“If people really knew the history of Sir John A. Macdonald, I’m not sure if they would celebrate his legacy,” Deputy Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler from the Nishnawbe Aski Nation said. (ANDRE FORGET/QMI AGENCY)

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/01/10/sure-john-a-macdonald-was-was-a-racist-colonizer-and-misogynist-but-so-were-most-canadians-back-then/

Nicole Ireland, QMI Agency

Jan 9, 2015, Last Updated: 5:57 PM ET

Aboriginal people in Canada say the 200th anniversary of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth is anything but a cause for celebration.

“If people really knew the history of Sir John A. Macdonald, I’m not sure if they would celebrate his legacy,” Alvin Fiddler, Deputy Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told QMI Agency. Nishnawbe Aski Nation represents 49 First Nation communities in Ontario.

First Nations and Metis people continue to live with the consequences of Macdonald’s policies — both as minister of Indian Affairs and as prime minister — to this day, Fiddler said.

In particular, Macdonald was “instrumental” in establishing the Indian Residential School system in the late 1800s. Back then, Macdonald insisted aboriginal children must be taken from their families and assimilated into the rest of society, rather than receiving education in their own communities.

“When the school is on the reserve, the child lives with his parents who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian,” Macdonald said, according to archived documents. “He is simply a savage who can read and write.”

That view led to a residential school system that lasted more than 100 years, tearing more than 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children away from their families and into boarding schools, where they were forbidden to speak their native languages or practice aboriginal culture and often lived in poor conditions. Many suffered abuse. Survivors — having been isolated from their parents — didn’t know how to bond with their own children, passing the trauma from generation to generation, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission was established when the Canadian government apologized for the residential school era in 2008.

Without understanding the complete historical picture, “it’s simply wrong for Canadians to be celebrating (Macdonald’s) legacy,” Fiddler said.

But Fiddler also sees the anniversary as an opportunity for people to learn more about that part of their history, with the hope that education can ultimately lead to reconciliation between aboriginal people and other Canadians.

“We need to have this conversation,” he said.

In a statement, the Assembly of First Nations said the anniversary has “different meanings for different people.”

“Many Canadians know only the conventional history of Macdonald as a ‘father of Confederation,’ yet for many First Nations the legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald is a painful one,” National Chief Perry Bellegarde said.

“First Nations are often lectured about ‘not living in the past’, but the decisions, policies and actions that are preventing First Nations from achieving the same quality of life and the full expression of our rights to control our lives and lands have a foundation in the early decisions of the settler governments,” he continued. “The commemoration of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birthday should be an opportunity to commit ourselves to understanding our past so we can understand how we can move forward together to create a country where we all thrive and benefit from the beauty and riches of this land.”

Click to enlarge and open in new window

Sure, John A. Macdonald was a racist, colonizer and misogynist — but so were most Canadians back then

Canada Is The Only UN Member To Reject Landmark Indigenous Rights Document

ADDITIONAL READING FROM STTPML:

http://sttpml.org/parts-i-and-ii-combined-breathtaking-hubris-and-hypocrisy-the-real-nature-and-foundations-of-anglo-american-imperiums/

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Residential schools commission calls for 30-year seal on records

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A lawyer for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has presented an alternative option to destroying the testimony of about 38,000 claimants — lock it in a vault for 30 years.

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The claims of 38,000 residential school survivors could be headed for a vault instead of an incinerator depending on the direction of a judge.

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On the second day of arguments over the potential destruction of documents detailing abuse at residential schools, Julian Falconer, the lawyer representing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, proposed an alternative to eradication — locking the documents away for 30 years and then transferring them to Library and Archives Canada.

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“You’re guaranteeing the claimants that no one can access their information for three decades and you’re not putting yourself in that irreversible position the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is worried about,” said Falconer. “The minute you destroythis portion of history, you alter the ability for generations to come to remind people what was done to these individuals.”

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Under the commission’s proposal, survivors would have the option of voluntarily sending their files to the National Research Centre, an archive set up at the University of Manitoba. Falconer also said the commission would accept a 50-year seal on the records if 30 years was deemed to be too short.

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Related:

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Survivors of residential schools push back against document destruction

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission gets access to thousands more documents

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Government ordered to hand over documents about infamous residential school

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The proposal from the lawyer working for the claims secretariat called for all records to be destroyed two years after the last residential school survivor has their claim resolved. Justice Paul Perell, the judge charged with administering the case, said he favours a retention period of at least 15 years in any case.

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Edmund Metatawabin, a survivor of St. Anne’s residential school, has previously opposed the destruction of the documents. He also opposed the suggestion that the records would be locked away and in the hands of the government.

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“In 30 years time, who’s going to remember this issue? Who’s going to be interested in opening this file?” said Metatawabin, who also decried their destruction.

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Metatawabin said the historical records are vital for Canadians to remember the past and learn from it.

“I am one of the survivors who was abused and I say don’t hide them. The people who are trying to hide them never felt all of these abuses, never felt helpless at the hands of perpetrators and predators, never stayed in bed and hoped that nobody would touch them during the night. It was hell to be in there,” said Metatawabin.

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Those who testified in the individual hearings did so with the understanding that their testimony would remain confidential, according to Steven Cooper, partner at Ahlstrom Wright Oliver & Cooper LLP, a firm that has represented more than 2,000 survivors.

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“I can assure you that the vast majority of survivors are aghast at the notion that their records would be maintained,” said Cooper in an email. “Ninety per cent of clients don’t want to see any record of the hearing and are relieved by the thought that the records will be destroyed. Some will only give their testimony on that understanding.”

