The UmBlog

It's an idea and not reality yet, but by the time I buy land this may be the reality I'm looking for, the Loq-kit house . It's like the Sears-Roebuck kit house remade for the 21st century. This era it would be the IKEA kit house without the allen wrenches. hat tip: Inhabitat See more posts on houses .

The Hidatsa and Mandan tribes lived on the Knife River in North Dakota. They didn't live in teepees in the winter. They lived in awesome earthlodges. Take a virtual tour or make a trip to the Knife River National Park . See other posts on native americans , houses and conservation .

In yesterday's post I admitted I'm a clueless blogger on the topic of Mashantucket sovereignty and the National Labor Relations Board. Today, I found Rob at Blue Corn Comics, who I've linked to recently, has a ton of information on tribal sovereignty . Read and learn. See my other posts on native americans and human rights .

If the U.S. truly recognizes the sovereignty of the tribes in its midst can it draw limits? Of course. The U.S. would not cut off its nose to save its face. For example, sovereignty does not mean that a tribe can invite jihadists to set up terrorist training camps on their reservations. In such a scenario, the U.S. would usurp tribal sovereignty to protect its interests. Neither can a tribe make laws legalizing that which the U.S. declares illegal. Hence, gaming could not be stopped on reservations if the states already have legalized gambling. But what of worker unions? Can a tribe declare illegal what the state considers legal? Some tribes already have unions in their casinos. The Mashantucket Pequots , owners of Foxwoods Casino opposed a union vote by its dealers. The National Labor Relations Board told them they had to let the vote go forward. A majority of dealers subsequently voted to form a union. Does this sovereign nation have to recognize them? I think those dissatisfied cou...

Welcome to this week's Top 10 . I've been too busy to blog lately, but I've still had time to read the feeds. If you'd like to see what i find interesting other than these top 10, look at the top of the blog or click here . And without further ado... Church I have a few selections from in this category. Subheading: Conversion Guy Muse has two of importance this week. Follow up on new converts is essential. A first person account of joining a church from the St. Paul's blog. Sociologist Bradley Wright compares the NYT map of megachurches with population density. Subheading Missions Guy follows up this week with shared lessons on starting a church planting movement . Subheading Charismata In memoriam of John Wimber who went to heaven 10 years ago. Subheading Theology J.P. Moreland warns against replacing the power of God with Bibliolatry . Native Americans Indigenous names leave their mark all over the U.S. Yet Americans still think it's not a problem to use...

Here are some questions to ponder today. You'll have to go to the Blue Corn Comics page to get the answers . Quiz: Know Your Natives 13 Questions to Test Your Knowledge of Native Americans 1. How many federally recognized tribes are there in the United States? 2. Who wrote The present King of Great Britain...has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers; the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. 3. Whose portrait is being carved in a mountain taller than Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota? 4. Which American woman has the most school buildings and monuments named after her? 5. Which two "Latin" countries have an indigenous majority? 6. What was actress Maria Cruz's most famous role? 7. How did Christopher Columbus punish Indians who didn't pay tribute on time? 8. Which three of the following plants are no...

Rob who I've linked to yesterday, left a comment with a link to an amazing resource on Thanksgiving myths and facts at his other website, Blue Corn Comics. Here is a taste. * Only 35 of the 102 colonists aboard the Mayflower were Pilgrims. Others were fortune-seekers fleeing the depression in Europe or indentured servants. * The colonists were supposed to join the tobacco plantations in Virginia. They landed in Massachusetts because of a storm or a navigation error, or perhaps because the leaders hijacked the expedition. * The colonists didn't hack a home out of virgin wilderness, they settled on the already cleared land of Squanto's decimated village, Patuxet. Some of them took the Indians' belongings and even dug up their graves. * The colonists didn't introduce the idea of celebrating the autumn harvest. The Eastern Indians had held such celebrations for centuries. * The first Indian-Pilgrim get-together was merely a feast, not a true "...

More information on King Philip's War from the Kansas City Star . Bloodier than the Civil War, 1/3 New England towns burned, many surviving Indians enslaved... Hat Tip: Newspaper Rock . B ut then came King Philip’s War, when things fell apart. What went wrong? What I saw in doing this book was how much the personal commitment of the leaders matters. Diplomacy is hard work, especially when there are such cultural differences. The tragedy of the story is that with the second generation, they lose that appreciation so quickly. King Philip’s War is the war that American history has forgotten. We start with the Pilgrims and in most histories leapfrog to the American Revolution. New England had changed radically in 55 years. As more and more English survived, land became a big part of this. Land had gone into English hands in a huge way. From the native perspective, they said, “What good was this alliance? We’ve lost our birthright.” And with the leaders not liking each other much, it l...

