Merry Love and Compassion Day

By Christine Rose copyright 2009

In the early days of this country, census takers declared that 91% of this county was Christian.  Today, that number is down to 78%.  Still a hefty number, but dwindling for sure.  Grumblers will declare that this is a Christian Country and that as the majority, they have the right to name the holidays and the minority be damned.  I say, Not so. 

Political correctness really must be dissected.  What are the proponents of all things dominant really saying?  They are declaring themselves the winner in all contests, without hearing the voices of the underrepresented.  They want to own the holidays, and name them after their own heroes.  They also don’t want to listen to the reasons why other groups may have other ideas.

I was playing Scrabble with my mother the other day.  She is a darling elderly woman, with friends from many races and creeds.  Yet she does things I cannot understand.  At the grocery store, she asked the well groomed African-American man wearing the name tag “Omar” if he was Omar from the Jungle.  She announced during a game of scrabble,

 “Chinkie say as Chinkie do.”  Stunned, I asked her what that meant, and she said, “You know, Chinkie Chinese!”  At lunch the next day, she announced to my guests that her Indian name was Bea Stays in Pajamas All Day.  With my head in my hands,  all I could do was take deep breaths and ask her to please stop tormenting me.  I did not say it nicely.

The oldest living generation does not understand political correctness because they ruled the country for almost two centuries, and in some places, longer.  In many places, where the dominant race is white and the dominant religion is Christian, the insistence that there is only one way to live is becoming obsolete, and to many it may be frightening.  To give in is to admit they are losing their footing. I believe this is the problem with the current disrespect being shown our president, who is being criticized for crazy things like bowing too low to an Asian diplomat. 

The dominant folks are being moved a little to the left as other groups, including those of us white folks who voted for Obama, say that it is now time to Play Nice!  No more bullying or name calling!  Being the dominant culture does not mean that they get to make all of the rules!  What it should mean is that they look out for the underdogs.

So if we look at today, this holiday called Christmas, this beautiful day of family, generosity and love, the dominant people are asking, “Why would they want to do away with Christmas?  Why do they want to throw Christianity out and bring the non-religious in?”

Why indeed.  Lets turn the question around and ask it another way.  Are the non-religious guilty of a lack of love, of generosity,  of lack of morals simply because they celebrate all of those wonderful qualities without the stamp of Christianity?  Religion is at its best when it is a community of loving people dedicated to spreading love and assistance to those in need.  It is at its absolute worse when it become a disrespectful imposition of one’s beliefs upon another. 

There are so many problems in the world but none so bad as disrespect, the cause of all woes.  Wouldn’t it be far better if we found the common ground and united under that?  Couldn’t we celebrate each other under the premise that all religions call for Loving our Neighbor and Compassion for all?  That may not be a particularly capitalistic sentiment, but then again, there are few religions based in self-service to the detriment of the downtrodden.

I was in the giant mega grocery store at 6 a.m. the other morning.  Its an interesting time of day, because the only people in the store are those who are stocking shelves and emptying boxes.  I go there often to hand pick the best boxes for sending out goods to our friends and to the most unfortunate children on Indian reservations in South Dakota.  I was standing next to a man who was unloading the potato chips and talking with him about Changing Winds, the charity that I run every fall and winter.  He remarked that he so wished he could participate in helping such a good cause.

I smiled at him, and said, Look at what you are doing.  You are helping me with those boxes.  Some people show up at my door with no money but a deep desire to help.  They pack and load boxes, clean goods, drive trucks and help me maintain my sanity when my house is floor to ceiling, wall to wall boxes. 

The point is, You CAN help.  You CAN change the world for someone less fortunate.  All you have to do is be willing to see beyond your own comfort level to the discomfort of others.  And when you see it, reach out and do something.  Anything.  Because every little bit of help moves the mountain.

Celebrating Christmas has become an argument about whether or not to celebrate the birth of the man people call Christ, the Son of God.  It could not be a sillier argument, and one that no doubt left Jesus shaking his head and wondering, How the heck did that idea get to be the overwhelmingly important one?

What did Jesus call for?  Loving your neighbor, humility, compassion.  That is what is important!  That is what brings together all people, from the religious to the atheists. And the Call to Arms for more Love could not come at a better time.  Merry Love and Compassion Day!!

