Why the ancient promise of alchemy is fulfilled in reading

Elisabeth Gruner, Associate Professor of English, University of Richmond
June 27, 2021·
In this article:
Nicolas Flamel
French scrivener


The potions classroom at the Making of Harry Potter Studio. Alex Volosianko

Within a 20-minute walk from Notre Dame Cathedral, in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, is the oldest house in the city: the house of Nicolas Flamel. If the name rings a vague bell, perhaps it’s because you read J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” or, as it’s known outside the U.S., “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Nicolas Flamel creates the philosopher’s stone of the title – and he was, in fact, a historical person.

The philosopher’s stone, the magical goal of alchemical research, was reputed to be capable of transmuting lead into gold and – of importance to Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter — brewing an elixir of life. Flamel, a wealthy Parisian bookseller and scribe, built his house in the early 15th century, and it is now associated with his legendary status as an alchemist. The menu at the restaurant on the first floor – Auberge Nicolas Flamel – promises patrons to “Transform banal reality into poetic, miraculous fiction and perfect the material. That is alchemy.”

While I’m neither chef nor chemist, I’m fascinated by alchemy, by the magical transformations that Rowling and others write of. In my study of fantasy literature, I have found that writers return again and again to alchemy – but why?

The roots of modern chemistry


As far as we know, neither Flamel nor anyone else ever did in fact create a philosopher’s stone. But in the history of alchemy lie the roots of modern chemical science. While for centuries alchemy was derided as a pseudoscience practiced only by charlatans and cheats, some contemporary historians of science recognize that in a pre-modern world, alchemy laid the groundwork for what later became empirical science. But alchemy never went away.

Rather than fading into the background of the history of science as yet one more discarded pseudoscience, alchemy retains a powerful hold on the imagination. While phrenology (the “science” of reading personality from bumps on the head) and the theory of the humors (which suggested that liquids in the body such as phlegm and bile were associated with both emotions and the four elements of earth, air, water and fire), have mostly disappeared, alchemy remains. And it recurs especially in fantasy literature such as the Harry Potter books.

Why is alchemy so fascinating? I think it’s because it suggests that there’s something magical in the lab: the possibility of utter transformation, of turning something worthless into something valuable. We know in our bones that lead isn’t gold – that they are unalterably separate. That’s why they appear in the periodic table, after all: Each is an element, one of the irreducible components of matter. We know they can’t change – but what if they could?
The magic of transformation


The magic of alchemy is the magic of books, especially of the fantasy books that entrance so many young readers. Like alchemy, fantasy novels promise a kind of transformation: the bullied kid becomes a hero, the servant girl becomes a princess, lead becomes gold. In novels like “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” or the more recent “Strange the Dreamer” by Laini Taylor, alchemy serves as a promise that true transformation is possible, even if it requires great sacrifice. The alchemist in “Strange the Dreamer” uses his own blood in the elixir, though reputedly the historical alchemists resorted to a more dispensable bodily fluid, their own urine.

But there’s a sleight-of-hand in the stories of transformation as they come down to us in fantasy. The transformations of fantasy stories are not, it turns out, quite so fantastical as they may seem. When Harry Potter becomes a hero, or Cinderella a princess, these are just outward revelations of their inner selves. The qualities that make them special have always been there – they just haven’t been recognized.

Most fantasy novels operate this way, it turns out: The quest hero needs to be revealed, not essentially transformed. To extend the chemical metaphor, perhaps they need to be distilled or refined through ordeals and sacrifice – to discover their true essence. Or maybe they need to come into contact with others and bond with them, as Harry does with his friends, or Cinderella does with her godmother and the prince, in order to become something even greater than their original self.

In either case, while some kind of chemical process may take place, it’s not an alchemical transformation, but rather a clarification, a refinement, a revelation.
The alchemy of reading

The magic of reading. Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com

The only example I know of alchemy in the real world is reading. When we read, brain circuitry designed to process visual, linguistic and conceptual information is activated simultaneously and letters on a page become ideas and even pictures and sounds in the mind almost at once.

Learning to read is hard work, but the process, once mastered, is really almost like magic. It’s no surprise, then, that alchemy is a controlling metaphor, or a fundamental goal, in so much fiction. Alchemical transformation is the goal of literature itself.

In Taylor’s “Strange the Dreamer,” the hero isn’t the alchemist. That character is actually something of a cheat, even though he does manage to perform the transmutation of lead into gold. He follows a recipe, spills some blood and makes something new, but (spoiler alert!) he himself remains selfish and opportunistic even after he achieves his greatest success.

The hero, though, is a librarian. Reading in the dusty depths of the archive, he puts together the story of a lost civilization, reclaims its language and then joins a band of travelers in their quest to restore that world. He takes the raw materials he has found on the shelves of the library, in the pages of ancient books, and turns them into stories – and then into a new life. Auberge Nicolas Flamel is right: That is alchemy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Elisabeth Gruner, University of Richmond.

