Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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Iskigamizigegiizis, or in English the “sap
boiling
moon” has come to Anishinabe Ojibway land.
That’s when Grandmother Earth and Mother Nature begin
re-awakening after
the Winter. The trees are budding and
birds have begun to come back. It’s
another phase of our life, in which all things are connected, and
harmonious. Soon, the mosquitos and the
flies and the
woodticks, and the bumblebees and all of the other insects which belong
here
will wake up. The deer will be having
their little ones, and the bears with their cubs are already out,
getting into
mischief, investigating everything, looking at the world.
The cubs are playfully rassling with each
other, acting like the little ones of every species.
It’s a good time of the year.
We,
the Anishinabe Ojibway People have to get back to our
roots, and our identity. Our
Traditional permacultural foods are an inherent part of this: our corn,
our
potatoes, our Mahnomen, our Ziinzibaakwad, and growing
our
gardens again. But, then again, if you
are not motivated, you can still be a “ration Indian” and get
“commods,” and
pay the price with your health and your life expectancy.
But, that’s your choice.
Indian
housing news:
The
rumor is that the housing authority at the hospital
compound is ousting all of the Red Lake Indians, making them vacate the
hospital housing to make room for some high-class Whites that are
coming
in. Could it be that these are social
engineers? The evicted Indians will
have to go out and rent housing off of the Res. The
closest place with much rental housing is in Bemidji.
What is this, integration, assimilation, and
segregation all at once? Put it any way
you want to.
Red Lake
Chippewa Indian sovereignty:
There
was recently a court case involving two Metis people
who were not enrolled members of the Red Lake Chippewa Indians. The real issue is Indian Tribal Sovereignty,
or Metis Sovereignty, whichever way you want to put it (no matter how
you put
it, it’s a delegated quasi-Sovereignty coming from the Europeans). Two representatives from the Tribal Council
are claiming that they had “Tribal Sovereignty,” and claimed
jurisdiction over
the Metis child and the mother. The
Tribal Judge honored the State of California’s Sovereignty, which was
the
diplomatic and legal thing to do, wasn’t it?
The Tribal Judge is operating under United States Federal Law,
in a
so-called Tribal Court run by contract from the Federal Bureau of
Indian
Affairs, and probably didn’t have much choice in interpreting the laws
that
were handed to him. If the U.S. wants
to give democracy to Indians, it seems like the judges should be
elected like
everywhere else, as should the Chief of Police. But,
what they are doing is muddying up the issue of Indian/Metis
Sovereignty, and trying to confuse it with Anishinabe Ojibway
Sovereignty. The U.S. is trying to use the
Metis to try
to steal our Aboriginal Indigenous Sovereignty, which they have no
right to do.
The
con artists in high places must be up to something
again. In Sunday’s Bemidji Pioneer,
there is an unsigned editorial saying that “both whites and Indians in
this
area are victims” of the Treaties. With
one side of his tongue, the writer of this editorial writes to support
the
Treaties, and with the other side of his tongue, he wants to abolish
them. The problem is that the United
States
negotiated the Treaties with themselves.
We’ve asked Senators and other officials for copies of the
Treaties in
Chippewa or Creole or any other Metis language, but the Treaties were
only
written in English. The Treaties are
not International Law, and if these Metis Indians take these Treaties
to World
Court under International Law, they would throw them out of court,
because they
aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.
So much for Metis Sovereignty.
Whatever they do with the Treaties, it does not affect the
Anishinabe
Ojibway People’s Sovereignty on our own land.
We, the Anishinabe Ojibway (We, the Original People) have a
right to
exist on our own land. The Indians do
not have anything to do with our inherent Aboriginal and Natural rights
to our
own land.
The
writers at the Pioneer are always hollering about
“taxes,” with particular focus on Red Lake.
