By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- Congratulations to the thirty winners of Native American Music Awards at the 10th annual celebration on the Seneca Nation in New York Saturday night. The sounds and performances revealed the pursuit of excellence from traditional sounds to rock, reggae, folk and hip hop. The award ceremony was broadcast live on the web, with a rapid fire chat room.

Tohono O'odham Nation transports O'odham home from pilgrimage, as drug violence and threats escalate

By Brenda Norrell

Updated: Oct. 3, 2008 12:10 am

SELLS, Arizona -- The Tohono O'odham Nation sent vans to Sonora, Mexico, on Thursday, offering an option to O'odham on pilgrimage to return home. As violence and threats of violence increased from competing drug cartels in the region, Tohono O'odham Chairman Ned Norris issued a statement and discouraged O'odham from attending an annual festival in Magdalena de Kino this weekend.

"We strongly advise members of the nation to not travel in Mexico," Chairman Norris said.

On Thursday evening, an emergency worker with the Tohono O'odham Nation said it is unknown whether Tohono O'odham were killed as they walked on pilgrimage from the US border to Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, for the San Francisco Xavier Festival. Some O'odham returned home from the 60-mile pilgrimage, while others remain on pilgrimage or unaccounted for.

By Brenda Norrell

LOS ANGELES -- Made in L.A. tells the story of three women, and of all women, who sacrifice for their children, and struggle against all odds. But it also tells the story of courage, the courage of all people who are called on to give more than they think they can. Ultimately, Made in L.A. is the story of America, of the United States, and the blindsightedness and denial that keeps Americans shopping for low prices without regard for the consequences to others.

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- Cynthia Weber's new film, "I am an American," screened tonight in Tucson. The film is a portrait of post 9/11 America, revealing the lives of migrants and Minutemen; patriots and political refugees.
"I am an American," shares the voices of US servicemen who were honored to be an American, and others who either fled America or were brutalized and criminalized by systematic hatred and racial prejudice. Fathers, mothers and children tell their own stories.

Friends of Marcella Sali Grace plead for help! Marcella lived in Tucson in recent years and supported Indigenous Peoples struggles.

September 26, 2008
Justice for our sister Marcella Sali Grace!
Version en espanol sigue despues del link.

Please read and sign the below call to action. The Spanish version follows my translation. This event is beyond tragic.

Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca.
Thursday, September 25

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON - Protesting outside the federal building in downtown Tucson, Attorney Bill Risner and other protesters called for no, "Bush Bail Out" on Thursday. Stating the frightening prospect of John McCain becoming president, Risner said McCain may very well have mental problems and Sarah Palin has already failed the test of sanity.
Risner said the US financial bailout for the "Bush gang of criminals" is a frightening possibility.
"If Obama wins, his hands are tied," Risner said of presidential hopeful Barak Obama.

Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham, replaces missing water tanks for migrants on the southern border, while Mohawk publisher Kahentinetha Horn recovers on the northern border

By Brenda Norrell

BABOQUIVARI DISTRICT, Arizona – Mike Wilson, Tohono O’odham, has replaced two of his missing humanitarian water stations on the Tohono O’odham Nation. Wilson was ordered by Baboquivari District Chair Veronica Harvey to remove his water stations in August.

By Brenda Norrell

DENVER -- When I went to the Democratic National Convention, to cover the political prisoners rally and march, I didn't realize I would witness the police provocation and arrests of a new wave of political prisoners during the week. The peoples' crime was to be peace activists, or merely to be present in the streets during the convention. Lucky for me, I couldn't afford to make it to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota. No doubt I would have been arrested with the other media in the streets, photographing unprovoked police brutality.

By Brenda Norrell
After Arlene Hamilton purchased stocks in Lehman Brothers, so the Navajo, Hopi and Lakota delegation could address stockholders in 2001, Arlene called me. Arlene said she had been threatened and believed she would be killed. She also said authorities had rifled through her papers at her Navajo weaving project office in Flagstaff, Ariz. Shortly afterwards, Arlene was killed in a car wreck near Kayenta, Arizona. Roberta Blackgoat, longtime Navajo resister of relocation, died at Arlene's memorial in San Francisco.

By Brenda Norrell

NEW YORK -- A delegation of Navajo, Hopi and Lakota warned Lehman Brothers stockholders of the dire consequences of their actions in 2001. In a rare move, censored by most media, the Navajo, Hopi and Lakota delegation warned Lehman Brothers, after it acquired the financial interests of Peabody Coal, of the spiritual consequences of mining coal on sacred Black Mesa and the aftermath of Peabody Coal's machinations that led to the so-called Navajo Hopi Land Dispute.
Lehman Brothers is now in the midst of financial collapse, with its bankruptcy producing a rippling effect throughout the world's economy.