Open Letter to Pope Benedict, Pope of the Catholic Church

An Open Letter to Pope Benedict, Pope of the Catholic Church

By: Pamela Waterbird Davison

Copyright 2008

You’re Imminence:

I am honored to have you reading my words and beg your indulgence while I address you as a human being. You see, I am no one to you. I’m not even Catholic. But I am the descendant of a North American Aboriginal People. Recently, I’ve seen you on my television, visiting Washington, and addressing issues among the people, including sexual abuse committed by priests of the order. As of April 15, 2007, an investigation conducted by the International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide, established by indigenous elders, will attempt to address the issue of many mass graves containing school children near Indian Boarding Schools.

“Our Tribunal will commence on April 15 by gathering all of the evidence, including forensic remains, that is necessary to charge and indict those responsible for the deaths of the children buried therein.”

What has been found, You’re Imminence, are twenty-eight sites of evidentiary remains – mass graves – some of which are five intact skeletons observed in school furnace. Many schools have been destroyed, some facilities are still functional, however, and a great many of these “boarding schools” were, and some remain, run by the Catholic Church. Kuper Island: Catholic school (1890-1975), offshore from Chemainus, Mission: St. Mary’s Catholic school (1861-1984), Cranbrook: St. Eugene Catholic School (1898-1970) names just three locations belonging to the Vatican.

For hundreds of years my people have told the stories of the holocaust committed on this land, but no one has listened…until now. Finally, we have proof of the stories; can show the world exactly what the true history of this land is.

I heard with gladness in my heart as you visited with victims of priests in your order. It feels like a step in the right direction. I appreciate your courage of conviction to meet truth head-on. Now I hope you will meet this truth with equal dedication.

A country which denies its own culpability is doomed to destroy itself. The same applies to a religious sect, especially those countries and religions as powerful as the United States of America and the Catholic Church. Will you continue to deny truth in the face of evidence, or will you acknowledge us, finally, into the proper context of history? It may not seem significant to you or other world leaders, but it is very significant to indigenous people all around the world and we are watching.

Featured Tribe: Calusa

An important tribe of Florida, the Calusa, formerly holding the southwest coast from about Tampa Bay to Cape Sable and Cape Florida, together with all the outlying keys, and extending inland to Lake Okeechobee. They claimed more or less authority also over the tribes of the east coast, north to about Cape Canaveral. The name, which cannot be interpreted, appears as Calos or Carlos (province) in the early Spanish and French records, Caloosa and Coloosa in later English authors, and survives in Caloosa village, Caloosahatchee river, and Charlotte (for Carlos) harbor within their old territory.

The Calusa cultivated the ground to a limited extent, but were better noted as expert fishers, daring seamen, and fierce and determined fighters, keeping up their resistance to the Spanish arms and missionary advances after all the rest of Florida had submitted. Their men went nearly naked. They seem to have practiced human sacrifice of captives upon a wholesale scale, scalped and dismembered their slain enemies, and have repeatedly been accused of being cannibals. Although this charge is denied by Adair (1775), who was in position to know, the evidence of the mounds indicates that it was true in the earlier period.

Their written history begins in 1513 when, with a fleet of 80 canoes they boldly attacked Ponce de León, who was about to land on their coast, and after an all-day fight compelled him, to withdraw. Even at this early date they were already noted among the tribes for the golden wealth which they had accumulated from the numerous Spanish wrecks cast away upon the keys in passage from the south, and two centuries later they were regarded as veritable pirates, plundering and killing without mercy the crews of all vessels, excepting Spanish, so unfortunate as to be stranded in their neighborhood.

In 1567 the Spaniards established a mission and fortified post among them, but both seem to have been discontinued soon after, although the tribe came later under Spanish influence. About this time, according to Fontaneda, a captive among them, they numbered nearly 50 villages, including one occupied by the descendants of an Arawakan colony from Cuba. From one of these villages the modern Tampa takes its name. Another, Muspa, existed up to about 1750.

About the year 1600 they carried on a regular trade, by canoe, with Havana in fish, skins, and amber. By the constant invasions of the Creeks and other Indian allies of the English in the 18th century they were at last driven from the mainland and forced to take refuge on the keys, particularly Key West, Key Vaccas, and the Matacumbe keys. One of their latest recorded exploits was the massacre of an entire French crew wrecked upon the islands. Romans state that in 1763, on the transfer of Florida from Spain to England, the last remnant of the tribe, numbering then 80 families, or perhaps 350 souls, was removed to Havana. This, however, is only partially correct, as a considerable band under the name of Muspa Indians, or simply Spanish Indians, maintained their distinct existence and language in their ancient territory up to the close of the second Seminole war.

