While most people are asleep at the wheel and becoming AI Assimulated, Steve Newcomb is standing tall at his post delivering arrows of knowledge. Native people need to start paying attention to his work so it can be used to free our minds from mental slavery. Thank you sir
Great article Steve, speaking with the sound of Thunders, and shines brilliance into the wounded psyche of Americans’ America.
I did need to see Maher’s “Guilt by Civilization” to have context - Wow ! My take was arrogance pretending to be humor. America is terrified in political legal terms of the power of both Indigenous and Black Movements here and worldwide.
The average American may not know who, what and why, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) and Rights of Mother Earth movement exists, while Jon Tester D-Montana chuckles along as if to give permission to Americans to stay in their uninformed denialism. The attack & omission of this info by Maher is intentional.
Attacks on the “land acknowledgements” movement, include co-opting, commodification, assimilation (domination) of the action by American/domination, that maintains both erasure of historic context applied to the present, and relational dis-connection with place and the Peoples of place, that perpetuates living on place rather than with place. “On” characterized by consumption and use for political and commercial domination, the later - living with relational responsibility.
Maher and America is telling on themselves, with the same old Lib-Con: The illusion of western “civilized” domination parading as “superior freedom” is better than the reality of Original Free Existence and “woke” Liberation from domination .
So someone may say “Hi I woke up 3 years ago”. Imagine saying that to since time immemorial ancestral future memory, and all that kind of statement implies.
Half of the nature of healing is the ability to receive it.
April, "relational dis-connection with place and the Peoples of place, that perpetuates living on place rather than with place", exactly, it's like settlers never actually 'landed' here, always on the move, drive-thru mentality, yet ironically claiming land. And,
"Half of the nature of healing is the ability to receive it." Good saying/advice!
Here is a book comic Bill Maher needs to read: AMERICAN HOLOCAUST: The Conquest Of The New World by, David E. Stannard, Ph.D. Copyright 1992. Oxford University Press.
Dr. David E. Stannard, Professor of American Studies @ the University of Hawaii.
And after reading this book, read: HONOR KILLING: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case. Copyright 2005 David E Stannard, Penguin Books.
If you want a copy of each book, send me your mailing address.
Maybe the most potent observation here is the fundamental cruelty (and insufficiency) of Maher’s Either/Or proposition. Babies and bathwater; the notion that land acknowledgements can only ever be another self-congratulatory liberal circlejerk betrays a serious lack of imagination on his part, and the implicit argument that it’s preferable simply not to speak about the living legacies of displacement and genocide is especially ghoulish. Thank you for this piece — I learned something from it.
I love your measured takedown of Maher’s obsessively negative rant.
When (and I truly pray for when, and not “if”) the US returns to an even far better resemblance that we once seemed to practice, to the doctrines of democratic governance and peace that the authors of the US constitution learned in baby-steps from the Iroquois (ie., Native”) Confederation, we will also have cleansed our collective minds from the domination drivel pouring today from the current occupants of the “Oval Office” and its minions.
Maher sounds more like a better edited and illustrated version of Trumpian disinformation and stupidity.
He too is repeating oft told big lies from the past of these current waves of world-reactionary stupidity. Once, in European culture (late 18th - early 19th century) there was a wave of longing for Enlightenment and evolution. In Europe those human hopes were dashed by the compromised betrayals of (1848) - Liberalism which posed as a “Better Way,” that “gradualism” was the only way. So Royalty became Capitalism , and human barbarism continued as the world order until this very day. Empires were formed thousands of miles from the “home populations” who continued to celebrate liberty and democracy while being entirely naive about where the newfound wealth that capitalism brought home on the backs is slavery in far-away lands. There was no critical journalism to counter the official lies of aggressive imperialism. For awhile we had a growing demographic better journalistic truth. And the so- called “free press” is free for the capitalists who own the presses and online censored media. So we have a Sub-stack” and critical blogging, like the revolutionary pamphleteers of another time. They too strived for a kind of Social Enlightenment, while cops busted heads of the pamphleteers on street corners. By the way, to become Enlightened means “TO WAKE UP,” another term for that is “TO BE WOKE.”
But awakening is nothing without awakened action, both direct and in all the writing and various media we ca muster.
I’ve known Steven Newcomb for more than 30 years. He represents the best of Awakened Communication and Expression. May his examples continue to probe, inspire and reveal all the convenient nooks and crannies of human denial and backwardness.
