Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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Parlez
vous Français, and Bonjour! That’s
Indian talk, saying “Hello” to you Pembina, Red Lake, and
Pillager Indians. Wie geht’s, and Guten
Tag! This is another Indian greeting,
to Chairman Brun and Rossback, who are patrilineal German Indians. The first greeting is also to Roger
Jourdain, who is a French Moor, and was also made into a Federally
Recognized
Indian by the White man.
To
the readers who’ve been calling in, wondering what
happened to my column: I’m sorry, I’ve
been overwhelmed with the work involved in finishing a book. According to the publisher, it should be out
in the next month or so. The book is
entitled, “We Have a Right to Exist.”
After doing eight years of research into the history and the
genealogy
of Red Lake, it’s finally getting ready to go to press!
This the first book ever published from an
Anishinabe Ojibway perspective. I’ll
give you an advance sample from a section in which I address racism,
from pages
16 and 17 (the page numbers are subject to change by the publisher):
“Dealing
with personalities and individual racism will not
solve the problems of structural racism.
Many “racist” individuals are operating within the context of
the
institution that they represent, and have no inkling of the racism that
they
convey. In order to deal with racism
effectively, we need to deal with the racist institutions that support
the
Euro-American hierarchy, and with the underlying thought patterns that
mold the
institutions. The courts, the police
departments, the I.R.S. and the schools are all racist institutions
which
entrench the White value system and social hierarchy.
In plain English, the W.A.S.P.s have a perpetual and eternal
monopoly on racism, the way their system is set up.
“European
thinking is hierarchial thinking, and because of
this, individual racism is not the core problem, and until the European
world
view changes, the racism built into their language and their culture
will
continue to be a problem. There were
some particular incidents of outright racial discrimination at the
Minneapolis
Alcoholics Anonymous, for example a Mexican man with twenty years
sobriety was
passed over for staff employment in favor of a White with only two or
three
years sobriety. This racism was
inherent in the institution, and it became clear that the established
White
A.A. could not address our needs, and so we formed our own group. Our struggling for sobriety, and trying to
solve the problems which confronted us in both the Indian and
Euro-American
culture is what gave birth to the American Indian Movement.
“The
Métis and White Indians could not get away from the
European values, and so the American Indian Movement eventually also
became a
racist institution, as have all of the other Indian organizations. The Minneapolis Indian grassroots
organizations of the 1960’s and 1970’s: the Indian Center, the Indian
Health
Board, the Indian Neighborhood Club on Alcohol and Drugs, the American
Indian
Movement, the Indian-run housing programs, were designed and funded in
the
White hierarchial pattern, and all of them eventually reverted into
racist
institutions which discriminated particularly against the Aboriginal
Indigenous
People and other non-Indians. The
Aboriginal Indigenous People pay taxes, and it is our own resources
which
underwrite the United States dollar. We
are paying for the Federal Funding which subsidizes the transformation
of
grassroots organizations into racist institutions.
We are also subsidizing Federal racist institutions with our
land
and resources, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the
Federally funded
‘social welfare services.’
“Using
their old strategy of blaming the victim, Aboriginal
Indigenous People are publicly castigated for “being on welfare.” The Aboriginal Indigenous People have never
been on welfare, and as a matter of fact, it is the Europeans who have
been on
welfare since 1492, living off of Aboriginal Indigenous Peoples’
property. We ask the immigrant Peoples the
question,
‘why are you here, if you’re not on welfare?’
In this day, Federal Dollars do deep damage, not only to
Aboriginal
Indigenous People, but also to the unemployed, the homeless, and the
underprivileged in the White man’s hierarchy.
Years ago, the Cavalry’s Federal bullets (also paid for with
Aboriginal
Indigenous Peoples’ resources) were used to destroy us.
