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Host: Shawn Spruce
Forty years after four brothers first formed the famed powwow and Round Dance band Northern Cree, they are releasing their first fully self-published and owned record, “Ôskimacîtahowin: A New Beginning”. The album is produced by Bear Witness and 2oolman from The Halluci Nation. As many as 16 musicians perform with Northern Cree at any given time. Today on Native America Calling, Shawn Spruce speaks with Steve Wood about the new album and what’s next for this band originally from Treaty Six Territory.
Break 1 music: Mîyo Iskwew (song) Northern Cree (artist) Ôskimacîtahowin: A New Beginning (album)
Break 2 music: Navajos Tacos and Native Movies (song) Eli Secody (artist) Rhythm of a Songmaker (album)
The Ghost of Colin Kaepernick
By John Burl Smith author of “The 400th From Slavery to Hip Hop!”
Sport heroes today come in all sizes, shapes, colors or genders and Brittney Griner is only one example. However, there is another story being kept out of the headlines, which the news media has dismissed as unimportant. This controversy involves Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones which I highlight in “The 400th From Slavery to Hip Hop!” I preference my premise with this statement, “White and Black people can experience or observe the same situation or event from the same position, at the same time and under the same conditions, yet come away with two totally different perceptions or entirely different scenarios.” The controversy is well known and is a situation white people have denied the relevance since they created it, beginning when the first enslaved African touched North American soil. Free Africans have been denied choice and voice since the first African was kidnaped and carried anywhere.
I was impressed with the way LeBron James addressed the controversy and I agree with his approach. Today white people continue to minimize their role in this saga, even blaming the Black victims for not being able to change the situation white people created and enforced with a rope against any Black person who dared object to the condition forced upon them. American history books do not detail the facts of what white people created and enslaved Africans were forced to endure. Enslaving white people did not want their children to know how and what they did to accumulate the wealth they inherited. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin is currently engaged in an effort to continue hiding the truth about slavery and what white people did to create and enforce slavery. Again, the point of the Jerry Jones controversy is he is someone who has benefitted enormously from the slavery system in America, which his parents were part of keep slavery’s descendants locked on the bottom of that system, so they could not compete against white people. These facts are well known, even though white people kept such facts out of history books, the reality is before everyone’s face, even if white people refuse to open their eyes to bear witness to their parent’s handiwork which gave them the great life they are living.
Back when Colin Kaepernick first kneeled (9/1/2016) to highlight the foregoing history I presented, white people went berserk and Jerry Jones was a leader among declaring, “I will bench any of my players who take a knee!!!” What would have been the response in the press, back then, if the photo of Jerry Jones attending the rally of white protesters, trying to stop Black children from receiving the same education white children were receiving? My question is what process did Jerry Jones undergo that scrub his mind of the racist hatred he received at home? Why Jerry Jones was there misses the whole point of why Black children had and still have to face white protest preventing them from receiving what the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 gave them?
Jerry Jones, as other white Americans, has never faced any opposition getting access to America’s bounty. Their entitlement not only gives them access, but their access, gives them the right and ability to deny slavery’s descendants access to what white people cordon off as part of their white privilege. This is why Colin Kaepernick kneeled and Jerry Jones rose up to take part in Kaepernick’s lynching, as he and his parents did in Little Rock. Back then they were revered and received no blow back but were cheered and affirmed that day at the protest against integration. Black people do not look at the child Jerry Jones was then, we look at the man he has become, and how he has used white privilege to wield power to limit, even destroy any Black person’s access or opportunity he chooses. That is the lesson Jerry Jones learned at that protest and the world has his picture to show he did not miss school that day. So he learned his lesson well!!!
“The 400th From Slavery to Hip Hop!” takes readers back to before the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to show that the wealth Europeans and Americans enjoy today began with slavery. The Jerry Jones of the world live lives based on the stolen bodies of Africans; hence their wealth is a stolen legacy. White people may be able to keep these facts out of history book, but they can never keep this knowledge out of slavery’s descendants’ minds.