Sacred Merchandise

By Christine Rose copyright 2009

I went to the mall last week to do a little Christmas shopping and I had to leave. Being in a closed in place with all those clothing stores was like a nightmare come true! Why, you might ask? Well, I run a charity and at this time every year we send out more then 1000 pounds of clothing to destitute children on Indian Reservations. A very worthy cause, and I love doing it. It has had a profound effect on my outlook on life. However, before the clothing leaves here to go to it's final destination, it hangs around my house for a couple of weeks. Used clothing is inspected for stains or damage, then it gets washed, dried and folded as pretty as a present. New clothing is sorted by size, reservation needs, and locations. For about six weeks, boxes and plastic bags are packed and ready to go in every inch of my home. My living room is a horror! My basement impassable!

So as I walked through the mall, I did not see fashion. I did not see anything I just had to have. I saw Laundry! Stores and stores filled with nothing but laundry! I couldn't get out of there fast enough!

Now, this is the first year we do not only send clothing. We are sending furniture, bikes, even the finest linens and flatware. You would be really impressed by the stuff that gets dropped off here. Our donors, who are the most loving and generous people in the world, are deeply concerned with keeping the stuff moving. You would not believe the outpouring of love that is like a tidal wave through here in December! But sometimes we come upon people who have trouble parting with their stuff.

Our radio announcement this years asks, Did you chop your wood today? Did you have to burn your clothing for heat? This is an impossible concept to imagine in a country as rich as ours, even in these hard times. But it's true. On the reservations we serve, the choices between food, electricity and heat must be weighed carefully. Last year, after the drive was done and we were well into spring, I called one of our contacts and asked him, Did the you all get good use from the coats we sent? He answered, “Yes, Christine. They kept us warm. They burned real good.”

This is shocking to imagine, and yet, if we sent the coats out for warmth, they did indeed do their job.  With all of the furniture that has been donated this year, I do not see a roomful of valuable antiques, I see firewood.  But with the cost of shipping versus purchasing firewood, we are looking for better ways to keep families warm.  And after all, people really don't want to spend money on good coats only to have them burned.

While we seriously hope we will not encounter such a situation again, it is interesting to contemplate that in tragedies of this sort, antiques are not really valuable, but keeping people warm is. I remember that someone dropped off a beautiful silver plated gravy boat, and as I packed the boxes, I wondered what the heck anyone would do with that. Food is rare enough, fancy dinner parties requiring such lavish accessories are most likely nil.

A few weeks later, I got a call. “Hey, Christine! What was that thing you sent us that looked like a genie's lamp? Our car overheated miles from anywhere and we used that to pour water in the tank! It worked great!”

The other day one of our donors called and she said, "My kids are grown and I have some really beautiful things that belonged to them, but I don't want to send them if they are going to get burned.” Of course, we all understand that. Those items are perfumed with love and cherished memories. For sure, we will put those goods into hands that will be so happy to receive them. But it does beg the question, Where does our sense of the sacred lie?

Because our country was based on the freedom to develop individually and economically, there has never been any emphasis on loving others as ourselves. In fact, the emphasis is love yourself to the exclusion of all others, buy beautiful clothing and insist there isn't enough left over to help others. What that really translates to is, I can't help others because I want too much stuff myself. I am not saying that we are a completely dispassionate society, because we surely do rally for disasters.  But our philosophy of “bringing ourselves up by the bootstraps” leaves too many disadvantaged people unable to even begin to achieve that.

Can you imagine a cold and hungry child, surrounded by the disastrous effects of war still waged upon his people (Oh, yes.  This is very true.), finding it easy to succeed in a school that insists his people were annihilated and that Christopher Columbus discovered America? Yes. It IS that hard for some people.

So the next time you find yourself holding on to things that no longer have meaning in your life, ask yourself, What do you hold sacred? That cashmere sweater, so soft against your skin? Or the betterment of the life of a child, who could possibly have heat in his home for a month for the cost of that sweater?

Spiritual living is understanding that Jesus's call to Take Care of Your Neighbor will not only save others, but will save your own soul as well.  Poverty is a symptom of the disease of greed. By taking care of others, you can cure that diseases with one not-so-bitter pill. What do you hold sacred? What can you do to save others, and yourself?

The Giving Season

By Christine Rose copyright 2006, 2007, 2009

Ten years ago, I had a Near Death Experience, and my world was turned upside down,  I remember sitting on my couch one day and suddenly being blasted by words as strong as a hurricane wind, TAKE CARE OF YOUR NEIGHBOR!

Whenever these things happened, the words lingered, and messages hung in the air like a Christmas Tree with ornaments of knowledge.  “There is enough stuff for everyone.  Move it around!”  “Your neighbor is cold and hungry!  Feed them! Clothe them!”  “Give everything away!”

