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COMMITTEE OF 500 YEARS OF DIGNITY AND RESISTANCE
P.O. BOX 110815, CLEVELAND, OHIO 44115
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The Committee of 500 Years presents:
Racist Imagery in Popular Culture and Education: Warriors of the People
10th ANNUAL CALL TO CONFERENCE
16th ANNUAL CALL TO PROTEST RACISM AGAINST THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
March 30-31, 2008
The 10th Annual Conference will be held at Baldwin Wallace College near Cleveland, Ohio. Berea is a suburb of Cleveland. The conference will be
in memory of Vernon Bellecourt, a true visionary. He was a strong presence at our conferences, opening day demonstrations and any playoff games
and Word Series games the Cleveland baseball team was in during the past 16 years. We valued Vernon’s friendship, leadership, insight, and
great humor, and always quick with a joke or a story. His teachings and compassion for the rights of the Indigenous peoples will always be with us
as we go forward.
Speakers for this 2008 Conference year will be Charlene Teters, Professor of Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and served as Dean for Arts and Cultural Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Charlene is also with the National Coalition against Racism in Sports and Media. Our second Keynote speaker is Dr. Gavin Clarkson, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, School of Information, School of Law, and Native American Studies.
Clyde Bellecourt will be in attendance as our spiritual leader.
Steve Blake, artist and Director of the Twin Cities American Indian Movement will also be joining us.
Entertainment will include a performance by the Crooked River Dance Troupe, The Seneca Stomp Dancer and the Taiko Drums.
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Proposed Agenda:
Date Time Event Location
Sunday 12:00 noon Registration Baldwin Wallace College,
March 30 Student Activity Center
1:00 pm Introductions and welcome 96 Beech St, Berea OH
Prayers – Clyde Bellecourt
Last 10 years
2:00 Open mike
3:45 Performance – Hand Drum song
4:00 Dedication to Vernon – Honor Song/AIM song by drum
4:45 Performance – Crooked River Dance Troupe, Seneca Stomp Dance
5:00 Dinner
5:45 Performance by the Taiko Drums
7:00 Speaker - Charlene Teters
Monday 9:00-10:00 30 minute classroom speaking time – Speakers will be talking to various classes
March 31 at Baldwin Wallace College
12:00 Meet at West 25th St. and Detroit Ave. to march to Jacobs Field
1:00-3:00 Demonstration against Cleveland Indian’s ball team at Jacobs Field
Gate A Quad, Ontario Street side.
7:30 Speaker - Dr. Gavin Clarkson
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“Warriors of the People: Honoring Vernon Bellcourt”
By Walks With Shield (Oglala Lakota)
One stand out warrior whose life we will honor at this year’s conference is “WaBun-Inini” who was an Anishinaabeg of the White Earth Reservation. “WaBun-Inini” translates in English to “Man of Dawn” and many on this Mother Earth knew him as “Vernon Bellcourt.”
Vernon Bellcourt grew up on the White Earth Indian Reservation which in the Ojibwe language is “Gaa-waabaabiganikaag” which translates to “When there is white clay.” He was born on October 17, 1931, and at that age of 16 moved to Minneapolis, MN, with his family.
Vernon exemplified the character and resilience of Native America and was active during some of the most notable times during recent Native American history. He was present during the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and many of us know his brother Clyde Bellcourt who was the founder. Vernon traveled with the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan to Washington, DC, in 1972. At this time, during the AIM occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building he served as a negotiator. He also was present at the 1973 AIM occupation of Wounded Knee and served as a spokesman and a fundraiser for the people.
Vernon gained international recognition as a stalwart advocate for indigenous people. He met with international leaders including, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, Yassar Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Vernon Bellcourt was also active in the fight to free AIM activist Leonard Peltier.
Vernon was also the President of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media. He remained a true warrior for the people as he fought the ongoing stereotyping and perpetuation of racist media throughout the United States and the world. He participated in numerous demonstrations and at one point was arrested for burning an effigy of Chief Wahoo. Ultimately, he was released but continued to fight for the people in an untiring and dynamic way. Those of us privileged to have met and known him remember a man who was committed to the people and was unwavering in his convictions. He was an internationally prominent figure but was down to earth and always loved to tell a story and joke around and laugh with his friends.
This year at the 10th Annual Conference we will celebrate a retrospective of his life and honor this outstanding “warrior for the people” named “Wabun-Inini” who now walks with our ancestors and the Creator. “Man of Dawn” we honor your life, your legacy, and your friendship. We remember you always – Aho.
