After browsing about Mindsay today, I'm shocked at how many stupid attitudes people are taking in regards to the immigration issue.  First off, (all sarcasm intended) I say the hell wit ya all, everyone should go back to the country of their ethnic origin and let us American Indians/Native Americans/First Americans/Amerindians (pick a name you want to call us already or call us by our tribal names) take back our lands.  Or you all should start paying us rent!  We were forced to learn English and abandon our religions and cultural heritage -- heck, you immigrants killed off so many of my relatives that you've practically made us an endangered culture altogether.  What right do Americans have today to tell other people who come here to work to do the same?  Why should we abandon our cultures in order to become American?  That's what is really crazy.

Everyone here is an illegal immigrant.  Every piece of land was taken over by another culture.  It's about time that Americans let people speak their own langauge or learn the language of another people in efforts to better understand other cultures instead of trying to force people to assimiliate into the main stream.  Assimiliation is cultural genocide! 

Perhaps the real issue here is that white people don't want any more brown people in this country.  People come here to escape the hardships of living in their home countries where conditions are far worse than you can imagine.  They will do anything possible to better themselves, even sleep 20 to a one bedroom apartment, just to survive. 

We can't deny other human beings the basic human right (which should never be a "special right" granted only to our own, but a right that we owe each other because all life is sacred) to live and work with diginity under the best conditions possible.  The protests are not about who gets special rights; the protest is about human rights!

Now, go out there and hug a Mexican!  Heck, while you're at it, go hug the Hmong, kiss a Korean, have dinner with an African, and go see a movie with your new Cuban best friend!  And tell 'em your friendly neighborhood Menominee/Chippewa Amerindian told you so.  In fact, while I'm on this subject, let's let some more Europeans in, too.  Give 'em some time and pretty soon they'll want to be a Native American as well.  Yeah, I see you all at the Pow Wows sticking out like pretty sore thumbs.  Let's hear a "This Land is Your Land" sung all around the border.  And, by Jezus, let my Irish friend, Paul, into this country NOW so he can marry his lovely American fiance.  The Irish had it just as bad as Native Americans -- we aboriginals need to stick together! 

Dear Gods, I'm sick of this immigration issue.  I'm glad there's a protest today to make everyone nervous and chatty.  We need more protests to shake us all up.  The more people are shook, the more stupid people slip through our fingers.  I'm tired of hearing people talk about how everyone should know English when the average American doesn't have a clue how to speak proper English.  In fact we don't really speak English like the English do anyway -- I'm sure I've made a few grammar mistakes even while I type this.

Let me tell you a quick story about my father.  He was born in the 1920's and, because he was raised on the reservation where my grandmother only spoke Menominee, he and my uncles were forced into Indian Schools.  These schools were kinda like a happy bunny fluffy version of concentration camps where "Indian" children were programed out of speaking their native languages (my father was beated with a ruler whenever one of his teachers heard him say a single Menominee word) and forced to learn the Ways of the White Man.  My father learned at an early age that the only way he could move up in the world was to be a White Man; since he wasn't born a White Man, he had to reject himself, stop speaking Menominee, start worshipping the Christian God, and get a hair cut.  While my uncles succumbed to drinking, my father joined the Marines as soon as he could manage to his own car and drive faraway from the reservation.

Two wars and seventy years later, my father only knows a few words of Menominee and doesn't associate with other Indians.  He married a white woman outside of the church because in the '50s all the area Catholic priests refused to marry a white woman to a red man.  My father speaks proudly of learning how to live as a "lone wolf" but I seriously wish that he was less of a loner and had kept his ties to his culture of origin.  Many people like myself are having a hard time rediscovering/recovering the Old Ways that our ancestors were forced to abandon in order to survive in a White World. 

When I see the brown people today who have immigrated here, I pray that they do not succumb to the demands of the White Man (and when I use the term "white man" I'm not talking about white people in general, I'm talking about "The Man" -- someone like Bush) and hold on to their cultural roots.  WHO CARES if the National Anthem is sung in Spanish? At least it is being sung!

Even though this country is over run with immigrants now, it's still a great country, offering people what they can't get in other countries; freedom from oppression where their human rights are protects.  Dare you take that from them?  Dare you keep them from it?  How dare we give ourselves the excuse to bitch about other human beings when we take for granted how good we have it here?  Aren't we running the risk of being the Oppressor?