An Indigenous Perspective On July Fourth
July 4th is a federally recognized holiday, observing the day North American colonists formally adopted the Declaration of Independence from Britain.
Makah tribal member, Cynthia Savini shares the complex indigenous relationship with this holiday, with KBCS’s Yuko Kodama.
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Music and ideas 91.3 KBCS Bellevue, a listener supported public service of Bellevue College online at KBCS.fm. Welcome to this special edition of Thom Hartmann program for July 4. On this federally observed holiday, we celebrate the voices of Indigenous women. As folks fire up their barbecues for this day, we take a moment to honor the original people of this land. What is an indigenous perspective on the federally recognized Independence Day? KBCS’s Yuko Kodama has this phone conversation. Next,
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I’m going to have you introduce yourself.
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My name is Cynthia Savini, and I’m an enrolled member of the Makah tribe in Neah Bay, Washington
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Now July 4th is coming up tomorrow. And other days that celebrate the the white settlership is Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. And it can be about you know, fireworks and barbecues for the fourth and Thanksgiving is about gathering and having food. But there’s this kind of backdrop behind it. So tell me how the indigenous community comes into thinking about these holidays?
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Well, I, you know, I’ve had an interesting, growing up and experience. I spent the first part of my life in Washington, DC, my dad worked for the Pentagon. And so going from that first part of my life being very, very indoctrinated into a very urban white setting. And then when my dad retired, and we moved back to my reservation, and he was teaching there I was completely immersed in my culture. So my experiences a little bit different than somebody who may have been born and raised on the reservation. And it comes from that space, which is also very common for a lot of natives, in being patriotic, Native Americans have the highest percentage of involvement in the military of any minority group per capita basis. So it’s really interesting to see how we really walked out, all through our history, our own protection of our land. And we felt that being warriors and being protectors of America, regardless of who was in charge, or in office, was an important role for us to play it something that we understood. So patriotism, runs very, very high on reservations, which is such an unusual thing. When you think about what that actually means. It means embracing, in some ways, our captors, so existing in that tension is a really interesting place to be, especially once you become aware, and it’s something that I feel like there’s becoming this mad awakening of people who are recognizing just how propagandized we’ve been how whitewash we’ve been for so long. Now 2019 a lot of tribes are exercising their own sovereignty. They have ways of diversifying, and capitalizing on things other than just natural resources like we have in the past. So we’ve got the like gaming, we have firework stands, it’s interesting to see how many people are embracing this Americanized version, of celebrating our independence, by blowing things up and having barbecues, and then seeing how a lot of Native people are becoming much more culturally aware of what they have given up by participating in that. So I’m seeing a real division in some indigenous communities where some people are really pulling back and they’re not being involved in the firework stands. And they’re not being involved in the parades and their reclaiming Thanksgiving, their reclaiming Columbus Day and their reclaiming the Fourth of July and being reflective about what that means to their ancestors. And now to them. It’s not necessarily that it’s become such a huge movement to be anti Fourth of July. And I think part of that has to do with some of the money that is able to be made by fireworks stands. Just here in Kitsap County and the mayor of Bremerton, I don’t know how successful he was, but there was discussion about him talking to the neighboring tribes to try to limit the kinds of fireworks that they would be selling because they are afraid of what could happen, because we’re supposed to be having a drought. And to me, that was one of those things where I went, thats a really careful conversation that you need to have, because a lot of people depend on this time of year to make money. It’s kind of like fishing for them. It’s seasonal work. Many people they’ll save up their vacation days and will take time off of their regular job to work this job as a side hustle. Because it’s going to then fund back to school clothes or vacations or what have you. So there’s a very real dollar value that’s also attached to specifically the Fourth of July. Thanksgiving and Columbus Day, that’s a little bit easier to unravel and to unpack for people, once they know the true stories. And it’s just at this point, now trying to be that voice of education, and enlightenment, we’ve already had to see Serena Williams deal with being cast in that light of being the angry black woman in expressing herself and where she was coming from. And we always have to deal with that as well. You know, becoming those angry natives that are so upset, why can’t you just get over it? Well tell the true story about Thanksgiving and how it was a celebration of the white people that they were thankful for surviving the massacre that they just placed on on 300 people and then came back and celebrated. Why are you forcing us to live down that story and to reframe it for our children so that our hearts don’t hurt any longer. Columbus Day is again, another one that’s relatively easy to unpack for people. Because unless you’re Italian, it makes a lot more sense. I think there’s a lot of Italians who have difficulty letting go of Columbus. But I argue that if I was Italian, I would be upset that they chose Columbus, why not Amerigo Vespucci. That’s who America was actually named after. He actually wasn’t as big a jerk as Columbus was. So to me, I feel like both of those are so much easier than the Fourth of July because there’s so many interwoven issues that go along with the Fourth of July. And a lot of that, again comes back to native people just really, really still having that connection to our own indigenous land. And, I’m being proud of the fact that we defend it even under the flag of another people.
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That was Cynthia Savina, a registered member of the Makah tribe speaking with KVCS’s. Yuko Kodama yesterday. Thanks for joining us here on 91 three KBCS for this special best of Thom Hartmann program for today July 4. Find out more about KBCS by going online to our website kbcs.fm.
Preteen and Teen Girls, Puberty and the Period
Are you, or someone you know navigating the preteen or the teen girl? Julie Metzger is a Pediatric Nurse and Founder of Great Conversations. Metzger has been providing programs on the topic of sex, puberty and growing up for over 30 years. She speaks with KBCS’s Yuko Kodama about what puberty brings to a girl’s life and the family.
Producer: Yuko Kodama
Image courtesy of Great Conversations – Photo taken by Losa Brooks
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91.3 KBCS, music and ideas. Listener supported radio from Bellevue College. Up next, a story on how to talk about puberty, sex, and the period with your young teen. This is Yuko Kodama with KBCS, with Julie Metzger, a pediatric nurse and founder of Great Conversations, which provides programs for families of teens and preteens about puberty, sex and growing up. What are some examples of stories that you’ve come across that really speak to how important the puberty even having the period, it really comes down to that in a lot of ways, right? This kind of expectation that “okay, at some point, I’m going to have a period. And what is that going to be like? And how scary is that?” Is there like a story that you could share around the potency of that for a young girl?