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The commission’s proposal would pass the documents to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada to be sealed for at least 30 years and a large-scale “enhanced notice” program to inform claimants about the fate of their transcripts, applications and decisions. The notice would also give survivors the opportunity to voluntarily submit their materials to the archive in Manitoba.

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At the end of 30 years, the documents would be transferred to Library and Archives Canada where they would be subject to the federal Access to Information Act and Privacy Act.

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“A destruction order means it’s irreversible. You create an act that can’t be changed about accounts that are some of the most detailed accounts we have access to,” said Falconer. “A court should be empowered to open that vault in two generations to deal with what neither you nor I can anticipate.”

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The hearing is scheduled to continue Wednesday.

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STTPML COMMENT Personal by Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii

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I have served as a “Tribal Judge” on a UN-NGO-Sponsored Tribunal on Indian Residential School Atrocities, I know personally, have interviewed and helped to prepare for trials that never came,  well over 200 survivors; and my own mother, a Blackfoot Indian, suffered at the hands of the Mormons; although they did not run Residential Schools as in Canada, they operated the same and committed the same vile crimes against children and others who opposed them.

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Further, some of those records I and some colleagues have seen. Here is some of the why they want them sealed:

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1) A whole lot of Canadian history and many history books,  will have to be rewritten or be exposed for what they are: cover-ups of genocide and a lot of Canadian notables, after whom many buildings and monuments are named and to whom they continue to pay tribute and cover-up their crimes–not just past, but present and intended for the future.; A whole lot of monuments, building names, awards, etc will look very differently when the history books are written by new generations of scholars. The FBI is part of the “Justice” Department, and the headquarters building is named after J Edgar Hoover, a mobbed-up racist, anti-Semite, extortionist, blackmailer, hid and used as extortion weapons, more crimes than he ever had any real hand in solving. Having a building that is supposed to be about justice named after Hoover is like having a shelter for battered women named after the serial killer Ted Bundy.

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2) The stories told, by different people, from different nations, time periods and clans, who had never met each other, but were abused by the same persons, in the same ways, with the same modus operandi, all these testimonies are not just corroborative, they are a powerful and human indictments and exposures of the system and all those so proudly and smugly white folks (along with non-white collaborators and sell-outs) so proud of their “pure and delightsome” white skin they had nothing to do with, so proud of their “stock” and Anglo-American genes they also had nothing to do with, luminaries of Canadian history, psychopaths and sociopaths many of them.

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3) They show willful, calculated, premeditated and conscious genocide (no need to cover-up what is clean only what is dirty; no need to avoid going to paper if honest and truthful–only if something to hide and attempting to escape exposure and accountability; no need to take reprisals against those bringing phony charges–disprove them–only those bringing the truth); What comes out from the records I and my colleagues have  seen can only be described as being as depraved and psychopathic as anything we have seen including from the Axis fascist powers.

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4) They show crimes in the present and that will continue into the future unless exposed and prosecuted with the possible bill due mounting into the billions of dollars.  Many of the offenders are dead, but their inbred scions, who would be nowhere without the family name, genes and connections, now in positions of power, are very threatened. Their whole Calvinist rationale for rule (White skin, power and wealth the sign and proof of being preordained to rule in God’s grace) crumbles.

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5) The City Council of Vancouver , BC just voted to give notice that the City of Vancouver, BC is on un-ceded, non-Treaty land of several Indigenous nations. That is what the Residential School system was really all about in addition to pure racism, forced assimilation and the rest of it: to break the connections of the nations with their traditional lands and Peoples to destroy any property rights (in the colonizer’s terms) as well as the nations themselves. A a common historical land base, along with common culture and language, common institutions of  governance and leadership selection, common history, common economic life, common  desire to remain a People;  these are the fundamental facts on the ground, plus international law (not recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations or nation-states) that define and protect, when defined as a nation, the rights of all nations  to sovereignty, not to be exterminated, and thus also self-determination, independence, right of indigenous-built social systems, freedom from outside interference in internal affairs not having external effects; and thus the genocide that built and still lives alive and well, some in the same old forms and instruments, some new forms and instruments– all open and naked as defined by Canadian law;

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6) I have seen some “visitor logs” of some Residential Schools with some of the “Great Names” of Canadian history, some of whom were famous when they made overnight “inspection visits” for one of the Churches or for the Government. Why would these notables be bothering with, let alone staying overnight, at some of these “schools” that were all in isolated places for a reason? They were serial abusers handed children to abuse as favors and gifts of bonding from the school administrators. The police knew about it and even provided security for the visits. When modern forensic techniques are applied to the content of those files (various kinds of sociometric and econometric  and network analyses), all sorts of new discoveries will shake the academic world; a cloistered, privileged and self-censoring world that has stayed so safe,with safe topics, from safe paradigms, safe sources, in the safe journals, or the safe media, with safe scopes and depths of analysis and writing, they will be exposed for what they are and represent by the realities they willfully, blindly and with depraved indifference, ignored and even disputed and covered-up.

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7) Many of the children from the Indian Residential Schools both while in the schools and after they left and wound-up on the streets in urban areas, were used for medical experiments, to test vaccines (Hep B etc) as well as used in the infamous CIA MKULTRA program (1950s to 1974?) of Ewen Cameron in McGill. SearchForTheManchurianCandidate I have personally interviewed three victims of this program, taken at different times, but with the same modus operandi, with backgrounds that allowed them to be easily dismissed if they ever talked or could talk and remember; all three were urban Indians, Residential School Survivors of different schools at very different periods but all lured into the program through supposed “help agencies” for the poor. Also many of the students were sterilized under the Alberta Sterilization Act of 1928 and the B.C. “Race Hygiene” Act (that directly inspired the Nazis) mostly under ruses so they did not know until much later they had been sterilized.