Read more:

Cosmic alchemy: Colliding neutron stars show us how the universe creates gold

The politics of the periodic table – who gets the credit and why

Lightweight of periodic table plays big role in life on Earth

Elisabeth Gruner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Historical Lessons Embedded In Alchemical Recipes

10th Century Lab Report From Historian Pamela Smith

By Mark Riechers

An original page from a manuscript in the "Secrets of Craft and Nature" project, which offers English and French translations of alchemical recipes and texts.
Bibliothèque nationale de France (CC0)

Published:
Saturday, September 26, 2020

Science history students at Columbia University don’t have to imagine what it was like to be an alchemist. If they take one of historian Pamela Smith’s courses, they can spend a semester reading medieval alchemical manuscripts describing recipes for making emeralds or turning silkworms into gold. Then they re-create the experiments in a lab.

Smith said recreating ancient experiments is less about transmutation for credit and more about exploring the headspace of people living in a very different time and in a very different world.

"I think that realizing those different understandings and not putting them on a hierarchy from primitive to modern is very important," Smith told Anne Strainchamps of "To the Best of Our Knowledge."

She argues that because of their different relationship to the world — as we understand it through some of these recipes — we can infer that they might handle the issues of our time, like catastrophic climate change, very differently.

"The worldview that saw humans as a part of nature might have led to a different kind of attitude toward nature that would not have landed us in this crisis," she said. "To be aware that different ways of understanding the universe might have value, I think, is important."

Among the translated alchemical recipes, some true panacea do exist. Smith cited a literature professor at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom who, in re-creating a cure-all potion for eye infections, discovered a solution that could fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But for the most part, she and her students are attempting to create riches mainly to understand the scientific minds of another era.

Here are two recipes Smith and her students tried to replicate, along with their findings.

The transcript highlights below have been edited for clarity and length.
Emeralds

Take ground rock crystal (mainly silica and red lead, which is powdered bright orange). Then take a little copper to add the green. Then add some salts, and heat it all together.

Results: "The grad students and the post-doc who was working with them tried it about 10 times and just got ash," Smith said. "Then they got black glass. Finally, on about the eighth try, they got green. Beautiful green emeralds."

Conclusion: "The interesting thing about these very ancient recipes for imitation gemstones is that they don't refer to them as imitation. The value is in the actual skill that goes into the imitation. (And) it really does take skill."
Gold

Acquire silkworm eggs. You can grow silkworms in a vessel of horse dung, Smith said.

"(It) sounds very exotic, but that's a very, very common thing that you see in recipes at this time, because horse dung and cow dung actually are host to thermophilic bacteria," Smith said. "It stays a constant temperature as long as the bacteria stays alive. So actually, it's a very good way to keep something warm at a constant low temperature."

One you have silkworms, feed them mulberry leaves until they are big enough to fight each other to the death. Then feed the victor gold leaf, and heat the vessel, killing the victor. Finally, use the resulting powder to make gold.

Results: "We found a supplier in Long Island or somewhere who could get us silkworm eggs," Smith said. "The student grew the silkworms — he had to keep the silkworms at a constant temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. We even called up the stables in New York City, but there was no way that we could actually have a pile of manure or composting anywhere on campus. And besides, it was winter and it wouldn't have worked. So what the student did was (find a nice warm spot) at the top of the boiler in his apartment building.

"He was finally able to buy mulberry chow, silkworm chow, on the internet, and they grow bigger," she said. "You continue to feed them egg yolks, and they grow bigger. And then you feed them gold leaf. And eventually the recipe says they will kill each other off and there will be one kind of 'super' silkworm left."

"The whole vessel is sealed, then you're supposed to put a ring of coals around that vessel, You're supposed to heat it to kill the silkworm and turn it into powder (that is) supposed to be able to make things gold."

Conclusion: "I don't think it could ever actually work... the importance of this recipe is in its symbolism and in its antiquity," Smith said. "These people have the focus on the same kinds of questions we have, like what generates life, what can regenerate growth, like growth of a limb or growth of an organ. So the focus is the same. But the way they're answering them is often different within a different cosmic understanding."

"People understood nature through religious texts and practices," she continued. "So it's not surprising that something that gave rise to new life or gave rise to the ability to a noble a metal or some other material would be compared to Jesus's resurrection."

Bible apocalypse: Burnt Pyramid notes reveal Newton's ‘astonishingly complex’ occult study

SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S fascination with biblical apocalypse, pyramids and the occult have been revealed in burnt fragmentary manuscript notes.

By TOM FISH
PUBLISHED:  Dec 8, 2020 


Legendary English mathematician, physicist, astronomer Sir Isaac Newton is rightly considered one of the greatest scientific geniuses ever. However, his wide-ranging research also led to an interest in alchemy, religion and even divine biblical apocalypse prophecies – now laid bare in some of his stranger papers.

