Migration of humans.

When I was a child, we would spend Memorial Day in the Cemeteries of my mother's people.

While her nuclear family was in a small town cemetery (the same one President Obamas's maternal grandmother is in--a worthless nugget of information that has stuck with me since it seems such a strange coincidence), the rest of her family was in three other Cemeteries in places of considerable isolation.  Two were old pastures, and well kept but without tree or bench, one was larger and rambling and full of ancient trees and strangely created family plots and roses and bushes and perennial flowers placed there by families, but also well tended.
In one of the pastures, there were tiny, little sugared stones that said merely a last name or "baby" and one of these was near my grandmother's mothers family.  My grandmother would always tell me about the family traveling through to the west and losing a newborn while by them--1870-1880, no date and before her time, so she was passing the stories told to her.  She had some good ones, before TV, people told a lot of stories.

Then, during the 3 hour trip back home, I would either annoy the crap out of my parents about those babies or ponder and daydream about people moving across the country and having to bury someone, a baby no less, on their trip.  I learned that babies were frequently not even named for months, and that some people would recycle the same name repeatedly till one lived long enough to warrant not using the name again.  I learned that a lot of people died on those trips from old home to new home and some were buried not in the small cemeteries of what are now ghost towns but in places that no one could ever find again, frequently with no more marker than a pile of rocks or a cross of two branches.  The babies in our cemeteries at least had markers made of limestone that the locals made after the migrating people had left.

But why did they migrate?  Why leave your extended family, your childhood home, to travel into a place you have never been, have only heard about and where you can only take small amounts of your belongings. And probably not go back for visits---ever?

Were they poor?  Had they lost everything?  Had they reached the peak of their success and were still disturbingly poor and hopeless?  Did they have a loved one that had health issues that supposedly were not as big a problem where they were going?  Were they adventurers? Were they chasing a gold nugget, free land, a vague job offer?  Rumors of places so rich the streets were paved in gold, so beautiful it was like living in Eden, so fertile that food practically fell in your lap?  Or were they escaping a place changed by a war, by a corrupt local politician, their own reputations after having been a less than charming youth.

Some of them had only been in this country from Europe a short while when they heard of places with cheap land; sometimes whole groups from their homeland would go start a small community that ended up looking and sounding much like the place far away they had left.  Sometimes they were prompted to move on by finding the new home even less welcoming than the one they had just left.

The first migrants to this land mostly arrived from Asia, probably via the Bering Strait more than 13,000 years ago but as much as 50,000 years ago.  Those migrants were here long enough to be genetically different than those people that did not make that journey.

Their were some isolated tourists in the intervening years, Vikings, Pacific Islanders, maybe even some Phoenicians or Egyptians. Not planned visitors but people that travelled by sea and accidently ended up here either permanently or temporarily. But there were no actual planned migrations till after 1492.

The next wave of migration was from Europe and Africa, Europeans, on purpose (1609-1775) and  West Coast Africans against their will (1492-1808 legally but till 1858 under cover of night).  This first wave of migration peaked before the American Revolution.  It brought to this continent colonizers mostly from England and Germany (which was not yet Germany but a group of Germanic language speakers from places that later became Germany--like Hessians of "SleepyHollow (the movie)" fame and the Palatines of William Penn's planning for great productive farmers,  but also France, Holland and assorted others in much smaller numbers.  It also brought unplanned migrators that came for the gold, adventure, glory, fur, and other natural resources and left behind their DNA and other marks.  And people from the Gold Coast and Ivory Coast that had the misfortune of being captured by traffickers after their own profits.

The third wave from Europe came later and lasted through the mid-nineteenth century and brought mostly Irish (due to the Irish Potato Famine) and Germans due to Industrial revolution effects on rural people. (and by this time, it might have been "Germany" as it became a unified nation between 1860 and 1870.)

The fourth wave came between 1870 and 1920 and this is the Ellis Island Group.  It mostly came from Asia, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe.

In 1965 we passed a law abolishing quotas by country.  At that point people from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean Islands started migrating in, as well as other people from countries that had previously had complete blocks against or very small quotas for.