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Maybe what we’re saying actually is, what is the foundational basis of how I build this curriculum and built this curriculum 31 years ago. Because I think part of it is, “what is the story that you need to tell?” The foundational idea is rewriting a story. There are a lot of adult women who walk in with a certain story around what a period means. There are words that are described very negatively, and they walk in sort of assuming a story. And they’re assuming the story, so much so that they’re assuming that we’re going to tell that story and that their daughters will learn that story and much of it is based on secrecy and shame and pain, and embarrassment and inconvenience. For me, from the very beginning, one of the whole goals here is to rewrite the narrative around that while still claiming the truth about a period. There are lots of things for instance, that are inconvenient about a period, they’re logistics. But I think looking at them more matter of factly, versus as if they’re a total pain and insurmountable, which is more the story that we’re told or that we continue to tell, even amongst each other because people, of course, don’t talk out loud about a period, which is its own problem, that we don’t talk out loud about periods, but even between ourselves as women, we tend to only tell a negative story. So at the most foundational place, my language and storytelling and description of puberty, of what it means, what it’s about, periods being only one part of that is a sort of rewriting of that narrative. 90% of my words are, I am talking directly to the girls in the room. Even though I’m talking to the girls, the people that walk out the most transformed are 100% the adults in the room. I can just see it in their faces, “I never thought about talking about it like this,” or they’ll walk out like “I haven’t laughed that hard in a year. That was like being at a comic stand up. I did not expect to cry or laugh.” There can be a story that doesn’t feel false, in fact, it feels so true that the adult people, dads, moms, are saying “I see it now that you’ve said it, I see it. And I’m excited about carrying that narrative forward.”
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So it’s kind of like setting the table for the family to then be able to start talking about all of this in in a way that is more open, that is freeing,
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And it isn’t shame, embarrassment, secret. You can still claim embarrassment while still lifting up. It’s what you’re learning out of that space. I have worked hard in these 31 years to surround the narrative that lifts up while also claiming the matter of fact truth of how to get a tampon in. It’s how you can look straight at what is truth, knowing that the culture, the narrative that all the adults have grown up within that room are that periods and most of puberty actually takes you away from what we are looking for in adult women. You get bigger, you have BO, you have pimples, you have greasy hair, you have leg hair, you have hair, you add fat to your body, and you bleed. I mean, there’s nothing about that that has been told in a way that lifts people up and yet how curious since none of the human beings on the planet would be here without the capacity of a woman’s body to be able to do the work to conceive and carry a baby and deliver, you’d think it would be the thing we would lift up most and honor. Puberty takes you away from what we admire in a beautiful woman and purity takes you toward what we look for in a man. So when you think of boys’ puberty, we lift up. “Oh, you’re getting bigger, your voice, your jaw, your muscles, your virility, your shape, your size, your manliness,” it’s a lifting up all the way along for boys puberty, and it is absolutely diminishing for what the story is, because we admire smaller women, not so messy, without hair, without BO. Those things don’t feel feminine. You know, we don’t think “oh, what’s the feminine ideal?” We don’t say, “well, for sure she’ll have BO.” It’s a curious and interesting thing, the weight that we carry, as women, around. Just think about it, that we have to remove all of our body hair to be attractive. It is just a amazing idea to think about.
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What kind of experiences do you tend to see among people who come through?
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One of the things that I can almost never get over and it’s so interesting, because it’s the narrative we’ve all bought into, iis when we had everyone an index card and give people two options. One is to ask any question. And the second option is write the thing you are most looking forward to in puberty and the thing you are least looking forward to in puberty. And we get, you know, 130 cards back and I read the most and the least out loud, very predictively. The girls are talking about things that are physical that we’ve already talked about, “I’m most looking forward to growing taller, I’m least looking forward to a period” would be the 80%. One of the interesting things is we’re also asking the adults in the room to do that same card and the most common thing that a grown up writes is that “they’re least looking forward to the moodiness of their daughter, or their mood swings.” They create a negative narrative around moods and emotions and I, I find myself so… I have an experience of sadness in that. That’s hard to describe, because I want to drop those cards down right in that moment, and this is, again, 31 years of this, it’s like, I want to look right in the eyes of those people who wrote that card and just help redirect their thinking about how important emotions are. How we need our girls to feel angry, how we need our girls to feel sad, how we want our kids to experience a wide range of emotions. That being emotions are about how we respond to the world. We need our girls to be not burying that, but actually learning and articulating that. Our task and challenge is how to articulate and show self control around how we act upon our emotions, but not that our girls are in any way, negative to the world by being moody. That is so powerful and visceral for me. I, I don’t even know what to do sometimes with that because I feel like sometimes those moms write that to be funny. Or they write it because that’s the story that they just assume. Or they actually do have real fear about emotions in their own home, because they can’t take it. I want to work on that. If it wasn’t for teenagers, the world would be a much less courageous place. If you think of so many extraordinary things that have happened because of teenagers. The Revolutionary war, most of the people who fought were teenagers. If you think of civil rights, most of the people who are brave enough to get onto a bus, to have the courage to sit at a lunch counter, where you’re not invited, requires real anger and real passion, and real sadness, and real emotion to be able to take that on and that’s the way the world improves and changes. If those same teenagers in Nashville and other places did not sit at that lunch counter, because they were afraid of showing their anger or their sadness, the world would not change. Young people who, because of their impulsivity, because of their passion, because of their sense of social justice because of their courage, that changes the world. That’s not an eye roll. That’s transformative.
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That was Julie Metzger, a pediatric nurse and founder of Great Conversations which provides programs for families of teens and preteens about puberty, sex, and growing up.
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91.3 KBCS music and ideas, listener supported radio from Bellevue College.
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KBCS 91.3 FM online at KBCS.fm. The teen girl can be complex to navigate for some guys, but male caregivers can have an important role to play in a girl’s future relationships. Up next, KBCS’s Yuko Kodama interviews a veteran in this field, Julie Metzger, a pediatric nurse and founder of Great Conversations, a program for families of teens on puberty, sex, and growing up.
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You offer the Dads of Daughters class. So what is it about?
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I thought, “Oh it would be really fun to talk to dads more about – and kind of help them along on the journey.” There’s a freedom in the room. They feel like they can talk more safely, maybe without being judged or embarrassed themselves. The dads are fantastic! Sometimes there’s, you know, 150 dads and me in the room. It’s pretty magical. I say, “Well, I’m not a dad. But I do know a lot about girls.” I believe strongly, and I would do this in any talk about teens, I think there’s sort of a primary task of adolescence, physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and kind of talk through what’s our priority as a grown up parenting these girls. My job is to help people improve their conversations. Let’s take the physical aspects of girls development. I talk about puberty for girls how it’s both the same and different for boys. It’s a very short, very precise, kind of five to six year journey. Tends to start in early elementary school finish up, many, at the end of middle school, early High School, that’s very different than boys’ puberty. I talk about what that looks like. How puberty takes you away from what we idealize and I mean, that’s all kind of a wake up for dads to think about, because they have not had that experience themselves. But then I talk about how because of some of those things, and because our society is worried about obesity-and needs to be-it’s important to hear though that, as we parent girls through puberty, our job really is not to talk about weight gain or food or things where we’re judging and shaming girls for their growth because between the ages of 9 and 16 a girl’s going to gain 15 to 55 pounds and that’s not going to come perfectly and evenly with their height. Many girls get fuller, bigger, before they get taller and I think there are lots of dads who think “oh, my daughter’s getting unhealthy. She’s, maybe she’s going to be fat or obese.” They worry they judge they create shame around those things and so I invite dads into the truth about girls physical development and about how they can encourage, promote and lift up their daughter’s physical selves by sharing activities, supporting their passions in their physical activities, encouraging them in that way, and inviting great food into their lives without that additional shame around weight gain. You know you can take that down each of those aspects, emotional, social, cognitive. And emotional for sure. A rewrite of lots of parents, dads, all humans around negating girls emotional selves. Helping them respond to their daughter’s emotional communication in a way that acknowledges and invites them to see themselves as heard and understood. I mean the research is super evident that when girls see and know themselves to be heard and understood by grown ups, there are healthier outcomes, they reduce their risk behavior, they slow down in their initiation of sex. They tend to know what it means to create healthy relationships. And there’s all sorts of amazing studies about the particular significance of dads in that work.