Newton’s surviving notes, and manuscripts contain approximately 10 million words.

These notes are part of Newton's astonishingly complex web of interlinking studies – natural philosophy, alchemy, theology – only parts of which he ever believed were appropriate for publication

Sotheby’s

And among reams of scientific and mathematical brilliance is evidence of another side of Newton, one his descendants were determined to shield from the public.

Much of these mystical leanings would have been considered heretical-thinking in the 17th century.


The texts, which are available at auction house Southeby’s, are literally fragments.

Bible apocalypse: Burnt Pyramid notes reveal Newton's ‘astonishingly complex’ occult study (Image: Getty)

The fire was reportedly started by a candle that was inadvertently felled by Newton's dog, Diamond (Image: Getty)

At time of writing, the pages have attracted a leading bid of £280,000 ($375,000).

They are the scorched remnants from a fire, reportedly started by a candle that was inadvertently felled by Newton's dog, Diamond.

The scorched correspondence concerns Newton's obscure occult theories which would today be categorised as pseudoscience.

They reveal Newton’s thought about ancient Egypt's Great Pyramid, which he believed was designed using an Egyptian unit of measurement called the royal cubit.

At time of writing, Newton's pages have attracted a leading bid of £280,000 ($375,000) (Image: Sotheby's)


By quantifying this royal cubit, Newton believed he might be able to refine his own theories on gravitation.

And through this he may even arrive at an unerringly accurate measure of Earth’s circumference.

At the same time, Newton suspected he could gain far weirder geometrical insights, including predicting the apocalypse as forecast in the Bible.

Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's manuscript specialist, told The Observer: ”He was trying to find proof for his theory of gravitation, but in addition the ancient Egyptians were thought to have held the secrets of alchemy that have since been lost.

"Today, these seem disparate areas of study – but they didn't seem that way to Newton in the 17th century."

But although pyramidology now lies outside the bounds of real science the study consumed the attention of one of the greatest minds on the planet.

Sotheby’s auction listing states: ”These notes are part of Newton's astonishingly complex web of interlinking studies – natural philosophy, alchemy, theology – only parts of which he ever believed were appropriate for publication.

"It is not surprising that he did not publish on alchemy, since secrecy was a widely-held tenet of alchemical research, and Newton's theological beliefs, if made public, would have cost him (at least) his career."

The notes reveal Newton’s thoughts about ancient Egypt's Great Pyramid (Image: Express)

The imminent auction coincides with the news historians have uncovered copies of Newton’s first edition in 27 countries, more than double the amount previously known.

New research has identified 386 copies, while it may be possible an additional 200 of them exist somewhere in private and public collections.

Mordechai Feingold, one of the historians and lead author of the study, said: “We felt like Sherlock Holmes.

"One of the realisations we've had is that the transmission of the book and its ideas was far quicker and more open than we assumed, and this will have implications on the future work that we and others will be doing on this subject.”

Isaac Newton's Secret Alchemy
A Founder Of The Scientific Revolution, And Perhaps 'The Last Of The Magicians'

By Steve Paulson

Photo illustration by Mark Riechers. Original images by Godfrey Kneller (CC0) and Johnny McClung (CC0)

Published:
Saturday, September 19, 2020, 9:20am

Was alchemy science or magic? Perhaps both, depending on whom you ask. Medieval alchemists sought to transmute base metals into gold. Their holy grail was the "philosopher’s stone," a kind of wondrous substance that promised great riches and miraculous healing powers.

Today, alchemy is the stuff of legend and fantasy. But for historians, alchemy offers an intriguing glimpse into the origins of modern science.

Take Isaac Newton, one of the founders of the Scientific Revolution. He wrote more than a million words on alchemy over his lifetime, conducting decades' worth of alchemical experiments. But he did it all in secret. For centuries after his death in 1727, few people knew the extent of Newton’s alchemical work.

Finally, in 1936, most of Newton’s alchemical papers came up for auction. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes bought them and later declared that Newton "was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians."

So why was Newton obsessed with alchemy?

The question fascinates Bill Newman, a professor of history and the philosophy of science at Indiana University. For decades, he's studied Newton’s alchemical notebooks and has even reproduced some of his experiments. Newman is the author of "Newton the Alchemist."

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Steve Paulson: Why are you so interested in Newton's work on alchemy?

Bill Newman: There are a couple of different reasons. Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that Newton was possibly the greatest scientist who ever lived, and yet he spent upwards of three decades in a sort of obsessive alchemical quest. This is the guy who discovered the law of universal gravitation, co-invented calculus with (Gottfried Wilhelm) Leibniz and was the first person to figure out that white light is actually a mixture of unaltered spectral colors. The fact that he was so deeply involved in alchemy struck me as rather amazing.

SP: Why did he spend all this time on alchemy when it may not have contributed to his larger scientific project?

