UH OH!!. . . "American Indians confront bikers"

[TheSlashFiveTourer]

HEADLINE:- (http://channels.netscape.ca/news/article.adp?id=20060804192809990003) "AMERICAN INDIANS CONFRONT BIKERS" `:uhoh

Sturgis (http://www.sturgis.com/), anyone? ` `:hide

[Motorman]

HHhhhmmmmmm Lets see here. One Indian protest vs a possibly half million bikers plus LOTS of booze. What could possibly happen......

[Belg]

maybe a few foreheads will have to sprout feathers before they get a clue....

[Rich]

This will be the first time in many years that I will not be going to Sturgis. Just too much going on.

But my son is going down with some buddies, I'm sure he will bring back some stories.

This Indian thing has been going on for quite some time. But I think the event organizers are just going to do what they want to do. Personally, I think the indians can find another spot to pray for that one week a year the area is over-run with bikers.

[eddie]

No one has cared about them or THEIR land sence Chris discovered America why should we start now.Heck if the white man could have just killed off a few thousand more these "bikers" wouldn't have to put up with this crap right?Sure would be nice if some respect could be shown.Germans killing Jews-bad,Whites killing Indians-who cares?Yes some of my ancestors are American Indians and I think we owe them any thing they want.We could all learn alot from these humble proud people.Hasen't enough been taken from them?

[Bob_M]

My boy just got back from there on Tuesday. (if he doesn't post a ride report I will do it for him) The protesters invited James and Tony to camp in their compound. They explained to the boys, the mountain's role in their theology. Their claim on the mountain's sacred status is backed up by their enduring myths. This tale is a deliverance myth where the ancestors were being chased by a giant bear. The land where they stood rose up onto a giant mountain and lifted them out of reach of the bear. That mountain is Devil's Tower and the basalt columns are formed by scratches from the clawing bruin. The bear retreated, curled up and went to sleep. That bear remains today as Bear Butte just outside of what is now Sturgis.

The passtimes of the bikers could just as well take place on the other side of Sturgis. The could drink and listen to music in an ag field just as well as under Bear Butte. These passtimes of drinking and loud revelry are incompatable with worship and they would be defiling holy ground.

I expect the bikers bought the property and are allowed by law to build the outdoor nightclub and campground. Just because people ride motorcycles and own property does not mean they always do the right thing.

[iRene]

I see so many Harleys with custom paint jobs involving native American imagery...
warriors, maidens, dreamcatchers, spirit animals...
Perhaps the mystical symbols are easier to embrace than the reality.
Here would be a great opportunity to them to show real support for
real natives practicing their religion.
What is one week of party by comparison?

[Motorman]

Irene,

Looking at it from another point of view, what is one week out of 52 to let the half million+ have their party. I'd bet that the majority of that half million also are native to this country too.

[Mika]

Purely as devils advocate:
What if it were a mainstream church, synagogue or mosque that was butting up against the party area? Would the government with control – state, county or city grant the permit for such use?

[eddie]

So would it be ok with you if they shut down the birth place of Christ for one week so a half million bikers could throw a wild party there for a week? How good would that go over with Christians?

[sector]

People attending the rally, have no investment emotionally, monetarily, or otherwise. Show some respect to the locals. Move the bloody rally. No one will notice as long as they know how to get there.

[FredRydr]

So would it be ok with you if they shut down the birth place of Christ for one week so a half million bikers could throw a wild party there for a week? How good would that go over with Christians?
And on Easter.

Fred

[iRene]

Irene,

Looking at it from another point of view, what is one week out of 52 to let the half million+ have their party. I'd bet that the majority of that half million also are native to this country too.

Time to play the "religion" card, sorry!

[wuli959]

So would it be ok with you if they shut down the birth place of Christ for one week so a half million bikers could throw a wild party there for a week? How good would that go over with Christians?

You might have to clear it with the muslims that run it . . . :brow

[Motorman]

<ahem>

Having actually read the article, I found no statement that the rally would be interupting a once a year religious celebration of any faith.

I don't have a dog in the fight on either side. I just find it interesting that a group of folks wants to prohibit traffic on a pubilc highway.....for religious reasons.

[eddie]

Purely as devils advocate:
What if it were a mainstream church, synagogue or mosque that was butting up against the party area? Would the government with control – state, county or city grant the permit for such use?


Could someone give their thoughts on this post by M1ka?


