Reflections from the Ah­nish­i­nah­bæó^t­jib­way (We, the People)

To the Editor:

On Wednesday, January 8, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a Commentary article (reprinted from the Los Angeles Times) by Michael S. Berliner of the Ayn Rand Institute, praising the “Civilization” brought by Christopher Columbus to these Continents.

The article begins by claiming that Congressman Ben Nighthorse Campbell is “an American Indian.”  This is true (anybody can be an Indian, and genealogical records prove that full-blooded White people were turned into full-blooded “enrolled Indians” by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is a White political institution).  But Congressman Campbell is not an Aboriginal Indigenous person from either one of these Continents.  He is identifying himself as an “Indian,” fraudulently claiming to be an Aboriginal Indigenous person.  There is a crucial distinction here.  Mr. Campbell is an European, from his patrilineal ancestry.  Although he may have had a few Aboriginal Indigenous ancestors on his mother’s side, by both the patrilineal inheritance of the Aboriginal Indigenous People, and the patrilineal inheritance of the Europeans, Congressman Campbell is gone as an Aboriginal Indigenous person.  He belongs within the Indo-European patrilines, and never was an Aboriginal Indigenous person.  Things would be different if Congressman Campbell stood up and spoke out for the Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples, but he can’t, because his Sovereignty and identity are owned by the White man.  There were no “Indians” here before 1492, Mr. Berliner.  The only “real Indians” here now came from India.

Whether Congressman Campbell is called “Indian” or “Native American,” or by whatever U.S.-created Tribe he might claim, these are fraudulent identities.  The Chip-away Indians of Northern Minnesota are part of these same fraudulent identities: they do not have the patrilineal Clans or Dodems of the Anishinabe Ojibway (We, the People).  Historical and genealogical documents show that these “Chip-away Indians” are European Metis brought in from the East, who were put on the “tribal rolls” by the same White men who created “Federally Recognized Indian Tribes.”  Why do “Indians” need to be “Federally Recognized” by a White man?  Don’t they know who they are?  Or is there some fakery going on?  Grouping Aboriginal Indigenous People into “tribes” is another Euro-American sham.  I am of the Anishinabe Ojibway Nation, and I am proud of who I am.  My culture and my identity have had their roots in this land, my land, for countless millennia.  My ancestors did not come over the Bering Strait, either—this is more self-serving crooked European pseudo-history.

Mr. Berliner’s article goes on to state that “before 1492, what is now the United States was sparsely inhabited, unused and undeveloped.  The inhabitants were primarily wandering hunter-gatherers, living hand-to-mouth and day-to-day. ... there were endless, bloody wars.  With rare exception, life was nasty, brutish, and short.”

If life was so cruel here, why did boat-load after boat-load of Europeans sign themselves into virtual slavery under indentures to pay their passage to the “promised land?”  Let’s look at the facts, Mr. Berliner.

Life in Europe in 1492, and for a long time thereafter, was indeed “nasty, brutish, and short.”  War, after war, after war, raged back and forth across Europe.  There were gallows and later guillotines in virtually every European village.  Burning at the stake was a common way of resolving religious differences, as was beheading the “infidels” after torture (including on that renowned invention, the “wheel”).  The Protestants did it, the Catholics did it, and the Puritans did it.  Religious wars are still being fought by the Europeans.  In the U.S.A., 1992, if a person doesn’t belong to the “right religion,” they are black-balled, black-listed and red-lined.  The Sovereignty of the Europeans was held by an inbred “royal” family claiming “divine right.”  The Sovereignty of the United States, Canada, and the United Nations is still controlled by British institutions under the “divine right” of royal English monarchy.  Read your own history!  Machiavelli, Cromwell, and Adolf Hitler are as much a part of “Western Culture” as Newton was.  The flowering of the Renaissance came not from stagnant European feudalism, but from the ideas and resources stolen from our Aboriginal Indigenous continents.  The Europeans peasants and serfs had no opportunity to read philosophy, and most of them still don’t.

The Englishmen left England, not to bring their best here, but out of sheer desperation and greed.  The British Isles are a small country.  The British plundered their own land into the bedrock to support their endless wars.  They still cannot support themselves: they have to maintain unbalance and conflict in the world so that they can survive as a parasite on other peoples’ land, labor, and resources.  “Democracy” was created by slave-holding societies.  Capitalist “democracy” is, and because of its very structure, always will be a system that depends on slavery and exploitation, a social system designed by crooks and con artists who have no legitimate claim to the world.  There are many other Peoples, and many other religions, languages and cultures who have ancient rights to their place in the world.  “Divine Right,” warfare, and illegal occupation and exploitation of other peoples’ land are not “civilization” by any truly Civilized standards.  They are racist concepts which violate Natural Rights as well as Human Rights, and are used by England to maintain their grip on other peoples’ land and resources.  Natural Rights supercede European claims of “Divine Right.”