Excellent history-that's-affecting-the-present lessons, Steve, along with taking Maher to task; his revering of the "fork" helps explain why he speaks with a forked-tongue.
Finally…someone refutes Maher’s racist rant about the original people of California and by extension, the North, South and Central land masses now known as the Americas. Is there anything he won’t say stupid things about? He wants to be funny but JC, making fun of oppressed people is NOT humorous. Thank-you Steve!
Thank you for this. I thought I was the only one livid after watching Maher, and I will never watch him again. BTW, I live on the ancestral lands of the Tongva (and I refuse to acknowledge the Spanish name also given which is usually lumped with it).
In my previous discussion of US empire abroad, I failed to speak of the of how this US empire began - with President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase from France, which included vast land from the Mississippi River to the Northwest Pacific Coast. The earlier Vatican mandate for world empire involved the notion of Terrus Nullus (“empty land” occupied by non-Christian people). The Vatican (Roman Catholic) terminology did not have the same impact on a largely Protestant, anti-Catholic population. This fact easily leads to the similar defamations of Native People in North America ranted in Maher’s ignorance and attack. The anti-Native narrative in the US was a far more aggressive and powerful homegrown demonization of people in order to rouse political, public support for the usurping of lands that were obviously not “Empty” according to Pope Alexander’s narrative. The white american language became more vicious and hateful against Native People within the US. Incidents of Native attacks on white settlers were offered as “proof” of Native barbarity without any notice that they were also defending their own traditional homelands against an unstoppable incursion of European settlers, and the murderous acts of barbarity that the Europeans had committed provocatively in order to make the new US claims against culturally different inhabitants from ancient times.
In other words, like Maher, false narratives were used to incite white settlers into “Indian Wars” and imprisonment on reservations that were controlled by US military and government.
Such was the Terrus Nullus program, North American style. Hitler was known to have studied and greatly admired that genocidal process.
I love your measured takedown of Maher’s obsessively negative rant.
When (and I truly pray for when, and not “if”) the US returns to an even far better resemblance that we once seemed to practice, to the doctrines of democratic governance and peace that the authors of the US constitution learned in baby-steps from the Iroquois (ie., Native”) Confederation, we will also have cleansed our collective minds from the domination drivel pouring today from the current occupants of the “Oval Office” and its minions.
Maher sounds more like a better edited and illustrated version of Trumpian disinformation and stupidity.
He too is repeating oft told big lies from the past of these current waves of world-reactionary stupidity. Once, in European culture (late 18th - early 19th century) there was a wave of longing for Enlightenment and evolution. In Europe those human hopes were dashed by the compromised betrayals of (1848) - Liberalism which posed as a “Better Way,” that “gradualism” was the only way. So Royalty became Capitalism , and human barbarism continued as the world order until this very day. Empires were formed thousands of miles from the “home populations” who continued to celebrate liberty and democracy while being entirely naive about where the newfound wealth that capitalism brought home on the backs of slavery in far-away lands. There was no critical journalism to counter the official lies of aggressive imperialism. For awhile we had a growing phenomenon of better journalistic truth. But today, once again, we have the so- called “free press” that is free for the capitalists who own the presses and online, censored media.
So we do have a Sub-stack” and critical blogging, like the revolutionary pamphleteers of another time. They too strived for a kind of Social Enlightenment, while cops busted the heads of the pamphleteers on street corners. By the way, to become Enlightened means “TO WAKE UP,” another term for that is “TO BE WOKE.” That is a good thing, may it never be shamed away or forgotten.
But awakening is nothing without awakened action, both direct and in all the writing and various media we can muster.
I’ve known Steven Newcomb for more than 30 years. He represents the best of Awakened Communication and Expression. May his examples continue to probe, inspire and reveal for others as well, to continue to pull away all the pre-natal covers and hiding places of dishonesty - all the convenient nooks and crannies of human denial and backwardness.
Thanks Peter for your strong support!
Thanks Steve for another clear explanation of history and a strong critique of the stupidity that passes for Hollywood humor.
While most people are asleep at the wheel and becoming AI Assimulated, Steve Newcomb is standing tall at his post delivering arrows of knowledge. Native people need to start paying attention to his work so it can be used to free our minds from mental slavery. Thank you sir
Thanks Bobo. I appreciate your kind words.