I actually read the article

To them it's sacred ground

Noise from bars,campgrounds,and concert venues disrupts the peace.People pray there and they can't pray when there's a bunch of drunks.

Of course it's just a bunch of silly Indians isn't it?

Hell they can keep bikes out of subdivisions so we don't disturb upity people.So being it's Indians F'em right.I know how it is and I don't like it.

Don't give'em any respect,why should we start now.

If any of you are ever out there go visit the Wounded Knee area on the reservation and see where we put'em and how they are living.

I pray some day people will wake up and give these people what they deserve because they will never ask for it.

[Rich]

To them it's sacred ground

Sacred ground that THEY (the Indians) don't own.

So if I find my own back yard sacred, my neighbors can't make any noise? I hear dogs barking all the time, I guess I should be whining something fierce. And those noisy neighborhood children, man, they gotta go.

Sorry, but we will have to agree to just not agree on this one.

[eddie]

No they don't"own" it, didn't they teach you in history class,it was taken from them.It's so easy to look over wrongs here in the good ole usa ain't it.Does that keep it from being a sacred place to them,I guess not.Of course you probably think it's ok to kill off a race and take what is their's.This was our killing of the Jews people.You can hear of the Nazis and what they did to the Jewish people every day in some media outlet.It was 1890 when Wounded Knee took place,what 45 or 50 years before the Nazis murdering Jews.When will the media and the citizens of this country admit we did the same thing.Only diffrence we succeded and the Nazis didn't.Proud to be American? I think any one who has read my post knows how I feel white man so you guys keep on with you racist views and post and I'll just read your insensitivity and refrain from any more post on the subject before I send this thread straight to the DOGHOUSE.

[StevieWonder]

You make a good case, but I would pose to you that the events of colonizing the Americas was not an isolated event but similar in nature to events occurring since the beginning of recorded history. Be it the Mongols, the Romans, the Greeks, the Turks, the Vikings or whomever ... there have always been conquerors and the vanquished. So, you've made your point but here comes the hardball:

What, exactly, have YOU done to compensate for the wrong you see? Have you donated your skills, energy and time to humanitarian projects on a reservation, for example?

I might point out that Native American tribes frequently were not too kind to each other and often warred among themselves over land and, in doing so, were not particularly kind and gentle in their treatment of captives from other tribes, long before the white man appeared on these shores. Ditto in Africa and in Asia. It's not a white man thing ... it's a human thing. Sad but true.

[ironMan]

So would it be ok with you if they shut down the birth place of Christ for one week so a half million bikers could throw a wild party there for a week? How good would that go over with Christians?


The Christens would be selling studded leather bound Bibles or chrome Holly water flasks with the commemorative rally logo.


Now it is my turn to be the Grammar Nazi. Anyone born in this country is a Native American. The correct term for the Indians is “Indigenous Americans”

[Mika]

Don’t have a personal dog in this hunt but at the same time we all do.

Take the rhetoric down a notch and look at it as a conflict between two competing freedoms: The freedom to do something (the party) and the freedom from something (those who see this as an infringement on worship).

The reason we all have a dog in this hunt is how this plays out says something about what we can expect if we are caught in a freedom to v freedom from situation. It says something about what we value as a society and adds incrementally to the regulatory and case law that establishes what we protect or prosecute legally.

I offered the devil’s advocate question to take it a step out of the current argument. Indian religion as I have been exposed to it does not function in the ways “traditional” religions do. They do not have the same sense of property and personal possession that society easily understands. Therefore it is harder to define sacred land as a concept than it is to, for example, define the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as being sacred to Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.

Observationally with no value judgment intended; I believe the Indians will loose in this particular case. I also believe, by implication, I can expect no more from society and government than they if I find myself in a similar situation.

So purely as a devil’s advocate I offer the question: If this were a traditional religion how would it play out?
:dunno

I am not known as a gramar or spelling NAZI but Holly is my daughter's name and the blessed water is holy. ;)

[Bob_M]

Don’t have a personal dog in this hunt but at the same time we all do.
If this were a traditional religion how would it play out?

Lets put religion out of the picture, and consider sacred ground. If the same developer goes to Virginia and decided to build a strip club/biker bar across the street from the Arlington National Cemetary, perhaps calling it the Hallowed Grind he would be shamed by a caring majority to change his plans. More likely the civilized people of Virginia anticipated this kind of jerk and devised zoning laws that prohibit development inconsistent with the intentions of the community.