Right now, a thing we were warned about in the mid-sixties, has come to pass.  Our birthrate, "our" being those of us whose ancestors came here before this country was a country to those that entered before WWII are not  reproducing at a rate to maintain the population.  Our current population growth is from immigrants.

When thinking tribally, this is horrifying.
When thinking from a reality basis, this is not a problem.  Ancestry.com indicates that my two children and I share DNA with craploads of people that are also here so it's not going to be a genocide in the USA.

Of course, that was not what has this in the news.  Another word for tribalism is--racism.  In this case White Nationalism, and that is the group most worried about not being the majority by enough points, especially since white covers Hispanic and Muslims and Jews--who the white nationalists do NOT consider white.

In 1491, these two continents were 100% Native American.  There were a lot of tribes, but the amount of non-native DNA was so miniscule as to be nonexistent.

Today, less than 1% of this country's population is Native American.  White non-Hispanic is 61% (and includes people that are not of European ancestry), Hispanic is 18%,  African-American is 12%, Asian is 5%.

To White Nationalists, that is not a good enough majority, that is an almost minority.

So now, we have calls for more births of white babies.

We are not underpopulated.  We have the highest population of humans on this planet that we have ever had.

Humans:     7,600,000,000
Pandas:                     1,864
Grizzly bears:             32,200
lions:                           20,000
tigers:                           3,890
Gray Whales:             19,000
Bottlenose dolphins: 600,000
Southern White Rhino:20,405

So human beings are much more common than most large mammals that aren't considered our food.  We are more like small mammals, rodents, perhaps  or even insects.

We are definitely not endangered.

To keep from being endangered, we migrate---we leave places that are threatening to our survival and go to places less threatening.

It's what humans do; we adapt to new surroundings.

We learn to live in new places.

We humans most likely either killed or mated with our competition (Neanderthal, Denisovans)  Our DNA says we did both.

But we need to learn to share.  Not just with people that don't look like us, but with other creatures.

The dog in the manger is a very lonely being--but he does have that bed of hay all to himself.

We humans don't like to think we are just part of the biosphere, but I fear our silly egos will let us commit suicide by destroying everything else with our big brains.  All those plans to migrate to another planet when this one becomes untenable makes us more locust-like than god-like.  

Time to just accept we are one species on a planet full of species and try to respect all life.

Who Does That?

If you have seen either of the two videos the above picture is from, then ask yourself these three questions.   Why?  Why?  Why?

First Why?  Why was an all white, all male, bus of Catholic adolescents sent to the Washington Mall to March AGAINST women's rights on the day of the WOMENS March.

Second Why?  Why does no one discuss the jeering comments videotaped by others--directed at young women marchers.  Those videos are still out there.

Third Why?  Why does that smile on this boy's face match so many other smiles we have seen.

If you have ever been teased, ridiculed, or bullied publicly, this is the face that you saw that was doing the teasing, ridiculing, or bullying.  It is the face of a person that thinks you are nothing, that they are amazing, and funny, and above reproach.

That is the smile of entitlement, privilege, and unimpeachableness.

There is a lot of anger directed at the poster's of the short video, which looks like they are making fun of the drummers.  

"It doesn't tell the whole story" 

And now the school if getting threats and people are talking badly about the school and the boys and the town--a small one in Kentucky,  in the south,  where parochial schools were frequently used to keep the richer, whiter students from having to knock elbows with brown people and poor white trash.  "that video made them look bad".

How about this, all the videos made them look bad....because they were acting out, being turds, unsupervised, annoying people with school chants during a very emotional march by other groups that were fighting for their own, personal rights.

Not one of these boys will ever want or need an abortion.  

They were not marching for THEIR rights!

They were marching to end the rights of women.

If they want to end abortion, now is the time to be teaching them about not raping people, not have sex without protection, (or for the hardcore--abstinence---but from these videos and their behavior, these are not devout boys, so start handing out condoms and do the banana demonstration--soon)

And don't send a busload of adolescent boys off to a political demonstration.  

Use your judgement, the brains God gave you.  If you want to let them participate in something political, send them to Your state capital, two at a time, to observe politics in action.  And send enough adults to keep them from acting like they are feral.

In all the videos, you should ALL be ashamed of their raising.

