NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: [9/23/09] Still very early in the morning here in Idaho. I had a strangely restless night and was awakened at 2:20 a.m. by what sounded very much like something "hard" striking our most public side of our house -- under my upper level window. No wind outside. Arising, I traveled quickly into our living room, noting that our out-front protective flood lights were on -- an indication that something may -- may -- have been afoot. When dawn breaks, I'll go around the house on an inspection tour. Restless sleep and meaningless dreams can, of course, engender disproportionate "hearing." If you hear nothing further from me, it means that there was nothing -- at least visible -- or something inconsequential.
[We live, I should add, on the 'way far up western edge of Pocatello. BLM and USFS lands are only a good stone's toss from our house.] For several years after we moved here in the summer of '97, there was consistent harassment ranging from obvious police surveillance to a few clearly racist things. For us and our Life, this is a not uncommon combination of things. We remained right here, obviously, and still do -- and, in time, most of this [not all] subsided. One of several things that hasn't subsided are "computer problems" that can't be explained by anything other than "official" -- if clumsy -- monitoring. That situation has seen, for us at least, a seamless transition from the Clinton administration through the Bushies and into the Obama epoch. [Our mailbox on Sandy Lane was damaged the other night -- but that may have been a careless driver.] Our Lair of Hunterbear website is now almost ten years old and contains several hundred URLs. It's well visited -- around 2,000 persons per day on the average. Its initial mission was to turn back and correct outright defamation, some of it downright ludicrous. [Much of this came via a few extremely poisonous adversaries at and around North Dakota [and some collateral settings] which was deliberately exported into our Idaho setting where it immediately found fertile ground with so-termed lawmen and a few racists -- even before we had arrived to unpack. As I have on earlier occasions, I want to state categorically that virtually all of our neighbors have been just fine from the very beginning. As well as countering and correcting this [both genders] witches' concoction, our website also chronicled some of many harassment high-lights as the years passed, and still does occasionally. In time, Lair of Hunterbear feathered out with all sorts of my written material [plus, in many cases, relevant comments from others]. Almost all of it is indicated by this excerpt from our cover -- masthead -- page: "This vast website is based on a lifetime of consistent and direct grassroots activist community organizing in many parts of the United States: Native rights, union labor, civil rights, civil liberties. It also includes much on the American West. There is a great deal on the actual practice of bona fide organizing and such accompanying dimensions as issues, strategies, tactics, pragmatism and vision -- through explicitly focused material and many personal and experiential accounts of significant campaigns. . ." But it's now a huge website. Coming to the point, we consider it essentially a finished work -- as a website -- and will be adding little more to it. If and when I "pass into the Fog and Beyond" [and I am not planning to do that any time soon] -- Lair of Hunterbear will remain into the far, far future. But -- we are considering seriously launching a second website. If so, it will have to have, to some extent, its own unique kind of focus. And that is high on my "brooding list" at this point. [Of course, I already have a name for the new Site.] Letters of all sorts continue to come via Lair of Hunterbear -- and, as I've indicated, I respond as fully as I can to virtually all of them. I've always practiced, from early childhood on, principled self defense. I am no stranger to violence [but generally support tactical nonviolence.] But I rarely attack anyone personally -- verbally or otherwise -- and, if I do, my thrust is restrained and restricted to either self-defense or a bona fide social justice issue. My primary loyalty always goes to family and friends. A little over two years ago, I wrote this on one of our website pages: "As the years progressed following our Southern experiences, we were able to -- in a fair number of cases -- extend a kind of "forgiveness" to some of our old adversaries. A few of them openly sought that dispensation and we obliged. In other instances, we just did it -- sometimes openly and explicitly and sometimes simply and quietly within ourselves. [These are genuinely fascinating human stories.] I should add that I have never been able to "forgive" conscious treachery. An old Movement acquaintance from the Tougaloo College days, himself a white Mississippian, had -- very, very early on in our association -- triggered considerable caution in Eldri's mind and mine and thus we were always very chary of revealing much of ourselves to him in the many years that ensued. Decades later, we learned he had done his best to knife us surreptitiously on a good number of occasions over much time indeed. We ended our association with him completely. He telephoned finally -- by then we were here in Idaho -- and "apologized." We were neither impressed nor receptive. We have had a few other of those situations, but not very many at all." We'll keep folks posted. And, still waiting for dawn to break, Hunter [Hunter Bear] HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm See Outlaw Trail: The Native as Organizer: http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm [Included in Visions & Voices: Native American Activism [2009] And see Personal Narrative: http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