Nothing is known of the linguistic affinity of the Calusa or their immediate neighbors, as no vocabulary or other specimen of the language is known to exist beyond the town names and one or two other words given by Fontaneda, none of which affords basis for serious interpretation. Gatschet, the best authority on the Florida languages, says: "The languages spoken by the Calusa and by the people next in order, the Tequesta, are unknown to us. They were regarded as people distinct from the Timucua and the tribes of Maskoki origin" (Creek Migr. Leg., 1, 13, 1884).

The Calusa tribe died out in the late 1700s. Enemy Indian tribes from Georgia and South Carolina began raiding the Calusa territory. Many Calusa were captured and sold as slaves.
In addition, diseases such as smallpox and measles were brought into the area from the Spanish and French explorers and these diseases wiped out entire villages. It is believed that the few remaining Calusa Indians left for Cuba when the Spanish turned Florida over to the British in 1763.

133 Skyway

An American Indian Film Festival nominee:

133 Skyway is a visceral reflection of urban homeless, survival and friendship. Derek Miller plays Hartley, a homeless man trying to get his guitar out of hock. As his health fails Hartley relies on a troubled friend and the kindness of a lonely pawnshop employee.

133 Skyway also includes Falen Johnson (Delia) and Terry Barnhart (Abel), both making their screen-acting debuts. Many of the crew were Aboriginal youth who received hands-on training on the film, which was an initiative of Project One Generation.

Project One Generation workshops are facilitated by Big Soul Productions and provide education and training opportunities for Aboriginal youth and adults in film, television and media.

Director: Randy Redroad
22 Minutes • Canada • Live Short

Students dance, drum, learn American Indian culture

By: Diane Huber

The Evergreen Forest Elementary School gym reverberated with drumbeats as the Nisqually Tribe Canoe Family performed traditional songs.

The performers included four drummers and six youth dancers, some from North Thurston Public Schools, which serves the Lacey area of Thurston County. They wore traditional regalia with symbols and pictures. Some carried drums made of deer and elk hide.

Tanisha Rattler, a freshman at River Ridge High School, said each song tells a story. “It’s not just about dancing. It’s about being around our friends in a good way that doesn’t involve drugs or alcohol,” she said.

The dancing was part of a Family Cultural Activity Night, a program that reaches out to North Thurston’s 500 American Indian students and their families. The program is funded by a grant from the Office of Indian Education.

It’s designed to teach tribal history and culture and help American Indian students meet academic standards, said Laura Lynn, the district’s native student program specialist.

“It’s about connecting their cultural history and practices to their experience in school,” she said.

The rest of the story is here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/336420.html

Location of Mass Graves of Residential School Children Revealed

By: Brenda Norrell

Squamish Nation Territory ("Vancouver, Canada") - At a public ceremony and press conference held today outside the colonial "Indian Affairs" building in downtown Vancouver, the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (FRD) released a list of twenty eight mass graves across Canada holding the remains of untold numbers of aboriginal children who died in Indian Residential Schools.

The list was distributed today to the world media and to United Nations agencies, as the first act of the newly-formed International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), a non-governmental body established by indigenous elders.

In a statement read by FRD spokesperson Eagle Strong Voice, it was declared that the IHRTGC would commence its investigations on April 15, 2008, the fourth Annual Aboriginal Holocaust Memorial Day. This inquiry will involve international human rights observers from Guatemala and Cyprus , and will convene aboriginal courts of justice where those persons and institutions responsible for the death and suffering of residential school children will be tried and sentenced. (The complete Statement and List of Mass Graves is reproduced below).

Eagle Strong Voice and IHRTGC elders will present the Mass Graves List at the United Nations on April 19, and will ask United Nations agencies to protect and monitor the mass graves as part of a genuine inquiry and judicial prosecution of those responsible for this Canadian Genocide.

Eyewitness Sylvester Greene spoke to the media at today's event, and described how he helped bury a young Inuit boy at the United Church's Edmonton residential school in 1953.

There's much more to this sad story of holocaust in North America here: http://atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/3719/1/