Happy Happy Joy Joy

Mr Poonie Jonesin is having a Bday. House of Glitter talk this morning has been how to say that special Happy Bday, but aren't in a hurry knowing how he stretches his birthday for two weeks if not a month.... I think we will be doing a party soon....

I love Wendy Ho

www.youtube.com/watch

Rain and Heat

Okay, it's currently raining in Oklahoma and it is 88 degrees.... like omg... crazy... okay, so its the humidity... tomorrow starts the Quapaw PowWow and their Hand Drum contest prize is $1,000.... I wanna win so I gotta be real sneaky....

National Native AIDS Awareness Day

It was beautiful..... I didn't think that I would get choked up over my brothers and sisters that I have lost since AIDS made its way into Indian Country, but I cried....

Fresh... fresh.... fresh....

Each April The FRESH FRUIT FESTIVAL gives awards to the entries in the past year's festival voted best by audiences and the Board of Directors. Also presented at that time are special lifetime awards for those who have supported LGBT arts. For performance in a Two-Spirit Evening held at New York's Conscious Collective in 2006, Landa Lakes and Samantha Richards of the San Francisco based Native American drag troupe the Brush Arbor Gurlz will be awarded Outstanding Artist Awards at the upcoming Fourth Annual Fruits of Distinction Awards.

Murry Hill will host the Awards to be held on Monday, April 16th, at the Metropolitan Room in New York City starting at 9:30pm. Landa and Samantha will perform in a short segment during this formal event.

Landa Lakes, the matron or mother of the Arbor, explained the origin of the troupes name is derived from Southeastern tribal culture. During the summer and early fall months also known as stomp dance season, Southeastern tribes erect brush arbors. Girls often seek shade under the arbors which gives them ample opportunity to flirt with the roaming boys. The troupe includes dragsters from the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Navajo, Tohono O'odem, Metis and Choctaw Nations.

Upon learning that she will be receiving an Outstanding Artist Award, Samantha exclaimed that she was honored and excited. As a long time performer in both drag and the theatre world, Samantha said that she loved performing with her Native American brothers and sisters and having the opportunity to share a slice of something traditional and personal with diverse audiences.

If you would like to learn more about the Fourth Annual Fruits of Distinciton Awards or get tickets, you may go to the website at www.freshfruitfestival.com.

Chikasha okla sia hoke!

Oh, what fun! Samantha and I just received word that we won an award for our performances during the Fresh Fruit Festival in New York City. I feels really good and I know that Samantha has been a little down so hopefully this is a pick her up! Okay, so I am doing a few things after Trannyshack Hawaii, I will be a contestant for the Gay Jeopardy at the Cinch (a game show from NYC that Artemis was a contestant in and is re-creating in San Francisco), then Coco Canal's Lucky Pierre at the Stud on Friday the 2nd in which I will be in the Landa Lakes' Indian Gaming Strip Poker Casino room.... come and join me for something.... don't be so lazy... bwah hahhahahaha

National Native AIDS Awareness Day

Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits

This year the Spring Equinox will be celebrated on March 21st. The equinox occurs when both day and night are equally long and in many Native cultures can be viewed as beautifully balanced. Fittingly seen as a time of change and new beginnings, the Native American community has chosen this day to commemorate the National Native AIDS Awareness Day. By choosing this day, we remind our communities that regeneration is possible through taking an active role in our health.

Examining the increase of HIV/AIDS, we find that American Indian/Alaska Natives have the third highest rate behind the African American and Latino populations. Testing is often a real challenge as it is more likely for Native people to live in rural areas. Rural areas often mean facing stigma, limited HIV testing services and health care facilities that are shared by a closely tied community. Native Americans living in San Francisco have the highest AIDS incidence (cases per 100,000) of any non-white ethnic group in the city. This diagnosis, compounded with other conditions such as homelessness, substance abuse and general poor health, require a sustained and culturally-sensitive response.

We extend many invitations to you. We invite you to write or call you tribal Nation to find out how your Nation will commemorate this day. We invite you to call out and seek support for increased treatment and care options. We invite you to contact your local or tribal papers and media to create a greater awareness of the risks of HIV/AIDS in the Native community. We invite you to gather in groups or individually for a sunrise ceremony to remember those who have passed and acknowledge those who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. We invite you to ask for culturally relevant materials, to see a need and fill it. We invite you get involved in prevention because we need to protect our community and HIV/AIDS does not discriminate between male, female, gay, straight, rural or urban.

The Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits, the Native American Health Center and the Native American AIDS Project would like you to join us in a sunrise ceremony with the NAAP drum circle and prayer in Dolores Park (18th St and Dolores St) on March 21st, 2007. Breakfast will be served at the Native American Aids Project located at 470 Carolina St. between 18th St and Mariposa.

