boiling sap at night at Wub-e-ke-niew and Clara's sugar camp, Bear Dodem sugarbush, Red Lake
Reflections from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People) |
A
travelling “American History” exhibit, the Seeds of Change, opens at
the
Minneapolis Public Library in June, according to the Minneapolis Star
Tribune. The exhibit should more
accurately be entitled “Self-Justified European Colonialism.” The very word “American” is an European
word—and so is “Indian.” It is probably
unrealistic to expect the immigrant Colonial Europeans (who call
themselves
“Americans”) to understand this history of this Continent from an
Aboriginal
Indigenous perspective. They have
transplanted themselves, their language and culture, and social
problems
virtually intact from Europe. They are
still Europeans, no matter what they call themselves, and have almost
as little
understanding of the reality of this Continent as they did five hundred
years
ago. Their language and their values
are still Colonial European. The
Aboriginal Indigenous people here have a different point of view—that’s
why the
ecosystem was kept intact. Everybody is
part of the ecosystem, and you cannot “conquer” it without destroying
yourself. (The immigrant Europeans and
their Indians seem to be suicidal, or they are caught in the momentum
of blind
greed.)
Revisionist
History, under the guise of “ethnic sensitivity” (after ethnic
cleansing), is
alive and well. Last year in South
Dakota, the sloganeers and propagandists were promoting the “Year of
Reconciliation.” There can’t be a
“Reconciliation” without first having “conciliation,” and the reality
of 1993
A.D. is business as usual: destroying the ecosystem, polluting the
waters, and
having the Europeans’ pet Indians—who have European values, and not
Aboriginal
Indigenous values—tell their blood brother European invaders soothing
lies to
ease their guilt (pretending they are speaking for the Aboriginal
Indigenous
People). “Reconciliation” and the
“Seeds of Change” are nothing more than covering up the theft of the
land and
the genocide of the Aboriginal Indigenous People. For
“reconciliation,” do I have to apologize to the Europeans for
having been born a Sovereign Aboriginal Indigenous Person, for owning
this land
and for my relatives being killed in the genocide—and for the “Indians”
that
you invented as brokers to steal Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples
resources. After five hundred years of
genocide, do we
have to say, “I’m sorry?” I am sorry
that the invading Europeans have destroyed the ecosystem, contaminated
the
water, killed the wildlife, clearcut the forests, wiped out countless
languages
and killed more than a billion of my Aboriginal Indigenous relatives. The problems which the Europeans have
created on this Continent are not “ancient history,” they are ongoing
today. Your White “Indians,” who embody
Europeans’ own racist stereotypes, are still, under European direction,
actively destroying the Anishinabe Ojibway permaculture, alienating our
land
and resources, and still contributing genocide. The
European U.S. Government is presently working on legislating
racist “Indian religion” for their smokescreen of frauds and fakes. For these, I am sorry. I’m
sorry.
I’m sorry.
According
to Randy Furst, staff writer of the Star Tribune, the exhibit “Seeds of
Change”
emphasizes the material “exchanges,” corn, horses, sugar, and syphilis. (Apparently, the Aboriginal Indigenous
Peoples’ land and resources are not addressed—the brutal theft and
plunder of
this Continent is buried so deeply in their abstract thinking that they
don’t
even see it.) The Europeans have tried
to claim that corn was theirs—a few months ago, the Star Tribune ran an
article
promoting their alleged ancient Greek “Goddess of Corn.”
Appaloosa horses are a pure breed indigenous
to this Continent. According to an
anthropologist we talked to, the evidence for the “absence of horses”
is that
there weren’t any dead horses in the archeological remains of ancient
villages
here. Maybe the “Indians” and the
Europeans left dead horses laying around town, but we didn’t. Syphilis is an European disease discussed in
the Bible under several euphemisms (for example, I Kings, Chapter 5,
Verse 6-9,
where it is called “emerods”). A
leading epidemiologist we talked to admitted to us that the Europeans
brought
over more than 90 diseases, including syphilis. But,
how many categories of mental illness have the Europeans
created, through their language, and their abstract and linear thinking? When you don’t know what reality is, when
you don’t know what the truth is, the consequences are a pathological
society
like the Europeans have here. All you
have to do is look at their prisons, mental institutions, and all of
the pain
and misery that they have created. The
Europeans had better have a “year of reconciliation” (or better yet, a
Century
Of Reconciliation) with their own people, first.
I
spent nine years a political prisoner in a Catholic Boarding School. The reason that I, and the other Aboriginal
Indigenous children of my generation, were forced into this school, was
to
brainwash us. But, they took away my
Anishinabe Ojibway language by beating it out of us, and they gave me a
“basic
English” of about three or four hundred words.
They got too greedy. They
couldn’t brainwash us, because they neglected to give us enough
language to brainwash
us in. I studied the language, war
culture and violent history of the European oppressors for years. There are an increasing number of Aboriginal
Indigenous people who read and speak English fluently.
You cannot use forked-tongue language on us
any more and get away with it.
DESTINATION—MISSING: If any of you
see the “Little Green Bus,” and if by any chance you do find it and it
is
stuck, and the wheels are spinning, be sure and look and see who’s in
the
driver’s seat. If Wellstone is there,
don’t
worry, because everything is “under control,” but call the publisher of
this
newspaper and let him know the latitude and longitude, because he’s
worried and
concerned. If the wheels are spinning,
tell those white “Indian Medicine Men” to get out of the bus and push,
and
please tell them that what they call “The Red Road” is a blind-alley
detour
invented by the illegal alien Europeans.
FOUND IN THE MAILBOX—someone asked me to put this in the column: “Now for a word in defense of Clyde
Bellecourt. Now a lot of bad things
have been said about my brother Clyde Bellecourt. It
has been said that he was a drug pusher. A
seller of illicit drugs. Now I know that
he sold bags of Marijuana
and hits of LSD. But let me tell you
something about that. He did in fact
sell drugs. But when he sold bags of
weed those bags weren’t skimpy bags nor was that weed he sold bunk
weed,
nosiree it was the good stuff. And that
acid was good too none of that crappy blotter, nope, not brother Clyde. So the next time some one says something bad
about that incident remember these words.”
Drugs
and alcohol are a vicious old European tactic of colonization and
genocide. As an Anishinabe Ojibway
elder, I’m giving you advice because I’ve been down that dead-end
road—drugs
and alcohol are bad medicine of the immigrant European.
I’ve never been old before, and it feels
good. I just wish I knew what I know
now, when I was young. I’m doing my
best to pass on what I’ve learned to the next generations, so they
don’t have
to go through the hurting that I did.
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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