Sherman Alexie on Colbert (Updated)

Here's the link to the entire show; Sherman Alexie comes on at @16.00 minutes, after the second blank bar on the bottom line. You can push the play button there to watch. (You have to watch a 30-second ad, and the play button jumped around on me, but it's worth it.)

Updated: The video:

Sherman Alexie Silences Colbert (Updated)

I will post video when it's up. Sherman Alexie! (A favorite author.)

Updated: The video:

Exxon-Valdez -- What Really Happened

Under the Supreme Court's other big decision yesterday, he has every right to buy that gun and carry it around in DC. The actual shooting is still barred by law, I think -- you never know how far the 2nd Amendment goes anymore, do you? Is the Exxon-Valdez oil spill the equivalent of a home invasion?

This article about what really happened in the Exxon-Valdez case is important. I saw this all the time in our asbestos practice -- before the asbestos companies took advantage of the bankruptcy laws and screwed all the workers they had poisoned for decades. Lawyers for companies would say right out, this is the most you are ever going to get. You may win at trial, but we'll appeal and you know how conservative the appeals courts are. We'll win on your appeal and your clients will get pennies on the dollar. And that was happening before Bush spent seven years packing the federal courts with even more rightwing nutjobs.

Read the rest of the article to see all the promises the oil companies made to the Alaskan natives to get the use of the Valdez Port, and how all those promises were cynically broken.

GregPalast.com: Court Rewards Exxon for Valdez Oil Spill

Twenty years after Exxon Valdez slimed over one thousand miles of Alaskan beaches, the company has yet to pay the $5 billion in punitive damages awarded by the jury. And now they won't have to. The Supreme Court today cut Exxon's liability by 90% to half a billion. It's so cheap, it's like a permit to spill.

Exxon knew this would happen. Right after the spill, I was brought to Alaska by the Natives whose Prince William Sound islands, livelihoods, and their food source was contaminated by Exxon crude. My assignment: to investigate oil company frauds that led to to the disaster. There were plenty.

But before we brought charges, the Natives hoped to settle with the oil company, to receive just enough compensation to buy some boats and rebuild their island villages to withstand what would be a decade of trying to survive in a polluted ecological death zone.

In San Diego, I met with Exxon's US production chief, Otto Harrison, who said, "Admit it; the oil spill's the best thing to happen" to the Natives.

His company offered the Natives pennies on the dollar. The oil men added a cruel threat: take it or leave it -- and wait twenty years to get even the pennies. Exxon is immortal - but Natives die.

And they did. A third of the Native fishermen and seal hunters I worked with are dead. Now their families will collect one tenth of their award, two decades too late.

Summer Museum Trip

Schenectady Daily Gazette
Adelbert John, a member of the Allegheny Reservation baseball team near Salamanca in New York’s Southern Tier, poses for the camera.

I'm going to make plans to see this show while I'm visiting Coach Mom in New York this summer.

NYTimes: The American Indians of America’s Pastime

Jacoby Ellsbury is beloved by Red Sox Nation.

He is also a member of Navajo Nation.

Ellsbury, whose mother is Navajo, is the first person from that tribe to reach the major leagues. He is among 47 American Indian baseball players whose contributions to the game, from its earliest innings, are chronicled in “Baseball’s League of Nations: A Tribute to Native Americans in Baseball,” an exhibit that opened April 1 and runs through Dec. 31 at the Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, N.Y.

“Since this exhibit opened, we have had some of our largest crowds in recent years,” said Erynne Ansel-McCabe, the director of the 27-year-old museum. “People have been staying for hours, looking at artifacts and reading all about these players, many of whom suffered from the same kind of racial discrimination as American Negro league players.”

Pitchers Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees (Winnebago) and Kyle Lohse of the St. Louis Cardinals (Nomlaki) are the only other American Indians in the majors.

“I think it’s wonderful to have a place where people can go to see all the accomplishments made by these great players,” Chamberlain said Thursday while sitting at his locker at Yankee Stadium before a game against Toronto. “I can tell you that the three of us playing in the majors are all proud to be carrying on this great tradition.”

The exhibit’s roster includes Jim Thorpe (Sac/Fox), an outfielder for the New York Giants, the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Braves (1913 to 1919); Ben Tincup (Cherokee), a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies (1914 to 1918) and the Chicago Cubs (1928); and Jim Bluejacket (Cherokee), who pitched for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops of the Federal League (1914-15) and the Cincinnati Reds (1916).

Moses Yellowhorse, a Pawnee, is considered by many historians to be the first full-blooded American Indian to play professional baseball. Yellowhorse, who was not-so-affectionately known as Chief, broke in with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1921. The next season, he hit Ty Cobb with a pitch between the eyes.

“This was probably as much a result of Cobb’s crowding the plate as it was a retaliation for his racist remarks,” is the explanation the museum provides from a Yellowhorse biography, “60 Feet Six Inches and Other Distances from Home” by Todd Fuller.

Voice of America News: American Indians' Untold Baseball Stories

IROQUOIS INDIAN MUSEUM: Calendar of Events for 2008

North Country Public Radio: Native Americans in baseball's past & present (audio)

Put Your Money Where Your Principles Are: Support Pretty Bird Woman House

This week Amnesty International reported that more than 1/3 of Native American woman are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. A diarist at dailykos noted the study, and posted a link to Pretty Bird Woman House, a domestic violence shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota that was days away from closing for lack of funds.

[t]he great majority of these horrific assaults are coming from outsiders. Outsiders who understand that these women are often isolated in remote areas, outsiders who know that the community authorities have little power to stop them, and who know that federal prosecutors have shown little interest in taking these cases.

You can donate to the shelter via paypal, or snail mail, here: