MFAS-The Federation of Alternative Schools

"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose ... There is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men ... upon whose well-being our own happiness depends." - Albert Einstein

100% this. 👇

Nite...

It is with a heavy heart that we share that a former teacher, principal and director of American Indian Education in Minneapolis Public Schools has journeyed on to be with our relatives in the spirit world. Info for his services and summary of the great impact he had on many many people are below. We are thankful for all he did in this life and are offering many prayers for his family and all those whose life he impacted ❤️💛🤍🖤🪶

Michael Francis Huerth, Negonigeshick “Light Before the Beginning of the Day” enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, son of Harris and Frances Huerth, began his next journey on May 3, 2022.

Wake: Sunday, May 8th starting at 7:30pm @ Minneapolis American Indian Center, 1530 E Franklin Ave
Ceremony: Monday, May 9th 10:00 am
Dakotah Lounge, Division of Indian Work, 1001 E. Lake Street Minneapolis
Four day fire was held in Maine with his family
Both the wake and the ceremony are potluck.

Negonigeshick spent a long career in education. He taught at the South High All Nations program, Flandreau Indian School and Nawayee Center School. He served as Assistant Principal at South High School and Principal at Patrick Henry High, South High, Roosevelt, Bdote Learning Center and co-found Anishinabe Academy. He also served as the Indian Education Director for Minneapolis Public Schools. His work to educate and find new ways to support our Native youth was a passion that drove his work each day.

Negonigeshick spent many years sundancing in Pine Ridge South Dakota and ran sweat lodge for our Native community in the Metro area. He was committed to serve our Native community and he will continue to watch over us in a good way.

With all that he accomplished in his profession with teaching, leading, or sacrificing for others well-being, Negonigeshick loved his family, or as he called it, his clan. Even as a young man, he wanted a family. As a husband, father, brother, uncle, grandfather, great-grandfather, he believed in kindness, gratefulness, and pride in who we are, as we are, and that family is worth doing the best we can.

MPS Director of Indian Education Jennifer Simon, is Minnesota Indian Education Association’s (MIEA) Administrator of the Year. Each year, MIEA presents awards to deserving individuals who are working hard and doing great things in Indian Country.

“Jennifer Simon has done an amazing job in bringing together the American Indian community and truly implementing the necessary changes that have been needed,” said Senior Academic Officer Dr. Aimee Fearing. “Her intentional focus and perseverance in uplifting students and families is showing through increased family engagement and graduation rates. I know no one better to receive this award.”

Congratulations, Jennifer!

In 1985, when the Public Library in Nijmegen decided to remove Charles Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness after a complaint from a reader, a local journalist reached out to the author for a response. Bukowski immediately fired off a letter, which included:

Thanksgiving Squanto 'true story' marked by slavery and treachery, says historian | CBC Radio Wampanoag author and historian Linda Jeffers Coombs outlines the darker history behind Squanto, known as the Indigenous guide who helped the English Pilgrims.

"Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order. In the early years of slavery, especially, before racism as a way of thinking was firmly ingrained, while white indentured servants were often treated as badly as black slaves, there was a possibility of cooperation. As Edmund Morgan sees it:
There are hints that the two despised groups initially saw each other as sharing the same predicament. It was common, for example, for servants and slaves to run away together, steal hogs together, get drunk together. It was not uncommon for them to make love together. In Bacon's Rebellion, one of the last groups to surrender was a mixed band of eighty negroes and twenty English servants.
As Morgan says, masters, "initially at least, perceived slaves in much the same way they had always perceived servants... shiftless, irresponsible, unfaithful, ungrateful, dishonest..." And "if freemen with disappointed hopes should make common cause with slaves of desperate hope, the results might be worse than anything Bacon had done."
And so, measures were taken. About the same time that slave codes, involving discipline and punishment, were passed by the Virginia Assembly. Virginia's ruling class, having proclaimed that all white men were superior to black, went on to offer their social (but white) inferiors a number of benefits previously denied them. In 1705 a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants whose indenture time was up with ten bushels of corn, thirty shillings, and a gun, while women servants were to get 15 bushels of corn and forty shillings. Also, the newly freed servants were to get 50 acres of land.
Morgan concludes: "Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests." _Howard Zinn(A People's History of the U.S)