That last one caused some problems in my marriage because what the messages said, I did.   Messages had been dropped like Love Bombs, exploding any personal ideas for how I should continue to live my life.  If there was a road paved by God before me, how could I not walk it?

I had a dream right around then.  I was sitting on a cold hard folding chair in the low ceilinged basement of a non-denominational church,  with a vast number of shadows of people.  God bellowed once again:  “Sow these seeds and they will grow!  Sow these seeds and they will grow!”

I did sow those seeds and they have become my life’s work, a garden that grows on its own, all I have to do is weed it and reap what grows to dispense to others.  This past weekend, I deposited 36 bags of used clothing at a church near here.  Each member took a bag home for washing, and we will send it out to the SD reservations clean and neatly folded, boxed as pretty as gifts and filled with just as much love.

Not all of my work has been so easy though.  Below is some of what I uncovered when I looked under the rugs and in the closets of this country.  There were skeletons galore, and not very old ones, either.  Prepare to be shocked, because what I found was a lack of love, a lack of compassion for those who suffer the most in this country.

“On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, homelessness is at 30% and unemployment at 80%. 60% of its residents live in substandard housing, and the Reservation, which is half the size of the state of Connecticut, doesn’t have a single bank. “The housing shortage on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is so severe that only 16 people living in a four-bedroom house is considered lucky. Next door there are 23 people in a three-bedroom house” (Rapid City Journal).   

     The American Indian Relief Council estimates that 44% of Sioux households lack complete kitchens and 55% do not have a telephone (itvs.org).”  “Sioux Indians in South Dakota have the poorest health of any minority group in the United States. The Indian health Service says that for every 1,000 children born on the Reservation…, twenty-nine died in infancy, almost three times the national average (Kilborn, Peter T: "Life at the Bottom-American Poorest Country...", New York Times, 1992) Death from heart disease, pneumonia, influenza, and suicide was 150% higher then the national rate; from alcoholism, ten times; from homicide, more than three times. Diabetes rates are six times that of the general white population. The average life expectancy for the Sioux is forty-eight years (itvs.org)”

“Only 23% of Sioux children graduate from high school, and among that group, only 17% go on to college (itvs.org) Homelessness, poverty, and learning disabilities contribute to the dropout rate, as does the lack of reading and writing experience. Lack of transportation (only 30% have cars) keeps truancy rates high, and lack of electricity in many homes prohibits students from doing schoolwork after dark. “ 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amidst all that was born in me through the NDE was also a passion for justice. My patriotic sensibilities were deeply offended when I began to see how injustice thrived in this country.  After my experience with God, this new knowledge now caused me excruciating gut wrenching pain. I know that most people are very good and that almost anyone would be as horrified as I was if they were to learn the truth.  So right now, feeling and sounding like a little kid, I am going to tell!

In 2001, I began an on-line chat group with a Civil Rights attorney by the name of Charles Yow, who has since passed on.  It was called Students and Teachers Against Racism.

The years flew by, and as our chat group evolved into a bona fide non-profit organization, people reported more and more serious incidents that were happening in Indian Country.  They ranged from  simple school discrimination to violence, hate crimes and legal abuse.  When I tell people what goes on in some places and what I have seen these last few years, they can never believe these kinds of human violations can go on in our own country, in this day and age.  I can tell you that except for one or two incidents, everything below has happened since 2002.   For Christmas, I give you these:

* An 11 year Lakota old boy was thrown in a trash bin by white students who told

 him he couldn’t come out “until he stunk like an Indian.”

* The same boy’s brother was jumped and painted brown by white high school students as he walked home from school and was taunted as a “gay Indian.”

* A Dakota boy in Sisseton, SD was knocked down and whipped on the playground by white classmates.  He went to the nurse and was told to lie down for a while.  The school never notified his mother, who only found out by seeing the deep welts on his back days later.  The boys who whipped him were not reprimanded until the mother sued the school.

*  Young adolescent Native children in Winner, South Dakota were arrested at school and brought to Detention Homes or even prisons. Often, the school did not alert the parents, who only found out when the child did not return home on the school bus.  At least one family was told by the school they did not know where their child was for days before they were finally told their child had been reported to the police. 

     Most of these parents had to fight, sometimes for years, to get their children back and often, the treatment of the child in the detention homes or prisons was so severe they suffered irreparable emotional damage.  The offenses were usually unjustified or were minor offenses such as talking back to a teacher or pushing in the lunch line.  (This situation was filed as a lawsuit with the ACLU, who reached a settlement with the school in 2007.  However, the school has refused to comply with the demands of the court and has instead built $200,000 into their budget for legal fees to defend their discriminatory actions.)

