Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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The
controversy surrounding Leonard Peltier and the F.B.I. is
front-page news again—along with Robert Redford’s Hollywood
“documentary,”
which presents a perspective on an incident at Oglala, South Dakota
after the
Wounded Knee takeover in 1973.
According to the Sunday, January 17 Minneapolis Star Tribune,
F.B.I. agent Nicholas O’Hara calls the Hollywood movies Thunderheart
and
Incident at Oglala “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, an
outrageous portrayal of how we [the F.B.I.] do business.”
But, he isn’t complaining about Hollywood’s Gangbusters
series, nor all of the Elliott Ness movies which glamorized the F.B.I.,
and
which were just as far away from reality as the movies he’s complaining
about
now.
Hollywood
has always promoted the “Indian.” The
entertainment moguls have a problem with
reality—their goal is making money, no matter what kinds of lies and
fairy-tales they tell, rather than the truth.
The very word “Indian” is an European term.
It is not an Aboriginal Indigenous word, and the people to whom
the word “Indian” refers are not indigenous to this continent. That’s reality. Whether
it’s Robert Redford making a movie about a French Métis,
or the Lone Ranger’s favorite “sidekick”—or Robert Stack living out a
fantasy—Hollywood has never been noted for accurate historical
documentation. The main connection that
Hollywood has with reality is when Hang-Around-The-Fort Indians and
Wanna-Be
Indians look to Hollywood for their mythological identity, and live out
the
projections and the racist stereotypes that the White man invented to
promote
the self-serving identity that the Euro-Americans depend on to defend
their
“Big Lie.” If there are “Indians” like
the ones in the Hollywood movies, it’s because these “Indians” learned
how to
wear their headbands and feathers in the movie theaters.
“Indians”
(Hollywood and otherwise) are unreal, a fake
identity that both feeds on and generates racism. Far
worse than peopling the mythological Indian identity with
Wanna-be’s, Hollywood images of “Indians” are violent and warlike, or
(recently) so such incredibly “noble savages” that to try to live out
either
dichotomy of the Indian stereotype will shatter the self-esteem of
anyone who
tries. That’s why there are so many
“Indians”
in jail. These stereotypes are all
false projections of Western European $ivilization, and have nothing to
do with
Aboriginal Indigenous People. We are
not “Indians.” But, a lot of real human
beings get hurt by real violence because of “Indian” and other violent
Indo-European mythologies. Western
European $ivilization is based on violence—otherwise they wouldn’t be
here. Where are the mainstream media
reports of people objecting to the mindless, gratuitous and
sado-masochistic
violence which pours out of Hollywood?
Hollywood
Indians are not the only people having trouble
telling apart fact and fiction. Ronald
Reagan, the celluloid cowboy, played the role of Great American Hero. He filled the leadership vacuum of the
political right wing, and for his acting in Washington, D.C. he got
knighted by
Queen Elizabeth.
NEWS FROM THE CRUSADES: Kuwaiti
Sweet Crude is lubricating the hidden agenda of George “Black Gold”
Bush. There’s a new epidemic of the mental
disease
of greed, and the symptoms include the fear of running out of stealable
oil, Klepto-petro-gone-a-phobia. But,
the pattern is at least as old as the
European occupation of this Continent.
“Infrastructure” is the hot word, but apparently most people
aren’t
thinking about the way in which the colonial “post roads” were replaced
by the
railroads, etc. ... The glory days of
the railroads were underwritten by the wholesale plunder of Aboriginal
Indigenous Peoples’ land and resources.
Fortunes were made and lost on speculation—and insider trading
of
coveted railroad “rights.” The real
(not “theoretical”) nature of capitalism [and its blood brother,
Communism] is
that only the “in-group” of the Good Ol’ Boy W.A.S.P.s is in a position
to take
advantage of the real prizes. When the
people whose “station in life” is lower on the hierarchy start to get
too
“uppity,” then the Capitalist Financial Engineers create a “recession”
or a
“depression”—and, not incidentally, change the details in the rules of
the
game. They use economic restraints and
financial handcuffs, along with the social engineering they call
“money,” in
order to hang onto their position at the top of the hierarchy they
invented.
The
Anishinabe Ojibway timber that the railroads used to run
their locomotives should not have been plundered—but if you take care
of them
again, for a thousand years or so, forests can re-grow.
