9979: Stove Top’s Plymouth Crock.

In What’s Black About It? by Pepper Miller and Herb Kemp, the authors spotlighted a case study involving Stove Top. To target Black consumers, the brand tapped research showing the audience preferred using cornbread over loaf bread, and referred to the side dish as dressing versus stuffing (see excerpt above). This marketing insight came to mind while viewing the new Stove Top campaign by The Martin Agency—a White shop in Richmond, Virginia—featuring annoyed Pilgrims to position the product as being great for occasions beyond Thanksgiving. Can’t help but wonder how the characters and concept cross over to Black consumers. Or Latinos. Or Native Americans.

Maybe Stove Top will produce a targeted commercial featuring Malcolm X proclaiming, “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us.”

9892: Wyoming Tribe To Kill Bald Eagles.

From USA TODAY…

Wyoming tribe gets OK to kill 2 bald eagles for ceremonies

By Michael Winter, USA TODAY

In a rare and potentially landmark decision, a Wyoming Indian tribe has received federal approval to kill two bald eagles for religious ceremonies, the Associated Press reports.

The Northern Arapaho Tribe had sued the government last year, arguing its members’ religious freedom was being violated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refusal to issue a “take” permit.

Federal law prohibits killing a bald eagle, the national bird. Eagle feathers and body parts are kept in a federal repository for tribal religious ceremonies.

The agency issued the permit Friday, allowing the tribe to kill two bald eagles off the Wind River Indian Reservation. The tribe shares the land with the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, which opposed killing the birds on the reservation.

“I’ve not heard of a take permit for a bald eagle,” Steve Moore, a lawyer with the Native American Rights Fund, or NARF, in Boulder, Colo., told AP. He said he and the fund “see it as a legitimate expression of sovereignty by the tribe, and respect for that sovereignty by the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

Fish and Wildlife had never issued a kill permit through 2009. AP says it wasn’t clear immediately if another permit was issued before the one given to the Northern Arapaho.

Although the bald eagle was taken off the U.S. list of threatened species in 2007, the species is still covered by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which was enacted in 1940. Learn more about their recovery.

9872: Hi-Yo, Stereotypes—Away!

The New York Post reported Johnny Depp will play Tonto in the upcoming movie, “The Lone Ranger.” Native Americans across the nation are flinching right now.

‘Ranger’ wing man Johnny

By Todd Venezia

Hi-yo, Johnny — away!

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer yesterday released the first photos from the set of his new cowboy flick “The Lone Ranger,” featuring Johnny Depp as Indian brave Tonto.

“Tonto and The Lone Ranger Ride Again!” Bruckheimer declared in his Twitter post containing the picture.

Depp is cast alongside his kemo sabe, the Lone Ranger, played by Armie Hammer, of “The Social Network” fame.

The film is set to hit theaters in May 2013. From the looks of the raven headdress on Depp, it seems Tonto is going to be as weird and wild as some of Depp’s other roles and nothing like the Tonto played by Jay Silverheels opposite Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger in the legendary 1950s TV series.

9820: Altoids’ Curiously Racist Commercial.

This new Altoids commercial makes light of Dutch colonists offering Native Americans a box of mints in exchange for land. The colonist rescinds the offer, probably realizing it will be easier to simply seize the country by force.

9783: InBev Not Indian-Friendly…?

Reuters reported on a $500 million lawsuit filed by Native Americans against beer manufacturers including Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide Inc, SAB Miller, Molson Coors Brewing Company and Pabst Brewing Company. An indirect link to the Budweiser ad posted earlier?

Indian tribe files $500 million suit against big brewers

By James B. Kelleher

(Reuters) - A Native American Indian tribe sued leading beer makers seeking $500 million in damages and accusing them of knowingly contributing to “crippling” alcoholism rates on one of the nation’s largest reservations in South Dakota.

The suit, filed by the Oglala Sioux tribe, alleges the brewers are “engaged in a common enterprise focused on assisting and participating in the illegal importation of alcohol” onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the sale, possession and consumption of alcohol is illegal.

The brewers sued include Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide Inc, SAB Miller, Molson Coors Brewing Company and Pabst Brewing Company, as well as four retailers in Whiteclay, Neb., and the distributors who sell to them.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal court in Lincoln, Neb., claims the defendants have knowingly turned Whiteclay, a small town Nebraska side of the border with South Dakota, into a major source of alcohol smuggling to the reservation. Whiteclay sells volumes of beer “far in excess of an amount that could be sold in compliance with the laws of the state of Nebraska.”

The lawsuit says Whiteclay has a population of fewer than 12 people and “no publicly accessible place to lawfully consume alcohol.” Yet each day, the four retailers in town sell more than 13,000 cans of beer.

Much of that beer ends up on the reservation, according to the lawsuit, where it has “devastating effects” on the tribe.

The suit says alcoholism is a scourge on Pine Ridge, a 2 million-acre reservation in southwestern South Dakota that is home to an estimated 40,000 people, most of them enrolled members of the Oglala Sioux tribe.

Eighty-five percent of the tribe’s members are “affected by alcoholism,” according to the suit, and one in four children born on Pine Ridge is diagnosed with either fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

The tribe is seeking $500 million in compensation to pay for “all damages it has suffered in the past and in reasonably likely to suffer in the future” as a result of the alcohol sales in Whiteclay.

SAB Miller declined to comment on the lawsuit. Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide Inc and Molson Coors Brewing Company did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the poorest spots in the country, according to the U.S. Census. More than 50 percent of its residents live below the poverty line, compared with 15.1 percent nationally. Shannon County, which lies entirely within the reservation, is the third poorest county in the country, the Census says.

The unemployment rate consistently tops 80 percent, according to most estimates. Violent crime and other social ills, including a high suicide rate, are all major problems on the reservation, according to the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

A 2011 Centers for Disease Control report on the health of racial groups said that Native Americans report more binge drinking episodes per month and higher alcohol consumption per episode than other races.

A number of theories have been suggested to explain why binge drinking—defined as five drinks in a sitting for men and four for women—is such a problem among Native Americans, according to a National Institutes of Health survey of literature.

Among those are high unemployment and poverty rates on reservations, NIH said. Of the five counties in the United States with poverty rates greater than 39 percent, four are located within American Indian reservations, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

One other theory is that American Indian traditional culture may help explain the attraction of drinking. American Indians may “drink rapidly to induce an altered state of consciousness, a practice congruent with some Native American practices,” the NIH survey said.

(Reporting by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Greg McCune)

9780: This Bud’s For Sioux…?

Before crowning itself The King of Beers, it appears Budweiser was first a lowly chief. And what’s with the image—did the Native Americans just trade land for some Bud?

9580: Revisionist History Of Wall Street…?

Couldn’t find any references to support the quote in this Italian ad, including sources here, here, here and here. Black slaves were reportedly involved in building the wall, and it was apparently used to defend against attacks from Native Americans. These days, it seems like Wall Street stops Blacks from entering.

Update: Found one source to corroborate the ad claim.

From Ads of the World.