Mariah Screaming Bird

* **Name:**Screaming Bird/Mariah Gourneau
* **Position:**Shirt Wearer (Upper Yankton Council Fire), Oceti Sakowin Governor for the Red River Disputed Military Zone .
* **Allegiences:** Citizen of the Mikinaakwajiw-ininiwag band of the Anishinaabe. Member of the Naca Omniciye Socity for the Upper Yankton Council Fire, member of the Dreaming Coyote Akichita Society and founder of the Screaming Bird Akitchita Society.
* **Metatype:** Human (*Homo sapiens sapiens*)
* **DOB**: 5/25/1995, Belcourt ND (now known as Siipiising, Upper Yankton CF)

Mariah Screaming Bird has been in this fight her whole life and longer then there's been a Sixth World. Born in the Turtle Mountain Reservation well before the Awakening, she was raised in the Catholic Church, but rediscovered her ancestral faith in her mid-teens. About the same time, she entered the world of activitsm. The years leading up to the Awakening were chaotic ones and there was more than enough to do in the fight to try and save the world. In particular, she joined the struggle to prevent a pipeline from being built that would contaminate her people's water supply. An alliance of people came together, calling themselves Water Protectors to try and prevent it. They didn't succeed, but by that time she had learned to fight the good fight and she had already met a charismatic young Paiute activist leader named Daniel Coleman, who went by the true name Howling Coyote. Yeah. You know where this is going.

Sensing a fellow traveler in defending their peoples in a nation that was once again turning against them as a declining USA turned on any scapegoat it could find that it didn't think could hit back, including native peoples who were once again losing their lands to the big corporations and industrialists. Daniel Howling Coyote recruited Screaming Bird into the Sovereign American Indian Movement (SAIM) and she became one of his cheif recruiters and grassroots organizers. After the Lone Eagle incident, when the President labeled Native Americans as enemies of America, she and Howling Coyote were among the SAIM and other Native American activists rounded up and detained in the "Abilene Re-Education Center" by Homeland Security.

And she was one of the circle of true believers and volunteers who assisted Howling Coyote in performing the Great Ghost Dance and one of the few members of that circle who lived to walk out of that camp with him. Now gifted with effective magic , she traveled as a Shaman, organizing other Native Americans and resistance to the backlash from the anglophone populace. She was a national Enemy of the People until the general amnesty and the Treaty of Denver and the recognition of the Native American Nations. Screaming Bird returned to her people to help lead them into this new era she had helped make. The Anishinaabe joined with the other Plains peoples under the banner of the Lakotah in the Oceti Sakowin , the Seven Council Fires.

She was one of the first twenty-eight councilors at the first full meeting of the Seven Council Fires and returned to a life position in the Upper Yankton's Naca Omnicye Society. She was instrumental in helping to design the SDF's combat shaman training program. An entire generation of fighting casters in the Oceti Sakowin grew up learning her techniques and idolizing her early battle. A generation that would have the chance to follow her the next time the Sioux took up arms against the old enemy in the UCAS .

In 2064, when word reached the Oceti Sakowin of the New Revolution 's attempted coup in the UCAS, it caused great concern at the highest levels of the Sioux Nation. The New Revolution had included a great deal of rhetoric about 'Manifest Destiny' and 'Taking Back Our Continent' that all sounded awfully familiar to someone who'd come to political maturity during the first couple of decades of the Twenty-First Century. So when the Council started looking at people to lead the peacekeeping expedition, she was quick to volunteer. Taking the rank of 'Shirt Wearer' Screaming Bird led a three-nation alliance (between SDF regulars, Niswi-mishkodewinan volunteers and Diné Auxiliaries) of peacekeepers to secure the border if the worst happened and the militant New Revolution came to power. Screaming Bird extended the border west to the Red River and led the forces entrusted to her to victory in what the Oceti Sakowin has come to call the Third Ghost Dance War . Given her role in taking it, it was only natural, once the Alexandria Accords created the Red River Disputed Military Zone, that she be appointed the Oceti Sakowin's half of the Governors of the RRDMZ, a post she has held from that day to this. She currently maintains her governor's offices in the Zone capital of Winnipeg.

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