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That was Julie Metzger, pediatric nurse and founder of Great Conversations which offers programs for families of preteens and teens to learn about sex, puberty and growing up.
The Crack Epidemic’s Impact on Black Communities
Crack cocaine, swept throughout the US in the 1980s as an inexpensive and easily accessible drug. Neighborhoods and families were severely impacted by this epidemic. Aaron Dixon, the former Seattle Chapter Captain for the Black Panther Party, is writing a book on the impact of crack cocaine on black communities. Dixon describes how large amounts of cocaine began streaming through the US in the 60s and 70s due to U.S. government actions. He also recounts his personal experiences in trying to keep gang-involved youth alive and afloat at this tumultuous time.
Photo courtesy of blackpast.org
The Crack Epidemic and Its Impacts on Black Families
Yuko Kodama 0:00
You’re listening to 91.3 KBCS. This is Yuko Kodama, I interviewed Aaron Dixon, who is the former Black Panther Party, Seattle Chapter captain. He wrote the book, “My People Are Rising.” And more recently, he’s been finishing a second book. I spoke with Aaron Dixon earlier this month about the book he’s working on now. You had written, “My People Are Rising” and tell me what’s in your second book.
Aaron Dixon 0:29
My second book, well the – the working title is “Journey Through The Black Underground;” Ronald Reagan, crack cocaine, gang epidemic, destruction of the black family and the black community. And that’s what I explore – is the beginning of the 80s because I think the beginning of the 80s really exemplifies where we’re at right now. Of course, it didn’t begin with Ronald Reagan. It didn’t begin in the 1980s. Before Ronald Reagan in the 80s, there was a lot more possibilities that we could really create a more just society and a just world coming out of the Vietnam War, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and coming out of the whole movement of the 60s and 70s… and all the things that the Black Panther Party did and all those movements of the 60s did. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan was elected as president, and Ronald Reagan was the beginning. It was the beginning of a lot of things with Ronald Reagan was elected. Before Ronald Reagan we didn’t have large amounts of homeless people – we very rarely saw any homeless people. We had a level of socialism that existed in our society. College tuition was much more affordable because the wealthy we’re being taxed to pay for a lot of that college education. You know, our medical mental health system was still intact.
What I wanted to do is explain and lay a foundation to young people. To explain how we got to where we’re at right now. You know, one of the first things that Ronald Reagan began to do was he cut the mental health funding, almost in half or more than half which, you know, people who are mentally ill, they need help. They need a place to go. They need a place where they could live and sleep and get the help and the care that they need to get. And when you can’t provide that – when you as a society cannot provide for the mentally ill. You’re really laying the foundation for a failed society. And that was the beginning of what we saw what Ronald Reagan did, by slashing the funding for mental health that put thousands and thousands of mentally ill people out on the streets today. And as a matter of fact, a lot of the people who are in prison are mentally ill, because they have nowhere else to go. So they’ve ended up in prison, but by putting a lot of them out on the streets, you had a lot of things that happened to them, as well as things that they did to other people, you know, there were people that were killed and murdered by the mentally ill, because we weren’t willing to take care of them. He also slashed the funding for HUD. Not in half, but damn near in half, you know, subsidized housing was slashed under Ronald Reagan. And then of course, you know, the war on drugs really began with Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon laid the foundation for the war on drugs. There were a lot of black men that were arrested in the 70s.
And we started to go into our prison reform in the later part of the 70s. So it looked like you know, there would be some reform, and so many people wouldn’t be going to prison. Also, in Nicaragua, we had the Sandinistas who forced Samoza out of power, who was one of the most brutal dictators in South America, who got a lot of funding and a lot of support from the US government. And Ronald Reagan became so alarmed with Samoza being pushed out of office and that fear and paranoia of communists spreading throughout South America, you know, created this thing where we started funding a counter-revolutionary group, the Contras. Oliver North was involved to try to get funding to the Contras. Congress said that they weren’t going to fund it. So what did they do? The CIA turned to the Nicaraguan drug dealers who had been big time drug dealers in the 60s and 70s, who were also responsible for bringing a lot of cocaine into America, and so they began to use those drug dealers to import cocaine into America to raise money for the Contras to have this counter-revolutionary war against the Nicaraguan government and the Nicaraguan people who had fought and died to create a better society in their country. And so, you know, millions and millions of pounds start finding its way into America.
Now, this wasn’t the first time that the CIA was involved in drug dealing. The very first time that the CIA began to get involved in drug dealing was during the Vietnam War. When there was a General Pao, who was the General in Laos, who was the kingpin drug dealer in Southeast Asia, the CIA became partners with him. First of all, they started giving him planes to be able to export his heroin around Southeast Asia. And then the next thing they did was introduce him to Gianconfe, one of the leaders – leading mobsters in New York. They connected him with General Po, and that’s when they began, the mob began to import heroin into America. And you saw a devastating effect of this heroin that came into America in the 60s, particularly was coming into New York and created a heroin epidemic.
You even see “The Godfather,” alluding to this in the movie, the first “Godfather,” you know, when Marlon Brando played the role, and he said, “Well, you know, we don’t want the- heroine is dirty. We don’t want that.” And then when the other Mobsters said, “we’re just going to give it to the n****rs”, that’s what he said, and so that was the first time the CIA brought heroin into America. And what that did then was it created a whole epidemic of heroin addiction and crime, which began this war on drugs by Nixon, they began to put more black people in prison. So here it is, 10 years later, under Ronald Reagan, they’re importing all this cocaine into America. And at the same time, you have his wife saying, “just say no to cocaine”, and it’s – it’s proven that Ronald Reagan, Bush no one, were involved in this, and Bill Clinton, were involved in this cocaine coming into America. And at first it was going to LA because in LA there was a man who was a businessman in Nicaragua. He was a sympathizer of the Contras, and he wanted to raise money for the Contras. So the CIA contacted him and asked him to work with him. So they were shipping him millions of pounds of cocaine into America. But he needed an outlet. And it just so happened that he found an outlet – this young man named Ricky Ross, who was a black – all this is in the “Dark Alliance,” a book by Gary Webb, called “Dark Alliance” and he researched this for over 10 years.