Squanto ended up on an English ship in 1605, either bribed or kidnapped. Several tribes' members were kidnapped also by Thomas Hunt who then tried to sell them in Spain. Friars interrupted the sale and eventually ended up serving as a slave or indentured servant in England for 9 years under Ferdinando Gorges then John Slaney. Gorges was a principal of the Plymouth company. Slaney was the principal of the Newfoundland Company. In 1619 he made it back to the Massachusetts Bay area, finding his people wiped out. His services as a trade intermediary were necessary as trade dried up after the kidnappings. The Pilgrims arrived on his tribe's abandoned area in 1620. Squanto was living with the Wampanoag at the time and their chief Massasoit who used Squanto as an ambassador. Squanto enjoyed his influence too much and used it for personal gain among the Indians. He tried to trick the Pilgrims into military maneuvers against other tribes to prove his influence. His deceit was exposed a...

Of course the right to freedom of religion didn't apply to native americans when it made white americans uncomfortable. The Ghost dance gave many tribes a sense of hope and power. Whites only saw it as a prelude to war. They never bothered to ask. It's practice precipitated the massacre at Wounded Knee. Here is a 6 minute documentary. see more posts on human rights and native americans

I first heard of the Ghost Dance when I listened to the Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge, see my short review . If you don't want to read much this music video gives a summary. see more Native American posts

This house has a great floorplan. It's exterior may be too modern for many, but I really like it. The blog if its construction is called From the Ground Up . more posts on houses .

Have you ever seen rocks baled up in wire mesh and wondered what they were called? I learned the answer today...gabions. I want to know if they would make economical exterior siding?

I only stumbled across his denial today. It was written this past September. Sadly, there are many supporters of his position among the commentors. He must have his own personal definition of genocide that has no dependence on reality. I guess not enough cultures were completely destroyed. Perhaps not enough human rights were denied to tribes. Perhaps not enough good land was taken. Perhaps the land exchanged wasn't bad enough. Perhaps not enough buffalo were killed to create famine. Perhaps too much promised food was delivered to tribes in exchange for peace and land. Perhaps not enough children were taken from their parents and put in boarding schools that shamed their cultures. Perhaps he hasn't been reading my blog where I write too much about genocide , human rights , and native Americans . Tribal Butterfly has a response from NDN News . NDN News has genocide article in small type. It's a painful read on the eyes and on the conscience. Some more information can be ...

Welcome Daily Dish readers. Andrew noted this blog here with a hat tip, thank you Mr. Sullivan. The post can be found in the top 10 blog posts of the week . I don't normally talk about marriage , but usually about church culture and history and conservation . November is National American Indian History Month, so I'm sharing what I learn this month. Thanks for dropping by. The top 10 blog posts of the week are culled from the shared feeds section above.

Today's post for National American Indian Heritage Month is about the Mohican Indians, their travels and travails and the missionary who worked among them, John Sergeant, who was a mentor to David Brainerd . Sergeant's son was also involved in the Brotherton movement . Here is part of the history from the Stockbridge-Munsee community . European Christians with missionary zeal also entered Native villages for the purpose of converting the people from their traditional spiritual practices to Christianity. Some Native people, noting that the Europeans seemed to be prospering in this new land, felt that perhaps the Europeans' God was more powerful, and agreed to be missionized. In 1734, a missionary named John Sergeant came to live with the Mohicans in their village of Wnahktukuk. He earnestly preached the Christian religion, baptized those who accepted his teaching, and gave them Christian names such as John, Rebekah, Timothy, Mary and Abraham. In 1738, the Mohicans gave Jo...

