Tag: Munsee

Why OBX Conservationists bought the Khoury Oak

By Sandy Semans Ross | Outer Banks Voice on October 18, 2021

The Khoury tree (Photo credit: Sandy Semans Ross)

The story of this ancient tree has deep roots

When the Outer Banks Conservationists purchased an undeveloped lot at 1050 US 64 on Roanoke Island in 2012, many scratched their heads and wondered why.

The nonprofit invests in area cultural sites, such as the Currituck Lighthouse and Island Farm. A lot with just trees on it didn’t seem to fit the mission of the organization.

To understand the reasoning behind the purchase one has to go back all the way to 1960 after Hurricane Donna made history by touching every state from Florida to Maine. Then take a deep dive into the memories of three children who visited the Elizabethan Gardens after Hurricane Donna. The Gardens were formally opened by the Garden Clubs of North Carolina just a month before the devastating storm.

“I was only eight,” recalls Manteo resident John Wilson, one of the founders of the Conservationists. “My neighbors were the Midgettes—and Nancy and Robert were my friends.”

That day, the three of them took a trip to the Elizabethan Gardens and the Lost Colony to look at the damage from Hurricane Donna. Robert’s father was Louis Midgette, the supervisor of the Gardens. Wilson said he vividly remembers the horticulturist working on the old living oak tree at the Gardens that day and it being said that – under the right conditions – live oaks could live up to 1,200 years. The first four hundred years were for growth, the second were for enjoying life, and the last four hundred were for slowly dying. Nancy and Robert also remember the conversation.

“I remember watching the tree…

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The full moon has been shrouded in folklore and mystique for millennia, inspiring everything from religious festivals to horror films and outlandish doomsday conspiracy theories.

Each lunar cycle lasts just over 29.5 days, which means that the full moon usually falls on a slightly different date each month and sometimes more than once (known as a “blue moon”).

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Hunter’s moon: Why full moon name meanings entered pop culture, even though there’s zero science behind them

Here’s the full calendar of full moons falling in 2021, along with all you need to know about the origins of different moon names and phenomena such as the “Supermoon” and “Blood Moon”.

When are the full moons in 2021?

Here are all the full moon dates for 2021:

• 28 January
• 27 February
• 28 March
• 27 April
• 26 May
• 24 June
• 24 July
• 22 August
• 21 September
• 20 October
• 19 November
• 19 December

Full moons have been shrouded in folklore and mystique for millennia (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

What are the full moon names?

The majority of pre-modern calendars used the moon as the basis for the names of their months, a convention ended by the introduction of the solar Julian and Gregorian calendars.

In modern times, new names for the full moons – and their purported meanings – have infiltrated pop culture, generally attributed to Native American tribes.

There is no standardised Native American…

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Mountainside treatment center participates in Release Recovery scholarship fund

CANAAN, Conn. — During National Substance Abuse Prevention Month, Mountainside treatment center is partnering with Release Recovery Foundation to provide scholarships to women battling substance use disorders. The aim of these scholarships is to offer life-saving inpatient treatment services to individuals struggling with alcohol and drug addiction who are not able to afford medical and clinical care otherwise.

Release Recovery Foundation, co-founded by “Bachelorette Season 16” winner Zac Clark and Justin Gurland, is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring all who are ready and willing to seek professional treatment are able, despite the financial barriers they may face.

Women face additional barriers, both emotional and societal, when seeking treatment. Childcare challenges, the high cultural standards placed on women as caregivers, and the stigma of addiction can all contribute to a perfect storm in which women feel they cannot leave home to address their disorder. This Release Recovery Foundation Scholarship was created to help women overcome these obstacles and embrace their own healing.

“Everyone has been impacted by COVID-19, but shortly after the pandemic began, we saw a noticeable decrease in women enrolling in detox and residential treatment,” said Andre Basso, CEO at Mountainside. “No one should have to sacrifice their own healing, for financial reasons or otherwise.”

For many women without an alcohol use disorder, COVID-19 stressors have intensified their drinking during the pandemic. A September 2020 study by RAND Corporation showed that heavy alcohol consumption among female drinkers increased 41 percent from 2019 to 2020. Couple this with the 30 percent surge in drug overdose deaths last year, and widespread support has never been more urgently needed.

The Release Recovery Scholarship will cover inpatient stays in Mountainside’s Detox and Residential programs. The treatment center will…

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League of Women Voters of Brookline, Diana McClure  |  Wicked Local

What is now known as Brookline was once part of the Algonquian territory. First settled by European colonists in 1638, it was part of an outlying section of the colonial settlement of Boston, known as the hamlet of Muddy River. Incorporated as a separate town on November 13, 1705, it has remained a town for 316 years. 