Now, what is used is Federal Dollars. United
States policy is to break up
families, using foster care, adoption, and the economic system. Federal dollars hurt more than Federal
bullets—they do deep psychological damage to people, and inflict a
slow,
painful death. Simultaneously, they
entrench the Euro-Americans’ racist social structure.”
The
White value system, and why it reverts to racism, is
explained in much further detail in the book.
The White man says that the Indians live in two worlds, meaning
that
they have two value systems, which is not true. The
Indians, because of their Indo-European patriline, are no
different from their White blood relatives, and have only one set of
values,
that of the immigrant Europeans.
Indo-Europeans
are always trying to say that they are
“Federally Recognized Indians,” figuring their heritage on the
matriline. Hanging onto their mother’s
skirts is what
conquered people do, and these self-proclaimed American Indians do not
have a
Dodem or a Clan and they are not indigenous to this land.
They may be “Indians,” but they are not
Aboriginal Indigenous People, whose heritage of identity is on the
patriline,
from the father’s people. Even the
Bureau of Indian Affairs admits this.
In their ecocidal economic plan, published in March, 1979 as The
Red
Lake Indian Reservation, It’s Resources and Development Potential,
by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, as Report No.
253—endorsed for the mythological Chippewa Indians by a French
Métis, Roger
Jourdain, and an immigrant German farmer, Celestine Maus, the Bureau
writes
that the Anishinabe Ojibway are “patrilineal and divided by clans
[Dodems]
usually named after animals.” Also
published in this book is the Bureau’s diabolical scorched-earth total
destruction of the ecosystem scheme, which is apparently the blueprint
being
followed by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, because this is not
their
land. This Indian and United States
Government “economic development plan” recommends deep degradation of
our
environment, noting for example on page 173 that their proposed rice
paddies
appear “to have contributed significant amounts of dissolved solids and
sulfates to the river ... [and] contributed significant amounts of
biochemical
oxygen demand and oxygen deficient water to the river system. Violations of the agency standard ...
seemingly occur.” The plan endorses
blasting duck nesting sites “with ammonia nitrate” on page 33, and
recommends
clearcut “land clearing” with [heavy-equipment] mechanical shearing
blades on
pages 69-73 and 131, along with “machine scalping” of the land,
application of
2-4D, 2-4-5T and other poisons (page 135), and elimination of “mature
stands
(page 127),” meaning wholesale destruction of balanced Anishinabe
Ojibway
forests, in order to make areas of ecological devastation
euphemistically
called “tree farms.” The Bureau of
Indian Affairs writes on page 126, “Despite conflicting opinions, stand
conversion [i.e., demolishing intact forests] will occur.” The White planners also note on page v of
the introduction that “such a program will necessitate changes in
certain
activities and attitudes that may not be entirely acceptable to tribal
members
[i.e. Anishinabe Ojibway people].”
It needs to be clearly reiterated here that the B.I.A.’s
Chippewa
Indians are not the Aboriginal Indigenous People of this land,
and they
are not the same people as the Anishinabe Ojibway; and in fact that the
Bureau’s in-group Indians expect to make money from this ecological
mayhem, and
some of them already have.
According
to my crystal ball, this insane plan is going to
wreak immense hardship not only on the Anishinabe Ojibway, who own this
land—and who were not consulted about the Bureau’s Hitler-mentality
assault on
our environment—it will also have dire consequences for the White
people, and
the Indians, in the surrounding ecosystem. The
effects of environmental devastation will hit all of you
people. There are no political boundary
lines when it comes to destruction of the ecosystem.
Why bother with Ducks Unlimited if the United States Government
is just going to blow up their nests?
Save your money for a trip to Washington, to talk to your
Senator about
this criminal madness. Maybe there are
some people in Washington who also need some butt-kicking to get their
brains
back in gear.
We,
the surviving Anishinabe Ojibway have an inalienable
right to exist as a Sovereign People on our own land, without
Wanna-be’s and
pretenders officially endorsing plans ruining land which does not
belong to
them.
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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