November is National American Indian Heritage Month. This blogger's interest lies in the intersection of the church and the world. Hence, some posts this month are about Europeans who brought the gospel and lived the gospel among American Indians. The Moravian , David Zeisberger , was one such person. He came to Pennsylvania from Moravia and helped found Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1739. He was invited to live among the Mohawk tribe in 1745 and he became fluent in their language Iroquoian as well as Algonquian. He wrote grammars and dictionaries as well as Christian literature and hymns in those languages. Wikipedia reports He worked among the Lenape (Delaware) of Pennsylvania, coming into conflict with British authorities over his advocacy of Natives' rights and his ongoing efforts to establish white and native Moravian communities in southern Ohio. His relations with British authorities worsened during the American Revolutionary War and in 1781 he was arrested and held at For...

My next nightstand book is The History of Missions by Stephen Neill, an Anglican who worked for many years in India. I skimmed the book for any information on missions among Native Americans. I came across John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians . He came to Boston in 1631, a year after its founding, and pastored a new church in Roxbury. He was creative and ahead of his time, like some Spanish priests in Mexico . Instead of trying to bring Indians into his meetinghouse, he spent time learning the Algonquian language, through a bilingual child who lived with his family. He learned the language enough to preach in a chieftain's wigwam and invited him back to teach more. He translated the Bible and it became the first Bible printed in the colonies. He eventually made converts and formed " Praying Indian " villages. Check out the rules they agreed to live by here . Things ended tragically for these villages of converts when King Philip's war broke out. the praying Indians...

This is my Veteran's day post during National Indian Heritage Month. As reported at the Department of Defence 's page in honor of Native American Heritage Month in 2002. Image from a page dedicated to Ira Hayes at Arlington Cemetery, where he is buried. Ira Hamilton Hayes is a full blood Pima Indian and was born in Sacaton, Arizona, on the Pima Reservation on Jan 12, 1923. His parents Joe E. and Nancy W. Hayes were both farming people. When he enlisted in the Marine Corps, he had hardly ever been off the Reservation. His Chief told him to be an "Honorable Warrior" and bring honor upon his family. Ira was a dedicated Marine. Quiet and steady, he was admired by his fellow Marines who fought alongside him in three Pacific battles. Ira Hayes was a noted World War ll hero. Although he had a normal childhood on his reservation, his life changed dramatically when war broke out and he joined the Marine Corps. After he completed courses under the U.S. Marine Corps Parachutist...

Came across a new site today called SmithBusters . Lots of information here. I have plenty of other links and stories on Mormonism  and apologetics .

Today, I read a children's history of local Indian (Pequot/Mohegan) history and came across a fact I never knew. The book I read is The Pequots by Shirlee P. Newman . I think I need a job like hers, writing brief histories. The new history to me is about the Brothertons. Not mentioned at Accessgeneaology is the Christian faith that united these diverse tribes members, but a simple history is given. The name of two distinct bands, each formed of remnants of various Algonquian tribes. The best-known band was composed of individuals of the Mahican, Wappinger, Mohegan, Pequot, Narraganset, etc., of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and of the Montauk and others from Long Island, who settled in 1788 on land given them by the Oneida at the present Marshall, Oneida county, N. Y., near the settlement then occupied by the Stockbridge. Those of New England were mainly from Farnington, Stonington, Groton, Mohegan, and Niantic (Lynne), in Connecticut, and from Charlestown in Rhode Island. They al...

Here is a rough sketch of church with a more contemporary metaphor in American culture. I am only talking about metaphor as a means to communicate with culture without compromising the reality of church that the metaphor points to. Please comment and add input. I’ve been thinking about my American culture. Sports is the recipient of a lot of American brain space and wallets and entertainment. Sheep herding, in contrast is not. 2 Timothy 2:5, Paul makes a rare Biblical reference to athletes, Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. (HCSV), in addition to references to soldiers and farmers. There already is a Salvation Army . What would church look like if presented as a team instead of a herd? And how would that be conveyed? I’m not claiming to be the first with this idea, nor the last. But I am not personally familiar with it and so I’m playing with it in my mind. Do Americans understand what a shepherd does? Do Americans und...

It's National American Indian Heritage Month and I blog about the church's interaction with the world. Here is one intersection, the life of David Brainerd . In 1743, the Connecticut native devoted himself to missionary work among the Indians. He first headed up to Stockbridge, Mass. and from there to an Indian village, Kaunaumeek, an Indian settlement about 20 miles west. He learned their language and preached to them. His efforts were spiritually fruitless for a year. He did manage to convince the tribe to move to Stockbridge. He moved on to preach among the Indians on Montauk Long Island. Then he preached among the Delaware Indians in New Jersey. It was in Crossweeksung that he saw converts. Brainerd wrote, "I preached from John 14:1-6; the divine presence seemed to be in the assembly; numbers were affected with divine truth; how great is the change lately made upon numbers of the Indians, who not many months ago were thoughtless and averse to Christianity, and how asto...