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8) The Catholic Church: The CC has just gotten around to admitting some past cases, paying out over 1 billion in sealed settlements so far, and the victims admitted to are all white, middle class, very presentable on camera and very articulate and believable; they have not even admitted all the abuses of Indian children and poor white children (now only in Ireland) and for how long; these records show some of it.

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9) The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was ratified by Canada in 1953 (Indians declared Canadian Citizens 1963) while the U.S. did not bother until 1988 to ratify it but passed a “sovereignty amendment” that vitiated the ratification (in the U.S. American Indians were declared American citizens in 1924 ratified in 1928). In both cases, treaties and conventions, when ratified by the respective governments that signed them, become part of the “Supreme Law of the Land”, but they even trump the Constitutions of the nations that signed them under “Supremacy Clauses” mandated by Canons of Treaty Construction and Contracts. Otherwise, nations could do what Canada and the U.S. routinely do and that is to take the advantages and consideration gained from a treaty or covenant, then ignore or refuse to obey the terms that are considered unfavorable (then do not sign the covenant to be selectively and conveniently kept by one party). These documents then, expose in naked, clear, irrefutable proofs, not only that Canada and the U.S. were built on genocide and theft not people of genius and certain bloodlines destined by God to rule; they indict not only the past, but all the present and future built on  a rotten foundation of lies, theft, genocide and wars of the kind Nazis were hanged for at Nuremberg.

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Residential_Schools Apology Not Acceptedpdf –

– Judicial Findings From the Inter-Nation Tribunal on Indian Residential Schools in Canada  Copy – Indigenous Epistemology and Scientific Method pdf – IndictmentRev1 – genocide-br-en-Clavero – conspiracy theories 387 – Residential_Schools (2) – http://sttpml.org/papers-at-the-university-of-minnesota-center-for-holocaust-and-genocide-studies/ – 44_Carroll_Quigley___The_Anglo_American_Establishment – psycophaths-at-work – eprint of international ed and imper 21598282.2011 – Residential Schools   The Past is Present (PDF), Radio program with James Craven on The United Church, May 2000. Transcription. – Chronicles of Ecoimperialism: Real Whales, Real People (PDF), by James Michael Craven (Blackfoot Confederacy) (Click here for HTML version). – Paper on Blackfoot Nation (PDF). – Indictment Of The Federal Governme – http://sttpml.org/legal-case-against-the-government-of-canada-for-genocide-against-indigenous-people/ – –

From Truth to Truth: The Sacred Hoop. Counter-clockwise, each imperative to the left of a process critical for it; Clockwise, each is an imperative for the process is fundamental to the next imperative.

In a real  Aboriginal Court, there are no: dueling expert witnesses each saying what the paying client wants from the same set of facts; no jury consultants, judge or venue shopping; no political hacks and megalomaniacs voted for patronage-selected as judges; no lawyers only take well-paying low-hanging fruit, looking to “win”; truth and the rest of it does not matter; no formalities and any ritual and process is to serve not obstruct the search for real truth. There is no playing games and slippery use of words and constructs depending on which side of an argument. There is no theatrics allowed but deeply felt emotions are encouraged as they may also yield probative evidence.

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Without the continual and search for Truth, without fear or favor, there can be no Justice; Without Justice (for all concerned including the innocents tainted by crime of a relative) there can be no real Healing (except something like “get over it” and “we’ll go back to the same positions we did crimes in but this time learn from our “mistakes”). Without some Healing there can be no real Reconciliation (that is not just intended to avoid future litigation, discovery of crimes etc). Without Reconciliation, not some phony utterances (“Ok we are over it, now we forget and move forward and of course on our terms”) there can be no Prevention of Future Abuse. Without Prevention of Future Abuse, there can be no climate that values, respects and demands the search for Truth.

This is a small example of what this grotesque cover-up is designed to hide and where it leads to the present and some very powerful and entrenched interests:

PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS ON THE ANGLO-AMERICAN USE AND COVER-UPS OF “MEDICAL RESEARCH” OF JAPANESE AND NAZI WAR CRIMINALS

SEE and SEE and SEE and SEE

FINAL REPORT TO U.S. CONGRESS 2007 ON U.S. AND ALLIED COVER-UPS OF PROTECTION OF NAZI AND JAPANESE WAR CRIMINALS IN RETURN FOR “RESULTS” OF “MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS” TO DEVELOP CHEMCIAL, BIOLOGICAL AND ATOMIC WMDs CONDUCTED INCLUDING ON ALLIED POWs

ANGLO-AMERICAN ORIGINS OF AND INFLUENCES ON NAZI AND JAPANESE IDEOLOGIES, RACIAL THEORIES, “EUGENICS”, “MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS” AND WMDs and OTHER ATROCITIES

The origins of Nazi and Japanese fascist ideology, including “racial theories” have their origins of the imperial and colonial ideologies and racial theories of the British and American Imperiums. In fact both the Japanese and German fascist theorists, along with Hitler himself personally, acknowledged their “inspirations” to have been the historical experiences, policies and racial theories of British and American imperialism and colonialism in the above quotation from John Toland’s “Adolf Hitler Volumes I and II” and in “Hitler’s Secret Conversations” by Hugh Trevor-Roper.