BN: I should point out that the term "alchemy" meant something different in the 17th century than what it means today. It wasn't just about the transmutation of base metals into gold — (it was) synonymous with chemistry, at least in this archaic 17th century spelling "chymistry."

One thing you have to bear in mind is that chymistry offered tremendous promise to people in the 17th century because they hadn't yet figured out the distinction between nuclear reactions and chemical reactions. So alchemy presented itself as a discipline that could make fundamental changes to matter — the most fundamental change to matter.

So for a man of Newton's intellect and desire to get to the bottom of nature, it really made perfect sense for him to be involved in alchemy.

SP: Yet he seemed to be very secretive about his work in alchemy.

BN: Well, it was considered dangerous to be an alchemist, particularly if word got around that you were successful at it. There are lots of stories about how alchemists were locked up by vindictive rulers who wanted to extract their secrets and wouldn't hesitate to use torture. And some of these stories are actually true.

For example, there was an alchemist in the early 18th century named Johann Friedrich Bottger, who was locked up by a Saxon ruler named August the Strong. And August actually managed to turn him away from his transmutation efforts so that he invented porcelain — at least the Western world's variety of it.

There were also alchemical charlatans who were playing the noble courts of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries for all they were worth. And if they were exposed, the consequences could be quite grisly — they would typically be executed.

SP: Was alchemy considered a kind of magic?

BN: That’s an interesting question, which can get complicated and nuanced. But to Newton, at least, alchemy and magic were distinct. In his mind, I think magic was associated mostly with demonic magic.

There is yet another feature, though, which comes out in a letter that he wrote to Henry Oldenburg in 1676, who was the secretary of the Royal Society. Newton is very concerned about the fact that Robert Boyle, who is sometimes called the father of modern chemistry, was a devoted alchemist himself. Newton is concerned that Boyle has revealed too much about a so-called "sophic mercury," a kind of initial ingredient of the philosopher's stone. So Newton tells Oldenburg that he would like to commend Boyle to "high silence." He's really worried that word will get out.

Why? Because he's worried that scientific secrets of a really radical sort are going to be loosed upon the world and tremendous damage could occur.

SP: What was the "philosopher's stone"?

BN: It meant essentially two things. On the one hand, it was an agent that was thought to be able to transmute base metals into gold. They even have descriptions of it; it was typically thought to be a sort of ruby red material that was fusible in the heat. You added it to a molten metal and it would instantaneously transmute it into gold or, in some cases, silver.

Many people also thought the philosopher’s stone was a panacea and could also cure the human body of any sort of illness.

SP: What did Newton actually do in his alchemical experiments?

BN: It's a very complicated issue because we have more laboratory notebooks than we really know what to do with. They're also extremely difficult to understand because he never really tells you exactly what he's trying to do in the experiments.

For example, he refers to something that he calls the "green lion" in his experimental notebooks. Nobody's been able to figure out exactly what that meant to him. He talks about the "two serpents." He also talks about something called "sophic I've found is that Newton was trying to create more and more volatile compounds. He was trying to replicate processes that he believed to be taking place under the surface of the Earth. He had a theory that metals are being generated within the Earth. He calls it a sort of "cosmic vegetable." So the Earth is literally a living being and metals are constantly being produced within it. It involves heating up materials, vaporizing them and producing reactions in vaporous or even gaseous form.

SP: Was Newton successful in his experiments? Did he produce the results he hoped for?

BN: He clearly never found the philosopher's stone. But he produced extremely interesting compounds, and it looks like some of these materials have not been reproduced since Newton's day. So he was, in fact, finding really interesting stuff and he knew it.

SP: I get the impression that there was a whole culture of alchemy, with the riddles and the secrecy. Was it like a secret club?

BN: They certainly presented themselves as a sort of a secret club. The term "adept" was used for someone who had actually attained the philosopher's stone. They were considered to be a kind of superhuman — to be "the chosen sons of God."

SP: We haven't talked about Newton’s rather strange personality. Wasn’t he pretty arrogant? Apparently, he was not the nicest person to be around.

BN: Yeah, probably one of the least nice people to be around. Newton was a loner of an extremely unpleasant sort. When you got close to him, it was dangerous because he could turn on you.

Some of Newton's personality traits can be explained if you think of him as somebody trying to become an adept — an alchemical master — because the adepts were themselves the ultimate loners. They couldn't trust anyone because anyone you trusted might reveal that you have knowledge of the philosopher's stone, and then you'd wind up strangled in your bed because somebody wanted to steal it.

SP: So the fact that Newton didn't like a lot of people actually fit pretty well with this secretive life in alchemy.

BN: Yes, exactly. Also, the alchemist was supposed to be smarter than everybody else.

SP: And Newton had no doubt that he was smarter than everyone else.

BN: And he was right, actually! (laughs)

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Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler among Kennedy Center honorees
Agence France-Presse
July 21, 2021

Joni Mitchell (AFP)

Folk legend Joni Mitchell and beloved actor Bette Midler are among this year's class of Kennedy Center honorees, one of America's most prestigious arts awards

Along with Motown icon Berry Gordy, opera singer Justino Diaz and Lorne Michaels, creator of the acclaimed comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live, they will be celebrated at the center's annual gala.