Cities and towns are creatures of the state; the only distinction between the two is the form of government. Towns always have a Select Board (three or five members) and a Town Meeting (open or representative). Cities always have a city council, varying greatly in size, with either an elected mayor or an appointed manager, or some hybrid – e.g., Cambridge has an appointed City Manager with a “weak” mayor appointed by the City Council, with some political authority and discretion. 

Prior to the Home Rule authority granted to cities and towns by the state legislature in 1966, cities and towns received their right to organize from the state and had to act only in ways granted by the General Court (Legislature), or as implied by powers conveyed. Home rule in general provides much more governing autonomy for cities or towns and allows communities to enact charters (through a charter commission process), without state approval. 

Usually, a municipal government is defined by a single charter, some 25 to 50 pages long, laying out all the roles and responsibilities of the city or town. 

Brookline, though, does not have a single legislative act constituting a charter. The town operates with a combination of default state laws relating to local government organization, adoption of optional state laws, and enactment of our own home rule bills requiring adoption by the state legislature. Keeping track of 316 years of state laws and going through the home rule process can be…

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Located along the southwest shores of the Michigami, at the intersection of the Milwaukee, Kinnikinnick and Menominee river sits the city of Milwaukee. The area that was once known to various nations is now currently a part of Marquette’s campus. Marquette’s new adopted Land and Water Acknowledgment aims to recognize that history.

“We are mindful that our campus and Milwaukee are the homelands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Fox, Mascouten, Sauk and Ojibwe nations, who have known these lands and waters as relatives for millennia and whose descendants alongside many other tribal nation members remain our hosts,” University President Michael Lovell said when announcing the acknowledgement’s adoption. 

The news of the adoption of the Land and Water Acknowledgement was received positively by some of the Indigenous students on campus. Clare Camblin, a junior in the College of Communication and member of the Osage Nation Eagle Clan, was one of those students.

“I texted my grandparents right away, it felt so good. I was very excited that they did that,” Camblin said. 

The acknowledgment was officially adopted Oct. 7 and is available in both written and oral versions. It was developed with Indigenous student leadership, including the Native American Student Association and faculty advisors. 

Some of the goals of the land and water acknowledgement are pay respect to elders of the past as well as continuing to develop good relations with sovereign Indigenous nations. Acknowledgements like these help to strengthen relationships between communities and develop a “condition of hospitality” for Indigenous students and community members.

Marquette’s council on Native American affairs was also involved in the development process. In addition to Lovell, the Land and Water Acknowledgement was approved by Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs Kimo Ah Yun.

“They pretty much told me they wouldn’t be opposed…

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The white-faced, gray marsupials with almost human-like hands and prehensile tails are Virginia North American opossums, so named by English colonist John Smith of the Jamestown colony in 1610. It is the only marsupial native to the Highland Lakes and North America. It is not, despite popular belief, a possum, which is only found in Australia. In fact, the Australian possum, also a marsupial, was named after the North American variety, whose moniker comes from the Algonquian word apasum, meaning white animal or white face. Possums without the “o” do not have white faces.

And, no, the “o” is not silent. The correct pronunciation is uh-pa-sum, although not many put the “uh” in front anymore.

Opossums have been around for millions of years, evolving from the age of the dinosaur. They are sometimes referred to as living fossils because they have retained many of the same features from the earliest-known marsupials. Their large, strong jaws and teeth as well as the female’s marsupial pouch are a few of their more primitive features.

Male opossums are known as jacks, the females jills, and the young joeys. Jills give birth only 12 or so days after fertilization. The young are only half-baked at this point and far from being fully developed. The newborn, hairless, and blind joeys have only front legs and a mouth and are about the size of a honeybee. They crawl directly into the marsupium, or pouch, and remain firmly attached to the mother’s milk supply for eight more weeks of development. Even after that, they remain in the pouch for another month or more. The young also ride on the mother’s back during this time, watching and learning in preparation for life on their own.

Opossums are opportunistic omnivores: They eat anything. Adaptable and excellent survivors, they are…

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Capt. Joe Berry, right, and longtime mate William K. “Billy” Brown, show off a wahoo in this 1955 photo from the Aycock Brown Papers. Photo: Courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, State Archives of North Carolina

Editor’s note: Some outdated racial terms that today are considered insensitive or offensive are used in this story, not out of disrespect but solely because of their appearance on official records.

Growing up, she was urged to not speak of her Indigenous roots.

“In our family, we were told not to talk about it,” recalled Marilyn Berry Morrison, chief of the Roanoke-Hatteras Tribe of the Algonquian Indians of North Carolina.

This fear, which “has been embedded” from generation to generation, is often still found among local Roanoke-Hatteras descendants today.

