REMARKS (SHORT)

Almost suppertime and the wind seems as strong as yesterday.  The sky is blue but a storm shelf stands over the Rockies.  Usually that means rain but it's not in the forecast.  Today I finally closed the windows.
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When I looked at my blog comments this morning I found a problem that's no one's fault but a consequence of history and social division.  I had written that I kept a card file for a long time in which each card was the obit of someone, an obit published in the GF Tribune.  But I don't take the Trib anymore and I suspect they charge to print them now, so I stopped and gave the card file to the Blackfeet Community College because there is always a lot of family information.  I wrote about this.

I don't print anonymous comments, which this one was.  It was a murder accusation.  I am neither a journalist nor a law enforcement officer, but I cannot include such things in my blog.  I have no way to find facts and the Rule of Law requires official processing.

The trouble is cultural and I can address that.  In the Anglo/Euro context someone accused might be validated by a "grand jury" or by a prosecutor.  Then the facts are pursued in a court of law with a jury of peers.  This is not foolproof but faulty in a number of ways.  I'm not a lawyer, but one can see that "prosecutors" can be diverted, "juries" might not be composed of peers, and so on.

In the pre-domination days when bands of a hundred or so people knew each other, traveled together, and set their own standards, justice came from discussion and consensus among those people.  Offenders were generally ejected.  Some were subject to family revenge.  This system runs against the prevailing law in the US and could pervert it, sabotage it.

I am aware that injustice uses the confusion of the rez.  People are left unsettled and angry. The lawless laugh.  Families protect their own.  But now the tribe includes lawyers who can use the system to get closer to unity.  Probably the days of FBI jurisdiction should end. They are outsiders.

I'm not part of that.  All I can do -- because I am old -- is remember the past for whatever use it is now.  I'm not trying to interfere nor intervene.  I'm just recounting.

As a reminder, in any case I will not append anonymous comments.
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When I went to get into my electric bed last night, all the cats preceded me and formed a kind of feline pancake, entwined together in the warm lullaby hammock of the night.  When I pushed them over, still entwined, they went on gently snoring their song of dark.  It had been hard work monitoring all the workmen.