The night of red-carpet glitz in Washington in December will end up being the center's second set of honors this year.

Having been forced by the pandemic to cancel the gala last winter, the center held a more subdued series of smaller socially-distanced events and tributes in spring for the 43rd class of honorees.

"After the challenges and heartbreak of the last many months, and as we celebrate 50 years of the Kennedy Center, I dare add that we are prepared to throw 'the party to end all parties' in DC on December 5th, feting these extraordinary people and welcoming audiences back to our campus," the center's president Deborah Rutter said in a statement.
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The honors are normally a major fundraiser for the Kennedy Center, Washington's performing arts complex that serves as a living monument to president John F. Kennedy.

The center had said it expected to lose an estimated $45.7 million in potential revenue during the 2020-2021 season, after the pandemic forced the cancelation of much of its programming.

December's bash will likely be the first attended by a sitting US president since Barack Obama's tenure, should Joe and Jill Biden renew what was once a traditional outing before the presidency of Donald Trump.

Trump is unpopular in the culture and entertainment communities and several of the honored artists threatened to boycott if he attended during his first year in office.

What’s tribal sovereignty and what does it mean for Native Americans?

This short explainer provides an introduction to tribal sovereignty and its importance to tribal nations and the daily lives of Native Americans in the U.S.

by Denise-Marie Ordway | July 18, 2021

(NRCPR from Pixabay)

Tribal sovereignty, often viewed as a legal term, sits at the center of almost every issue affecting tribal nations existing within the United States’ geographical borders.

In its most basic sense, tribal sovereignty — the inherent authority of tribes to govern themselves — allows tribes to honor and preserve their cultures and traditional ways of life. Tribal sovereignty also is a political status recognized by the federal government, protected by the U.S. Constitution and treaties made generations ago, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although the concept might seem relatively straightforward, there has been considerable disagreement between Indigenous groups and American government agencies over what tribal sovereignty actually entails, its implications and how tribes and states can or should work together to serve their constituents.

States and tribes continue to battle over land and jurisdiction in areas such as law enforcement. Government officials still are trying to understand all the ramifications of last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark tribal sovereignty case McGirt v. Oklahoma.

Supreme Court justices affirmed that a giant swath of land in eastern Oklahoma the U.S. gave the Muscogee (Creek) Nation through treaties in the 1800s is, in fact, an “Indian reservation” and that the state of Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction to prosecute Jimcy McGirt, an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation, for serious crimes that occurred on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land.

Attorneys and policymakers across the country predict the ruling’s impact will extend well beyond Oklahoma and criminal prosecutorial matters.

Journalists planning to cover those impacts and tribal nations in general should have a basic understanding of tribal sovereignty and its significance to Indigenous people living in the U.S. Below, we provide important context.

We do not intend for this explainer to be exhaustive, but it is a starting point — and the first in a series of tip sheets, explainers and research roundups we’ll publish over the coming year to help journalists improve their coverage of Native Americans. In our next piece, we’ll take a much closer look at McGirt v. Oklahoma.

It’s worth noting that while federal government officials and documents often refer to Indigenous people in the U.S. as “Indians” or “American Indians,” the Native American Journalists Association has created a guide on Indigenous terminology.

Toward the bottom of this piece, we’ve gathered a variety of resources we think will help journalists, including links to academic papers on tribal sovereignty and a new website created by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and the Native Nations Center at the University of Oklahoma.

—–

Some key things journalists should know about tribal sovereignty:

• There are 574 federally-recognized American Indian and Alaska Native nations in the U.S., according to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Each is a government entity with its own policies, processes and system of governance.
  
  “Sovereignty for tribes includes the right to establish their own form of government, determine membership requirements, enact legislation and establish law enforcement and court systems,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

• Tribes vary in size. The largest in terms of both population and territory is the Navajo Nation, which stretches across 27,000-plus square miles in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico and, as Indian Country Today reports, had nearly 400,000 tribal members in May 2021. The Navajo Nation’s comprehensive budget for Fiscal Year 2021 is $1.25 billion.
  
  The Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians in California, on the other hand, had just 12 members in late 2019, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reports.

• Tribes set their own rules for who can join, so enrollment criteria vary from tribe to tribe. “Tribal enrollment criteria are set forth in tribal constitutions, articles of incorporation or ordinances,” according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.
  
  Tribes often require evidence of tribal lineage. For example, a tribe might require documentation demonstrating that the person seeking to enroll is related to a tribal member who descended from someone named on the tribe’s base roll, or original list of members. Tribes may also require evidence of blood quantum. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs issues what’s known as a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood, computed based on family lineage.