“Migwich”
Vernon Bellcourt (October 17, 1931 – October 13, 2007)
2008
DEMONSTRATION
DATES
ALL DEMONSTRATIONS WILL START AT THE NW QUADRANT OF ONTARIO STREET
DATE TIME
March 31 12:00 Noon
Monday Meet at W. 25th Street & Detroit to mar to ball Park
1:00 pm
Demonstration at Jacobs field
April26 2:00 pm
Saturday
May 24 5:00 pm
Saturday
June 28 5:00 pm
Saturday
July 13 5:00 pm
Saturday
August 30 5:00 pm
Saturday
September 20 5:00 pm
Saturday (Last scheduled demonstration) If the team does go to the playoffs and world series, we will demonstrate at every home game.
PLEASE CLIP AND SAVE!
For more information on up coming events check our website at: www.committe
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REGISTRATION FORM:
Racist Imagery in Popular Culture and Education: Warriors of the People
Sunday, March 30 & Monday, March 31, 2008
Please print:
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Speaker Bios
Charlene Teters
A member of the Spokane Nation. The Spokane Nation is indigenous to the Plateau region of what is now Washington State. She is an artist, teacher, writer and activist.
In 1984, she made her journey to the southwest to attend the prestigious Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), in Santa Fe New Mexico. A junior college where many of her fellow Spokane Tribal artist friends and colleagues had attended and achieved recognition, at least regionally for their artwork. It was a positive time of renewal. She describes this time at IAIA as "reclaiming herself, both as an Indian person and her dignity as an Indian woman." Teters early works, from home in Washington and IAIA, are romanticized paintings focused on subject matter of Indian women and children in tribal regalia. Her purpose was to contrast the dominant subject matter of Indian men by portraying Indian women and children as center of family and as keepers of the cultures. She painted in the style readily defined and publicly accepted by the art market as "Indian Art."
After graduating with an Associate of Fine Arts in painting from IAIA in 1986, she attended the College of Santa Fe where through the New York Arts Program she was influenced in her artistic development by feminist painter Sylvia Sleigh, curator and Art Critic, Lawrence Alloway and Printmaker Bob Blackburn. She graduated from the College of Santa Fe with a BFA in Painting in 1988.
In 1988, Teters was recruited to the University of Illinois, along with Norman Akers (Osage) and Marcus Amerman (Choctaw). The three, traveled to the heartland of Illinois to attend the University of Illinois, Department of Art and Design graduate program. It was there that Charlene and her art became politicized. When the three arrived they found a community that was permeated with degrading depictions of American Indian caricatures because of the University's use of an "Indian chief" as its sports team mascot. Charlene actively campaigned to eliminate the racist symbols after it became evident that her teenage children's self esteem was undermined by these uses of these Indian images in the community.
Teters was lifted and mentored into national leadership during her years of struggle by social justice leaders such as Ken Sterns, of the American Jewish committee, Tim Giago, Founder and Publisher of the "Lakota Times" and the Lakota Nation Journal", Kuame Ture (Stockley Carmichael) and American Indian Movement leadership, Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt.
Today, as an internationally recognized and sought after artist, Teters expresses her personal and political views about America's dehumanization of Indian Peoples by creating multimedia installations that examine the social presumptions and portrayals of Indian people in pop culture and media. She exhibits widely in the United States and internationally.
Teters has a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Illinois and was presented an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Art from Mitchell College, New London Connecticut. ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings honored Ms. Teters for her commitment to her work and her people as "Person of the Week," October 10, 1997.
Teters is currently the Hugh O. LaBounty Endowed Chair for Interdisciplanary Knowledge at CalPoly, Pomona. She is on leave from the Institute of American Indian Arts where she is Professor of Art and has served as Dean for Arts and Cultural Studies at IAIA. In the mid 1990s she served as Senior Editor of Native Artist Magazine. She is a founding Board Member of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media. Ms. Teters currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She frequently lectures on her art and issues of human rights.
Gavin Clarkson
Dr. Gavin Clarkson is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He also has simultaneous appointments at the Law School and in Native American Studies.
Dr. Clarkson holds both a bachelor's degree and an MBA from Rice University, a doctorate from the Harvard Business School in Technology and Operations Management, and is a cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School, where he was the managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology and president of the Native American Law Students Association.