Great article Steve, speaking with the sound of Thunders, and shines brilliance into the wounded psyche of Americans’ America.
I did need to see Maher’s “Guilt by Civilization” to have context - Wow ! My take was arrogance pretending to be humor. America is terrified in political legal terms of the power of both Indigenous and Black Movements here and worldwide.
The average American may not know who, what and why, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) and Rights of Mother Earth movement exists, while Jon Tester D-Montana chuckles along as if to give permission to Americans to stay in their uninformed denialism. The attack & omission of this info by Maher is intentional.
Attacks on the “land acknowledgements” movement, include co-opting, commodification, assimilation (domination) of the action by American/domination, that maintains both erasure of historic context applied to the present, and relational dis-connection with place and the Peoples of place, that perpetuates living on place rather than with place. “On” characterized by consumption and use for political and commercial domination, the later - living with relational responsibility.
Maher and America is telling on themselves, with the same old Lib-Con: The illusion of western “civilized” domination parading as “superior freedom” is better than the reality of Original Free Existence and “woke” Liberation from domination .
So someone may say “Hi I woke up 3 years ago”. Imagine saying that to since time immemorial ancestral future memory, and all that kind of statement implies.
Half of the nature of healing is the ability to receive it.
April, "relational dis-connection with place and the Peoples of place, that perpetuates living on place rather than with place", exactly, it's like settlers never actually 'landed' here, always on the move, drive-thru mentality, yet ironically claiming land. And,
"Half of the nature of healing is the ability to receive it." Good saying/advice!
ah, thank you Mankh.
Aloha April.
Here is a book comic Bill Maher needs to read: AMERICAN HOLOCAUST: The Conquest Of The New World by, David E. Stannard, Ph.D. Copyright 1992. Oxford University Press.
Dr. David E. Stannard, Professor of American Studies @ the University of Hawaii.
And after reading this book, read: HONOR KILLING: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case. Copyright 2005 David E Stannard, Penguin Books.
If you want a copy of each book, send me your mailing address.
Larry Inn, 428 Keaniani St., Kailua, HI 96734.
Maybe the most potent observation here is the fundamental cruelty (and insufficiency) of Maher’s Either/Or proposition. Babies and bathwater; the notion that land acknowledgements can only ever be another self-congratulatory liberal circlejerk betrays a serious lack of imagination on his part, and the implicit argument that it’s preferable simply not to speak about the living legacies of displacement and genocide is especially ghoulish. Thank you for this piece — I learned something from it.
Steve,
I love your measured takedown of Maher’s obsessively negative rant.
When (and I truly pray for when, and not “if”) the US returns to an even far better resemblance that we once seemed to practice, to the doctrines of democratic governance and peace that the authors of the US constitution learned in baby-steps from the Iroquois (ie., Native”) Confederation, we will also have cleansed our collective minds from the domination drivel pouring today from the current occupants of the “Oval Office” and its minions.
Maher sounds more like a better edited and illustrated version of Trumpian disinformation and stupidity.
He too is repeating oft told big lies from the past of these current waves of world-reactionary stupidity. Once, in European culture (late 18th - early 19th century) there was a wave of longing for Enlightenment and evolution. In Europe those human hopes were dashed by the compromised betrayals of (1848) - Liberalism which posed as a “Better Way,” that “gradualism” was the only way. So Royalty became Capitalism , and human barbarism continued as the world order until this very day. Empires were formed thousands of miles from the “home populations” who continued to celebrate liberty and democracy while being entirely naive about where the newfound wealth that capitalism brought home on the backs is slavery in far-away lands. There was no critical journalism to counter the official lies of aggressive imperialism. For awhile we had a growing demographic better journalistic truth. And the so- called “free press” is free for the capitalists who own the presses and online censored media. So we have a Sub-stack” and critical blogging, like the revolutionary pamphleteers of another time. They too strived for a kind of Social Enlightenment, while cops busted heads of the pamphleteers on street corners. By the way, to become Enlightened means “TO WAKE UP,” another term for that is “TO BE WOKE.”
But awakening is nothing without awakened action, both direct and in all the writing and various media we ca muster.
I’ve known Steven Newcomb for more than 30 years. He represents the best of Awakened Communication and Expression. May his examples continue to probe, inspire and reveal all the convenient nooks and crannies of human denial and backwardness.