• Knowledge of treaties is important to tribal coverage. The U.S. Constitution calls treaties “the supreme Law of the Land.” Although they were negotiated generations ago — Congress stopped making treaties with tribes in the late 1800s — they remain relevant because they, among other things, outline the property rights and federal protections the U.S. agreed to give tribes in exchange for ceding millions of acres of their homeland.
  
  The U.S. acquired much of its land through treaties, which “rest at the heart of both Native history and contemporary tribal life and identity,” Kevin Gover, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, writes in 2014 in the museum magazine. “Approximately 368 treaties were negotiated and signed by U.S. commissioners and tribal leaders (and subsequently approved by the U.S. Senate) from 1777 to 1868. They enshrine promises our government made to Indian Nations.”

• The U.S. Constitution outlines the federal government’s relationship with tribes. “The Constitution gives authority in Indian affairs to the federal government, not to the state governments,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Just as the United States deals with states as governments, it also deals with Indian tribes as governments, not as special interest groups, individuals or some other type of non-governmental entity.”

• Attorneys commonly cite three historic court cases in legal challenges and legal analyses related to tribal sovereignty. In the 1832 case Worcester v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Cherokee Nation was not subject to state regulation. Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the court, explains that the Cherokee Nation “is a distinct community occupying its own territory … in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves …”
  
  Today, states have no authority over tribes unless Congress gives it to them. In 1953, for example, Congress enacted Public Law 280, allowing six states — Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin — to begin prosecuting most crimes occurring on tribal land. The federal law let other states decide whether they also wanted to make the change.

Additional resources

• McGirt and Rebuilding of Tribal Nations Toolbox:This website, created by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and University of Oklahoma Native Nations Center, provides a broad array of resources, including a series of briefing papers examining the ramifications of the McGirt decision in areas such as taxation, criminal justice and child welfare.
• Indigenous Data Sovereignty: This explainer, created by the Global Investigative Journalism Network and Native American Journalists Association, “explores what investigative opportunities exist for journalists regarding the bundle of issues known as ‘Indigenous data sovereignty.’”
• Shaawano Chad Uran, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation and former professor of American Indian studies at the University of Washington, explains sovereignty and its importance in Indian Country Today, September 2018.

Law journal articles, academic papers worth reading

• Who Is an Indian Child? Institutional Context, Tribal Sovereignty, and Race-Making in Fragmented States
  Hana E. Brown. American Sociological Review, August 2020.
• Genetic Ancestry Testing with Tribes: Ethics, Identity & Health Implications
  Nanibaa’ A. Garrison. Daedalus, March 2018.
• Indian Education: Maintaining Tribal Sovereignty through Native American Culture and Language Preservation
  Nizhone Meza. Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, March 2015.
• Myths and Realities of Tribal Sovereignty: The Law and Economics of Indian Self-Rule
  Joseph P. Kalt and Joseph William Singer. Harvard University Faculty Research Working Paper Series, March 2004.

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway
She joined The Journalist’s Resource in 2015 after working as a reporter for newspapers and radio stations in the U.S. and Central America, including the Orlando Sentinel and Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work also has appeared in publications such as USA TODAY, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post. She has received a multitude of national, regional and state-level journalism awards and was named as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013 for an investigative series she led that focused on hazing and other problems at Florida A&M University. Ordway was a 2014-15 Fellow of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She also serves on the board of directors of the Education Writers Association. @DeniseOrdway

Missouri GOP slammed for not inviting Black speakers to ‘ridiculous’ hearing on critical race theory: 'You're talking about us without us'

Travis Gettys

RAW STORY
July 21, 2021

Stressed black woman (Shutterstock)

A Missouri legislative committee held a hearing on teaching about race and racism but didn't include any Black parents, teachers or scholars

The Joint Committee on Education held an invitation-only hearing on critical race theory, which has roiled school boards across the country amid conservative media hysteria, but only included critics of the academic philosophy of examining the role of racism in American history, reported the Kansas City Star.

"That talks more to the kind of hearing that they wanted to have than the information that they wanted to gather," said Missouri NAACP President Rod Chapel. "They wanted to hear from their friends who were going to support their political talking points."

Chapel said it was "ridiculous" to have a conversation about inequity while "excluding the very people who are saying we've been treated inequitably," but Republican state Sen. Cindy O'Laughlin, the committee's chairperson, said she wanted to highlight complaints from parents that she says have been ignored.

"I felt today it was important to hear from people who have tried to go through the official cycle of authority within their districts and have basically been turned away," O'Laughlin said.

The GOP state senator said additional hearings would almost certainly be held, but Black educators are angry their voices weren't included.

"You're talking about us, without us," said Heather Fleming, a former Missouri teacher who now does diversity and inclusion training. "What not having any African Americans in the room really showed was that this wasn't really about understanding."