Michael S. Berliner writes that “some cultures are better than others.”  Some cultures are more heavily armed than others, and some cultures con their people more thoroughly than others.  What kind of people would stand for hours in the cold, for a glimpse of “royalty.”  I wouldn’t, and no sane person would, only a person who’s been deluded into crazy actions.  When you evaluate a culture according to the condition of the most oppressed, rather than that of the most privileged “big wheels,” then the world looks different.  The Europeans have their priorities backwards.  Look at all of the jobless, homeless, and hungry people that the culture which Mr. Berliner refers to as “man’s best” has created  If children starving in the midst of plenty is “progress,” I wonder what Mr. Berliner’s definition of “decline” would be.  Get your head out of the sand, and face the real world!  All you have to do is go to the other side of the Freeway in smoggy Los Angeles.  There was no poverty, and no crime, on these continents before the Europeans brought them here on their boats.

Columbus didn’t come by plane, or by space shuttle.  He didn’t use wheels to come across the water, either, and he didn’t come on the “wheels of justice.”  Columbus travelled by boat, just like everybody else at that time in the world.  The Europeans concentrated on war, to the virtual exclusion of all else, and all of the European cultures were insanely unbalanced toward the development of weaponry.  They still are: only a madman would drop bombs on women and children.  The Aboriginal Indigenous people of these continents had superb agriculture/permaculture, and we had writing and permanent settlements until we were driven out by wandering bands of marauding, warmongering uncivilized Europeans.  The transportation that we used was more efficient in the natural environment that we intentionally maintained than wheels would have been.  We lived in a paradise of our own cultural design, a peaceful harmonious co-existence throughout the Nations of this Continent which we had maintained for millennia.  There were no wars here.  There was plenty to eat, and the Aboriginal Indigenous People lived long, healthy, joyful lives with ample leisure time for the development of our oral literature, music, dance, and other arts.  Harmonious and peaceful stability are not “stagnation.”

The Aboriginal Indigenous People deliberately maintained an egalitarian paradise for everyone on these continents.  The Europeans pillaged our Peoples’ vast jointly held wealth, and created their idea of Utopia for their elite White men and a few of their cronies, and poverty in a degraded environment for everyone else.

The Europeans brought us disease: bubonic plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, syphilis and gonorrhea, influenza, killer measles, and a host of other plagues.  They swept through our land like locusts, intentionally bringing us starvation.  They slaughtered our buffalo and the rest of our abundant permacultural game, and what of our forests they couldn’t cut down, they burned.  They polluted our land and our water, and sent over 90% of the indigenous species of this continent into extinction.

The United States Census says that there are “three million Indians.”  Almost all of these people are Europeans disguised as the invented identity of “Indians,” so that the United States, Canada and England will not have to face genocide.  These fake “Indians” are helping the blood-thirsty Europeans hide from the genocide that they committed on these Continents.  There are only about fifty or sixty thousand Aboriginal Indigenous people left here, if that many (the rest of the “Indians” are Indo-Europeans).  And Mr. Berliner has the blind, stupid arrogance to say that “without [Western culture], most of today’s Indians would be ... not even alive.”  He’s right about the “Indians”—the Europeans invented this hybrid identity with genetic and social engineering and cross-cultural fertilization, but he’s absolutely wrong about the Aboriginal Indigenous people.  He doesn’t know the Aboriginal Indigenous people, and he apparently doesn’t know very much about European history, either.

“... every person [as] a Sovereign entity, with the power of choice and independent judgement,” which Mr. Berliner cites as a value of “Western Civilization,” is in fact an Aboriginal Indigenous idea, not an European one.  Under our Aboriginal Indigenous Sovereignty, or land is not held in common.  It is held jointly, among egalitarian Sovereign People, along with our Aboriginal Indigenous religion—which is not the same as “Indian religion” (which was established by U.S. Congress for “their Indian” citizens, in violation of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution).  The Indo-Europeans of 1492 did not have any Sovereignty, and they still don’t.  They don’t have the guts to talk real, true individual Sovereignty.  They are so afraid of personal Sovereignty that everywhere they go, they build prisons and jails—and they continue to commit genocide against the few remaining Peoples in the world who still hold their own individual Sovereignty.  The Europeans do not own their own personal Sovereignty, and their colonial nations, for example the United States, do not hold any Sovereignty on this continent, either.  The Sovereignty alleged by the United States and Canada is owned by England—and the European Nations are illegally on our two continents.  The “Indian Treaties” which the United States uses to claim our land are fraudulent documents, signed by their “Indians” who did not own Sovereignty and did not own this land.

If everything on these continents was that bad, why did the Europeans come here?  We didn’t ask you to come here.  If you don’t like the culture and values that are indigenous to this land, you are welcome to go back to the barren European rock that you and your ancestors came from, and take your fake “Indians” with you.

The headline to your column reads “Man’s best came with Columbus.”  Why didn’t you put down “White man?”  Are you afraid to admit to your racist agenda?  Or, is your conscience bothering you, and you are ashamed that you are White?  I’ll say it for you, “it was mighty White of you to write your article for us.”

Wub-e-keniew
Bear Dodem
Anishinabe Ojibway Nation