From James Poole:

“He [Hitler] was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government’s forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations his hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large ‘reservation’ in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease.” (James Pool, Hitler and His Secret Partners: Contributions, Loot and Rewards, 1933-1945; Pocket Books, N.Y.op cit. p. 273-274).

and:

“Having been a devoted reader of Karl May’s (sp?) books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as ‘Redskins.’ He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of Indians or Redskins. ‘I don’t see why,’ he said, ‘a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat wheat from Canada, we don’t think about the despoiled Indians.’[James Pool, Hitler and His Secret Partners: Contributions, Loot and Rewards, 1933-1945; Pocket Books, N.Y. 1997 pp. 272-75]

And from some more “primary” sources in Anglo-American History:

“The depiction of Indians as wild beasts was quite common among early English and American leaders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. David E. Stannard writes:

‘As is so often the case, it was New England’s religious elite who made the point more graphically than anyone. Referring to some Indians who had given offense to the colonists, the Reverend Cotton Mather wrote:

“Once you have but got the Track of those Ravenous howling Wolves, then pursue them vigourously; Turn not back till they are consumed… Beat them small as the Dust before the Wind.”

Lest this be regarded as mere rhetoric, empty of literal intent, consider that another of New England’s most esteemed religious leaders, the ReverendSolomon Stoddard, as late as 1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs “to hunt Indians as they do bears.”‘[American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press (1992)), p. 241]“

From Amherst College named after “Lord” Jeffrey Amherst (after whom many towns and cities were named and with statues of him in them all:

Amherst College china plates depicting mounted Englishman with sword chasing Indians on foot were in use until the 1970′s.

And from some of the earliest known forms of calculated Biological Warfare that later inspired the Nazis (from their own mouths) “Lord” Jeffrey Amherst:

“.. Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the fort — an early example of biological warfare — which started an epidemic among them. Amherst himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter to Ecuyer. [p. 108] (Carl Waldman’s Atlas of the North American Indian [NY: Facts on File, 1985]. Waldman writes, in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) by Chief Pontiac’s forces during the summer of 1763)

1763

“Sir Jeffrey Amherst noted for his deliberate use of smallpox-infected blankets as a weapon against Indians. Amherst and his British lieutenants were a marked change from the French commanders at the forts throughout the Old Northwest and Canada. He made no effort to build goodwill with Indian peoples. He had no respect for Indian leaders, treated them contemptuously, and frequently described them as ‘wretched people’. He put an immediate end to the traditional French practice of giving Indians ball and powder when they ran short; he also prohibited emergency provisions if game was scarce, and clothing or gifts of goodwill. Lord Amherst (for whom Amherst College is named) initiated a genocidal new policy:‘Could it not be contrived’ he wrote to one of his officers, ‘to send the smallpox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every strategem in our power to reduce them’. Blankets were taken from the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. It delineated Indian country as west of the line; colonists lands as east of the line.” [Judith Nies “Native American History: A Chronology of a Culture’s Vast Achievements and Their Links to World Events”, Ballantine Books, N.Y., 1996, pp. 190-192]

and:

“The Seneca invaded forts in Pennsylvania. Delaware Indians attacking Fort Pitt (formerly Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg) were presented with ‘gifts’ of blankets taken from the smallpox ward of the fort’s hospital. It started an epidemic that would rage through the Delaware villages and Shawnee towns of Ohio, decimating their populations. Still, by the end of 1763, eight out of 12 British posts had been captured and their garrisons ‘massacred’… Pontiac’s War became a major topic of debate in Britain. The English enlarged Sir Jeffrey Amherst’s powers to subdue the rebellion. (The smallpox blankets of Fort Pitt had been Lord Amherst’s inspiration).” [Judith Nies, Ibid, p. 195]

Conclusion

Bertolt Brecht summed-up the dangerous mentality of the smug elites who write checks with their mouths they pass on to others to cash with the blood and treasure of others.

Those who take the meat from the table,
teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined,
demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry,
of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss,
call ruling too difficult,
for ordinary folk.

Bertolt Brecht

These wanted war criminals wound up as high level politicians (one a Prime Minister of Japan), at high levels of the Yakuza and other underground criminal conspiracies, as professors at prestigious universities and as “scientists” developing Anglo-American WMDs at places like Ft. Detrick. Md a notorious place for the development of biological as well as chemical weapons of mass destruction that then continued this work as well as covered-up where some of the “data” had come from and how it had been obtained.

“Medical” and “Delivery” Experiments to Develop Chemical and Biological Weapons Using Human Beings and even Whole Cities Started by Japanese and German Fascists Continued in the U.S. and Elsewhere Post-War

PLEASE SEE and SEE and SEE and SEE and SEE and SEE

One Traditional Indigenous Definition/Model of Sustainable Development that recognizes and respects the Real Sources and Foundations of All of Creation. In many ways, Traditional Indigenous societies two hundred years ago were 200 years ahead of the present in terms of awareness of totalities and intricate webs of life forms and all that they are an integral and interdependent part of.

Is Blood Band not covered by Charter?

BY LETTER TO THE EDITOR ON JUNE 19, 2014.

Never in the history of the Blood Tribe have we ever experienced such aggressive and hostile governance towards empowerment and self-determination. With the recent developments on the Blood Indian Reserve #148, totalitarianism and fascism have set in; we now have an autocratic regime that believe in annihilation of treaty, aboriginal and indigenous rights.