State Sen. Lauren Arthur (D-Kansas City) criticized her colleagues during the hearing, saying that "if we are interested in gathering information and really understand seeing a complete picture of what's happening, for what purpose and the impact it's having on students both good and bad, if bad, then, I hope that we as a committee really look at a completely diverse perspective as opposed to handpicking witnesses to testifying."

In A Historic Reform, Elected Civilians Will Now Help Oversee Chicago’s Police Department

By Mariah Woelfel, Becky Vevea
Wednesday, July 21, !
The plan that got final approval from the City Council Wednesday will allow for more robust civilian oversight of the Chicago Police Department. Manuel Martinez / WBEZ


Chicago aldermen reached a major milestone in police reform Wednesday by passing a long-awaited measure to implement elected civilian oversight of the Chicago Police Department.

The ordinance, passed 36 to 13, is a compromise between two previously competing proposals from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who campaigned on beefing up civilian oversight of the police in the years following Laquan McDonald’s killing, and community activists who’ve been pushing for several different iterations of police oversight for years.

Wednesday’s historic vote came after nearly two hours of comments from Chicago aldermen who’ve had a hand in crafting the proposal, and from those who oppose it. The chamber broke out in applause after it passed.

“While I wish that we would have been further along … and that this ordinance would be stronger, we should be proud, because this is a strong, transformative and robust ordinance, because this is a balanced ordinance,” said co-sponsor Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th Ward.

Lightfoot said the ordinance is a step toward rebuilding trust between communities and police.

“If the communities do not trust [police] because they’re not legitimate to them, they will not be effective in their most core mission, which is serving and protecting every single resident of the city,” Lightfoot said.

The new plan will create a two-tiered system of oversight. There will be both a seven-member commission and 22 elected district councils, one for each police district. The new commission will play a key role in hiring future police superintendents and will have unilateral power to hire and fire the head of the city agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct.

It would also have the authority to draft, review and approve new policies, and it would be authorized to start the process of removing a superintendent by adopting a resolution of no confidence.


Members of the inaugural commission will be selected by aldermen. Future commissioners will be selected by a committee made up of the publicly elected delegates from the 22 district councils. The first election would be in 2023.

“I have a lot of confidence in the public,” said Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th Ward. “I think that we have to allow them as they create this to say, ‘This is what we need and this is what we don’t need.’”

Giving everyday Chicagoans some ability to police the city’s police department has been debated for many years. Various oversight boards have existed and been dissolved over time, but the push for a civilian oversight body ramped up after police officer Jason Van Dyke killed teenager Laquan McDonald. Competing proposals have floated through City Hall, but never came to a vote.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th Ward, chairs the Council’s Committee on Public Safety where many of the competing versions of civilian police oversight have been debated the past decade. He’s also a former cop and supported the compromise proposal that passed Wednesday.

“I love policing and I loved being a police officer,” Taliaferro said. “I’m very proud to have served with them. But I’ve also seen things that I know that need to be reformed in our department. If we don’t take these bold steps now, we will be having a future in this city that none of us will be very proud of.”

Ald. Ray Lopez, 15th Ward, who often stands in support of Chicago police, voted for the measure and said he believes it will help repair police morale.

“The second-guessing by everyone because of the system that exists now is eroding [police officers’] ability to be the heroes in the communities that we know they are.”

Many progressive aldermen who were elected on the issue of police reform spoke in support of the new oversight plan.

“Some of us got voted in and got elected to do something and I’m really proud of everyone here that came together to talk, even those of us who didn’t agree,” said Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th Ward. “Through negotiation, we were able to come to an agreement there and establish something that makes our city better and our city safer.”

The tensions between those who favored the plan and those who did not were evident as aldermen spoke on the Council floor before Wednesday’s final vote. Vasquez noted in his comments that many of the same Council members who vote against legal settlements that involve police misconduct are also resistant to oversight and reform.

“Taxpayer dollars are wasted time and time again, because you don’t work in an institution that clearly needs to be fixed,” Vasquez said.

Thirteen aldermen voted against the ordinance, with several saying they feel current oversight of the Chicago Police, including in the form of a consent decree from the federal government, is sufficient.

“I don’t believe that we should be pushing another form of oversight,” said Ald. Anthony Napolitano, 41st Ward.

Napolitano, also a former police officer, said communities need to be held accountable for engaging in gun violence, noting the high numbers of shootings so far this year.

Ald. Nick Sposato, 38th Ward, echoed Napolitano.

“We don’t need police reform,” he said bluntly. “We need family reform. Families need to start taking ownership and watching after their children protecting their communities. We can’t be blaming the police for everything.”

Those who voted against the ordinance include Brian Hopkins, 2nd Ward; Anthony Beale, 9th Ward; Patrick Daley Thompson, 11th Ward; Marty Quinn, 13th Ward; Ed Burke, 14th Ward; Matt O’Shea, 19th Ward; Silvana Tabares, 23rd Ward; Ariel Reboyras, 30th Ward; Nick Sposato, 38th Ward; Samantha Nugent, 39th Ward; Anthony Napolitano, 41st ward; Brendan Reilly, 42nd Ward; James Gardiner, 45th Ward.

