the alley Newspaper | News & Views of Phillips Since 1976

Raise Your Voice:

Written by editor on 31 January 2022

Headstone Markers

By PETER MOLENAAR

Note: the stone for my own “resting place” has been chosen, hopefully ahead of time.

December 30, 2021…

Readers of the alley know Sue Hunter Weir is this neighborhood’s “master of cemetery.” It was at the American Swedish Institute’s open house that we chatted while tabling for the paper. She was stunned to learn from me that Lynne Mayo had passed away in September of 2020. I had only just recently come to know this myself… no thanks to COVID.

It was via the 17th Avenue Community Garden that Lynne had become a “significant friend” some 20+ years ago. As life went on, geography and our common activism created occasional encounters, the last one taking place at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, a venue that day for a global warming protest. Why had she turned her head away? I realize now that a cancer was developing.

Hey, I am grateful for the imperfections within persons whose lives have been so much larger than my own. Consider the life of Clyde Bellecourt.

It was 30+ years ago that a misunderstanding occurred between the two of us. Then, a little more than a decade ago, I would balk before entering a discussion circle at the American Indian Center. Clyde was presiding, but he beckoned me to enter.… Read the rest “Raise Your Voice:”

Giga-Waabamin Nee-Gon-We-Way-We-Dun

Written by editor on 31 January 2022

Neegonwewaywedun “Thunder Before the Storm” A.K.A Clyde Bellecourt, Co-Founder of the American Indian Movement

Prominent Indigenous elder to local and nation-wide communities Nee-Gon-We-Way-We-Dun (Thunder Before the Storm in Ojibwe), also known as Clyde Bellecourt (White Earth Nation), passed to the spirit world January 11th, 2022.

His dedication and steadfast work for the lives and heritage of Indigenous people worldwide — fighting against police brutality; establishing and keeping Little Earth of United Tribes; initiating programs for health, education, safety, language, legal rights, cultural heritage, and education; advocating against racist sports names, icons, and mascots; and co-founding the American Indian Movement (AIM) — was obvious locally and has been chronicled, in part, by the alley newspaper since the paper’s beginning in 1975.

The alley newspaper is honored to memorialize him with this excerpt from a New Years reflection by Laura Waterman Wittstock, published in the December 1991 issue.

– *Laura Waterman Wittstock, Heron clan from the Seneca Nation, passed to the spirit world in January 2021.*

Prologue: THE DAMN TRUTH “YOU CAN PRAY ALL DAY AND NIGHT, but if you don’t work damn hard you ain’t gonna get what you want. That’s the way I believe, you know? You see a tornado coming, know what you do?… Read the rest “Giga-Waabamin Nee-Gon-We-Way-We-Dun”