Now, Ricky Ross was a young black man who wanted to be a tennis player. He played tennis in high school. When he got out, he tried to get into college, but he couldn’t because he couldn’t read or write. So he went to trade school, and he met this black guy who was selling just a little bit of cocaine here and there, you know, because in the 70s, cocaine was a casual drug. Everybody was snorting it; Hollywood people, Congress people, everybody was snorting – it was a casual drug. But the more money you had, the more likelihood that you would get addicted to cocaine. And so when you have so many people using a drug like that, then people started experimenting with other ways and they get more access to more pure cocaine. And so, you know, first you had to powder cocaine, and then you had this thing, that people who had money started to smoke the pure cocaine, which was called “rock” – you know, like a big pure rock of cocaine. The Rock cocaine became popular, but you had to have more money to smoke that rock because it costs a lot of money. Okay, so Ricky Ross, he starts selling rock cocaine. But Ricky Ross, he’s smart, he knows how to market. So he sees how people are buying this coke, he said “Well, we got to make it more affordable for the average person.” So they come up with this method of cooking it down to this little small packages of 10 – 20 dollars a package. This is the crack now we’re talking about crack, it went from powder to rock, who was for the rich people, to crack to for the average person. It’s more addictive than anything that anybody has ever seen. I mean, people will come buy it and 10 minutes later they come back buy some more. It just like kept going and getting growing and growing bigger and people came more addicted and more addicted and he opened more crack houses and the gang see this and gangs have always been territorial. The gangs weren’t about making a lot of money. You know, they were doing small time hoodlum crimes, you know, and they were more concerned about their territory and different things like that. But when the gangs saw how lucrative this business was, they got involved. And the thing about it is this drug is so addictive, that people would do anything to get some more crack. And, you know, black mothers have always been the most maternal, because they had to take care of the slave masters kids. They were used to take care of other people’s kids. When slavery ended, they had a chance to take care of their kids. And so they were very – black mothers were very maternalistic. But when they used crack cocaine that maternalism went away.
And so people became highly addicted- I mean, everybody was getting addicted! Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents; everybody is getting addicted under this crack. And the gangs, they’re making lots of money, but also it creates more violence. Because not only is cocaine coming into the country – into LA, specifically at this moment – but also a lot of guns and weapons are coming in by the CIA. I was in Oakland when crack cocaine hit. I was there. I saw what happened in Oakland when crack cocaine came. I saw the destruction that it did to families, to businesses, black owned businesses. You know, the other thing that was happening in the 80s was this materialism, this extreme materialism that people really didn’t care that much about in the 60s and 70s. Everybody wasn’t so consumed with wealth, but in the 80s it was all about money. It was all about getting your money, you know, and you had black athletes for the first time getting million dollar contracts and, you know, 10 million – you know, Michael Jordan, then you had, you know, you have Michael Jackson. And so materialism and money, it took over people’s minds in the 80s. And so, you know, I remember being in Oakland, I remember school teachers were selling cocaine because they wanted to get rich they want to have money too! So everybody was either selling cocaine, or they were using it.
I think all that the black community has gone through. We got to give ourselves some props that we – we survived that first of all, but that we are able to rise up above that, you know, and do better. And being able to overcome and producing a lot of great young black people. I mean, right now, black entertainers are in demand. Black filmmakers are in demand, creating some of the best films that have ever been made. black actors are in demand. And so the fact we may not be this solid group that we were in the 60s and 70s, we are dispersed and spread out in a lot of different avenues, but we have been able to rise above. You know, I’m thinking about the movie, “Moonlight,” that won an Academy Award – that was an extremely beautiful movie, and the fact that “Black Panther” is one of the highest grossing movies of all time. You know, we gotta give ourselves some props. We got to give ourself some props.
Yuko Kodama 14:57
That was Aaron Dixon, former Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter Captain. You’re listening to KBCS independent radio.
The Crack Epidemic’s Impact on Youth
Yuko Kodama 0:00
This is 91.3 KBCS listener supported radio. I’m Yuko Kodama. Aaron Dixon is the former Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter captain. After his work in the Black Panther Party, he continued on to work with youth in the Seattle Public Schools. He spoke with me about the drug epidemic during the 80s and 90s and its impact on Seattle youth. He starts by describing when and how youth gangs became prevalent in our region.
Aaron Dixon 0:28
When I was growing up, we had these superficial gangs, you know, we had names and we carry switchblades. And, you know, we fought mock battles with each other, you know, it was nothing serious. But the first black kid to get killed by another black kid in Seattle was in 1980. And before that, there were no gangs in Seattle. But the Crips came up to Seattle, so in defense, the kids in Seattle, had to create their own gang, a guy from Chicago, he was with the Black Gangster Disciples in Chicago, and he created the Black Gangster Disciples in Seattle, and they became the rival to the Crips and Bloods in Seattle and so you had this whole neighborhood warfare going on. And in 1990, Seattle started Seattle Team for Youth, which they hired all these people to work as counselors to work and all these gang counselors to work and all these different neighborhoods to try to fight against the gangs. And I got one of those jobs and I started working with young people in West Seattle, who were gang involved. So I’m raising my kids, as a single parent, and I’m also as a gang counselor, I’m working with all these young people who are in gangs, you know, and a lot of other, my fellow workers are also working with gangs. And we were trying to, you know, save as many young people as we could. Now, prior to 1980s, black kids did not go to foster care. Because we had such a strong community that if kids were homeless, there was always somebody that was going to take that child and there was always a family member that was going to take that child in. By 1980s. black kids have flooded the foster care system. Because the family and the community broke down.
And as a result of that, you know, these kids are traumatized. These kids have gone in the foster care system, they become traumatized, because a lot of those foster cares only care about money, it was it was it was pretty crazy. You not only had black families who were fleeing LA, who are bringing their kids to Seattle, to get away from the gangs. And bam, they get to Seattle, the gangs are here. The gangs are in Seattle. And a lot of the kids I worked with in Seattle, they had came from LA, because the parents are trying to get him away. So now they get game involved in Seattle, I had about 15-20 kids on my caseload and we were all trying to figure out how to work with these kids. You know, we really didn’t know exactly how to go about doing what we were doing. There were eight kids that I work with there on my caseload that were involved in homicides. We talked about 15, 16, 17 year old kids involved in homicide, they almost all of them brought guns to school, so I could either turn them in, and they would get expelled because the school had a zero policy. So what I say it was, “okay, when you bring your weapons to school, you got to come and turn them into me.” And that’s what they did. They came into my office in the morning, open up the file cabinet, they put all their guns in there and after school they came and got them, you know, because I had to build trust with them too. And I couldn’t tell them what I was gonna tell “don’t carry no guns. You can’t bring no gun to school.” They’re not gonna listen to me. Because you had gang warfare going on. They had to protect themselves and defend themselves. And so that’s the only way that I could keep them in school. And make sure they graduated.