What we are seeing are forms of governance initiated by Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin and more.

This chief and council has no comprehension of “peace, order and good governance” entrenched in the Canada Act of 1982. Recently, a tribal member was persecuted for believing and practising his rights to farming entrenched in Treaty No. 7.

Prior to Canada becoming a dominion, the Blood Band entered into the Lame Bull Treaty with the U.S. in 1855. The Blood Band already was a sovereign nation; Canada did not exist.

The proceedings ignored and deliberately refused to reference provisions of the Charter of Rights, Sections 7 to 11. Section 15 specifically refers to “equality rights.”

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

The Charter of Rights at this courthouse has ruled that the Charter does not cover members of the Blood Band; let alone s. 35, which reads: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed.”

Was Mr. Fox supposed to receive justice when the band authorities can pick their own apparent “hired gun,” to appear before a person with real conflicts of interest – even beyond the appearance of conflict of interest? How can there be “Rule of Law” without basic due process and equal protections/responsibilities of law applied without fear or favour to all? Why do all valid constitutions have “supremacy clauses” that incorporate ratified and valid treaties into the corpus of – and indeed trump when in conflict with – the constitutions of the nations that signed them? (Reason: otherwise nations could sign treaties and gain advantages from them, but then only keep to the terms they favour under the banner of “sovereignty” as the U.S. and Canada often do).

Keith Chiefmoon

Standoff

 

 

1935 Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws and Classifications. From Nazis own mouths and writings directly inspired by the Anglo-American-German Eugenics movement,, the British Columbia 1933 Race Hygiene Law, the Alberta 1928 Sterilization Act and the sterilization laws of 27 of the U.S. states defining Indians as “feeble-minded per se”.

U.S. states with sterilization laws that inspired the Nazis

 

From Wasi’chu: The Continuing Indian Wars by Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas, Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1979; Introduction, John Redhouse, 1979

“Gold is a wonderful thing! Whoever owns it is lord of all he wants. With gold it is even possible to open for souls the way to paradise!” [Columbus, letter to Isabella and Ferdinand, 1503]

Later, I learned that Pahuska [Lakota name “Long Hair for George Armstrong Custer] had found there much of the yellow metal that makes the Wasi’chu crazy.” [Black Elk, on the U.S. Army expediton to the Black Hills, 1874]

Introduction by John Redhouse

Wasi’chu is the Lakota (Sioux[sic]) word for ‘greedy one who takes the fat.’ It was used to describe a strange race that took not only what it thought it needed [and that “God’s preordination of them as “the Elect” made their needs and wants imperatives]. but also took the rest.

A Mountain of Indian Skulls

STTPML COMMENT: 

Please view the following video by James Starkey that explains that Indigenous peoples and their languages have no words for or concepts of “race”, or even of different colors of skin having anything to do with anything. Wasi’chu refers not only to a certain mentality of greed, selfishness, ultra-individualism, predation, cut-throat competition, malignant narcissism, egoism, hedonism and megalomania,  but also the the type of whole system that that nurtures, requires, reinforces and will collapse without that mentality: capitalism.

Race, or “blood-quantum”as a biological, even social, construct, is totally bogus and bankrupt pseudo-science. The Inuit, for example, have over 100 words for different kinds of snow and snow conditions, but only one word for people or human beings–“Inuit” (a true person) and have no words for people based on skin color or other phenotypical features commonly associated with the bogus concept of “race.” Wasi’chu come in all colors, religions, genders, sexual orientation, socioeconomioc status and class; but most of the Wasi’chu that the Lakota and other Indigenous Peoples confronted were white, and not only proud of it as if they had something to do with their being white, but they were full of certitude that they had been ordained by God to rule the “non-white” races as well as the “inferior stock” (“White Trash”) of the “white race” itself. But the word was always used to refer to mentalities, behaviors and systems that nurture and require the Wasi’chu mentality and consciousness.

Worse, the notion of race and “blood-quantum” it is a central instrument of genocide; Adolf Eichmann could have written this:

“Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians and intermarriage will occur; when that happens, the federal government will be finally freed from its persistent Indian problem.” (BIA Document quoted in “Legacy of Conquest” by Patricia Lamark p. 338)

Introduction by John Redhouse (continued)

Wasi’chu is also a human condition based on inhumanity, racism and exploitation. It is a sickness, a seemingly incurable and contagious disease which begot the ever advancing society of the West. If we do not control it, this disease will surely be the basis of what may be the  last of the continuing wars against the Native American people.

Indians have been the victims of war and aggression for most of the past five hundred years, The so-called Indian Wars were always fought over the issues of land and resources. We have always had something that the Wasi’chu wanted. Even after five hundred years of war and genocide, we still have something that they want.

The Spanish conquered the Inca, Aztec, and Mayan civilizations in search of gold and silver. Today, wars are still being conducted for  mineral wealth on Indian lands.

After the Indian wars of the 1880s were over, we were left with 150 million acres of land. the Dawes Act of 1887 reduced that to 50 million acres through a forced system of individual allotments. we were then assigned to seemingly worthless and barren lands called reservations. We own less than 3 percent of what we once had. And now the Wasi’chu wants all we have left.

In 1978 Indian people possessed 55 percent of the nation’s uranium supply and one-third of the low-sulfur strippable coal reserves. Both coal and uranium are vital to President Caret’s national energy policy. In April 1977 President Carter called the achievement of his energy policy ‘the moral equivalent of war’. To many Indian people that phrase meant that the Indian wars are not yet over and that we must again fight against the U.S. government and multinational corporate interests in order to protect our remaining land and resources.