In the wild west of South Dakota the civilizing constraints of zoning laws are less prevalent. This is clearly true because the developer is not civil.

In this case the developer can not fathom a world view different from his. The notion that his property is located at the epicenter of a Lakota creation myth is of no importance. He is selfish, inconsiderate and likely to desecrate a very meaningful place. I have no dog in this fight, but I can appreciate that for a spiritual people this is sacred ground. When a$$holes do really bad things it pisses me off. :fight

[FatChance]

No they don't"own" it, didn't they teach you in history class,it was taken from them.It's so easy to look over wrongs here in the good ole usa ain't it.Does that keep it from being a sacred place to them,I guess not.Of course you probably think it's ok to kill off a race and take what is their's.This was our killing of the Jews people.You can hear of the Nazis and what they did to the Jewish people every day in some media outlet.It was 1890 when Wounded Knee took place,what 45 or 50 years before the Nazis murdering Jews.When will the media and the citizens of this country admit we did the same thing.Only diffrence we succeded and the Nazis didn't.Proud to be American? I think any one who has read my post knows how I feel white man so you guys keep on with you racist views and post and I'll just read your insensitivity and refrain from any more post on the subject before I send this thread straight to the DOGHOUSE.
I've never killed an Indian or stolen by force any land. I've never owned a slave and never killed a Jew. You might want to back down from calling everyone who disagrees with you a "racist". Yes, before we took over the Black Hills, the area was "owned" by the Lakota. But not too long before that, when the Lakota got Spanish horses, they had taken by "military conquest" the land from the Blackfeet who themselves had taken it from someone else sometime before. The Black Hills were sacred to someone else for other reasons before the Lakota took it with superior military force. Why are we the only evil ones for having done what the Lakota themselves had done in the not too distant past? You can keep your white guilt for yourself, but don't try to paint others with that brush. There are only heros and villains when you look at a small time slice. Each victim at one time stole that place from someone else. Perhaps you should read your history a little closer yourself before spouting that 'holier than thou' rhetoric. IMHO, of course.

[Motorman]

Eddie,

I am not responsible for the actions taken a hundred years before I was born. I am responsible for my own actions, period.

BTW I love the racist bit there. Ya know pulling the race card really doesn't hold much water to me, since I am not white by the true "white persons" definition. I can relate a bit to the feelings of the decendants of the original settlers of the country, BTW they emmigrated here too, as my distant ancestors are also an "indigenous" people that were "discovered" by a European, Spaniard specifically. They aren't recognized as a tribe here as they were too far south of an arbitrary line. Be that as it may, I am neither "Indian", "Mexican", or even "German" as befits the majority of my lineage. I am what the "polite" folks might call a "Mestizo" by preponderance of genetics. I consider myself to be by birth and choice an American. Born here, served to defend it both domestically and overseas in State and Federal service. Just as much an American as those who are termed the Native people since I was born on this side of an arbitrary line.

I don't believe in "races" of people on this little ball of dirt in space here. We're all just variations on the same species and people come in different sizes, shapes, shades and abilities. "Race" just makes a convenient handle to use on someone when you don't have anything else to belittle them with.

I don't care what somebodies ancestry is or where they are from. I am impressed by what they do themselves, not what someone who came before did. Live your own life, not your ancestors.

On that vein, they don't close highways for church services of other religions so why should that highway be closed for them.

[Mika]

The current protest we are discussing here is part of an on going effort to protect the Bear Butte area from further development. Here is a link (http://www.manataka.org/page278.html) to a piece that seems to summarize the Native American side of the issue. Here are additional links to the Bear Butte State Park (http://www.sdgfp.info/Parks/Regions/NorthernHills/BearButte.htm) site, a park Map (http://www.sdgfp.info/Parks/CampMaps/LocationMaps/BearButte.pdf) in PDF format and a Google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bear+butte+sd) done on Bear Butte SD. I can not vouch for any of the content, just did the search and read a little.

The part that concerns me is how the various governmental agencies, courts and such deal with it. That tells me the minimum I can expect for myself if I find myself in a similar situation. Race plays a part in this in many ways. On an individual basis it is either an active filter or non issue to how we process the information given and react to it. What little I have been able to read on this leads me to believe that the plaintiffs have come up against and have been treated the same as any of us. They have won a bit, lost at times and have had the opportunity to appeal.