One of the kids that I had on my caseload was a young man named Jeremiah Boucher. Jeremiah was a very smart young man, very intelligent, he was computer literate, when nobody else was computer literate. He came from a middle class family, grandparents, from Africa, but his father left and went back to Africa, his mother had to raise three kids by herself. So his older brother was gang involved. His older brother tried to rob a store in High Point in West Seattle. And he shot the store owner. And, and he, the store owner testified against him. Now, Jeremiah, I’ve been trying to get him in my group. But you know, he’s one of these smart kids, the smart, really smart kids, they’re not so apt to like, come into a group, you know, a gang intervention group, you know. And so I was, I just was getting ready, I just, he just started coming around, you know, he had his own car, 14 years old, he’s got his own car, he’s a short little guy. Ballet, you know, he took ballet, everything, just really smart. He started coming by and being inquisitive and everything. “Yeah, Aaron I’m gonna start coming to the group” and everything. And his brother gets sent to prison, because this Ethiopian store owner testified against him. Now Jeremiah, in his mind, he thinks, “okay, I have to get revenge on this guy for testifying against my brother.” So he goes in to the store, and kills the Ethiopian store owner. And became, he becomes the youngest person in state of Washington, sentenced to life in prison. So, you know, this is the type of stuff that was happening, you know, there was there was just a total breakdown in the family, total breakdown in the community, not a not a total breakdown in the community because people in the community are trying the best that they can, to try to do that. There are a lot of people in the community did step up, you know, like, the football coaches, baseball coaches, and, you know, other sports, you know, they would bring kids in, some of them would take the kids home, and, you know, everybody’s trying to, you know, save our community, it just had a devastating effect. And this went on up until the 2000s. And it was a breakdown of the family to break down the community. But it was all reinforced by Ronald Reagan.
Yuko Kodama 7:25
When you were working with the youth, what were you seeing as things that seem to resonate with people?
Aaron Dixon 7:32
Well, I was going through some things myself, you know, and I started doing affirmations, I started reading books about positive thinking, about affirmations, and creating affirmative things to say, you know, that made me feel better, and made me feel that I could achieve things. And so I started using that on the second group of kids that I worked with. And so this was the sharpest alternative high school, and we’re still heavily gang involved, these kids are bringing guns to school every day, all the kids are, almost all the kids were gang involved, and you know, and I was working with a lot of different kids, Filipino kids, mostly black kids. And so one day, I decided that I was going to introduce him to affirmations. And I didn’t know how it would come off. I didn’t know if they would laugh at me. And so “Aaron, this is silly, this is stupid, we’re not going to do this.” So I did, I asked the principal, to give me a class, once a week that I could have once a week for my kids, and the teachers were reluctant. They say no, “you’re going to take the kids out of class, they need to be in class,” I said, “Well, let me have them for a hour, once a week, and I guarantee you, they will be better students. So I brought all these kids together and I started introducing them to affirmations, I write the affirmations on the board and I explained to them the power of the mind, how the mind works, what you put in your mind, that’s what you get, you put positive things in there, then you’re going to be move forward and have success, if you’re getting negative things in your mind, all the time, then you’re not going to have success. So I wrote these affirmations and you know it blew my mind they started saying them, We would say the affirmations three times. And then I gave him a list of affirmations to take home. And I instructed them to say the affirmations in the morning when they look in the mirror and say these affirmations “I’m the power within I am what I am, what I am has beauty and strength,” you know, very basic stuff. And man, these kids start turning around, they start telling me, it blew my mind. I had some resistance from one kid, I had to put him out. Because he just had a negative mind and nothing positive was going to seep in, I tell him myself, “Okay, you have to leave the class because you’re, you’re going to interfere with what I’m trying to do.” And the principal gave me a list of 17 boys, she said “Aaron,” Mrs. Moore, I got to give her credit at sharpest high school, she said, “Aaron, I need to have these boys graduate.” All 17 of those boys graduated. And these were gang involved kids. And they did it by saying affirmations, believing in themselves, saying these positive things. Of course, I did a lot of other things with them, taking them on field trips, University of Washington and bringing in guest speakers and all those types of things. But it was the affirmations that had an effect that got them to switch their mind around from a negative thing that they were thinking to more positive things. And so that was the most important tool that I could find, to really help turn around kids. But to think about affirmations, you got to keep saying them. They all graduated, but some of the kids who left they ended up getting into trouble anyway because they stopped saying the affirmations. So, but that was the most important thing that I had was to learn how to teach young people how to think positive, you know, think positive about themselves, and be able to visualize them doing something positive with their life. When I was doing the affirmations, there was a Laotian kid who a gang of our Roshan kid, he came up to me, he said, “Aaron, the only reason why I come to school is to say affirmations.” That was a beautiful thing to hear him say, I’ve had other kids say that “the only reason why I’m coming to school Aaron is a say these affirmations.” Yeah. Shows you how powerful it is to put into your mind, the things that you believe about yourself are true. So I guess that’s all I have to say.
Yuko Kodama 12:15
Yeah, thank you so much. Aaron Dixon, former Black Panther Party leader. Aaron Dixon has written a book titled My People Are Rising. He’s working. He’s currently working on a second book about the impact of the drug epidemic on black families. I’m Yuko Adama and this is KBCS.
The Impact of the Drug Epidemic on Black Families
Crack cocaine, swept throughout the US in the 1980’s as an inexpensive and easily accessible drug. Neighborhoods and families were severely impacted by this epidemic. Aaron Dixon, the former Seattle Chapter Captain for the Black Panther Party, is writing a book on the impact of crack cocaine on black communities. He starts by describing how large amounts of cocaine began streaming through the US in the 60’s and 70’s.
0:00
You’re listening to 91.3 KBCS. This is Yuko Kodama, I interviewed Aaron Dixon, who is the former Black Panther Party, Seattle Chapter captain. He wrote the book, “My People Are Rising”. And more recently, he’s been finishing a second book. I spoke with Aaron Dixon earlier this month about the book he’s working on now. You had written, “My People Are Rising” and tell me what’s in your second book.
0:29
My second book, well the – the working title is “Journey Through The Black Underground”; Ronald Reagan, crack cocaine, gang epidemic, destruction of the black family and the black community. And that’s what I explore – is the beginning of the 80’s because I think the beginning of the 80’s really exemplifies where we’re at right now.
0:55
Of course, it didn’t begin with Ronald Reagan. It didn’t begin in the 1980’s. Before Ronald Reagan in the 80’s, there was a lot more possibilities that we could really create a more just society and a just world coming out of the Vietnam War, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and coming out of the whole movement of the 60’s and 70s’… and all the things that the Black Panther Party did and all those movements of the 60’s did. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan was elected as president, and Ronald Reagan was the beginning. It was the beginning of a lot of things with Ronald Reagan was elected. Before Ronald Reagan we didn’t have large amounts of homeless people – we very rarely saw any homeless people. We had a level of socialism that existed in our society. College tuition was much more affordable because the wealthy we’re being taxed to pay for a lot of that college education. You know, our medical mental health system was still intact.