Many Indian people feed that the Carter administration is one of the worst in modern history. They say that President Carter puts on a democratic face to the rest of the world by advocating human rights for all and treaty rights for Russians and Panamanians. And yet as far as the treatment of the Indian people is concerned, the U.S. government has one of the worst human rights records–and certainly one of the worst treaty rights’ records–in the world.

The authorizing legislation creating the Department of Energy allows the director of the agency to enter into a pact with the Department of Defense to seize unilaterally and hold areas of strategic significance if such action is justified as being in the ‘national interest.’ For Indian nations that have enough energy resources to make a difference in the future direction of this country, such a stipulation is equivalent to a threat to call out the calvary again.

In recent years the Navajo  Nation has rejected a proposed lease by Western Gasification company (WESCO) to construct the nation’s first and the world’s largest commercial coal gasification plants on their reservation. The Navajo have also threatened to cancel the leases of Four Corners Power Plant and Navajo mine. The power plant is one of the world’s worst industrial polluting sources, while the mine is one of the largest coal strip mines in the western hemisphere.

The Northern Cheyenne and Crow Nations have each taken legal action to cancel the coal leases on their reservations. The Northern Cheyenne have to this date halted construction of the nearby Colstrip Power Plant. the two Indian nations sit atop one of the world’s largest coal deposits.

The Laguna Pueblo Nation is considering whether to renew its uranium-mining lease, which includes the largest uranium strip mine in the world.

Yet for Indian nations to defy the national policies of the U.S. government and multinational corporate interests is to defy the two most powerful forces on the face of the earth. To do so is to invite possible military intervention. For most Indians it would not be the first time. During the 1973 Arab oil embargo the U.S. government made contingency plans to intervene militarily in order to secure ‘our’ oil in the Middle East because it was in the ‘national interest’. So if the Wasi’chu government talks about using military intervention to secure ‘our’ oil in an area halfway around the world, what is it going to say about securing ‘our’ coal and ‘our’ uranium right here in Indian Country?

The Carter administration [and every one since] maintains a complete silence on any semblance of an Indian policy. Even President Nixon had an Indian policy. That is why Indian people are now saying that Carter’s Indian policy is really his energy policy.

Now enter the anti-Indian backlash. Although anti-Indian sentiment has always existed, it has now developed into a full-scale national anti-Indian movement aimed at stripping us of our legal rights and ultimately of our remaining land and resources. The strength of this movement has been manifested by the introduction of eleven pieces of legislation, several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions adverse to Indian self-determination, and numerous state anti-Indian bills. The Congressional bills range from those that would abrogate all Indian treaties to those that would limit our water rights and tribal self-government. the state bills propose to disenfranchise Indian people of their right to vote and hold public office. The Supreme Court decisions have further undermined our tribal sovereignty and jurisdiction.

It is now said that we are facing the gravest crisis in our history as Indian people. We are still being faced with the military calvary. Now we are also being faced with the legislative, judicial, bureaucratic, and corporate cavalries, whose missions are one in the same: to destroy the physical and spiritual basis of our existence and survival as a people. What is left of our lives, land, water, resources, way of life, sovereignty, and future is being threatened. The Wasi’chu have already taken everything else. Now they want all we have left. Except for the Final Indian War, the circle is complete.

Niahuau Ahakanbith! (“The Whites are crazy!”)

Niathuau Ahakanith! (“The Whites are crazy!”)

Lakota Song, Ghost Dance, Wounded Knee, 1890

The Past is Prologue in The Continuing Indian Wars by Bruce Johansen and Roberto Maestas

The major thesis of this book is that the economic, cultural and political forces which propelled mercantile colonialism across the Atlantic are now in retreat; the Wasi’chu of today have found it increasingly necessary to exploit domestic people and resources to sustain their system. As this exploitation intensifies, all outside the Wasi’chu classes are learning what it is like to be “Indian”. (p. 18)

The story of the past Indian wars is a well-told one; it has been easy and comfortable to  categorize the last century, and prior history, as a time inhabited by strangely unenlightened and greedy souls who plundered two continents. To categorize ‘the past’ as a separate time, unconnected to and not influencing the present, ignores the continuance of cultural, political, and economic beliefs and systems which transcend single human life spans.  Our thesis is that the mechanisms which motivated the plundering of the past are still present–sometimes more subtle, sometimes more refined–with similar goals; the theft of life, land, and resources from America’s first inhabitants. (pp 18-19)

What have been called “The Indian wars” never were (and are not today) exclusively a matter between conflicting “races”. they have been (and are) matters of conflicting ideologies. Just as the Lakota did not call the invaders ‘palefaces’, but ‘the greedy ones’, the Cheyenne called them Veho–‘spiders’ [who surround and choke their prey]. The categorization of peoples by their [supposed] biological characteristics (including skin color) has been emphasized throughout history by the Wasi’chu as part of the colonial system of subjugation, but some non-Indians and many Indians have never fallen prey to this fundamental building block of racist thought.