Dr. Clarkson was on the Computer Science faculty at Rice University from 1991 until 1998 and was a KPMG Fellow at the Harvard Business School from 1998 until 2003. While at Harvard he was also the John M. Olin Research Fellow in Law, Economics, and Business, the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching, and held a university-wide fellowship, the 1665 Harvard University Native American Program Fellowship. Dr. Clarkson joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2003, where he conducts research in two distinct areas: intellectual property management and tribal economic development, including tribal access to capital markets and the determinants of success for tribal entrepreneurship. In 2005, he received the first ever grant from the National Science Foundation to study the dynamics of tribal finance.
An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Dr. Clarkson has consulted, written, and published extensively on tribal sovereignty, tribal governance and court systems, tribal economic development, and tribal asset management, and has conducted extensive research on the empirical data underlying the American Indian mascot controversy. Dr. Clarkson was also a contributing author for the most recent edition Felix Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law, providing material on tribal finance, tribal corporations, economic development, and intellectual property. In May of 2006, Dr. Clarkson testified before the Senate Finance Committee regarding his research that has demonstrated statutory and regulatory discrimination against tribal governments in terms of capital market access.
Dr. Clarkson holds the Series 7, Series 24, and Series 66 Securities licenses from the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD).
Clyde Bellecourt
Clyde a Anishinabe - Ojibwe Nation is a founder and Director of the American Indian Movement. He was a major figure in the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 and played a founding role in an ongoing Indian School System, Legal Rights Center and the International Indian Treaty Council. He is also directing the Peacemaker Center for Indian youth and the AIM Patrol which provides security for the Minneapolis Indian community. He is an organizer of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media. He is founder and currently Chairman of the Board of American Indian OIC, an innovative job program that has moved over 14,000 people from welfare to full-time employment. Clyde sees a bright future: "This generation of little children is the 7th Generation. Not just Indian children but white, black, yellow and red. Our grandfathers said the 7th generation would provide new spiritual leaders, medicine people, doctors, teachers and our great chiefs. There is a spiritual rebirth going on."
As one of the original founders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Clyde Bellecourt (born 1939) has long been an activist for the rights of Native Americans. He was an essential participant in the occupation of both Wounded Knee and a Bureau of Indian Affairs Building in the early 1970s.
Born on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in 1939, Clyde Bellecourt was one of the founders of a national activist organization called the American Indian Movement (AIM) and a powerful force in major activist struggles of the early 1970s. AIM was founded by Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, and Bellecourt, all Ojibwa, in 1968. On February 27, 1973, they and other leaders led an armed occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, after Dee Brown's book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971) had established the site as a nationally recognized symbol.
Bellecourt also helped draft twenty demands that were put before the government during the Indian occupation of a Bureau of Indian Affairs building in 1972. Among other things, the protestors demanded a separate government for Indians, the restoration of Indian lands, the renegotiation of all treaties, and a special agency in Washington, D.C., for the reconstruction of Indian communities. While the White House did not meet these demands, the government established a task force to meet with the protest leaders and promised to make no arrests for the occupation.
In December 1993 at an AIM conference, a tribunal was established to investigate charges against Bellecourt and his brother, Vernon. In November of 1994, the tribunal released its verdict: the brothers were found guilty of eight crimes, including collaboration with the U.S. government and drug related activity. As punishment, the two were banned from AIM for life.
Clyde and Vernon--key members of the National American Indian Movement, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minnesota--responded by calling the charges "ridiculous" and "slanderous." They named Russell Means, Ward Churchill, and Glen Morris as instigating the matter after the Bellecourt brothers signed an open letter that expelled Churchill and Morris from National AIM.
Bellecourt remains active in promoting the rights and culture of Native Americans. He is the current director of the Peacemaker Center for Indian Youth, organizer of the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and the Media, and chairman of the Board of American Indian OIC.
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As we’ve done in all previous conferences, we have a housing list for conference participants who would rather stay in a home than a motel. This is on a first come, first serve basis. If you would like information on local hotels please contact us.
We are asking for a donation of $10.00 to help defray the costs of the conference which will include a year’s membership. There will be membership forms at the registration table for those wishing to continue as a member or become a new member of the Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance. We look forward to all and any support. Hope to see you take a stand.
Please join the Indigenous community, friends, and supporters, for a weekend of education, fun and entertainment.
Sponsored by The Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance. For more information call, 216-252-1622
or email ferneellen@sbcglobal.net. www.committee500years.com
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