Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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September 23, 1992
Senator
Paul Wellstone
United States Senator
2550 University Avenue W., #100 N
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
attn.: Dwayne Williams
Dear Senator Wellstone and
Dwayne
Williams,
I
am enclosing the “privacy release form” which we finally
received. We have been having an
ongoing problem with delivery of our mail since 1985.
I
am a Sovereign Anishinabe Ojibway person, living on my
Aboriginal Indigenous land at Red Lake.
I am not an “Indian,” and I am not a “Native American.” “Indian” and “Native American” are racist
slurs referring to non-existent races of people. As
we have written you previously, the majority of the people
identified as “Indians” are neither Anishinabe Ojibway nor Aboriginal
Indigenous
People—more than 95 percent of the people who are “Federally Recognized
Indians” on the “Indian Enrollments” at Red Lake, for example, are
people of
European or Indo-European ancestry—not Anishinabe Ojibway ancestry.
The
United States/English governments created “Indians” in
order to steal this Continent.
Specifically at Red Lake, the people with whom the United
States/England
has dealt throughout their inter-relationship with the Anishinabe
Ojibway
People at Red Lake, have not been the Anishinabe Ojibway People. Here, the majority of the “Indians” are
people of French or French-Moorish patrilineal ancestry.
They do not have a patrilineal Clan nor
Dodem of the Anishinabe Ojibway people—our Aboriginal Indigenous
Sovereignty
and identity are through our religion, the Midewiwin, through our
patrilineal
Clans and Dodems. For example, the
people who signed the “Treaty” in 1863, upon which the United States is
resting
its “title” to much of the Red River Valley, was signed by people of
predominantly French-Moorish ancestry, not by the Anishinabe
Ojibway
People who owned the land. The “Red
Lake Tribal Council,” with whom the United States, the State of
Minnesota, and
other agencies of the U.S./English is also an organization comprised of
French
Métis—a puppet government created by the United States Congress,
governing a
“Tribe” created by the United States Congress.
The presence of what your own Senate Select Committee on Indian
Affairs
called a “federal instrumentality ... an arm of the Federal sovereign”1 is a human rights
violation, as well as a violation of
International Law.
We
can document the devastating genocide of the Anishinabe
Ojibway People here, under the United States/English colonial
incursions onto
our land. After Adolf Hitler’s legacy
of genocide became public knowledge, the United States/England’s
policies—which
continue to be the annihilation of all Aboriginal Indigenous Nations on
this
Continent [the same Senate Report quoted earlier anticipated that this
would be
accomplished within “fifty years”]—shifted and became more subtle. The “Indians” which the U.S./England created
serve several functions in the post-Third Reich policies: their numbers
mask
the fact that only a very few Anishinabe Ojibway People survive, and
their
inclusion in statistics masks the evidence of ongoing genocide. The “Indians” are used as brokers and
middlemen between the Aboriginal Indigenous People and the
U.S./England: it is
U.S.-controlled “1934 Indian Reorganization Act Tribal Councils” and
other
“Indian” agencies which sell, lease, and sign away Anishinabe Ojibway
Peoples’
land, resources, and rights. It is
“Indians” who administer the programs which are still actively
promoting
genocide of the Anishinabe Ojibway people.
Because these “Indians” operate under a paper “sovereignty”
delegated by
the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, the U.S. Government is probably
hoping that
they can avoid accountability for their actions.
The
Anishinabe Ojibway People at Red Lake still have some of
our Aboriginal Indigenous land—we are the last ones in the United
States who
were not “allotted.” We intend to keep
our land, and we intend to preserve a future for our future generations. We are a non-violent people, and this is our
land. We have a right to exist as a
Sovereign People on our own land.
I
have spent much of my adult life working to create a better
world for the next generations of Anishinabe Ojibway people. For many years, I tried to work with
“Indians,” which was impossible because “Indians” do not own their own
identity,
they do not own their Sovereignty, and they operate out of the White
values of
their European or Indo-European patrilines.
As “Indians,” they are stuck in an identity controlled by
Western
European “Civilization”—an identity which is a stereotype and a stigma
and
racist.
In
1984, I tried to get a post office box at Red Lake.
The “Indians” who worked there said that
there weren’t any post office boxes.
[There is not any rural mail delivery to most of the
Reservation,
although the population density along the potential mail routes is
greater than
many other rural areas which do have mail delivery.]
What they meant was, “we don’t have a post office box for you,”
because this is Anishinabe Ojibway land, and I am one of the few
surviving
Anishinabe Ojibway people at Red Lake.
The Post Office’s refusal to rent me a post office box was a
not-so-subtle way of saying that the “Indians” who control the
political
process under the aegis of the United States Government at Red Lake,
did not
want me establishing legal residency on my own land.
[I also could not get U.S.-funded housing, an Indian Health
Service well, nor even a “fire number.”]
Fine, the United States can keep their “Indian programs.”
In
1985, I rented Post Office Box number 484 at Bemidji,
56601. Post Office Box rental at
Bemidji is not inexpensive. I pay more
than thirty dollars per year to pick up my mail at Bemidji, while most
people
living in the United States get mail delivered to their mailbox at home. This would be alright with me, except that
the Bemidji Post Office regularly does not put some of my mail into my
post
office box, although it is addressed to me, with my post office box
number, and
with the correct town and Zip code.
Some pieces of mail get “forwarded” to Red Lake, where either
the B.I.A.
opens my mail and reads it, or it is given out to other people,
“Indians,”
living at Red Lake, who open it, read it, and maybe they give it to me
several
months later and maybe they don’t. Last
month, a piece of mail correctly addressed to myself, was sent to Red
Lake. I happened to be expecting this
particular piece of mail, and asked repeatedly and with increasing
emphasis at
the Bemidji Post Office, finally talking to the person in charge. The Postmistress told me that it had been
forwarded
to Red Lake, which had then returned it to the sender,
“addressee
unknown.”
We
have been dealing in a “stopgap,” nonconfrontive way with
the problem by asking people to send us important mail “certified,
return
receipt requested.” Today I got a piece
of certified mail which had been torn open by some party in the Post
Office,
damaging the contents. I am enclosing a
photostatic copy of the envelope and bag in which I received it. Enough is enough!
I
assume that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and/or other
Neo-Fascist organizations within the United States Government are using
the
justification of “trusteeship” or some equally racist, apartheid
illegal
fiction to interfere with my private affairs.
I am not an “Indian”!
I am a Sovereign Anishinabe Ojibway person, and no government
arising out
of Western European Civilization has any jurisdiction whatsoever over
my
private affairs, my Sovereign person, nor my Sovereign land. I am not violating any laws, either my own
Traditional Anishinabe Ojibway laws, nor the laws of the United
States/England,
which is illegally claiming eminent domain over the territory of my
Anishinabe
Ojibway Nation.
I
am requesting that your office ensure that the responsible
parties (and irresponsible parties):
a)
give all of my mail which the U.S.A., or any of its agencies
including their 1934 Indian Reorganization Act “Red Lake Tribal
Council” has
taken previously, to me.
b)
deliver all of my mail in the future, to my Post Office
Box 484 at Bemidji, Minnesota, 56601, and cease and desist mutilating,
mis-routing, delaying, opening, and otherwise interfering with my mail.
c)
provide me with a detailed record of your actions in this
case, including copies of all relevant files which any of your
Government’s
agencies have.
Thank
you for taking action in this matter.
Wub-e-keniew,
aka Francis Blake, Jr.
1American
Indian Policy Review Commission,
Final Report, submitted to
Congress, May 17, 1977, volume one, pages 258-9
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