The differences attributed to peoples’ intellects on the basis of biological characteristics have had a central place in the ideology, or rationalization, of subjugation. The domination of people is an act of war that demands first that those people be portrayed in the subjugator’s minds as an enemy, a less-than-human adversary. Throughout the history of conquest racial stereotypes have tended to stiffen when the need for Indian land and resources was greatest. Between times, the savages may have been noble, but they were still portrayed as savages. The image of the savage (which became embodied in U.S. Indian policy) has had two sides: the noble savage (Indian or child figure) and the ignoble savage (Indian as a warrior or as a resister). the stereotypes of Indians created in the European mind have been used to justify conquest around the world, from colonialism in Africa, to the British regime in India, to recent attempts on the part of the United States to ‘pacify’ Vietnam by destroying ‘gooks’. Any imperialistic culture finds it necessary, in defense of its own humanistic self-image, to demean its victims.” (p. 20)

Supporting Evidence (Source Documents)

http://sttpml.org/parts-i-and-ii-combined-breathtaking-hubris-and-hypocrisy-the-real-nature-and-foundations-of-anglo-american-imperiums/

http://sttpml.org/the-cia-and-wanted-nazi-war-criminals/

http://sttpml.org/the-horrifying-anglo-american-roots-of-nazi-eugenics/

http://sttpml.org/bush-family-skull-and-bones-nazis-and-eugenics-parts-1-4/

http://sttpml.org/canada/genocide-right-here-right-now-some-of-the-evidence/

By Glen CoulthardPosted in – Voices Rising on November 5th, 201316 Comments

There is a significant and to my mind problematic limitation that is increasingly being placed on Indigenous efforts to defend our rights and our lands. This constraint involves the type of tactics that are being represented as morally legitimate in our efforts to defend our land and rights as Indigenous peoples on the one hand, and those which are viewed at as morally illegitimate because of their disruptive and extra-legal character on the other.

With respect to those approaches deemed “legitimate” in defending our rights, emphasis is often placed on formal “negotiations” – usually carried out between “official” Aboriginal leadership (usually men) and representatives of the Crown (also usually men) – and if need be coupled with largely symbolic acts of peaceful, non-disruptive protest that must abide by Canada’s “rule of law.”

Then there are those approaches increasingly deemed “illegitimate.” These include but are not limited to forms of protest and direct action that seek to influence power through less mediated and sometimes more disruptive measures, like the slowing of traffic for the purpose of leafleting and solidarity-building, temporarily blocking access to Indigenous territories with the aim of impeding the exploitation of First Nations’ land and resources, or in rarer cases still, the re-occupation of a portion of Indigenous land (rural or urban) through the establishment of reclamation sites that also serve to disrupt, if not entirely block, access to Indigenous territories by state and capital for prolonged periods of time.

Regardless of their diversity and specificity, however, most of these activities tend to get branded in the media in a wholly negative manner: as reactionary, threatening, and disruptive.

Blockades and beyond

What the recent actions of the Mi’kmaq land and water defenders at Elsipogtog demonstrate is that direct actions in the form of Indigenous blockades are both a negation and an affirmation. They are a crucial act of negation insofar as they seek to impede or block the flow of resources currently being transported from oil and gas fields, refineries, lumber mills, mining operations, and hydro-electric facilities located on the dispossessed lands of Indigenous nations to international markets. These forms of direct action, in other words, seek to negatively impact the economic infrastructure that is core to the colonial accumulation of capital in settler political economies like Canada’s. Blocking access to this critical infrastructure has historically been quite effective in forging short-term gains for Indigenous communities. Over the last couple of decades, however, state and corporate powers have also become quite skilled at recuperating the losses incurred as a result of Indigenous peoples’ resistance by drawing our leaders off the land and into negotiations where the terms are always set by and in the interests of settler capital.

What tends to get ignored by many self-styled pundits is that these actions are also an affirmative gesture of Indigenous resurgence insofar as they embody an enactment of Indigenous law and the obligations such laws place on Indigenous peoples to uphold the relations of reciprocity that shape our engagements with the human and non-human world – the land. The question I want to explore here, albeit very briefly, is this: how might we begin to scale-up these often localized, resurgent land-based direct actions to produce a transformation in the colonial economy more generally? Said slightly differently, how might we move beyond a resurgent Indigenous politics that seeks to inhibit the destructive effects of capital to one that strives to create Indigenous alternatives to it?

Rebuilding our nations

In her recent interview with Naomi Klein, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson hints at what such an alternative or alternatives might entail for Indigenous nations. “People within the Idle No More movement who are talking about Indigenous nationhood are talking about a massive transformation, a massive decolonization”; they are calling for a “resurgence of Indigenous political thought” that is “land-based and very much tied to that intimate and close relationship to the land, which to me means a revitalization of sustainable local Indigenous economies.”

Without such a massive transformation in the political economy of contemporary settler-colonialism, any efforts to rebuild our nations will remain parasitic on capitalism, and thus on the perpetual exploitation of our lands and labour. Consider, for example, an approach to resurgence that would see Indigenous people begin to reconnect with their lands and land-based practices on either an individual or small-scale collective basis. This could take the form of “walking the land” in an effort to re-familiarize ourselves with the landscapes and places that give our histories, languages, and cultures shape and content; to revitalizing and engaging in land-based harvesting practices like hunting, fishing, and gathering, and/or cultural production activities like hide-tanning and carving, all of which also serve to assert our sovereign presence on our territories in ways that can be profoundly educational and empowering; to the re-occupation of sacred places for the purposes of relearning and practicing our ceremonial activities.

Although all of these place-based practices are crucial to our well-being and offer profound insights into life-ways that provide frameworks for thinking about alternatives to an economy predicated on the perpetual exploitation of the human and non-human world, at the micro-political level that these practices tend to operate they still require that we have access to a mode of subsistence detached from the practices themselves. In other words, they require that we have access to a very specific form of work – which, in our present economy depends on the expropriation of our labour and the theft of our time for the profit of others – in order to generate the cash required to spend this regenerative time on the land.