The Anishinabe Ojibway people did not ask them to bring their
European
money system in here, and we did not need the White man’s money until
they used
money from our stolen resources to violently force us into their money
system. With one hand, the Beltrami
County Pillars are desperately trying to gerrymander their new County
Commissioner districts to prevent a County Commissioner from Red
Lake—although
the Diminishing Reservation has a population of about half that of
Bemidji
itself. With the other hand, they are
crying for money, and more money.
Sunday, the complaints were about “Payment In Lieu of Taxes.” More than a hundred million dollars per year
of Anishinabe Ojibway Peoples’ money goes directly into the Bemidji
area
White-controlled economy, instead of staying here and building up our
own
community. Anishinabe Ojibway Peoples
stolen land and resources are the base for the rest of the Bemidji area
economy. And still they are greedily
crying, “more money, more money.” The
White man red-lines us with his crooked money system, and sends out his
racist
projections through his Capitalism showing as crooked “socialism,”
stealing our
resources for his own use and then blaming impoverished welfare
recipients for
the consequences of his theft.
Addendum
to Sovereignty:
An
excerpt from the report of the Indian Claims Commission:
“Following
the 1863 treaty session [which no Anishinabe
Ojibway People signed], the Red Lake Indians [as well as the Anishinabe
Ojibway
People] continued to occupy the unceded lands adjoining the
cession on
the east, ... which Ramsey reported had been reserved by them at the
time of
the treaty. The United States Supreme
Court has held in the cases of Minnesota v. Hitchcock,
185 U.S.
373 and United States v. Holt State Bank,
270 U.S.
49, that the Red Lake Indians held the Indian right of occupancy or
title to
the lands retained on the east of the 1863 treaty cession, even though
there
was no formal cession from the United States [which never owned
our
Anishinabe Ojibway land], or a formal act setting the land apart as a
reservation for them. In the latter
case the Court stated in its opinion that “the effect of what was done
was to
reserve in a general way for the continued occupation of the Indians of
what
remained of their [sic, this has always been Anishinabe Ojibway
land]
aboriginal territory, and thus it came to be known and recognized as a
reservation.”
The
Indian Claims Commission, as a part of their crooked
process of trying to “close the books,” goes on to cite the 1889
“Agreement.” The Anishinabe Ojibway
people of Red Lake did not sign this agreement—on the original
“signature
rolls” the X-marks are forged. That’s
why the Indians and the United States don’t dare go into International
Court,
because they know it’s a con job.
England and the other heirs of Western European “Civilization”
still
need to come to terms with the genocide on this Continent.
Just as Hitler came out of the exact same
tradition of Western Civilization, so the other Europeans and
Euro-Americans
must face what they have done. They
cannot hide.
News from
the political front:
Governor
Brown is making the Feudal Lords uncomfortable with
what he is saying about taxes, housing, and the de-facto slavery which
is a
part of the Democratic Process. He’s
waking up the farmers who lost their farmland, the people who are
losing the
mortgages on their houses, the jobless.
I still say, nobody has addressed jobs as one of the endangered
species
in America, which need to be addressed along with the buffalo and other
wildlife, which the lords and the vassals of Ye Olde Merrie England are
after. George Bush’s lip-synching,
“read my lips, four more years of Reaganomics, S. & L. bailouts,
give-always to the rich,” and more pork for his cronies in the
Department of
the Interior, subsidizing the destruction of the environment that’s
left. George Bush’s “new world order” is
the same
old European upper-class Feudal rip-off trying to rule the world, when
they
can’t even run their own lives. They’re
kiting checks for themselves, and don’t want to balance the
National
budget because the interest on the National Debt is another give-away
for the
privileged rich. The American Dream has
always been a night-mare named “Unbridled Greed.” Someone
needs to tell President Bush that the Aboriginal
Indigenous Peoples’ resources that have supported England and the
United States
for 200 years are gone. It’s time to
get your head out of the sand and face the real world.
There is no more. You have already
wasted and plundered what supported the
Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples in abundance for many millennia.
Wub-e-keniew
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