Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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In
the January 7, 1994 OJIBWE NEWS, Charles Lone Eagle
expressed his distress with the media circus which has hounded him. He said that he was tired of being given the
identity of a drunk who was a Trunk Indian, singled out as one of the
many
people who are abused by the Minneapolis police.
Clyde
Bellecourt and Larry Levanthal are exploiting Charles
Lone Eagle with no regard to his feelings or best interests. Where is the highly touted Indian
solidarity, Indian Sovereignty, and Indian and Free?
Where are the Tribal Chairmen, and the Indian Tribal
Councils? What about the B.I.A., which
is bound by departmental regulations to watch out for the best
interests of
their Indians? Maybe the Indian
élite
and the Federal officials feel that the “best interests” are to use
Indians
with an alcohol problem as a punching bag; to kick them while they’re
down.
Former
Minneapolis Police Chief Tony Bouza wrote, in an
editorial in the March 29, 1989 Minneapolis Star Tribune, that
“Controlling the
underclass is one of the key functions of America’s police. ... The
cops know
that ... they must sometimes use force.
They possess a legal monopoly on violence.”
Could it be that the “Indian leaders” want to rise on the
Euro-American class hierarchy, because of their White values, and so
they have
no objection to the brutality used in maintaining the social classes
they
aspire to?
When
Charles Lone Eagle got categorized as an “Indian,” the
United States Government and the churches took away his real identity
and gave
him a stereotype. When he tried to live
out a part of this stereotype, he got trapped.
The Minneapolis Police Department knew the stereotypes that he
was stuck
in, so they took away the rest of his self-esteem and his dignity—and
beat him
for no other reason than that the Euro-Americans are a violent people,
and some
of the members of the Police Force get their jollies from sadistic
violence. I’ve been on both sides of
the fence: I was trained as a military policeman and assigned to a
constabulary
unit, and I saw the way that some of those M.P.’s enjoyed violence. The Minneapolis Police are no different than
the B.I.A., which enjoys an abusive relationship with their Indians. The U.S.A. was founded on violence, and in
order to solve the epidemic of violence which is tearing apart U.S.
cities, the
Euro-Americans need to take a hard look a their violent history,
culture, and
values.
MORE OF THE
AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
In
the Sunday, January 9, 1994 issue of the Minneapolis Star
Tribune, there was a front page article about Indian-owned Casinos. The newspaper reported that B.I.A. Area
Director Earl Barlow got caught selling his influence in gaming
regulation,
accepting vouchers for gambling money, and jackpots at the casinos he
was
supposed to regulate. While Clyde
Bellecourt and his Wanna-Be Indians were standing around in the cold
demonstrating against Indian Mascots at the 1992 Superbowl, their
B.I.A. Chief,
Blackfoot Indian Earl Barlow was sitting in a Metrodome Skybox paid for
by a slot
machine company, doing the Tomahawk Chop.
According to the F.O.I.A. records quoted by the Minneapolis
paper,
Barlow also was apparently driving all over town, dilly-dallying with
his
secretary—and charging the taxpayers for his mileage and his time.
According
to the Star Tribune, the National Indian Gaming
Commission does not allow its staff to gamble in Indian casinos. Fred
Stuckwisch, the Commission’s Executive Director, is quoted as saying “I
guess
any [gambling] machine can be rigged under the right circumstances.”
Abuse
of power by Area Directors, public officials, and
Indian Agents has been going on since the inception of the Bureau of
Indian
Affairs, and United States Indian History is a chronicle of fraud,
corruption,
and mismanagement in the B.I.A.; cover-ups and investigations; firing
of
scapegoats and bureaucratic reorganization; and then another round of
fraud,
corruption, and mismanagement in the B.I.A.
When
I was young, in the 1930’s, Red Lake Reservation was
explicitly a concentration camp. The
U.S. Government policy was compulsory education. The
boarding schools were designed to take away our Aboriginal
Indigenous identity. They used
forked-tongue speaking, and gave us an Indian identity.
Then, these “Indian givers” took away the
Indian identity that they had just given us, by telling us “you are the
vanishing Americans, and you will go.”
Now, the same crooked institutions are back here again,
promoting the
Indian identity they were trying so hard to destroy fifty years ago.
Now,
the B.I.A. is having their Indians say that this Indian
concentration camp is an “Indian Nation,” with “Indian Sovereignty”
(belonging
to the Secretary of the Interior).
Rather than trying to solve one small part of the problems in
the
B.I.A., by trying to regulate B.I.A. employee gambling, why not just
phase out
the B.I.A., the Indian Tribal Governments established by the Bureau
under the
1934 I.R.A.—and the Bureau’s Indians.
The
French Métis who were made into P.O.W. Indians as a
result of the “Indian Wars” have an European identity on their
patriline. The Bureau of Indian Affairs
knew this, and
in the 1890 Report of the Commissioner, wrote that, “the question
depends ...
not on the quantum of Indian blood, but upon the condition of his
father, under
the rule of civil law ‘partus sequiter patrem,’ which governs
in this
class of cases. ... Vattel, in his Law
of Nations, p. 102, [wrote] as follows: ‘By the law of nature alone
children
follow the condition of their fathers and enter into all their rights;’
and adds
that this law of nature, so far as it has become a part of the common
law ...
must be the rule in the case before it. ... “
Despite
laws that the people they were making into Indians
were considered Whites, the B.I.A. Commissioner stated U.S. Indian
policy as,
“the admixture of blood, however, must be considered in connection with
all the
circumstances of each case; consequently a fixed rule applicable to all
cases
can not well be adopted.” Ten years
earlier, the B.I.A. had advocated turning White men into Indians “on
the books”
for the issuance of halfbreed scrip.
The Bureau has not historically operated on the basis of
meticulous
attention to legal or ethical niceties, because their philosophy has
been,
“Since, under existing conditions, tribal organizations are now rapidly
passing
away, almost every question of importance depending on the tribal
system will
be solved.”
In
their arrogance and greed, the Indo-Europeans have refused
to recognize the Aboriginal Indigenous Nations of this Continent. Rather than deal with reality, the
Euro-Americans made “Indians” out of their subject people.
Using their “Indians,” they have created
demeaning Indian mythology; fraudulent Indian Treaties in which they
controlled
both sides; and their bureaucratic agency of war and occupation, the
Bureau of
Indian Affairs. It’s about time that
the Euro-Americans trashed their whole Indian mythology, and
decommissioned the
B.I.A. The money saved by eliminating
this obsolete, pork-barrel bureaucracy could be applied to the deficit.
If
Euro-Americans can’t phase out their mythology of Indians,
why not let the Boy Scouts take over?
They’re volunteers, and they take an oath of Scouts Honor—which
is more
than can be said for the present corrupt Indian leadership.
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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