Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
|
Wub-e-ke-niew
had a sharply honed sense of irony and a keen wit, and there were
aspects of
the hearing on "Court File No. 98-002, in re: Estate on "Francis
George Blake' Deceased'' which would have provided Wub-e-ke-niew with
plenty of
material for a long series of columns of political satire about the
"Red
Lake Nation Tribal Court, Red Lake Indian Jurisdiction." There was a
more
serious side to the May 22 "hearing" and the May 26
"continuance," too - aspects of which are rooted in the very nature of
the United States' "Indian" establishment and the Euroamerican
legal-political system as applied to "Red Lake Indian Reservation.
Hidden
underneath the day-to-day turmoil of "Indian politics" and a
shamefully long chronicle of United States violations of civil, human
and
natural rights on the Rez, and at the very foundation of the present
"Indian system, is the Europeans' and Euroamericans' legacy of the
genocide which they committed against the Ahnishinahbæótjibway
and other Aboriginal Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Somehow,
perhaps
the probate hearing over which the Red Lake Indian Courts claimed
jurisdiction
- and all of the beyond-the-law back room deals which accompanied it -
might
have been something which Wub-e-ke-niew found very funny.
The
official notice stated that a probate hearing of "Francis George
Blake's" estate would be held at 2:00 p.m. on May 22, 1998, at the
"Red Lake Nation Tribal Courthouse." The Notice included the advisory
that, "any objections that you may have to this petition must be filed
with the Court and hear by the Court at said last mentioned time and
place or
else the same are forever barred." The Notice was mailed to two of
Wub-e-ke-niew's sons, made its way fourth-hand through the grapevine to
Wub-e-ke-niew's wife, Clara NiiSka, and it may have been posted
somewhere.
The
Petitioner for Probate is listed in court of documents as Valerie Lynn
Blake,
who describes herself on the Petition as the daughter of "Francis
George
Blake, Jr." She sought the "Indian" jurisdiction of the
"Red Lake Court of Indian Offenses, Probate Division" by declaring
and affirming, under penalties for perjury and deliberate
falsification, that
the "deceased is an Indian" on the basis of a State of Minnesota
death certificate. The "informant" who claimed that "Francis
George Blake, Jr., alias WUB-E-KE-NIEW" was an "American Indian"
for the purposes of that death certificate was Valerie L. Blake, who
also
provided the information that the decedent resided in a post office box
in
Bemidji, as well as within the "City Limits" of "Red Lake,
Minnesota." The abstractions of official bureaucratic forms can create
interesting distortions of reality, and according to documents provided
to the
Native American Press/Ojibwe News, the accuracy of more than half of
the
non-medical information on the death certificate, including the
categorization
of Wub-e-ke-niew as an "American Indian," is still under
consideration by the State of Minnesota.
The
Court documents also include an undated "Certificate of Degree of
Indian
Blood" from the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Tribal Operations
Division. This document is signed by Donna Whitefeather, and certifies
that
"Francis G. Blake, Jr. (DOB: 6/6/28)" is an [illegible fraction]
"degree of Red Lake Chippewa Indian and is an enrolled member of the
Red
Lake Band of Chippewa Indians." In 1990, Wub-e-ke-niew sent his
"Indian Identity Card" to Thurgood Marshall, Chief Justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court, which according to Wub-e-ke-niew's reading of the
U.S.
Constitution was the Court of first jurisdiction. He then notified the
U.S.
Secretary of the Interior's office that he had done so, and wrote, "I
want
my name removed from the basic membership, identification and enrolment
lists
of your `Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians.' I will no longer be
identified by
your racist term of `Indian.'" He advised the Secretary of the Interior
that he was Ahnishinahbæótjibway,
that his Ahnishinahbæótjibway land
"has never belonged to `Indians,' as the United States Government
continues to falsely claim." Wub-e-ke-niew's sent photostatic copies of
his letter to the Secretary of the Interior all over the world, and it
was
published by the Ojibwe News in early 1991. The Native American
Press/Ojibwe
News has copies of documents including a letter from the Acting
Director of
the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, which addresses the
issue of
colonizing and genocidal entities controlling the identity of those
whom they
wish to destroy: "... to get the language issue correct is important,
not
so much because of `political correctness,' but because it is important
to
permit people to define themselves. During the Nazi period, the Nazis,
not the
Jews, defined who was a Jew. ... David Stannard, historian and author
of
American Holocaust, ... has indicated that language is part of a
Eurocentric
contempt for the indigenous peoples of North and South America, as well
as
Africa, which has contributed to the creation of political mythologies
and
distortions of the truth, and as a consequence, also the creation of
government
policies which embody these distortions."
The
"Indian Identity Card" which Wub-e-ke-niew returned to the U.S.
