July 18, 2016 Where Have I Been?

July 18, 2016 Where Have I Been? That s not important. I will say this: Sometimes life piles it all on at once and digging out takes time and focus and good friends to guide you. I had a good friend pass away and it affected me on several levels. Explaining mortality to a 9 yr. old who just had her whole world fall away from her took me to places in my emotional terrain that left me adrift. How do the people I work with and hear from every week do this and do it so often it becomes regular fare? When will there be Justice? When will there be answers for those whose loved ones were taken from them? Hard enough to deal with when it is expected to end and the world crashes in anyway; but to have it suddenly at one s door, like a thief that reaches into your chest and steals so much of your heart and the core of your existence that you can t catch your breath a thousand, thousand times worse. The other delay was a conspiracy of software updates that clashed with each other and left me with limited use of my computer. Most of that is rectified right now. I m going to have to save up for a new rig. I get very attached to my computers. I put my life on them. We argue, wrestle and then come to an agreement and let fly with blogs so we become a team. Not looking forward to parking this partner but when the time comes it comes. Dealing with vendors who are all convinced the problem wasn t their update & don t want to play as a team with other vendors to get the problem solved, takes a toll. I spent 48 hrs straight running analytics and debugging. I m not good at either, and I had to learn stuff I would only use once. Mental exhaustion kicked in. I had to travel a lot during June and early July because of events. I m not a good traveler anymore. I stand in a long line of weary passengers and I feel as if the world has changed into a bureaucratic dystopian wilderness that serves some unseen system that cares nothing about any of us. We re all in this together and we are each other s only hope. We had better learn to work together to resolve issues or nothing gets better. *Beep!* Step forward. Put your arms to the side *Wee-Oh-Wee-yoop* Next. But I m making my way back. Events Gear Up investigations in South Dakota seem to be turning over bigger and bigger rocks. We ll discuss that more, later. I have lots of links to work with. You can planly see how money that is not audited or followed as it is dumped by the truckload into Indian Country, serves only to create more corruption while denying basic services and failing to even attempt to serve the people in Indian Country that it was ostensibly marked for in the first place. You can also see that the corruption starts at the top levels and works its way down through the ranks. Those who would blow the whistle are moved out of play, quickly,

18 July 2016 Page 2 of 5 and those who embezzle thousands and millions form tighter and tighter webs that bring in even more money and which hurts even more people. So when you see that X amount of dollars goes into Indian Country, and the Feds and the States show you their budgets shoveling all those tax dollars into Indian Country, don t think for a minute that anyone except the top dogs, many of them not part of any tribe, are getting any of those funds. When you see the decrepit shanties that people have to live in; the mold, the lack of insulation or foundation, the broken walls, broken plumbing, leaking roofs, don t soothe your conscience by assuming you did your part and they choose to live that way. You haven t and they don t. Those you elect are not just wasting millions of your tax dollars, making their political allies wealthier while keeping an entire demographic in poverty, they re stealing from your pocket and blaming Indian Communities that never see a dime of it. That s how racism works. We assume the money is going where it should, when in fact, it s political sleight of hand and our eyes deceive us, our assumptions based on stereo types deceives us. We let it by not questioning it. We let it when we assume that the major revelations coming out of South Dakota on the Gear Up investigation, are a one off when in fact it s obvious that it is the practice, not the exception, and it s happening throughout Indian Country. Small Potatoes but No Cracks Now, wrap your head around this: The Gear Up funding was a few million a year. That s all. It seems like a lot, but it s small potatoes compared to the hundreds of millions that go into Casey Family Programs that thrive in Indian Country while children are trafficked, raped, abused, neglected and murdered at a higher rate than any other demographic in the country. What they get away with in Indian Country, and the corrupt application of politics that enables it, is being practices throughout the Nation. There are no cracks. I repeat: THERE ARE NO CRACKS. Children are not falling through any cracks. If there were cracks, all the children that had fallen through them over the past 50 years would have led to someone fixing those cracks. Now, they just want to make it illegal to protect children in Indian Country, or anywhere. That s how they eliminate their problem of repeatedly saying: They fell through the cracks, or we are setting up a task force to look into this and can assure that in the future It s happening so frequently, so horrifically and so wide-spread now that the next step is to silence all reports. That s what they are attempting to do with the NICWA laws