The remedy that is being sought for a number of issues is a 5 mile buffer around the state park. The purpose of the buffer is to protect the peace of the site. Efforts to stop the development of a gun range within this buffer area seem to have been successful to this point. So does it make sense to apply it in other cases?

Do a search for churches in the Sturgis area and you will find there is something like 479 in zip code that Sturgis is in and over 10 within the city limits of Sturgis itself. To my mind if the government is going to grant a 5 mile buffer to Bear Butte for prayer it would have to grant the same for each church in the area. What ever value judgment you place on the issue, in the granting of liquor licenses and temporary use permits, the regulating agencies appear to be treating religious use the same, it is not a defining point in the decision.

[Motorman]

Yep it should be treat all equally granting all the same extra priveledges, or leave them all the same as they are now. You can't make some more "equal" than others and call it fair.

[TheSlashFiveTourer]

Interesting set of statistics drawn together on 18 August by Larry Pynn of the Vancouver Sun newspaper regarding the 65th Black Hills Motorcycle Rally at Sturgis in 2005:
109 couples were married -
317 people visited the hospital emergency ward -
448 went to jail -
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` and six people died

[Mika]

The stats like that are always fun to read after Sturgis. What are comprable stats for a town of +200K people and a population heavily scewed above age 21?

[ironMan]

Interesting set of statistics drawn together on 18 August by Larry Pynn of the Vancouver Sun newspaper regarding the 65th Black Hills Motorcycle Rally at Sturgis in 2005:
109 couples were married -
317 people visited the hospital emergency ward -
448 went to jail -
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` and six people died


And 12 guys on Beemers

[BradfordBenn]

I wonder how many people were concieved?

[StevieWonder]

Or conceived .... :nyah

[TheSlashFiveTourer]

"I wonder how many people were concieved?"
"Or conceived ...."

"Conception being in the eyes of the beholder" . . . (old Icelandic proverb discovered on a Viking tomb near Hvannadalshnukur, Vatna Glacier, 1921) ` :gerg

[The_Veg]

Or maybe mis-conceived or ill-conceived?

[rgvilla]

you know what the two indians said when they saw the mayflower? There goes the neighborhood :D on a more serious note, I think we should all recognize that the past does play a part in the present and that the powerful and rich always fu*k over the poor, always have always will, doesn't really matter what race is involved. Fact of the matter is over 12 million indians were killed so we could take over this country. The Spanish (my mothers side of the family) did their share of killing and torture in the Southwest. The mexican indians, (my dad's side of the family) did most of the dying. Imagine people coming into your home and forcibly taking your kids to a school thousands of miles away to educate them. Every treaty ever written by americans was broken by americans. Recently a federal judge found the Dept of Indian Affairs in contempt for their handling of the indian trust fund, which basically can't be accounted for. I don't know if this matters in the present argument at Sturgis, but i'm rooting for the indians. Why are we talking about a Harley rally anyway? You couldn't pay me to go to sturgis, same thing bike week in Daytona beach. A bunch of loud obnoxious drunks on loud obnoxious motorcycles. There, have I pissed everybody off? And after the Mexicans as road hazards I said I wouldn't get involved anymore. Why won't I ever learn?

[Plainsscout]

I will probably have huge balls of fire thrown at me for saying this, but "Indian" religion is generally not what it was. It has been made largely by Hollyweird since the "Cowboy" movies of the 40's and 50's.

One of my oldest friends responded this way when I asked him about Indian religion :"There isn't one. For the most part Indians are making it up as they go along. What there was ended about the time small pox wiped out much of the Indian people. The medicine bundle carriers and religious leaders died during the epidemic and we had no written language so their oral histories of what Indian religion was died with them. Those that practice Indian religion now is mostly what they have learned from movies."

My friend is a full blooded Indian and a tribal elder of our local tribes.

However, it is very PC to be an Indian practicing Indian religion these days.

[john1691]

And on Easter.

Fred

That would be fine with me, I normally celebrate Easter at my normal church, not in Jerusalum. Besides, as mentioned, it isn't a once a year holiday for them, but more an issue of "holy" ground.

On the other side, it really wouldn't hurt to move some events to a less controvertial area.

I grew up near an Indian Reservation, and had "off the Rez" Americam Indian neighbors. Like all people groups, some were great, some normal, and some were milking their heritage for all it was worth. I'm glad the family that lived closest to us were some of the great ones, as my attitude toward the whole group would have been more negative had I not been such good friends with my neighbors.

john1691
K1200RS