Mariah Woelfel and Becky Vevea cover city government at WBEZ. You can follow them @MariahWoelfel and @BeckyVevea.

Another report blasts police actions during George Floyd unrest

The report is further proof of the need for massive change at the $1.7 billion city agency.

By CST Editorial Board Jul 21, 2021

Members from Chicago Police SWAT Team outside of the Chicago Police Department headquarters, at 35th and Michigan during the George Floyd protests in May 2020. Victor Hilitski/For the Sun-Times

The Chicago Police Department was so disorganized and unprepared during last summer’s unrest and mayhem following the murder of George Floyd, some cops used their own money to rent vehicles to take them to hot spots — and even spent personal cash to buy zip ties for mass arrests.

Meanwhile, peaceful protesters were verbally abused, tackled and pushed down stairs by police.

That’s the word from a 464-page report released Tuesday that blamed a lack of proper police department leadership for the confused and sometimes needlessly violent response during the tense days following the Floyd killing.

Written by Maggie Hickey, the ex-federal prosecutor keeping watch over court-ordered police department reforms, the report should alarm anyone concerned about safety in Chicago. And it’s further proof of the need for massive change at the $1.7 billion city agency.
Police lacked equipment, training

The report comes on the heels of City Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s equally critical probe released last February of the police’s response to the disturbances and protests.

According to the newest report, police and protesters described scenes of utter disorganization and pandemonium during protests.

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Officers said they were often deployed to areas but had no sense of what to do or who was in charge, once they arrived.

Hickey’s investigation found the department even had problems sending the right number of properly equipped officers to the correct locations.

“Many officers were deployed without their equipment, including radios, body-worn cameras or protective gear and also without provisions for their basic needs, such as transportation or access to rest periods, restrooms, food or water,” the report said.


Protesters said police “pulled their hair; struck them with batons, fists, or other nearby objects; hit them after they were ‘kettled’ with nowhere to go or after being handcuffed, and sprayed them with pepper spray without reason,” according to the report.

“We heard from many community members who expressed new fears, frustrations, confusion, pain and anger regarding their experiences with officers during protests,” the report said.

In response to the report’s release, Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke up for the police department.

“We saw peaceful protests hijacked by vigilantes,” she said. “And then we saw looting.”

“We had not seen anything like that — on that scale across so many neighborhoods in Chicago — maybe ever . . . So we prepared for a large-scale protest. What we got was something very, very different.”

But that isn’t quite the defense that Lightfoot perhaps thinks. Read between the lines of her explanation and it’s an admission that police — despite their training and intelligence-gathering capabilities — were caught absolutely flatfooted and ill-prepared for the events that transpired.

And Hickey’s report bears that out.

“Even if the city and the CPD had predicted the level of protests and unrest after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, the city and the CPD did not have the policies, reporting practices, training, equipment, community engagement or inter-agency coordination required to respond timely and efficiently,” the report said.
Echoes of the past

The report is sobering when viewed in the light of history.

In 1968, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence issued the Walker Report following the “police riot” at the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago that year.

The findings are eerily similar to those in Hickey’s report released this week.

“There is no question but that many officers acted without restraint and exerted force beyond that necessary under the circumstances,” the Walker Report said. “The leadership at the point of conflict did little to prevent such conduct and the direct control of offices by first line supervisors was virtually non-existent.”

We've known the problem for at least a half-century.

Now, it’s time to fix it.

Send letters to letters@sutimes.com.

In a First for the Continent, Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Will Be Produced in South Africa

WEDNESDAY, July 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine will be produced for the first time in Africa by a South African firm, Pfizer announced Wednesday.

The Biovac Institute in Cape Town will produce the vaccine for distribution across Africa, which is in desperate need of more COVID-19 vaccines as cases surge, the Associated Press reported.

Biovac will receive large-batch ingredients for the vaccine from Europe and will blend the components, put them in vials and package them for distribution. The company will begin production in 2022, and the objective is to make more than 100 million doses a year.

This is "a critical step" in increasing Africans' access to an effective COVID-19 vaccine, according to Biovac CEO Dr. Morena Makhoana, the AP reported.

The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is already being made in South Africa and being distributed across Africa, the wire service said. Plans are to deliver 200 million J&J doses across the continent, the AP reported.

South Africa is relying on the Pfizer vaccine in its mass vaccination drive. It has purchased 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which are arriving in weekly deliveries.

More than 5.5 million of South Africa's 60 million people have received at least one jab, with more than 1.4 million fully vaccinated, according to official figures released Wednesday, the AP reported. South Africa's goal is to vaccinate about 67% of its population by February 2022.

Across Africa, vaccination levels are still low, with less than 2% of the continent's population of 1.3 billion having received at least one shot, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More information

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on COVID vaccines.

SOURCE: Associated Press