the alley Newspaper | News & Views of Phillips Since 1976

Phillips, Mpls, America Awake!!!

Written by editor on 09 November 2013

by Jim Graham, Ventura Village

Discrimination against Native Americans really is an issue for Phillips, as well as a Minneapolis as a whole. Minneapolis, and in particular the Phillips Community of Minneapolis is home to the largest coherent Urban Indian Community in the Nation. It is the birth place of AIM and the Indian Civil Rights Movement. The City of Minneapolis even has been forced to formally acknowledge the historical institutional discrimination of Minneapolis against Native people in a formal document. And in a formal MOU with the Indian community promised to stop doing so and redress the past institutional discrimination.

That institutional and individual bias in Minneapolis unfortunately continues. It continues even in what is supposed to be E-Democracy. This is particularly true with the Minneapolis Issues List where the discrimination continues.

The “powers” at the Minneapolis Issues List of E-Democracy have continued this institutional bias by arbitrarily and without basis issuing a ruling that the issue of racial slurs against Native People IN MINNEAPOLIS is not an issue that is allowed to be discussed on that forum. And more over dropped from membership anyone who dared take issue and think it was a real Minneapolis specific issue.

The term “Redskin” when applied to Native people is a racial slur that would be unconscionable if a similar one was applied to Black people.… Read the rest “Phillips, Mpls, America Awake!!!”

Circle of Healing: A BYI Community Health Action Team

Written by editor on 09 November 2013

Who is The Circle of Healing?

by Harry Ford, Circle of Healing CHAT

The Circle of Healing Practitioners CHAT is a collaborative of Backyard practitioners including complementary healers, elders, representatives from different cultural traditions, conventional health professionals and community care givers. Members of this CHAT come together as practitioners interested in creating a more formalized network of people (Circles of Healing) around Backyard residents to provide better information, support for healing, and reflection about the message of dis-ease. This network serves both the Backyard community receiving care and the healing practitioner community in the Backyard.

The Vision

The vision behind the Circle of Healing Practitioners CHAT is grounded in cultural health practices and ways of knowing that honor the reciprocal and holistic nature of healing. In order to meet the health needs of the people living in the Backyard, this CHAT aims to empower health practitioners and community members and to connect the community care-giving system to the conventional health care system in a more formal, integrative way. The CHAT aims to bring awareness to Circles of Healing, Map to Wellness Sessions and the community care-giving system that currently operate/are available in the Backyard. One way the CHAT plans to accomplish this task is by holding a series of dialogues about the Integral Framework and its relation to all healing systems.… Read the rest “Circle of Healing: A BYI Community Health Action Team”