    *Native children in a school in Wolf Point, Montana were punished by being placed in a thickly glassed, locked, padded room, or in a narrow cubicle that was barely 32 inches wide and about four feet deep.  The children could do nothing but face a blank wall, and were never told how long they must stay there.  It could have been fifteen minutes, three hours or two days.  One child who was not allowed to take a bathroom break messed his pants.  The white principal told him to wash himself in the bathroom, then chastised him for making a mess and made the boy clean the toilet with his hands.

    Out of approximately 225 children in this school, more than 80 children were referred to be medicated with Ritalin.   Another boy in the same school left home each day in a good mood, but was harassed almost immediately after entering school each morning.  He told me, “They break my spirit everyday.”

    *A young girl in Washington worked to have the “tomahawk chop” removed from her high school football teams “pep” activities.  The team uses an Indian name. When she was successful, she was told by white students that she would be raped and killed, her cousin was beat up, they taunted her with “Hiya ya ya” whenever she passed by, and ultimately she had to leave the school.  She states that she could never have gone to another game or she would be in “big trouble.”

    * Many complaints have been received from Washington State but so many people have been violently victimized that everyone who has complained to me has been afraid to file formal complaints with an agency that could help them.  In Oregon, one college student was ready to file, but immediately dropped the complaint when the newspaper printed his story and he received death threats in the mail. He could not be convinced to pursue the complaint once his girlfriend convinced him to drop it.  She was terrified because her brother had once been beaten to the point of no longer having a face by a carload of passing white men.

    * A father in Oregon complained that his son is so harassed about being Indian, he is turning away from his culture and “becoming white before my very eyes.” His son is so bullied about being Indian, his father must drop him off a block from school in the mornings.

While interviewing members of the Cheyenne River tribe in South Dakota about the report of a Native boy found hanging from a school swing set two weeks after we filed civil rights complaints against the school, we uncovered several other incidents that should have been, but were not, investigated by the FBI:

• A Cheyenne River Lakota woman’s best friend was called late one night to pick up a friend who was said to be drunk and was lying on the ground behind a bar.   When the friend arrived, she found the woman had been beaten into unconsciousness, had been washed and was still wet, and her underwear was left beside her in a paper bag.  She died the next day.
• An old Indian man who was walking along the street was “doored” by two pillars of the community, a banker and a rancher,  as they drove by.  They said they did this in fun. The old man died from the impact of the speeding cars doors. (This was in the 1980s)
• A Cheyenne River woman slipped and fell on the ice, hurting her head and was unable to get up.  An ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital but she was kicked by a passer-by who said, “Why bother?  It’s just a drunk Indian.” She was not drunk and the attending paramedic quit her job shortly after in disgust at the racist way this woman was treated.
• According to local legend, a judge in Pierre, SD was alleged to have been heard saying that before he retires, he would like to put 1000 Indians in jail.  In this same court system,  whites are offered trials while Indians are forced to take plea bargains, even when there is extensive evidence of their innocence. 

In some cases, charges were manufactured by the federal agents, and in at least one case, an agent threatened or bribed children into filing charges against their brother, who he sought to incarcerate although there was no evidence at all of his guilt. I was told by his superior that, even when the charges are false, "The agent is trained to get the statement."  This ensures jails full of many innocent Indians, and plenty of prison support jobs for a state with a depressed economy.

While almost all of the above scenarios took place in South Dakota between 2001 and 2006, Native Americans in other mid-west states can also suffer intense discrimination. 

• In Nebraska, a nineteen year old Sicangu Lakota boy was found hanging in jail.  Evidence proved that he is a victim of, at the very least, a wrongful death and very possibly the victim of murder by police.  It was not properly investigated by the FBI, and the police waited hours before alerting the family, who lived less then two miles away.  The police told the parents that he had been drunk and beaten, but we tracked down the last person to see him ten minutes before the police picked him up, and he was sober, neat and tidy.

In the following days, the jailers refused to release his clothing to the family and denied them the ability to come into the cell to pray for their son. His is but one of many other unexplained deaths of Indians that happen from time to time in this county.  These deaths have been notoriously uninvestigated by the FBI for decades, and this same police force was served a lawsuit for the wrongful death of another Native man just a few years ago. 

