Welcome to Episode 126 of Ramping Up your English!
I remember reading years ago about a retired farmer in the Midwest who donated his land to the Native Americans who once inhabited that area. Since then, the Land-Back Movement has picked up momentum, especially during the Biden Administration. Government return of land goes back at least as far as the Franklin Roosevelt Administration. Later actions have affected American Indian Tribes in California and in Oregon. This episode explores matters of land concerning Native Americans.
Watching Episode 126
Click here to watch Ramping Up your English Episode 126 as shown on RVTV Voices in Southern Oregon. You’ll see the Hi Definition production on ad-free archive.org.
Episode 126 Summary
Episode 126 is the first of two episodes dedicated to land matters as they affect Native Americans. We begin with the Black Hills, and the struggle of Sioux Indians to win the return of land that in sacred to them. We also explored examples of Land Back and more say in how lands are managed. The Crow Nation’s struggle to protect Crazy Mountain – the place where Plenty Coups received his vision that guided the Crow Nation through the Indian Wars.
We looked at the importance of land to reestablishing buffalo on tribal land involving the Shoshone and the Minominee of Wisconsin. There’s a deeply moving scene when buffalo return to that land reflecting a gratitude and brotherhood between members of these Tribes. The episode ends with a Methodist church returning land to the Nez Perce in their beloved Wallawa Valley and lake in Eastern Oregon.
Videos Used In Episode 126
The featured Video is also about Land Matters. Click here to see the feratured video. This video runs a little longer than the video used in the episode, before being edited to fit.
Outside Links to Videos
These links will take you outside the archived videos linked above. PBS produced a couple of reports about the LandBack Movement. Click here to watch Part One. In part two of the PBS series, focus is on the Yurok Tribe of Northern California, which is one focus of our next episode. Click here to watch part 2.
The Struggle of the Crow Nation to protect a sacred site we call Crazy Mountain is the story told in this video. Click here to watch. We used part of a PBS production about buffalo (Bison). Click here to enjoy the entire production. Click here to watch the Methodist Church returns land to the Nez Perce. This is a production of KGW News.
Language Work
It’s a good time to check for comprehension and for understanding. Did you understand the gist of the featured videos? What common themes did they all share. Some of the stories were about Native American Tribes gaining ownership of some of their traditional lands. What are some of the ways they gained more control, but not ownership? This is a more complex situation.
If you’re ready to stretch you English skills, write up a brief report on this episode. If you want to stretch more, state an opinion about whether or not you think the LandBack Movement is a good thing., and explain your opinion. You can also go further to say if you think having a say in how parts of Tribes’ traditional lands are managed should be considered a part of Land-Back, or not.
Personal Note
During this time of Native American life, there’s much happening in the United States. Native Americans are being picked up and detained with no communication with their families or tribal brothers. It’s an alarming reality of the brutal assault on Americans by our own government.
While I believe that most Americans welcome and value immigrants, this must be a terrible time to move to the United States. Even those with permission to be here are often seized and imprisoned in detention centers for days at a time with no due process. Over seven Million people took to the streets to resist this cruelty, but it will take much more than that to return to being the “land of the free.” No one is against deporting dangerous criminals, but most of those subjected to the cruel action that’s happening are not violent criminals. To my knowledge, there’s no real attempt to fix the broken immigration system in the United States, so changes are not likely anytime soon. Be safe.
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