Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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On
Wednesday, April 22, 1992, the State of California
executed the son of a Cherokee Indian woman, Robert Alton Harris. The vicious stereotypes and labels of
Indians have done their dirty work. The
media avoided saying that Robert Harris was an “Indian,” although an
in-depth
article from the Los Angeles Times mentions that Harris fantasized
about
“mystical Indians.” There were no
Indians here before the White man invented them, and Harris paid with
his life
in the gas chamber of San Quentin, for trying to live out the White
man’s
nightmare and scapegoat projections of “Indian” identity: drunken
Indian, lazy
Indian, dirty Indian ... As long as a
person is caught in the identity of “Indian,” there is no escape from
these
stereotypes. An extremely high
percentage of “Indians” are in prison—because of their identity of
Indian. They don’t need to follow that
vicious,
self-destructive path. The Indian
identity is a diabolical tool of genocide invented by the White man. There is absolutely no way anybody can base
a good life on this insane European racism, and too many people have
died
trying. It’s too late to turn the
meaning of “Indian” into something else; the genocide cannot be erased.
I,
myself, have tried to fill the Indian stereotypes and live
the roles defined by the labels the White man created: the drunken
Indian, the
lazy Indian, the dirty Indian, the born loser.
I was forced into the Boarding Schools at Red Lake, and I went
through
the brainwashing process that both the Churches and the U.S. Government
used to
try to turn Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples, as well as Metis Peoples,
into
“Indians.” I speak from
experience. My advice to you young
Metis who want to be “Indian,” is forget it.
It isn’t worth it. No human
being can fill out the stereotype, anyway.
My children and my grandchildren are not Indians, they are
Anishinabe
Ojibway People with a Clan and a Dodem.
If you’ve lost your Clan and Dodem, find out who you really are. Metis people have their own identity and
their own history, although they are not Aboriginal Indigenous peoples
of this
Continent. Metis do not need to be the
White man’s caricature.
I
went into the St. Mary’s Mission School, under the
genocidal Compulsory School Education Act, speaking the Ojibway
language. Every time I said a single word
in my own,
ancient and beautiful language, I would get physically beaten that
night. They said that this was to
“civilize”
me. (Now, the Red Lake Schools are
teaching “Chippewa,” which is not the same as the Anishinabe Ojibway
language. The Chippewa language is a
creole language, with French, and English, and a lot of other things
all mixed
up together; it’s a mutated language and does not have the strength and
power
of the Anishinabe Ojibway language.) To
replace the language they beat out of me, they gave me four hundred
words of
broken English. The nuns told me “you
are the vanishing American.” They said
“your grandparents are dirty Indians,” and advised me to abandon my
Anishinabe
Ojibway heritage. They told me I was a
“savage, dirty Indian, and the Europeans have a God-given right to
destroy you
[Manifest Destiny].” They brainwashed
all of us young Anishinabe Ojibway children into believing we were “no
good,”
so we could fill out their stereotypes, provide cheap labor and cannon
fodder,
and so they could steal our land and resources. (Their
ancestors had already plundered their own land in Europe
through their greed.) After they got
done with me, I didn’t have much of any language at all.
I didn’t have much of anything: low
self-esteem, a fake identity, and a lot of anger because it’s difficult
to
express yourself in four hundred words of Broken English.
It’s difficult to even think clearly,
without any language at all.
I
left the boarding school when I was fifteen years old.
In order to be an “Indian,” a person had to
drink. I was given “home brew”
(home-made beer). The people who gave
it to me said, “Have a drink, Nii-jii!
You are no friend of mine unless you have a drink.”
The family violence, the fights, the
car-wrecks, the broken marriages, were all a part of the “drunken
Indian”
stereotype. How many of our people have
died from this vicious projection of the White man, “drunken Indian.” Alcohol had no place in the Anishinabe
Ojibway community, and alcohol and drugs still do not belong here. Alcohol is the “sacred drug” of the
Europeans, and was brought into the Anishinabe Ojibway Nation with the
intended
purpose of destroying us as a People, which it does.
The
subject peoples who were relocated from the East Coast,
the Metis or Chippewa Indians, many of them were already alcoholics
when they
were packed onto the Enrollments at Red Lake.
The Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, an Euro-American genocide
organization, controls who is recognized as “Indian,” who can be Indian
and who
can’t be Indian. These people of
European patrilineal heritage were adopted into the “Indian” tribe by
the
colonizers, but they were not adopted by the Anishinabe Ojibway People
who own
the land.
These
White Indians are the people who are the most outspoken
about “Indian” culture. These are the
people who told the Anthropologists about “Indian culture,” they are
the people
who sit on the “Indian boards,” and they are all over the Media,
promoting
Indians. But, they are not Aboriginal
Indigenous Peoples, and they do not know anything about Anishinabe
Ojibway
culture. Although several books have
been written about “Chippewa Indian religion” some of them by
“Indians,” these
Metis people cannot go into the Midewiwin and do not know anything
about our
Anishinabe Ojibway religion. The Big
Chippewa Indians leaders are “faking it,” and adding “authenticity” to
the
Europeans’ stereotypes.
It’s
more than a full-time job filling out the stereotypes of
“Indian.” The projections and the
scapegoats and the labels have already done their dirty work. There are now people out in the front,
Indian spokespeople to the Media, trying to change the label from a bad
label
to a good label, but the damage has already been done.
They can’t un-do it. The Media are
scrambling, promoting and
cheer-leading their Indians, trying to prevent the day of reckoning
that must
come. The United States, and all of the
other Euro-American States on these Continents, are founded on the
genocide
tradition of Western European so-called Civilization.
Their roots and their way of thinking are the same as Adolf
Hitler’s. They come out of the same
mold, and they are going to have to come to terms with it.
Robert
Alton Harris filled out a role and a stereotype, and
he paid with his life for it. The
prisons are filled with Indians—and there were no Indians here before
the
Europeans got here. These Indians are
trying to live out the stereotypes: Dances with the Wolves, Billy Jack,
Tonto
and all of that other crap. All of the
Hollywood role models that Indians are so desperately trying to follow
are all
the White man’s bullshit. Indians and
Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples are two entirely different groups of
people.
To
you people in the Euro-American prisons, how are you going
to live out all of these Indian stereotypes?
You can’t do it, nobody can do it.
You would be better off finding out who you really are, and
throwing the
White man’s garbage identities into the trash; they are more pollution,
worse
than the Nuclear Bomb they dropped on the Japanese.
At
last January’s Super Bowl football game, a lot of Wanna-Be
Indians got on T.V. They thought they
were protesting the racist slur used by the United States Capitol
City’s
football team—but what it amounted to was free promotion (unless some
of the
Indian leaders got paid—and they probably did get paid from the
Churches),
international Media coverage that there are really colorful Indians in
Minneapolis. The football team got free
advertising, and the Indians got used and shafted by these snake-oil
salesmen,
again. There are real, serious problems
in both the Metis and Aboriginal Indigenous communities in Minneapolis. There needs to be serious questions directed
toward this “Indian identity,” and the Indian leaders are not helping
their
people. They are caught up in an ego
trip where they are promoting racism and the very identity that’s
destroying
people, along with the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has been
trying
to annihilate all of the Aboriginal Indigenous Nations ever since it
was
founded in the United States War Department in the early 1800’s.
The
Euro-Americans have written what they think is a practically
airtight maze of statute laws, bureaucratic regulations, and court
decisions
for their “Indians.” They call it
“Indian law,” even though it is imported European Roman Statute Law and
British
Common Law written for their subject peoples, the people they call
“Indians.” When Indian Law is applied
to Aboriginal Indigenous People, it is in violation of International
Law—and it
is genocide. Aboriginal Indigenous
Sovereignty on these Continents takes precedence over any
European-derived
laws, it supersedes “Indian Law” any day of the week, and it also
supersedes
the Papal Bulls and other Judeo-Christian laws.
In
my research into the genealogy and in writing the history
of the Anishinabe Ojibway, of the more than twenty-one original Clans
of the
Anishinabe Ojibway, there are only five Clans and Dodems remaining in
Red
Lake. There are three Clans and Dodems
which have disappeared recently; the last person of these Clans and
Dodems has
died. These are the Lynx Clan, the
Beaver Clan, and one of the fish Clans and Dodems, and these Anishinabe
Ojibway
People who are now gone are my relations.
This is genocide. It is an
extension of Western European Civilization, just like the Nazis.
Wub-e-keniew
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