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was named Amonute at birth and went by the name Matoaka.
https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/pocahontas

So, Trump actually childishly and tauntingly calling Elizabeth Warren a name that means playful.  Amonute was dead by age 22.  Her life was nothing like the Disney Romance.

Apparently the insult is because it is a well-known white legend about a Native American.  I suppose he could have called her Sacagawea--oh wait, he did that also.

Elizabeth Warren has "made the mistake" of discussing a family legend of Native ancestry.
Her DNA said the legend was true.  (Her family was in Oklahoma, and in Oklahoma many pale skinned and light eyed people have similar family legends.  For that matter, many dark skinned and black eyed individuals do also.   And not just in Oklahoma, but in any area where immigrants from other lands lived near indigenous Americans.  And many of those people also have Roll Numbers that tie them to their Tribe's Nation and benefits.)

The Tribes aren't happy about her claims and she has no Roll Number.

She has denied claiming a tribe or a searching for a Roll Number.  (And in Oklahoma, many of us claimed to have a Cherokee Princess as a  umpteenth great grandmother, even though none of our ancestors lived near Cherokee places---it just seemed romantic in the 1930's to 1950's, as did being related to Jesse James or Daniel Boone)

The Tribal Leaders need to be quiet unless they want to accept and explain their own parts in the passing of  much Native American DNA to the descendants of White and Black people in this country.

I had my DNA done, and both my father's and mother's side told stories of Native Ancestors, and I had none; zero, zilch, nada.  But my Grandmother's little sister had 2% and a trace of European Jew.(which I expected, from my father's side and I also had none of.
What? you say?  How can that be?  But genetics are funny things, random and filled with weird chances and all that crap about twins with different fathers is no more likely than that the two are fraternal siblings that got nearly completely different sets of each parents DNA.
My grandmother and her sister were obviously related, both resembling each other and both of their parents.  There is a French Canadian Grandma (several greats back, that looked decidedly indigenous but it was a drawing, and not necessarily accurate.)

And this is what the Tribal Leaders need to consider when speaking of Native blood outside the Tribes.
While England and Germany sent families to colonize the country, many countries sent single men, frequently young, but also older, married individuals that took care of business, and those men, due to transportation methods, frequently spent large amounts of time on the continent and in the "wilderness", going about their fur trapping and hat making and resource acquiring businesses.  They were also on an adventure.  The Tribes not only traded with them, but also accommodated them with women.  I have no idea if those women were prisoners from other tribes or just excessive baggage of the tribe, but women had no more power or worth in Native America than they did in the rest of the world at that time.  If you doubt that, read up on the real history of Pocahontas.

The indigenous people's of the America's got a raw deal, land stolen, culture stolen, many tribes extinct or so lost that one tribe's DNA is not recognizable from the next, languages lost to time.
But, the Treatied Tribes are sovereign nations, with land and their own governments and constitutions, election methods, budgets, etc, etc, etc.
Their continued existence and growing strength gives me hope for my own nation's soul.

But when one woman  from a state full of people that got here from somewhere else after traveling around in this country for 1-4 hundred years mentions that her family says they had Native Blood, that should not cause Native Americans to be disgusted or confused, their own ancestors were the ones handing out that DNA in the form of undervalued female members, and should not cause President's to deride anyone like Native Blood is an insult.

We are a melting pot.  And while it currently looks more like a chunky stew, those of us whose ancestors mostly got here after 1492 but before 1796, have more stories than those told in history classes.  They are verbal histories, much like those told by indigenous people all over the world, and we of the old immigrants have finally melted completely.

Now, can we all just act like grown-ups.

What if Congress looked like us?

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/04/678227272/what-it-looks-like-to-have-a-record-number-of-women-in-the-house-of-representati

NPR did a nice article about women in Congress over the years.  The link is above.
While obviously, the people representing us can not mirror our ages---the people represented are age 0-120, but they can mirror everything else, race, sex, economic level--at least when they start (politics seems to be a good way to get ahead, eventually), sexual orientation, marital status, religion---us, ALL of US.

The country, our USA is 50.73% women and 49.27% male.