Once a barrel of oil is burned, it’s gone
forever. It cannot be replaced. Although the Euro-American occupation of
this continent—and everywhere else these locusts have invaded—has never
been environmentally responsible nor sustainable, there was not so long
ago a
very efficient public mass-transit system in the United States. It was purposefully gutted by special
interests, including certain corporations which have been greedily
devouring
everything they could reach in the public trough for nearly a century. The gas-guzzlers held a near-monopoly on the
publicly funded New Infrastructure. Gas
stations were known as “Service Stations” and gave away premiums for
filling
your tank. Then, the OPEC Outbreak
brought an epidemic of No-Petro-Phobia.
Now, a person has to pay a fine for not wearing a seat belt,
people pump
their own gas—and the Good Ol’ Boys are talking about a “Brand New”
infrastructure of—guess what—public rail transportation.
Most of the Euro-American elders who
remember the last time this all went around are sitting in warehouses
called
“Old Folks Homes,” dancing the Thorazine Shuffle.
There
will come a time when there is no more oil
available. Instead of burning it up,
why aren’t the “World Leaders” using what remains of the petroleum
wisely, to
build a better and more harmonious world for future generations? The “New World Order” that Ex-President Bush
talked about is just as crooked as the Third Reich, or any other Old
World
Order. Under European thinking, and
European “International Law,” “Peace” is more violent than war. Look at what has happened to the Anishinabe
Ojibway lands and people after the white “Indians” signed a Treaty of
“perpetual peace and friendship.” Under
what the Europeans call “peaceful conditions,” tree-clippers,
chain-saws, toxic
chemicals, bull-dozers and skidders are decimating our environment,
perhaps
even beyond regeneration. If they quit
destroying them now and leave them alone, we will be lucky if our
forests can
be healed in five hundred years. But,
Indo-European “peace” and their “war” are the same thing: European
violence. There is no word for either
“war” nor “peace” in the Anishinabe Ojibway language.
Violence was neither in our culture, nor in our language, and we
also did not need the violence of “Anglo-Saxon” swear words.
Under
the right-wing leadership of the Reagan-Bush
administrations, the Pentagon has changed its name to the Petro-gone. The oil baron who used to run the Secret
Police has started Bush-fires all over the world, as a oily
smoke-screen for
his major objective in the Middle East.
The Islamic Nations and the Christians have been fighting for
more than
a millennia. In 1918, the British
occupation forces were kicked out of Kuwait, and the Arabs have also
broken
away from direct British colonial occupation in the rest of their
homeland. (Although their Imperial
boundaries shift like the sands of the man-made deserts created by
Indo-European “civilization,” the underlying structure remains the
same.)
George
Bush, who is an Englishman with so-called “royal blood,”
feels obliged to avenge the insult to his crown cousins.
He’s spending more money stealing oil, than
it would cost to buy it. His last days
in office have been dictated by what he’s deluding himself is
“principle.” He’s also hoping that the
mess that’s he’s
leaving will keep the new administration so busy that they won’t have
time to
think about the Iran Contra-Gate Affair, nor about the war crimes
committed
during Operation Desert Storm. Even Adolf Hitler did not strafe nor
bomb the
retreating British troops he had routed out of France and had “bottled
up” at
Dunkirk. In this new era of
instantaneous communication and satellite news networks, where was the
world-wide broadcast news coverage of retreating and surrendering Iraqi
troops
being killed in cold blood? How about
the photographs of all the U.S. military equipment that George Bush
sold, and
then turned around and blew up?
Military censorship of the media was to hide not only the
criminal
brutality of the U.S. command, but also the U.S.-made tanks and other
U.S.
armament and equipment which Commander Bush sold to the Iraqi Army so
he could
go to war and steal oil. If greedily
creating the agony of untold thousands of shattered families of widows
and orphans
is “heroism” or “patriotism,” then so-called Western Civilization needs
to
seriously rethink its priorities.
Saddam
Hussein and George Bush are both right-wing
fundamentalists coming out of the very same Indo-European mad-dog
hierarchial
theocratic tradition. Islam and
Judeo-Christianity share identical violent roots: Allah and Jehovah are
very
closely related: both disharmonious patriarchs who are easily
manipulated into
war. But, before you start calling
people names, go take a hard look in the mirror, George.
My advice to George Bush is to seek
political asylum in Great Britain.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has arrogantly decided that they
can
kidnap “suspects” from anywhere in the world, England is the exception. The Queen of England still holds the
Sovereignty of the protestant Euro-Americans, through their
religion—and they
exercise minute control over their subject peoples’ lives through the
imported
European monetary and military system, just like the exported English
monetary
system is used in the other U.S.A., the Union of South Africa, and in
the rest
of the world.
My
telephone 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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