WHY ARE AMERICAN-INDIAN SOLDIERS ‘SERVING’ IN IRAQ [OR ANYWHERE]?

Why are American Indian soldiers serving in Iraq?
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Posted: August 04, 2006
by: Michael Yellow Bird

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Editor’s note: Dr. Yellow Bird’s essay will be disagreeable to many and welcomed by many. Please read carefully. Share your views witheditor@indiancountry.com.

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An open letter to all indigenous peoples.

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As the United States celebrates its annual Independence Day, I strongly urge all of our nations to hold critical and independent discussions on why we are committing our young people to serve the U.S. military in its occupation of Iraq.

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The recent reporting (including revelations of a cover-up) of the murders, executions and massacres of innocent Iraqi citizens by U.S. troops prompts me to ask, ”Why are indigenous (American Indian) soldiers serving in Iraq?” I wonder why our tribal communities have not had critical debates on the immorality of this war, on the lies of the present Bush administration that got us into this war and on the spiritual, economic, social and psychological costs that our people and the Iraqi people will pay for this war. It is clear from the history of many of our tribes that our people understood the grave costs of war and so took this act very seriously.

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INDIGENOUS APPROACHES TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY: LECTURE AT YUNNAN UNIVERSITY, CHINA

The following Indictment, also published in The 4thMedia in Beijing has been submitted as supporting evidence and argument in several legal cases in Canada, and in several official submissions to high levels of the U.S. Government, without rebuttals of any kind to its content. It is also published, along with other documents, at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the specific request and invitation of the Center and its founder the late Dr. Stephen C. Feinstein who was a real “Mensch” and visionary, rigorously honest and principled, from whom I learned so much in our conversations and many exchanges that I will always remember and cherish. Dr Feinstein could not only see the parallels between the Nazi Holocaust against Jews and other targeted victims, but he saw how Hitler personally, and the Nazi Holocaust were directly “inspired”, from Hitler’s own mouth and speeches (see “Hitler’s Table Talk” also as “Hitler’s Secret Conversations” by Hugh Trevor-Roper) by Hitler’s ideas and take on the American and Canadian genocides against Indigenous Peoples. After he had read some of my work he contacted me and that began a friendship until his death that still saddens me to this day as he was a remarkable human being and a true visionary.

Dr. Feinstein understood that in the rank-ordering of evil, certainly that which inspired the likes of Hitler and his policies (the U.S. and Canadian genocides against Indigenous Peoples), along with the later post-World War II policies applied against Indigenous Peoples that Hitler and the Nazis, along with the likes of the infamous Japanese Unit 731 inspired (with a long list of wanted war criminals brought to the U.S. and Canada and protected in return for their “research” on human subjects being turned over to the U.S. and Canadian and other allied governments), also had to rank highly as pure evil.

Here at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Blackfoot Indictment was originally written for an Investigatory Tribunal on the Indian Residential School Systems of the U.S. and Canada convened on the Apatohsipiikaanii (Northern Peigan) Reserve of the Blackfoot at Brocket, Alberta conducted by Traditional Authorities of the Blackfoot Nation (Hereditary Chiefs, Bundle Holders, Pipe Carriers, Medicine Persons, Elders) under Emergency and Exigent Circumstances (the near extinction of Blackfoot People as a People and indifference/genocidal actions and policies of the U.S. and Canadian Governments)

INDICTMENT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA, DESIGNATED AGENCIES OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND CANADA, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE BRITISH CROWN AND NAMED CHURCHES RESIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND CANADA* FOR THE COMMISSION OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST BLACKFOOT LAW AND PETITION FOR ORDERS MANDATING THE PROSCRIPTION AND DISSOLUTION OF NAMED INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACIES AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS

By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii

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