18 July 2016 Page 3 of 5 they are passing. Making children property rather than Human Beings entitled to protection. They can be trafficked, beaten, abused, raped and grow up to be anything but credible. Nothing they say will ever be believed because they will be regarded as criminals as many turn to crime to survive, or to cope with their addictions. Addictions they took on to cope with the constant abuse and no refuge we re building that future right now. What you see today is nothing compared to what s coming. We re all in this together. We had better see that. You, me, them. The kids, the addicts, the Human Wreckage, we re the ones left dealing with it because the system is designed to feed corruption, not to stop it. Until we demand Justice for these kids, the corrupt will continue to gain power and strength over us. The NRA has armed us so we can blow each other to pieces. Armed us so that those pushed over the edge can enter a school, theater, a park, a hospital, a store and just vent their anger in a spray of bullets, taking random lives senselessly, and we do nothing. More people will deal with sudden loss, senseless life altering loss of loved ones until we see the problem and fix it. We put seat belts in cars. The auto industry fought it for years. Seat belts have saved lives. Saved my life at least twice. Probably saved yours or someone you know, only it is so common we expect to survive car crashes, we don t think it s that special. Selling We don t have to make sure that everyone that wants a gun has one. The NRA is a lobbyist for gun manufacturers. Lobbyists don t protect anyone s rights, they make it so their clients can have maximum sales or financial benefits. But we re brainwashed by being told they are protecting our Second Amendment Rights. I hear this all the time from people who ve never read the Second or know what it says and what it means. All the time. So do you. Media never gives you the foundational basic information you need, they give you extreme views that make no sense and never push back on twisted interpretations or outright lies. News used to be a public service in trade for networks using our airwaves. Now it is sponsor driven, and sponsors let you know what they want to hear and what they don t want to hear. They need conflict to drive the tension that brings in viewers. Facts don t create tension. So facts seldom appear in reporting or in paneling pundits who just spout talking points, leaving viewers worse than not informed, leaving them misinformed.

18 July 2016 Page 4 of 5 We re being sold to by networks and by the people on them who want to drive sales to their clients, masking themselves as delivering information but in fact, they are just driving sales. The less informed we are, the more ignorant we are, the more confused we are the more reactionary we become and that makes us easy to herd, like sheep. The dogs who bark at the sheep and chase them into the pens do so while the herder whistles commands. Go Left! Go Right! Up the Hill! Down the Hill! Swing over to the gate! The herd is divided, driven into separate pens with no idea how they got there. The sheep just want to stay clear of the dog. They react without really looking in what direction they re being driven. They seem relieved when it s over even if they are far from where they wanted to be, far from where they were. They never connect the dots of the dogs chasing them to the man whistling at the dogs. TV and talk radio have essentially a series of barks and chases commanded by whistles that are chasing us to believe this or that without giving us time to think or facts to compare, and we are so busy running with the herd in the chosen direction, we don t educate ourselves or research any of this on our own. The nation becomes divided into regions with completely opposite beliefs on just about everything. We forget that we are judging other Human Beings, fellow citizens who actually want the same things in life that we do: Prosperity, education, safety, security, especially for our children. We all want Justice. None of us is getting Justice. We all hate corruption but we all are being run ragged by the most corrupt in our midst & they convince us they are our heroes. We are driven into separate pens based on the whims of whistlers and we assume those in other regions or who don t run with us, are the enemy, different from us in basic ways, when in fact, we are all the same at the very levels we think we are different. Worth Noting The scandal at Penn State was laid at the feet of Jerry Sandusky, but the facts and common sense tell us that he could not have committed those horrible acts on children for all those decades without the help of very powerful, politically and socially powerful people. Now it comes out that yes, Joe Paterno, that legendary coach, knew directly about Sandusky as early as the 70 s and he refused to do anything to protect the children or to stop Sandusky because Sandusky was bringing in a lot of money to his program. When confronted directly in the 70 s by one victim, he protected Sandusky. It is impossible to guess how many victims, how many lives were ruined, and how many became predators themselves, acting out their rage on children, creating

18 July 2016 Page 5 of 5 exponentially greater, wider circles of destruction, Human Wreckage and more monsters prowling in our midst. Children who survive abuse become devalued in their damage. We judge them by their outward behaviors and not by the circumstances that created them. We assume they are not like us. But they are like us. And who s to say that we, under the same circumstances, would be any different, any less destructive or violent? It s time to listen to survivors. It s time to bring justice to survivors. It s time to heal wounds and to stop those who injure and stop those who enable those who do harm by demanding accountability and demanding investigations go broader is scope, not narrowed down to one fall guy, guilty as he may be, when we know there s a whole mesh work, a whole web of corruption behind them. WE are owed that. Smith & Family I hear that Duane Smith hit and ran a man in Woodlake District on the Rez. Of course he ran. He had a lot to get rid of that he was not supposed to have in his vehicle. I don t know how seriously injured the victim is, but I am told that Myra Pearson, NLO, has covered up the crime and refused to arrest Duane or to let any details out of what happened. Fill me in and I will share with the class. Thundershield apparently had no one covering his shit. Smiths are rich. Different treatment. NLO controls millions of dollars that go into the Rez, but seriously, she s small potatoes in all of this. Her corruption affects the lives of thousands of people on the Rez, but in all of this, she s small potatoes. But those kids who are affected those small fry, will affect the lives of everyone they come into contact with. At least the ones that survive will. Good People The Rez has some of the most courageous, most decent people living among the most corrupt. They are doing an unbelievably good job of raising their children to survive the overwhelming odds against them. Some will make it. Too many will not. Don t ever think even for a moment that the People are bad. They aren t. It s the system. It s the top, the middle and the lower levels all feeding on and enabling the corruption. More to come. You know where to find me. ~Cat