This quote from Jake Page's book In the Hands of the Great Spirit agrees with the thesis of Kiernan in Blood and Soil , that in the European eyes, farming was civilized, hunting and gathering was savage. Of course, as the Europeans encroached on Native american farms, they forced them to resort to hunting and gathering, causing an ever condemning feedback loop. As Page notes, there were other cultural issues on the Indian side, especially gender roles. Another difficulty white Americans had was the communal methods of the Indians which morphed into accusations of Soviet communism after WW1. Meanwhile, the Indian policy favored by George Washington was that of Henry Knox, his secretary of war. Knox called for making treaties with the tribes that would result in opening the lands of the Northwest to settlers, but the treaties were to be made fairly and squarely – “honorably,” to use the contemporary word. Expansion with honor. This can be made to sound utterly cynical, especia...

Think the Black Panthers but composed of American Indians. They both burst on the scene in 1968. A.I.M. was committed to protecting the rights of American Indians at first in Minneapolis, then across the country. They confronted U.S. authorities at Wounded Knee, a story told well in the book I recently reviewed, The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge . They also occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington D.C. This story recounted below from Wikipedia is so similar to that of Eldredge Cleaver , see interview links , and the Black Panthers . Prior to the founding in July of 1968, some of the founding members of AIM had experienced years of discrimination from a dominant society. Not feeling a part of white culture or an association with their Ojibwa heritage, several acted out in ways deemed anti-social and illegal by both societies. These actions would result in time served in the Minnesota penal system. It is here that ideologies would emerge that would define the initial course of A...

Since not every reader visits this blog and notices the shared feeds section at the top, I'd like to share some of my favorites of the past week. Sunday 1-At An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution , Steve Martin attempts to define the nuances of the word "evolution" to his fellow Christians. He begins Much of the confusion in the evolution debate lies in the meaning of the word “evolution”. Since it can have several different meanings, and even the scientific definition of evolution can include several distinct components, it is not surprising that many confusing and confused arguments are articulated. Certainly the conversation is very difficult when conversation partners discussing evolution do not share the same definition, conflate several of the definitions, or elevate one component of evolution to be descriptive of the whole. Monday 2-At Evolution News and Views , Catholic evolution proponent and professor at Brown U. Ken Miller is challenged for claiming to much. Th...

I must confess, I am a Christian American who is not a fan of the American Revolution. I don't believe that Romans 13 gives Christians license to revolt due to taxes. As Jake Page notes in his book, In the Hands of the Great Spirit , the revolution was bad for the invaded people. But for the Indians, the American Revolution was an unmitigated catastrophe of incalculable proportion. By July 1776, the handwriting was not just on the wall; it was inscribed clearly in that most quoted American document, the Declaration of Independence. There, in enumerating the sins of the British in the person of King George III, the document points t the tyrant’s effort “to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” This clause is rarely quoted these days at Fourth of July celebrations. It seems to have been mostly unsubstantiated rumors that the British were inciting both the sou...

I am clueless, but providence makes me look intelligent. As I've been blogging and reading about Native Americans last month and into this month, I might have appeared as someone who was aware that November is National American Indian Heritage Month . I will try to give priority to these topics this month. I will probably check out these sites. Index of Native American Resources on the Internet National Museum of the American Indian Indians.org My other posts on native americans and book reports .

Jake Page in his book, In the Hands of the Great Spirit , has a few observations on the interaction between the church and the New World. Several Spanish missionary priests made great efforts at identifying with the culture of the Native Americans. They served as intermediaries between the two cultures with little success. For several decades, the Spanish crown had received petitions, particularly from a scholarly friar named Bartolome de Las Casas, the first priest ordained in the New World, that the colonists of the New World treat the native populations with kindness rather than hostilities. Coronado’s orders were to explore and take possession of the lands to the north, but specifically not to harm the Indians. He was met at Hawikuh by an assemblage of some two hundred Zuni warriors, who refused his demand for food and drew lines of cornmeal on the ground with dire warnings about crossing them. Coronado ordered a charge and in the ensuing melee he himself was severely woun...