Krishna Singh Khalsa
New Mexico
Excellent history-that's-affecting-the-present lessons, Steve, along with taking Maher to task; his revering of the "fork" helps explain why he speaks with a forked-tongue.
Thanks Mankh. And thanks for catching that typo of 2014 to 2025 when it should’ve been 1914 to 2025.
Also, Maher's alluding to Natives of the past as "homeless" is total ignorance of living with the land/Mother Earth.
It's that colonizing is a human trait and native groups have done it for eons too. Recognizing that also should be part of any land acknowledgment.
Finally…someone refutes Maher’s racist rant about the original people of California and by extension, the North, South and Central land masses now known as the Americas. Is there anything he won’t say stupid things about? He wants to be funny but JC, making fun of oppressed people is NOT humorous. Thank-you Steve!
Let’s please not pay any attention to Mahr. It just promotes his stupidity
Thank you for this. I thought I was the only one livid after watching Maher, and I will never watch him again. BTW, I live on the ancestral lands of the Tongva (and I refuse to acknowledge the Spanish name also given which is usually lumped with it).
In my previous discussion of US empire abroad, I failed to speak of the of how this US empire began - with President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase from France, which included vast land from the Mississippi River to the Northwest Pacific Coast. The earlier Vatican mandate for world empire involved the notion of Terrus Nullus (“empty land” occupied by non-Christian people). The Vatican (Roman Catholic) terminology did not have the same impact on a largely Protestant, anti-Catholic population. This fact easily leads to the similar defamations of Native People in North America ranted in Maher’s ignorance and attack. The anti-Native narrative in the US was a far more aggressive and powerful homegrown demonization of people in order to rouse political, public support for the usurping of lands that were obviously not “Empty” according to Pope Alexander’s narrative. The white american language became more vicious and hateful against Native People within the US. Incidents of Native attacks on white settlers were offered as “proof” of Native barbarity without any notice that they were also defending their own traditional homelands against an unstoppable incursion of European settlers, and the murderous acts of barbarity that the Europeans had committed provocatively in order to make the new US claims against culturally different inhabitants from ancient times.
In other words, like Maher, false narratives were used to incite white settlers into “Indian Wars” and imprisonment on reservations that were controlled by US military and government.
Such was the Terrus Nullus program, North American style. Hitler was known to have studied and greatly admired that genocidal process.
Steve,
I love your measured takedown of Maher’s obsessively negative rant.
When (and I truly pray for when, and not “if”) the US returns to an even far better resemblance that we once seemed to practice, to the doctrines of democratic governance and peace that the authors of the US constitution learned in baby-steps from the Iroquois (ie., Native”) Confederation, we will also have cleansed our collective minds from the domination drivel pouring today from the current occupants of the “Oval Office” and its minions.
Maher sounds more like a better edited and illustrated version of Trumpian disinformation and stupidity.
He too is repeating oft told big lies from the past of these current waves of world-reactionary stupidity. Once, in European culture (late 18th - early 19th century) there was a wave of longing for Enlightenment and evolution. In Europe those human hopes were dashed by the compromised betrayals of (1848) - Liberalism which posed as a “Better Way,” that “gradualism” was the only way. So Royalty became Capitalism , and human barbarism continued as the world order until this very day. Empires were formed thousands of miles from the “home populations” who continued to celebrate liberty and democracy while being entirely naive about where the newfound wealth that capitalism brought home on the backs of slavery in far-away lands. There was no critical journalism to counter the official lies of aggressive imperialism. For awhile we had a growing phenomenon of better journalistic truth. But today, once again, we have the so- called “free press” that is free for the capitalists who own the presses and online, censored media.
So we do have a Sub-stack” and critical blogging, like the revolutionary pamphleteers of another time. They too strived for a kind of Social Enlightenment, while cops busted the heads of the pamphleteers on street corners. By the way, to become Enlightened means “TO WAKE UP,” another term for that is “TO BE WOKE.” That is a good thing, may it never be shamed away or forgotten.
But awakening is nothing without awakened action, both direct and in all the writing and various media we can muster.
I’ve known Steven Newcomb for more than 30 years. He represents the best of Awakened Communication and Expression. May his examples continue to probe, inspire and reveal for others as well, to continue to pull away all the pre-natal covers and hiding places of dishonesty - all the convenient nooks and crannies of human denial and backwardness.
Krishna Singh Khalsa
New Mexico