“We have active tribal members who don’t want to put in their paperwork to make them an official tribal member,” Morrison said.

Centuries of fear of forcible removals, government-sanctioned land-stealing and even government-sanctioned murder took its toll.

“Many years ago, if you claimed to be Indian or Native American, you were killed, OK? So that fear has trickled on down through generations,” Morrison explained. “Even having President Theodore Roosevelt say that ‘a good Indian is a dead Indian’… it really had a tremendous impact on being called Native American. And that is who we are.”

She has become an outspoken advocate of the tribe and believes others will follow suit.

“I believe in time we’ll get rid of that (fear) once they accept who they are…

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NORTH ADAMS — The second Monday in October is now Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the city, Mayor Tom Bernard declared on Friday.

“There have been discussions on the recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day among School Committee, the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) working group, and others to recognize the contributions and history of Indigenous People in our area — as well as pending legislation at the state level to establish Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a formal holiday,” Bernard said in a statement Friday. “This proclamation formalizes the conversations, the implicit commitment of the legislation, and the alignment with our values as an inclusive community.”

The proclamation recognizes that the city is on land previously occupied by the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

“The City of North Adams recognizes and acknowledges the ongoing trauma and historical harms, acts of genocide, and violations of human rights of Indigenous People caused by European colonization,” the proclamation reads. It adds, “The City wishes to honor our local Stockbridge-Munsee Community heritage and our national Indigenous roots, history, and contributions.” The entire document can be found on the city’s website.

“This is the start of a conversation,” Bernard told The Eagle. “We will need to look at the places where there is language that needs to be amended to formalize this.”

Bernard credited City Councilor Benjamin Lamb and School Committee Member Tara Jacobs in helping with the proclamation. A number of School Committee members and city councilors signed off on the proclamation, as well as Superintendent Barbara Malkas, according to the announcement. Bernard is encouraging people to read and endorse the proclamation, which can be done on the city’s website.

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ZILWAUKEE, MICHIGAN, isn’t the only city with a name similar to ours, which has its own origins in Anishinaabe or Algonquian. Here are three other places whose names are a little on-the-nose:

1. Milwaukie, Oregon

FOUNDED IN 1903

Founder Lot Whitcomb didn’t hide his admiration for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when he incorporated this growing community of settlers in 1903 on Clackamas Indian territory. It’s unclear why the ie spelling stuck here, while other knockoff towns changed their names to have the ee ending. This city of 21,000 also sits on the water, only on the Willamette River instead of Lake Michigan.

 

 

2. Milwaukee, North Carolina

RENAMED IN 1915

This unincorporated community in Northampton County between Raleigh and Norfolk was named for Milwaukee as well, according to a text published in honor of the county’s bicentennial. The town formerly known as Bethany was renamed in 1915 after what was then the 12th-largest city in the U.S.

3. Milwaukee, Pennsylvania

FOUNDED IN 1844

It’s possible that this small, unincorporated community west of Scranton in Lackawanna County was named for the Wisconsin city, too. The area was first called Flickerville after a native bird species, the Northern Flicker, but the founders of an 1844 gristmill in the area renamed it Milwaukee after a nearby road. The spelling was inconsistent – sometimes using the ie and other times using the ee ending – but today the region uses the same spelling we do.

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More than 14 months after the Wappingers Central School District board expressed a willingness to end its use of the moniker “Indians” for some of its sports teams, the board announced the next step in potentially doing so.

Board President John Lumia said the district plans to schedule presentations at a future board meeting at which the topic will be discussed, and said residents will have the opportunity to ask questions.

However, a date for the meeting has not been set, nor a timeline for a decision. The issue has not been on an agenda to allow for public comment since summer 2020, when the board first announced it was tabling the issue in the interest of focusing on COVID-19 safety measures.

Roy C. Ketcham High School and Wappingers Junior High both use the word and accompanying logos for their sports teams.

Lumia made the announcement at the board’s regular meeting Monday, and declined to clarify details of a timeline when reached Tuesday.

‘Indians’ still: Talks to drop Ketcham HS moniker on hold a year after push to change

Petitions for change: Ketcham, Nyack grads using petitions to have schools drop ‘Indians’ moniker

Counter argument: Wappinger native, school board president defend Ketcham’s Indians theme amid debate

He said the district has plans to invite local Wappinger descendants and the Stockbridge Munsee Community-Band of Mohicans to presents their thoughts on the issue. 

He said the board will have the opportunity to ask questions. Members of the community will then have two weeks to submit questions to the district clerk, which will then be answered by the two groups, posted to Wappingers’ website and submitted to the board.

A push to do away with the school’s Native American nickname and logos began in July of last year, with some groups including native groups, calling them offensive.

Later that month, some…

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