A similar problem informs self-determination efforts that seek to ameliorate our poverty and economic dependency through resource revenue sharing, more comprehensive impact benefit agreements, and affirmative action employment strategies negotiated through the state and with industries tearing-up Indigenous territories. Even though the capital generated by such an approach could, in theory, be spent subsidizing the revitalization of certain cultural traditions and practices, in the end they would still remain dependent on a predatory economy that is entirely at odds with the deep reciprocity that forms the cultural core of many Indigenous peoples’ relationships with land.

Developing Indigenous political-economic alternatives

What forms might an Indigenous political-economic alternative to the intensification of capitalism on and within our territories take? For some communities, reinvigorating a mix of subsistence-based activities with more contemporary economic ventures is one alternative. In the 1970s, for example, the Dene Nation sought to curtail the negative environmental and cultural impacts of capitalist extractivism by proposing to establish an economy that would apply traditional concepts of Dene governance – decentralized, regional political structures based on participatory, consensus decision-making – to the realm of the economy. At the time, this would have seen a revitalization of a bush mode of production, with emphasis placed on the harvesting and manufacturing of local renewable resources through traditional activities like hunting, fishing, and trapping, potentially combined with and partially subsidized by other economic activities on lands communally held and managed by the Dene Nation. Economic models discussed during the time thus included the democratic organization of production and distribution through Indigenous co-operatives and possibly worker-managed enterprises.

Revisiting Indigenous political-economic alternatives such as these could pose a real threat to the accumulation of capital on Indigenous lands in three ways. First, through mentorship and education these economies reconnect Indigenous people to land-based practices and forms of knowledge that emphasize radical sustainability. This form of grounded normativity is antithetical to capitalist accumulation. Second, these economic practices offer a means of subsistence that can over time help break our dependence on the capitalist market by cultivating self-sufficiency through the localized and sustainable production of core foods and life materials that we distribute and consume within our own communities on a regular basis. Third, through the application of Indigenous governance principles to non-traditional economic activities we open up a way of engaging in contemporary economic ventures in an Indigenous way that is better suited to foster sustainable economic decision-making, an equitable distribution of resources within and between Indigenous communities, Native women’s political and economic emancipation, and empowerment for Indigenous citizens and workers who may or must pursue livelihoods in sectors of the economy outside of the bush. Why not critically apply the most egalitarian and participatory features of our traditional governance practices to all of our economic activities, regardless of whether they are undertaken in land-based or urban contexts? Cities are on Indigenous land too, and a hell of a lot of us currently live in them.

New alliances, new opportunities

The capacity of resurgent Indigenous economies to challenge the hegemony of settler-colonial capitalism in the long term can only happen if certain conditions are met, however. First, all of the colonial, racist, and patriarchal legal, political obstacles that have been used to block our access to land need to be confronted and removed. Of course capitalism continues to play a core role in dispossessing us of our lands and self-determining authority, but it only does so in concert with axes of exploitation and domination configured along racial, gender and state lines. Given the resilience of these equally devastating relations of power, our efforts to decolonize must directly confront more than just economic relations; they must account for the complex ways that capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and the state interact with one another to form the constellation of power relations that sustain colonial patterns of behavior, structures, and relationships. Dismantling these oppressive structures will not be easy. It will require that we continue to assert our presence on all of our territories, coupled with an escalation of confrontations with the forces of colonization through the forms of direct action that are currently being undertaken by communities like Elsipogtog.

Second, we also have to acknowledge that the significant political leverage required to simultaneously block the economic exploitation of our people and homelands while constructing alternatives to capitalism will not be generated through our direct actions and resurgent economies alone. Settler-colonization has rendered our populations too small to affect this magnitude of change. This reality demands that we continue to remain open to, if not actively seek out and establish, relations of solidarity and networks of trade and mutual aid with national and transnational communities and organizations that are also struggling against the imposed effects of globalized capital, including other Indigenous nations and national confederacies; urban Indigenous people and organizations; the labour, women’s, GBLTQ2S, and environmental movements; and, of course, those racial and ethnic communities that find themselves subject to their own distinct forms of economic, social and cultural marginalization. The initially rapid and relatively widespread support expressed both nationally and internationally for the Idle No More movement last spring, and the solidarity generated around the Elsipogtog anti-fracking resistance today, gives me hope that establishing such relations are indeed possible.

It’s time for our communities to seize the unique political opportunities of the day. In the delicate balancing act of having to ensure that one’s social conservative contempt for First Nations doesn’t overwhelm one’s neoconservative love of the market, Prime Minister Harper has erred by letting the racism and sexism of the former outstrip his belligerent commitment to the latter. This is a novice mistake that Liberals like Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin learned how to manage decades ago. As a result, the federal government has invigorated a struggle for Indigenous self-determination that must challenge the relationship between settler-colonization and free-market fundamentalism in ways that refuse to be co-opted by scraps of recognition, opportunistic apologies, and the cheap gift of political and economic inclusion. For Indigenous nations to live, capitalism must die. And for capitalism to die, we must actively participate in the construction of Indigenous alternatives to it.

—
Glen Coulthard is a member of the Yellowknives (Weledeh) Dene First Nation and an assistant professor in the First Nations Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. This piece is drawn in part from his forthcoming book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (University of Minnesota Press, summer 2014). Follow him on Twitter:@denerevenge

capitalism decolonization Dene Nation Elsipogtog nationhood post-capitalism resurgence