Get the latest info at www.baaits.org or contact Miko Thomas at admin@baaits.org

Geez

By a closely divided 4 - 3 vote, the California Supreme Court has allowed the state's Fair Political Practices Commission to sue tribes in state court for violating state election campaign reporting laws. This decision flies in the face of federal law guaranteeing tribes immunity from lawsuits without their consent, as well as language in the U.S. Constitution committing Indian affairs to the federal government, not the states. It also fits a pattern of California carving out exceptions for itself from federal Indian law. As early as the first years of statehood, when California's governor was literally calling for the extermination of Indian people, the state defied U.S. Supreme Court precedent in extending state authority over tribal groups still living on their ancestral lands. In more recent times, California has refused to recognize tribal jurisdiction in the wake of Public Law 280, a position it reversed less than 10 years ago.

What may be most distwurbing about the California Supreme Court's decision, however, is its treatment of the sovereign gestures that the tribe involved, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, made to the state to resolve the dispute without litigation. The Agua Caliente offered to make voluntary compliance with the state's campaign reporting laws, and to enter into a government-to-government agreement with the state binding them to adhere to state requirements. As the tribe pointed out, this arrangement would satisfy all of the state's needs for election monitoring while respecting tribal sovereignty. Yet the California Supreme Court dismissed the tribe's proffered alternative as inadequate and "uncertain." "Absent the threat of a lawsuit," said the court, "we see no incentive for the tribe to agree to comply with the [state's] reporting requirements."

That assertion could not be further from the truth, as one look at the area of tribal/state tax agreements reveals. If it were true that Indian nations refuse to make agreements unless they are subject to suit, one would expect to see no such tax agreements. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has said that states can apply their sales taxes to on-reservation cigarette or gasoline purchases by non-Indians, and tribal sellers can even be required to collect these taxes on behalf of the state, there is no way for states to sue tribes that refuse to turn over the tax money. Tribal sovereign immunity - the same sovereign immunity that the California Supreme Court should have recognized - protects Indian nations from such suits. Nevertheless, tribes regularly make tax agreements with states regarding collection of such taxes. In fact, as the National Conference of State Legislatures recently noted, ''Nearly every state that has Indian lands within its borders has reached some type of tax agreement with the tribes.'' Thirty-four such agreements exist with the state of Oklahoma alone.

Why do tribes make such agreements, even without the threat of litigation? They do so for the same reason that governments make agreements in the international realm - to achieve gains through cooperation, avoid conflict and curry favor with powerful actors. For example, the tribal/state tax agreements provide creative ways to improve the economic situation of both tribes and states, often facilitating economic development and developing revenue streams that would not otherwise exist. In the case of Indian nations, the additional incentive to make agreements is the plenary power that Congress claims in the realm of Indian affairs, a power that Congress has often used to the detriment of tribes.

Given the greater representation and influence that states have in the Congress, Indian nations must always be mindful of the possibility that Congress will act to strip tribes of their jurisdiction or sovereign immunity if they appear to be too uncooperative. Even apart from such threats, however, tribes have reason to make agreements because they must coexist in the United States with states, counties, municipalities and other units of government. All of these governments are interdependent. For example, no one unit can effectively regulate in areas such as zoning and the environment, which transcend political boundaries.

Elections and initiative campaigns perfectly illustrate the reasons why tribes would want to make compacts with states. The whole purpose of campaign contributions is to influence outcomes in the donor's favor. But if Indian nations acquire a reputation for flouting state campaign-reporting requirements that the general public views as necessary for fair elections, tribally favored candidates and causes will be rejected. Indian nations in California, as elsewhere, depend on state government support to achieve important goals, such as beneficial gaming compacts, adherence to the Indian Child Welfare Act, and retrocession of Public Law 280 jurisdiction. A state government that views tribes as undermining state elections will be less favorably disposed on such matters.

The California Supreme Court could only imagine Indian nations responding to a show of force through lawsuits against them in state court; it could not envision California tribes as responsible actors making agreements with the state on a government-to-government basis. The state needs to break out of its old pattern, and join the modern era of federal Indian law.

Carole Goldberg directs the Joint Degree Program in Law and American Indian Studies at UCLA, and is the Faculty Advisory Committee Chair of the UCLA Law School's Native Nations Law and Policy Center.



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Love is fleeting....

But before you make love sometimes you might need Fleet.....

Time goes by.....

Here is an old photo of me from 1989 when I lived at 87 Webster St in San Francisco. It is tattered and damaged much like my relationship with my ex from that time period. I was still in the military at the time and was freshly in SF, geez .... 17 years since then....