We are 59.70% white, and 13.45% black,  6.02 % Asian,  1.27% native American, 0.24% Pacific Islander, 2.8% mixed race, and 18.73% Hispanic (and Hispanic has been pulled out of whatever racial group they would have been in because apparently speaking Spanish trumps (pun intended) race, which is genetically speaking not really a scientific thing.

We are also religiously diverse with 70.6% identifying as Christian (29.4% percent don't identify as Christian--that is more than voted for our current president in 2016).
That is divided by denomination:
Evangelicals 25.4%
Traditional Protestant  14.7%
Black Protestant 6.5%
Catholic 20.8%
Morman 1.6%
Orthodox 0.5%
Jehovahs Witness 0.8% ( a small group, but very annoying on relaxing Sunday mornings and their tracts have terrible artwork on them)

Jewish 1.9%
Muslim 0.9%
Buddhist 0.7%
Hindu 0.7%
Other world religions 1.8%
No religion 23.4%

Our current, as of the 2018 election, Congress is not nearly this diverse.
https://www.amny.com/news/politics/115th-congress-house-senate-leaders-and-demographics-1.12841856
The above link is to the congress from 2017 to now, I'm not finding more than the NPR link to show the 116 congressional makeup.
Amazingly, while a good number of registered voters are neither democrats or republicans, they are not always represented because our congress is all about the party.  The entire House was 2 party and there were 2 independents in the senate. I have found nothing about religion of the senators and representatives, since religion is not supposed to be hooked to our government, but I live in a state where religion is touted heavily by campaigning politicians.
Party affiliation is also not at all reflected in our congress.  At the 2016 presidential election, we were 27% republican, 31% democrat and 36% independent.  By the last election, November 2018 we were 28% republican, 31% democrat and 39% independent.

A breakdown of the just ended 115th congress is:

House of Representatives (435 total)

Parties: Republican: 241 (55.40%); Democrat: 194 (44.60%); Independent: 0 (0%)

Gender: Men: 352  (81%) now 335 (77%) but to reflect us, should be 49.27% or 214 men;  Women: 83 (19%), now 100 (23%) but to reflect us should be 220 (50.73%)

Race: White: 339 (77.9%)  which should only be 260 (59.7%); Black : 46(10.5%) which should be 59 representatives (13.45%); Hispanic: 33 (7.59%) which should be 81 (18.73%); Asian: 10 (2.3%) which should be 26 (6.02%); Other: 3 (0.7%) which should be 18.

Senate (100 total)

Parties: Republican: 52 (52%) went up by one for 2019 but should be 28; Democrat: 46 (46%)  went down by one but should be 31; Independent: 2 (2%) but should be 39

Gender: Men: 78 but should be 50; Women: 21 but should be 50 but only went up to 22.

Race: White: 90 but should be 60; Black: 3 but should be 13; Hispanic: 4 but should be 19; Asian: 3 but should be 6 and other, currently 0 but should be 4.

To understand who we are as a nation requires we interact with people not like ourselves.  We are a diverse nation built on a diverse foundation.  And while we have not always recognized everyone, it is long past time that we become the country our founding fathers idealized whether they made it real or not.

What I have left out is the way that economic and educational levels  are not represented.  The house was a collection of rich white men that had no idea what getting ahead as a poor person of color entailed.  They did not fear their children being shot at routine traffic stops or the mothers of their children going to jail over a bounced check because no one had bail.  

Their parents made sure they went to college because they could.

BUTTTTTTT  we currently have a shutdown government due to a crazy man wanting to please his fan base, the 27% of voters that got him where he is.  

He wants 5 billion dollars for this wall he promised, 5 billion after the giant tax break to the wealthy, so the budget is already strapped.  

We need a congress that will stand up for all of us.

That will pass sensible bills that benefit us all and that will use their ability to get past the presidential veto power.

Congress must approve the returned bill by a two-thirds majority in both Houses. Once the bill receives this approval, it becomes a law.

Loyalty to a tyrant, especially a childish tyrant is not any part of representing the people of this country.

We need the 116th congress to stand up like the equally powerful branch of our government it was meant to be.  The Congress is not the executive branch's rubber stamp. 

Do the job for all of us.

You have the power to be superheroes.