2:05
What I wanted to do is explain and lay a foundation to young people. To explain how we got to where we’re at right now. You know, one of the first things that Ronald Reagan began to do was he cut the mental health funding, almost in half or more than half which, you know, people who are mentally ill, they need help. They need a place to go. They need a place where they could live and sleep and get the help and the care that they need to get. And when you can’t provide that – when you as a society cannot provide for the mentally ill. You’re really laying the foundation for a failed society. And that was the beginning of what we saw what Ronald Reagan did, by slashing the funding for mental health that put thousands and thousands of mentally ill people out on the streets today. And as a matter of fact, a lot of the people who are in prison are mentally ill, because they have nowhere else to go. So they’ve ended up in prison, but by putting a lot of them out on the streets, you had a lot of things that happened to them, as well as things that they did to other people, you know, there were people that were killed and murdered by the mentally ill, because we weren’t willing to take care of them. He also slashed the funding for HUD. Not in half, but damn near in half, you know, subsidized housing was slashed under Ronald Reagan. And then of course, you know, the war on drugs really began with Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon laid the foundation for the war on drugs. There were a lot of black men that were arrested in the 70’s.
3:58
And we started to go into our prison reform in the later part of the 70’s. So it looked like you know, there would be some reform, and so many people wouldn’t be going to prison. Also, in Nicaragua, we had the Sandinistas who forced Samoza out of power, who was one of the most brutal dictators in South America, who got a lot of funding and a lot of support from the US government. And Ronald Reagan became so alarmed with Samoza being pushed out of office and that fear and paranoia of communists spreading throughout South America, you know, created this thing where we started funding a counter-revolutionary group, the Contras. Oliver North was involved to try to get funding to the Contras. Congress said that they weren’t going to fund it. So what did they do? The CIA turned to the Nicaraguan drug dealers who had been big time drug dealers in the 60’s and 70’s, who were also responsible for bringing a lot of cocaine into America, and so they began to use those drug dealers to import cocaine into America to raise money for the Contras to have this counter-revolutionary war against the Nicaraguan government and the Nicaraguan people who had fought and died to create a better society in their country. And so, you know, millions and millions of pounds start finding its way into America.
5:46
Now, this wasn’t the first time that the CIA was involved in drug dealing. The very first time that the CIA began to get involved in drug dealing was during the Vietnam War. When there was a General Po, who was the General in Laos, who was the kingpin drug dealer in Southeast Asia, the CIA became partners with him. First of all, they started giving him planes to be able to export his heroin around Southeast Asia. And then the next thing they did was introduce him to Jim Conniff, one of the leaders – leading mobsters in New York. They connected him with General Po, and that’s when they began, the mob began to import heroin into America. And you saw a devastating effect of this heroin that came into America in the 60’s, particularly was coming into New York and created a heroin epidemic.
6:58
You even see “The Godfather”, alluding to this in the movie, the first “Godfather”, you know, when Marlon Brando played the role, and he said, “Well, you know, we don’t want the- heroine is dirty. We don’t want that.” And then when the other Mobsters said, “we’re just going to give it to the n****rs”, thats what he said, and so that was the first time the CIA brought heroin into America. And what that did then was it created a whole epidemic of heroin addiction and crime, which began this war on drugs by Nixon, they began to put more black people in prison. So here it is, 10 years later, under Ronald Reagan, they’re importing all this cocaine into America. And at the same time, you have his wife saying, “just say no to cocaine”, and it’s – it’s proven that Ronald Reagan, Bush no. one, were involved in this, and Bill Clinton, were involved in this cocaine coming into America. And at first it was going to LA because in LA there was a man who was a businessman in Nicaragua. He was a sympathizer of the Contras, and he wanted to raise money for the Contras. So the CIA contacted him and asked him to work with him. So they were shipping him millions of pounds of cocaine into America. But he needed an outlet. And it just so happened that he found an outlet – this young man named Ricky Ross, who was a black – all this is in the “Dark Alliance”, a book by Gary Webb, called “Dark Alliance” and he researched this for over 10 years.
8:54
Now, Ricky Ross was a young black man who wanted to be a tennis player. He played tennis in high school. When he got out, he tried to get into college, but he couldn’t because he couldn’t read or write. So he went to trade school, and he met this black guy who was selling just a little bit of cocaine here and there, you know, because in the 70s, cocaine was a casual drug. Everybody was snorting it; Hollywood people, Congress people, everybody was snorting – it was a casual drug. But the more money you had, the more likelihood that you would get addicted to cocaine. And so when you have so many people using a drug like that, then people started experimenting with other ways and they get more access to more pure cocaine. And so, you know, first you had to powder cocaine, and then you had this thing, that people who had money started to smoke the pure cocaine, which was called “rock” – you know, like a big pure rock of cocaine. The Rock cocaine became popular, but you had to have more money to smoke that rock because it costs a lot of money. Okay, so Ricky Ross, he starts selling rock cocaine. But Ricky Ross, he’s smart, he knows how to market. So he sees how people are buying this coke, he said “Well, we got to make it more affordable for the average person.” So they come up with this method of cooking it down to this little small packages of 10 – 20 dollars a package. This is the crack now we’re talking about crack, it went from powder to rock, who was for the rich people, to crack to for the average person. It’s more addictive than anything that anybody has ever seen. I mean, people will come buy it and 10 minutes later they come back buy some more. It just like kept going and getting growing and growing bigger and people came more addicted and more addicted and he opened more crack houses and the gang see this and gangs have always been territorial. The gangs weren’t about making a lot of money. You know, they were doing small time hoodlum crimes, you know, and they were more concerned about their territory and different things like that. But when the gangs saw how lucrative this business was, they got involved. And the thing about it is this drug is so addictive, that people would do anything to get some more crack. And, you know, black mothers have always been the most maternal, because they had to take care of the slave masters kids. They were used to take care of other people’s kids. When slavery ended, they had a chance to take care of their kids. And so they were very – black mothers were very maternalistic. But when they used crack cocaine that maternalism went away.
11:56
And so people became highly addicted- I mean, everybody was getting addicted! Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents; everybody is getting addicted under this crack. And the gangs, they’re making lots of money, but also it creates more violence. Because not only is cocaine coming into the country – into LA, specifically at this moment – but also a lot of guns and weapons are coming in by the CIA. I was in Oakland when crack cocaine hit. I was there. I saw what happened in Oakland when crack cocaine came. I saw the destruction that it did to families, to businesses, black owned businesses. You know, the other thing that was happening in the 80’s was this materialism, this extreme materialism that people really didn’t care that much about in the 60’s and 70’s. Everybody wasn’t so consumed with wealth, but in the 80s it was all about money. It was all about getting your money, you know, and you had black athletes for the first time getting million dollar contracts and, you know, 10 million – you know, Michael Jordan, then you had, you know, you have Michael Jackson. And so materialism and money, it took over people’s minds in the 80’s. And so, you know, I remember being in Oakland, I remember school teachers were selling cocaine because they wanted to get rich they want to have money too! So everybody was either selling cocaine, or they were using it.