One day a woman I know called me from jail. I could barely hear her whisper as she told me her unbelievable tale.  Barbara had sent her two children, ages 4 and 6, to school that morning.  She was home resting on her couch with her youngest child who was a 2 year old boy.  There was a knock at the door, and since Barbara was not expecting anyone, she did not get up.  She had taken to locking her door as social workers, who were not assigned to her as a case, continually stopped by and walked into her home unannounced.  They had no legal right to do so, and when she called to report them, the agency said the social workers were concerned for the children's welfare. 

The morning that Barbara did not get up from her couch, the angry social worker standing outside of her door called the police and told them that Barbara refused to allow her to come in.  The police, without ever ascertaining whether or not the social worker had any legal rights to enter the home, arrived and handed the baby to the social service worker who took the baby (and went to school and took the other children as well) and left. 

Barbara was understandably upset and repeatedly screamed, “You cannot take my baby!”  The police officer arrested her for Disturbing the Peace, and then pulled her down the stairs by her belt loop, injuring her back so badly she could not speak.  She was placed in jail for two weeks before they x-rayed her and found that she had suffered a broken rib and ruptured tail bone.  The x-rays then disappeared.  Her court appointed attorney did not know any of this story and was prepared to offer her a plea bargain for disturbing the peace, but Barbara referred him to me.  Once he understood what had happened, he was able to get the charges dropped. However, it has been more then two years since Barbara lost her children, she has no money to visit them, and she has no idea why they were removed in the first place.  Because she has no money to visit them, hundreds of miles away, they accuse her of abandoning her children and are seeking to terminate her parental rights.

Since then, Barbara has suffered endlessly.  The only reasons she has been given for the removal of her children have been based on gossip with no basis in truth.  Psychologists and neighbors report the children were well loved and cared for by Barbara, and they suffered terribly by being removed from her.

Barbara soon went off of the deep end.  She lost her home, began to drink, and has been criticized and stereotyped by those who have no idea how she has suffered.  She struggles now to get her life back together, to make a home for her children for whom she cries every single night, and still the social workers refuse to see that she has met their every demand.   While Barbara works tirelessly to bring her children home, as unbelievable as this story may sound, it is commonplace on the Reservation. 

Stories like Barbara’s abound.  In recent years, thousands of children who should be protected under the Indian Child Welfare Act are handed off to White families who seem to feel that being able to provide nice things for a child is more important then the relationship between a child and its mother.  Much of our charitable work is geared to keeping children with their families.  There is an expression, For want of a shoe, a horse was lost.  Can you imagine if for want of pair of shoes, your own child was lost?  Why is the pain of poverty not too much to bear in itself?  Why does one lose their humanity because they cannot afford the needs of a child?  These are not kittens and puppies that are being handed off; they are families who love each other as much as you do your own.  A system that values material worth over the love of a mother is in sad shape indeed.

As you read each story, does your heart hurt?  Can you imagine what some people are forced to live with each day?  Are you moved to do something, but don’t know what?  Pay attention to the ills of the world.  Don’t turn your back on them or sweep them under the rug.  Even if all you do is pray for the victims of injustice, then perhaps you can at least alleviate some of their pain.

There are many who live a free and privileged life in areas where crime is low and the majority of  traffic tickets are given to dark skinned minorities who pass through middle-class towns.  This is not said in disdain, but in a cry for compassion.  Weigh your blessings and make sure that you remain in God's favor by caring for those who may be suffering in ways you cannot imagine.  Make sure that you maintain balance by giving back as much as you receive. 

There are many causes to defend in  this world.  Find one and give it at least some amount of your time.  Raise your children with all the love you have, give them all you have of yourself, and when they grow, put the later years in your life to easing the suffering of parents who have no one else to turn to.  I promise you, your life will improve, as will your sense of gratefulness, when you reach beyond your comfort level to those who cannot change the world for their children without the help of people like you.  Flip the coin, imagine living in an oppressed world that is invisible to so many, feel the compassion you would like others to feel for you if you suffered so greatly.  Take the moccasins of others and try them on for size. 

 Each of us has a talent, and is capable of changing the world in some small or even great way.  All you need to do is ask God what you can do to help others, ask how you can serve God.  Ask often and with great faith that you will be guided to those who may need what you in particular can offer.   Reach out to those in your community who need help.  Volunteer.   You can make your life a giving season by giving beyond your comfort zone.  Give not just gifts, but yourself, give that which is hard for you to give and give with love, not resentment.  Give your time to those that need you.  Take care of your neighbor.