ARE YOU AN AMERICAN ? PROVE IT.

[Donald Rich]

From AARP Bulletin March, 2008. Your Health: Medicaid.
By Barbara Basler

Hi-Lites

Bernice Todd's Choctaw family roots back in the soil of Oklahoma .
The 39 Yr Old Bernice Todd, is in the Middle of a battle with Cancer .
Bernice Baby-Sits and Cleans houses in a trailer park to make a living, LOST her State Medicaid Health Care Coverage because?? Although she's a Native American, she could not prove she is a US Citizen.
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PART 2
Although Bernice's case is full of irony, she is one of thousands who are falling victim to a NEW Federal rule-aimed at keeping Illegal immigrants off the Medicaid Rolls. (Home Land Security)
Requiring recipients to prove citizenship and identity with documents many don't have.
GET YOUR PAPERS READY.

[Little Dog]

This is related to the topic of one of the articles in the main page.

Your story also brings up the issue of medicine. Even when we use modern medical techniques, we need to have the right to receive treatment within our communities if we so choose. That could be a whole other thread! (Would love to hear from anyone in a care-giving profession who has something to contribute!)

Back to Don's topic: The separation of Native American identity from federal citizen identity seems absurd. This could affect voting rights and other things like military duty, too!

Please post a link to the orignial article if you can, Don. This one looks like bureaucrats-gone-wild. We'll all want to follow the developments.

[Sheila Kennedy- Robinson]

Thank you Little Dog, I have enjoyed reading your articles.The governments of the world totally amaze me, and the lack of the 'rights' that many of our forefathers fought to preserve.

I grew up in a Western Medical household with some years in East Africa before my parents moved to Australia in the 1960's. In my family I am the 'black sheep' because I do not follow the family 'nursing' tradition. Instead I am an alternative therapist / healer.

Many are the clients I have worked with, when like with myself the western medicine failed and failed miserably. Australia, a supposedly modern country would not recognize the work of one of the wonderful people I trained with although his methods are taught at university level in other countries.

For many sick people treatment in their homes or their communities is much less stressful than a strange hospital or often another town or city.

Big Pharma continues to supply drugs which may harm more than they help, and those who need are turned down as in the case of Bernice Todd [above]

Have our government bureaucrats around the world gone seriously gone mad, we are who we are, our heritage is a part of us, each and every one of us. I have a friend here in Australia of 'mixed' descent who told me many years ago that if you have one drop of Aboriginal blood then you are 'an Aboriginal'. Well I don't have Aboriginal
blood in my veins, but I class many Aboriginals and their descendants as my friends as I do friends of many other cultures. I believe that we are all made in the image of the Creator and how could we not all be beautiful, no matter our color or caste.

Love and Light
Sheila

[Little Dog]

Oh, before I forget: please pop into the "Welcome" thread and give us a short self-intro, ok?

[Little Dog]

You bring up a very interesting point, Sheila: the question of "mixed blood". For the racial purists, like many of the European groups who have dominated the American political system for many years, a "drop of" indigenous blood was a contamination, hence the terms like "octoroon" and "quadroon" as well as "mulatto" and "colored" in American traditions.

African-Amercians have an interesting term: "red-headed stepchild". This refers to the cast-off children of white fathers and African-american mothers, and it gives an interesting contrast to it's mirror term, "n-- in the woodpile" that is so filled with hate I dare not print it out even in the context of this discussion.

"Red-headed stepchild" has that lovely mix of affection and distance that carries the African depth of honest love as well as honest recognition of the natural resentment of the situation. "N-- in the woodpile" carries within it another kind of honesty: honest recognition of the servant status and the life-giving work (wood-pile=hearth fuel) of the mother's role in the white slave-holder's family and also honest recognition that affection never entered into the relationship as far as the slave-holders were concerned.

Now this modern question of "citizenship" is highly bureaucratic and I am sure the bureaucrats would choke on their own laughter if I went to them and suggested that the paper process they are demanding of all people on American soil is a superstitious ritual, a ritual involving banishment and primitive fear of the "other", etc.

Ah, but what other explanation than superstition could there be, since people like Bernice Todd have done nothing to deserve banishment from the community of those entitled to medical support?

[Little Dog]

BTW, here is the link to the article mentioned in Don's original post:
http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/medicare/citizenship_medicaid_rules.html

[Donald Rich]

------------------------------------------------------------------
PART 2
Although Bernice's case is full of irony, she is one of thousands who are falling victim to a NEW Federal rule-aimed at keeping Illegal immigrants off the Medicaid Rolls. (Home Land Security)
Requiring recipients to prove citizenship and identity with documents many don't have.
GET YOUR PAPERS READY.

[Little Dog]

We are obsessed with papers. One person accuses another of not belonging to a tribe because they lack papers, and the same persona can accuse another of not belonging because if they were "really" there the papers would not matter.

It has never before been necessary to prove your citizenship to anyone except at voting time. This is a real tyranny of the petty bureaucrats that is upon us.