13:33
I think all that the black community has gone through. We got to give ourselves some props that we – we survived that first of all, but that we are able to rise up above that, you know, and do better. And being able to overcome and producing a lot of great young black people. I mean, right now, black entertainers are in demand. Black filmmakers are in demand, creating some of the best films that have ever been made. black actors are in demand. And so the fact we may not be this solid group that we were in the 60’s and 70’s, we are dispersed and spread out in a lot of different avenues, but we have been able to rise above. You know, I’m thinking about the movie, “Moonlight”, that won an Academy Award – that was an extremely beautiful movie, and the fact that “Black Panther” is one of the highest grossing movies of all time. You know, we gotta give ourselves some props. We got to give ourself some props.
14:57
That was Aaron Dixon, former Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter Captain. You’re listening to KBCS independent radio.
The Impact of the Crack Epidemic on Seattle Area Youth
The crack epidemic of the 80’s and 90’s and its entanglement with increased gun presence and gang activity deeply impacted communities throughout the US. Aaron Dixon, the author of the book, My People Are Rising, and former Captain of the Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter, worked closely with gang involved youth at the time. He describes what challenges the youth faced, and what approach to working with them was most successful.
Photo courtesy of blackpast.org
Yuko Kodama 0.00
This is 91.3 KBCS listener supported radio. I’m Yuko Kodama. Aaron Dixon is the former Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter captain. After his work in the Black Panther Party, he continued on to work with youth in the Seattle Public Schools. He spoke with me about the drug epidemic during the 80s and 90s and its impact on Seattle youth. He starts by describing when and how youth gangs became prevalent in our region.
Aaron Dixon
When I was growing up, we had these superficial gangs, you know, we had names, and we carried switchblades. And, you know, we fought mock battles with each other. You know, it was nothing serious. But the first black kid to get killed by another black kid in Seattle was in 1980. And before that there were no gangs in Seattle. But the Crips came up to Seattle.
So in defense, the kids in Seattle had to create their own gangs. A guy from Chicago, he was with the Black Gangster Disciples in Chicago, and he created the Black Gangster Disciples in Seattle, and they became the rival to the Crips and Bloods in Seattle. And so you had this whole neighborhood warfare going on. And in 1990, Seattle started Seattle Team for Youth, which they hired all these people to work as counselors – to work and all these gang counselors are working all these different neighborhoods to try to fight against the gangs. And I got one of those jobs. And I started working with young people in West Seattle who were gang involved. So I’m raising my kids, as a single parent, and I’m also a gang counselor. I’m working with all these young people who are gangs, you know, and a lot of other, my fellow workers were also working with gangs, and we were trying to, you know, save as many young people as we could.
Now, prior to 1980s, black kids did not go to foster care. Because we had such a strong community that if kids were homeless, there was always somebody that was going to take that child in – there was always a family member that was going to take that child in. By 1980s, black kids have flooded the foster care system. Because the family and the community broke down. And as a result of that, you know, these kids are traumatized. These kids have gone into foster care system. They become traumatized. Because a lot of those foster care homes are just about money.
And, you know, it was – it was a very, it was it was pretty crazy. You not only had black families who were fleeing LA, who are bringing their kids to Seattle to get away from the gangs, and bam, they get to Seattle – the gangs are here. The gangs are in Seattle. And a lot of the kids I worked with in Seattle, they had came from LA, because their parents were trying to get em’ away. So now they get gang involved in Seattle. You know, I had, man, I had about 15-20 kids on my caseload. And we were all trying to figure out how to work with these kids. You know, we really didn’t know exactly how to go about doing what we were doing. There were eight kids that I worked with, that were on my caseload, that were involved in homicides. We talking about 15, 16, 17 year old kids involved in homicide.
They, almost all of them, brought guns to school. So I could either turn them in, and they would get expelled because the school had a zero policy. So what I say it “was okay, when you bring your weapons to school, you got to come and turn them into me”. And that’s what they did. They came into my office in the morning, I open up the file cabinent, they put all their guns in there and after school they came and got them, you know, cuz I had to build trust with them too. And I couldn’t tell them, what I’m gonna tell? “Don’t carry no guns. You can’t bring no gun to school.” They’re not gonna listen to me. Because you had gang warfare going on. And they had, they had to protect themselves and defend themselves. And so that’s the only way that I could keep them in school and make sure they graduated.
One of the kids that I had on my caseload was a young man named Jeremiah Bourgeois. Jeremiah was a very smart young man, very intelligent. He was computer literate when no other body else was computer literate. He came from middle class families and grandparents from Africa. But his father left and went back to Africa, his mother had to raise three kids by herself. So his father, his older brother was gang involved. His older brother tried to rob a store in high point in West Seattle. And he shot the store owner, and, and he, the store owner, testified against him. Now Jeremiah, I’ve been trying to get him in my group. But you know, he’s one of these smart kids, the smart, really smart kids. They’re not so apt to like come into a group, you know, a gang intervention group, you know. And so I was I just was getting ready. I just – he just started coming around. You know, he had his own car, 14 years old. He’s got his own car, he’s a short little guy. Ballet, you know, he took ballet, everything. Just really something – started coming by – being inquisitive and everything. “Yeah, Aaron, imma start coming to the group and everything”. And his brother gets sent to prison because this Ethiopian store owner testified against him. Now Jeremiah, in his mind, he thinks, “okay, I have to revenge this guy for testifying against my brother”. So he goes in to the store and kills the Ethiopian store owner. And became – he becomes the youngest person in the state of Washington sentenced to life in prison.
So, you know, this is the type of stuff that was happening, you know, there was there was just a total breakdown in the family, total breakdown in the community, not a, not a total breakdown that came in because people in the community are trying the best that they can to try to do this. There are a lot of people in the community that did step up, you know, like, the young – the football coaches and the baseball coaches, and, you know, other sports, you know, they would bring kids in, some of them would take the kids home and, you know, everybody’s trying to save, you know, save our community. It was – just had a devastating effect. And this went on up until, you know, up until the 2000’s, and it was a breakdown of the family – to break down the humanity. But it was all reinforced by Ronald Reagan.
Yuko Kodama 7:10
When you were working with the youth, what were you seeing as things that seemed to resonate with people?
Aaron Dixon 7:18
Well, I was going through some things myself, you know, and I started doing affirmations. I started reading books about positive thinking and about affirmations and creating affirmative things to say, you know, that made me feel better and made me feel that I could achieve things. And so I started using that on the second group of kids that I worked with. And this was at Sharples Alternative High School, and there was still heavily gang involved. I mean these kids are bringing guns to school every day. All the kids, almost all the kids, were gang involved, you know, and I was working with a lot of different kids, Filipino kids, mostly black kids.
And so one day, I decided that I was going to introduce them to affirmations. And I didn’t know how it would come off. I didn’t know if they would laugh at me. And say “Oh, Aaron, this is silly. This is stupid. We not gonna do this”. So I did. I asked the principal, to give me a class once a week that I could have once a week for my kids and the teachers were reluctant. They say, “No, you’re going to take the kids out of class, they need to be in class”. I said, “Well, let me have them for an hour. Once a week, and I guarantee you they will be better students”. So I brought all these kids together. And I started introducing them to affirmations. I write the affirmations on the board. And I explained to them the power of the mind, how the mind works, what you put in your mind – that’s what you get.
