Wub-e-ke-niew with Foxy and Bear
Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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After five hundred of
Western European occupation, genocide, and grand theft of the
Aboriginal
Indigenous Peoples’ land and resources, the Europeans and their
Indians, who
have been on welfare for five hundred years, celebrated Columbus Day. At Red Lake, the Chippewa Indians marked
Columbus Day by celebrating the White Sovereignty that was given to
them by the
United States Government. 1934 I.R.A.
Tribal Administrator Judy Roy was quoted in the Bemidji Pioneer as
saying that
the Red Lake Indian Pow-Wow “began last year as part of the
quin-centennial
celebration of Christopher Columbus, ... and ‘our celebration of our
sovereignty that we are still here’.”
From an Anishinabe Ojibway perspective, what Ms. Roy said can be
interpreted
as that colonial governments and their subject Indians are still here,
celebrating five hundred years of colonial occupation and complicity in
genocide.
Also quoted was Frances
Brun, who said that Red Lake was a closed Reservation, meaning,
according to
the Bemidji Pioneer, that “all the land is held in common, with no
individual
allotments.” Francis Brun was speaking
on the basis of Western European Indian policy, and what the U.S.
Government
calls “Indian law.” These Indians that
Brun was talking about, have European patrilines, and are thus subject
to
imported Roman Statute law, British Common Law, and the colonial
occupations
called United States Law. Brun did not
mention the Anishinabe Ojibway, because he was speaking on behalf of
the U.S.A.
as one of their subject Indians, and Brun does not have any Anishinabe
Ojibway
ancestors at all. Brun did not say, and
probably does not understand, that according to the ancient laws of the
Anishinabe Ojibway Midewiwin, this land is not held “in common,”
particularly
with the Chippewa Indians. This land is
held jointly by the patrilineal Dodems of the Anishinabe Ojibway—and
the
Indians promoted in the media have been packed onto land which does not
belong
to them by the United States Government.
The Indians celebrated
their
Sovereignty, which is Protestant Sovereignty, operating under the
French feudal
philosophy of the subject Chippewa Indians at Red Lake.
I am not an Indian, and I do not belong to
the Chippewa Tribal structure created by the United States Government. The B.I.A. listed me on their “Chippewa
Indian Rolls” without my knowledge or consent, and I sent my
resignation as a
Chippewa Indian to then-Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S.
Supreme
Court, in respect of the procedure described in the U.S. Constitution
for one
Sovereign dealing with another. Justice
Marshall accepted my resignation, and these papers are now in the
Library of
Congress. I explained to Thurgood
Marshall about the dishonest identity of “Indian,” and that I have my
own
Aboriginal Indigenous identity. I am a
Sovereign Anishinabe Ojibway on my own land, and British Indian common
law,
United States law, and the Chippewa Indian Tribal Code do not have
jurisdiction
over the Sovereigns of the Anishinabe Ojibway Nation.
We are on our own land, and have been here for millennia, long
before the White man, the Pillager Indians, the French Métis,
and the Chippewa
Indians got here. We, the Anishinabe
Ojibway have a right to continue existing on our own land, without the
wanna-be
Chippewa Indians trying to steal our identity and our traditions,
abetting the
Whites in trying to steal our land and resources, and covering up the
genocide.
To you, Brun, I challenge
you, as you try to use and abuse my Aboriginal Indigenous Sovereignty
to get
out of paying taxes on money you made plundering my resources and
destroying my
forests. Try to kick me off of my land,
which has belonged to the Anishinabe Ojibway, including my family and
my Dodem,
for more than the last hundred thousand years—we’ll see who leaves. Why don’t you Chippewa Indians practice the
Protestant Ethic, and go to work, instead of spinning your wheels
trying to
live out all of the projections, labels, and stereotypes that the White
man
created for his subject Indians? One
moment, the United States Government tells you that you have
Sovereignty, and
then out of the other side of their mouths, they tell you that with
“one stroke
of the pen, we can terminate you.”
TRUMPING
THE INDIANS: According
to Saturday’s Minneapolis Star
Tribune, “Casino mogul Donald Trump” testified on Indian gaming
regulations to
the Natural Resources Committee of the House of Representatives. Trump is quoted as saying that many Indians
who want to operate casinos “don’t look like Indians to me, and they
don’t look
like Indians to Indians.” You’re right,
Don—the Aboriginal Indigenous people of this Continent did not have
curly hair,
blue eyes, nor the other Moorish and European features that
characterize most
Federally Recognized Indians. The U.S.
Government
is using some inconsistent logic that has nothing to do with the
Anishinabe
Ojibway and other Aboriginal Indigenous People. “Indian
Blood Quantum” is irrelevant—both to whether or not a
person is an Aboriginal Indigenous person, and the way that the United
States
has calculated it, it has nothing to do with whether or not a person
who claims
to be an “Indian” has any Aboriginal Indigenous ancestry.
The U.S. is hurting because of past
genocide, desperately trying to re-create the Aboriginal Indigenous
People that
they destroyed. Re-defining 1/32 as
1/4, and then saying “this person is an Indian because their
great-great-great
grandmother was an ‘Indian princess’” [she was probably one of the
so-called
King’s Daughters involuntarily exported from France to Montreal] makes
as much
sense as would re-defining an African-American as “Lily-White” because
they
have 1/32 White blood. Maybe because
Math is an abstraction, this can be done.
GRAND
LAND THEFT:: The following is an
excerpt from the chapter on “Language” in my upcoming book, We Have
a Right
to Exist. The publisher revised the
printing schedule, and it will now be coming out in January of 1994:
Chief Joseph did not
understand Western European abstract thinking in detail; Aboriginal
Indigenous
People usually described the language generated by it as “forked-tongue
speaking.” Because he could not speak
English, he did not know how to defend himself against the abstract
Indians and
the abstract laws which were used to steal his land.
The United States Government gave Chief Joseph four abstract,
artificial identities: Chief, Nez Perce, Joseph, and Indian, in order
to steal
his land. (The U.S. wanted to make
absolutely certain they clinched the deal they had stacked in their own
favor,
so they overdid it with the fake identities.
I haven’t figured out yet, why they changed the names of a lot
of
Aboriginal Indigenous people, as well as many of their White Indian
Chiefs,
into Joseph.) Neither the Europeans nor
the Euro-Americans have clear title nor eminent domain to any of the
land on
this Continent. Western Europeans can
write all the Title Abstracts that they want, but they can’t change
reality. This is the way Chief Joseph
was interpreted as describing what happened—I don’t know what was lost
in
translation:
Suppose a white man should
come to me and say, ‘Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy
them.’ I say to him, ‘No, my horses suit
me, and I
will not sell them.’ Then, he goes to
my neighbor, and says to him, ‘Joseph has some horses.
I want to buy them, but he refuses to
sell.’ My neighbor answers, ‘Pay me the
money, and I will sell you Joseph’s horses.’
The white man returns to me and says, ‘Joseph, I have bought
your
horses, and you must let me have them.’
If our lands were sold to the government, this is the way they
were
bought.
The “neighbor” that Chief
Joseph describes as selling things which do not belong to him, was not
an
Aboriginal Indigenous person. Neither
Joseph, nor any other Aboriginal Indigenous person, can sell land,
because of
the Autochthonous religious and philosophies of this Continent.
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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