristone is used in a regimen together with misoprostol to end a pregnancy less than 70 days in duration. Adobe Stock/HealthDay

 

Women don’t need an ultrasound to have a safe medication abortion, a new study says.

Women who received abortion pills by mail without getting an ultrasound first did just as well as those who were examined and given the drugs in person, researchers found.

Source: Study: Medication abortion without ultrasound safe – UPI.com