Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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Have
you ever noticed the town of Redlake? This
is the only town to speak of, that’s a
local telephone call for more than six thousand people.
Casual visitors to Redlake are discouraged
by the Bureau of Indian Affairs: “this is a Closed Reservation,” people
are
told, “strangers keep out!” There is no
public transportation onto or off of the Reservation (except for Bingo,
and
that’s run by the immigrants). Anyone
wanting to do business here must first approach the Tribal Council to
get a
license to trade (a product of capitalism, free enterprise, and
economic
discrimination).
When
you go off the Reservation on any highway, you see an
altogether different set-up. Compare
the immigrants’ settlements with what purport to be towns on the
Reservation. Look at any one of the
little towns with a population of around two hundred, look again at
Redlake
with an in-town population of nearly two thousand—and then tell me
again about
economic discrimination, and an occupation of government employees. Tell me this isn’t an “company town” run by
the U.S. Government, and tell me it isn’t still a P.O.W. camp. The social engineering is graven in the
architecture. The economic
infrastructure is “occupation—we’re going to steal it all from you,”
and every
other “service” on the Reservation is what’s mandated under European
so-called
“International” conventions of War-and-Peace, which is all violence. European “peace” is even more violent than
their war—look at how these foreigners have devastated our forests and
polluted
of our water under a “peace treaty” with their Indians.
Wherever
those immigrant Europeans have occupied other
peoples’ land, the number one item on their agenda has been stealing
(and what
they can’t steal they wreck and destroy).
The social engineering necessary to maintain their theft is
accomplished
through eugenics. In order to obliterate
every trace of reality here, the marauding Europeans created a
fictitious group
of people and called them “Indians.”
[The real meaning of “Indian” is hinted at by the use of the
words
“Indian country” referring to the “humanitarian war” in Somalia. “Indian” is an European word which means
that the Europeans don’t belong there, they’re getting violent, and
they’re
stealing again—in Somalia it’s oil.]
Rather than recognize the people who were here and who have been
here
for millennia, rather than acknowledging that this land and these
resources do
and always have belonged to real people, a few of whom still survive,
the
Europeans created a fictitious people and they called them a “tribe,”
and use
their European languages to put all kinds of attributes on them. These adjectives and these names are foreign
to the Aboriginal Indigenous People here: “tribes,” “peace-pipes,”
“tomahawk
chop,” “warriors” ... these are all English words describing foreign
European projections.
The
Europeans, in order to steal the land and hide the
genocide, say that the Aboriginal Indigenous People never existed. The Europeans created the “Indians,” and
their co-called Indians’ existence is on shaky ground, because Indians
can be
“terminated” and are repeatedly told so.
In 1967, the Indian Omnibus Bill was an open message that “you
Indians
only exist through the Europeans’ creation and with the Europeans’
permission.” Roger Jourdain and a
number of other “Indian leaders” were pleading with immigrant
Europeans’
government, “please don’t terminate us, because then we’ll have to find
honest
work!” The biological fathers of these
“Indians” are all Europeans. This White
paternity is one of the main ways that the Europeans have defined
“subject
people” since they began their colonial expansion.
They keep them under rigid control by continually threatening
them with “termination,” and by using racism as the other side of these
brutally defined artificial identities.
The
only people who benefit from the racist “Indian” identity
(and other racist labelling) are the good ol’ English so-called
élite. Even presumably “positive”
stereotypes hurt
the people who get caught in them. We
need to come to terms with the racism and start dealing with reality. There were no “Indians” here, and getting
caught up in this European mythology doesn’t help anybody.
Everybody does have a real identity—and
something positive to contribute to this Earth.
NEWS FROM THE OCCUPATION
FORCE: In
the
past week, President-Elect Bill Clinton held a two-day economic
conference in
Little Rock. Good vibes came out of
this conference. It reminded me of
F.D.R.’s “fireside chats,” the same old deal that turned into the New
Deal. There were no right-wing
fundamentalists
from the Republican Party in the Clinton Circle, who would have brought
the
“moral issues” down Pat, or Duked it out over “ethnic cleansing” and
Final
Solutions.
One
of the participants in this economic summit was a
health-care provider from Hawaii. She
said that she felt discriminated against because many of the other
participants
were bashing the health care system, using it as a scapegoat for part
of the
Deficit. They’re approaching “health
care” backwards, as usual. What they’re
doing to the environment and to the food supply is what’s making people
sick. The contaminated food is also one
of the fundamental reasons for the violence and the crime, and the more
than
ten percent of the population that’s “institutionalized.”
Another
participant in the Economic Conference spoke of how
much it cost to keep prisoners incarcerated.
He said that it would be less expensive to send the Prisoners to
Harvard, than to keep them in prison.
Can you imagine all of these inmates going to Harvard and
getting a law
degree—and after they graduate, going to Washington as high-powered,
high-status lawyers ... and then these poor innocent lawyers, with the
ink
barely dry on their law diplomas, being corrupted by the old-line
politicians
and lobbyists who have been running the inner circle on the fringes of
the Law for
decades. (They stay out of prison by
having the law re-written one step ahead of their shenanigans.) Maybe these newly-graduated Harvard Lawyers
could reduce the Deficit by breaking it into a serial form, like
“Rocky” or the
SuperBowl: put a cap on Deficit I, and then go into Deficit II, and so
forth. This kind of psychological
“reduction” of the deficit, using slippery English, isn’t any different
than
some of the creative accounting that is already being used in
Washington.
Although
this two-day economic conference had good feelings
and was good P.R., in Western European customs and ethics, and the
traditions
of Western Capitalism and economic discrimination, these people still
need to
have somebody to bash and scapegoat in order to make their programs
work. Indians are still having the Willies
from
when President Bush threatened to terminate them last summer, but now
Willie
Horton has finally decided to move on.
He has had enough of his codependent abusive relationship with
the
Republican Fundamentalist Camp. Over
the past two elections, Willie Horton has been projected into whatever
role was
convenient. His image was used without
his approval. In 1993, look for the new
headlines: “Willie Horton summoned to Washington by Executive Order.” Maybe he will form a task force on ethnic
bashing, scapegoating, and foreign capitalist economic discrimination.
I
thank the people who have taken the time to write or call
about this column. If you haven’t
already heard from me, you should be getting your reply soon.
My
phone number is (218) 679-2382, and my mailing address is
P.O. Box 484, Bemidji, MN 56601.
Wub-e-ke-niew
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