You put positive things in there then you’re going to be move forward and have success. If you’re getting negative things in your mind, all the time, then you’re not going to have success. So I wrote these affirmations and you know and it blew my mind. They started saying them.
You know, we would say the affirmations three times, then I gave them a list of affirmations to take home.
And I instructed them to say the affirmations in the morning when they look in the mirror and say these affirmations. “I am the power within”. “I am what I am”. “What I am has beauty and strength”, you know, very basic stuff. And, man, these kids start turning around, they start turning – and it blew my mind. You know, I had I had some resistance from one kid. I had to put him out because he just had a negative mind and nothing positive was gonna seep in. I just tell him myself, you have to leave the class because you’re, you’re going to interfere with what I’m trying to do. And the principal gave me a list of 17 boys, she said, “Aaron”, Mrs. Moore, I got to give her credit at Sharples High School. She said, “Aaron, I want – I need to have these boys graduate. And so all 17 of those boys graduated. These were gang involved kids. And they did it by saying affirmations, you know, believing in themselves – saying these positive things. Of course, I did a lot of other things with them, taking them on field trips, University of Washington and bringing in guest speakers and all those types of things. But it was the affirmation that had an effect that got them to switch their mind around from a negative thing that they were thinking, to more positive things. And so that was the most important tool that I could find, to really help turn around kids. But to think about affirmations, you got to keep saying them. And so, you know, some of the kids who grad- they all graduated, but some of the kids who left they ended up getting into trouble anyway because they stopped saying their affirmations. So, but that was the most important thing that I had was to learn how to teach young people how to think positive, you know, think positive about themselves, and be able to visualize, you know, them doing something positive with their life.
When I was doing the affirmations, there was a Laotian kid, a gang involved Laotian kid, he came up to me, he said, “Aaron, the only reason why I come to school is to say affirmations”.
That was a beautiful thing to hear him say – I’ve had other kids say that too “the only reason why I come to school, Aaron, is to say these affirmations”. Yeah. Shows you how powerful it is to put into your mind things that you believe about yourself are true, you know. So I guess that’s all I have to say.
Yuko Kodama 12:13
Yeah, thank you so much. Aaron Dixon and former Black Panther Party leader.
Aaron Dixon 12:19
Thank you.
Yuko Kodama 12:20
Aaron Dixon has written a book titled “My People are Rising”. He’s working – He’s currently working on a second book about the impact of the drug epidemic on black families. I’m Yuko Kodama and this is KBCS.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 6 – Women Are Water Carriers
The Prayer Skirt, a long skirt adorned with ribbons, is ceremonial regalia for the Plains tribes. During the demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, indigenous women of many different tribes began to wear the prayer skirt at ceremony in solidarity with the Plains Tribes women.
Prayer skirts, have also been adopted into events calling for more awareness and support for families of missing and murdered indigenous women. KBCS’s Yuko Kodama spoke with Noel Parrish, a member of the crane clan of the turtle mountain band of Chippewa Indians, about the relationship of the prayer skirts, missing and murdered indigenous women and the struggle to protect our waters from the fossil fuel industry.
Special thanks to Jim Cantu for additional help with editing this story
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 4 – A Story of a Missing Aunt
A report released by the Urban Indian Health Institute in 2018 shows that over 500 cases of missing or murdered indigenous women have been found throughout the United States – many since the year 2000. 70 women had gone missing or were murdered in Seattle and Tacoma. 6 were reported in Portland. KBCS’s Yuko Kodama interviewed Kayla Crocker of Chemanis First Nations about her journey of looking for her aunt, who had gone missing.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 2 – Prayer Skirt Sewing Circle
Indigenous women have taken the lead in increasing awareness of the high numbers of their sisters who go missing and die to violence. KBCS’s Yuko Kodama takes you to a red skirt sewing circle, a community building event which builds support for, honors, and assists in the healing of the community mourning their missing and murdered indigenous women. Thanks to Jesse Callahan for help with editing.
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Indigenous women have taken the lead in increasing awareness of the high numbers of their sisters who go missing and die to violence. Roxanne White from the earlier story organized a community building event with the focus of supporting indigenous women. KBCS’s Yuko Kodama went to the gathering and brought back this story.
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I walked into a small church in Renton, there’s a large spread of food and drinks in the corner, a potluck. A handful of kids chase each other in the hallway and under tables. The table tops are covered with sewing machines and brightly colored material. On the walls are posters with photos of women. There’s bold lettering saying “missing”, then the woman’s name, and the date and place of their last sighting. The event is a red skirt sewing circle. It’s a community building event for women to come together to sew ribbon skirts. This sewing circle was themed for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. A group of about 11 women and youth work away at measuring, cutting and sewing fabric to make the skirts – an a-line long skirt decorated with brightly colored ribbons and patterns. This ribbon skirt or prayer skirt is ceremonial regalia of the plains tribes. Noel Parrish is from the plains area. She’s from the Crane Clan of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Parrish describes what the prayer skirt represents.
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We wear our skirt because we, as women, as life givers, are sacred. Our colors connects us to the Mother Earth and who we are as women, as life givers. And so we choose our colors so that creator knows who we are.
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I’m no expert. I’m a Yakama woman, but the way I feel about it is is that when I put this skirt on, it’s sacred. And it’s a covering. It’s a protection. It’s who I am as a woman is an indigenous woman, a native woman.
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That was Roxanne White from the Yakama, Nez Perce, Nooksack, and Gros Ventre tribes. White is a leader in the missing and murdered Indigenous women movement. She’s also the organizer of the sewing circle. The ribbons, skirts are plains tribes regalia. Indigenous women from other tribes began wearing them in solidarity with the tribes at Standing Rock. The skirts have taken on an additional life, as a symbol of prayer and solidarity among women, which is relevant at this event: the red skirt sewing circle.
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Women’s skirts is becoming a thing where women, from all tribes, from all nations, are excited to make their own ribbon skirt. We decided to have this event open because of the importance of solidarity and how we all work together as one people. This is good medicine. It’s for each one of these women and their children and their families. Even the little kids, even the little girls went and picked out their material and whatever they saw themselves wearing. And then they’ll learn and when they wear it, they’re going to feel proud because they’re wearing culture. And that’s what it’s all about.
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So the women at the red skirt sewing circle are building a nurturing support network for each other amidst the growing number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. For KBCS. This is Yuko Kodama.
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The red skirt sewing circle was held in December of 2018.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women 1 – What’s Needed
Roxanne White, of the Yakama, Nez Perce, Nooksack and Gros Ventre tribes, is an activist who advocates for the families of missing and murdered women (MMIW). KBCS’s Yuko Kodama spoke with White about the MMIW movement at an indigenous prayer skirt sewing circle organized as a community building event in honor of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Rahul Gupta on Changes to the International District Neighborhood
The International District has seen a change as businesses respond to outside forces. KBCS’s sat down with Rahul Gupta, Education and Tours Director at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, to learn more about the neighborhood.