Supreme Court identified Wub-e-ke-niew as Francis Blake, Jr., with no
middle
name. Wub-e-ke-niew wrote about his name in a PRESS/ON column published
a few
months before his death, stating, "My name is Wub-e-ke-niew. That other
name was given to my father in the Mission School by racist Christians,
to
destroy my people's real identity. My father was the first generation
with the
name `Blake,' and using that derogatory `Indian' name is an insult, a
human
rights violation, disgusting and obscene." Since the English-language
"Indian" names given to him by the Euroamericans and their agents
were not really his name, Wub-e-ke-niew was generally known by two
different
"Indian" names: "Francis Blake, Jr." in the official
documents of the BIA bureaucracy and the derived documents of the
"Indian
Tribal Council" established under the 1934 I.R.A.: and "Francis
George Blake" in the official State and Federal documents like his
drivers' license, military records, etc. Because one of Wub-e-ke-niew's
sons is
a "junior," there are also a few documents which refer to
Wub-e-ke-niew as "Francis G. Blake, Sr." Until the Red Lake Band of
Chippewa Indians' posthumous "enrolment" of Wub-e-ke-niew as
"Francis George Blake, Jr.," based on the erroneous information
provided on the death certificate, there was no such person as "Francis
G.
Blake, Jr. (DOB: 6/6/28)." Wub-e-ke-niew was born before the Red Lake
"Base Rolls" were compiled under the directives of the 1934 I.R.A.,
and he was listed by the BIA on their "census rolls" as a matter of
bureaucratic procedure - and, as soon as Wub-e-ke-niew became aware of
the
implications of the "tribal enrollments" derived from the old BIA
census rolls, he told the Secretary of the Interior, under whose
administration
those census rolls were compiled, that he wanted his name removed.
The
probate hearing was held after parties with vested interests created
"official documents" which they used to support their claims of
"jurisdiction" over Wub-e-ke-niew, who was named on the Probate
Notice as "Francis George Blake." Pursuant to the Notice of probate
hearing, which indicated that the hearing date had been set for May 22,
1998,
at 2:00 p.m., Valerie Blake, Clara NiiSka, and parties who had offered
to
witness the events, where present at the "Red Lake Nation Tribal Court
House." The public view of the courtroom proceedings was of a
"hurry-up-and-wait" colonial process. Clara NiiSka filed a
"Notice of Special Appearance" with the Clerk of Courts slightly
before 2:00 p.m., and shortly thereafter also filed a box of
attachments, which
included a copy of We Have The Right To Exist, A Translation of
Aboriginal
Indigenous Thought. The first book ever published from an Ahnishinahbæótjibway
perspective, a videotape of a television
broadcast featuring Wub-e-ke-niew taking about We Have The Right To
Exist... as
well as short clips of Clara with some of the research supporting the
book, and
several thousand pages of other documentation. The twenty-page Notice
was filed
"In objection to any assumption and/or exercise of jurisdiction by the
Red
Lake Indian Courts, et. al., over Wub-e-ke-niew, and/or over his
estate, and/or
any property in which he may have held an interest. I further object to
any
attempt by the Red Lake Indian Courts, et. al., to make any legally
binding
determination related to Wub-e-ke-niew's name, identity, marital
status, heirs,
geographical nomenclature, etc. My objections are on jurisdictional,
factual,
legal, historical, ethical and epistemological grounds. ..." These
basis
for these objections was detailed, with citation of attached evidence.
The
summary pages of the Notice include the observation that, "If there
were
people who disagreed with what Wub-e-ke-niew was saying, they had
plenty of
time to talk to him about it while he was alive. I do not believe that
it is
honorable, to wait until a man can no longer speak for himself, to try
to
discredit him or insult him, and stealing from the dead? I cannot
imagine how
anyone could live with their conscience after doing something like
that."
The Notice also includes the observation that, "I doubt that, within
the
legal structure which is imposed on them by the Code of Federal
Regulations and
Federal funding guidelines, the Red Lake Indian Courts, et. al., can
openly
recognize the legitimacy of the very real connections between Ahnishinahbæótjibway like my recently
deceased husband, and the land which has in reality been the land of
the Ahnishinahbæótjibway for countless
generations. I can and do ask and request, however, that the Red Lake
Indian
Courts, et. al., seriously consider the issues that I have raised here,
and ask
and request that the Red Lake Indian Courts, et. al. make the only
stand for
real justice which may be possible under the present political
situation -
withdraw any exercise of their [claimed] jurisdiction over
Wub-e-ke-niew's
estate, over his property, and over his Ahnishinahbæótjibway
land of his Bear Dodem. Wub-e-ke-niew may have been outspoken, but he
was also
meticulously honest - and true to himself - and he deserves to be
respected.
There is a potent legal precedent for doing what is morally right
rather than
following the letter of the law, and that is the Nuremberg Principles,
which
are attached..."
Clara
NiiSka and one of the witnesses waited through about two hours for the
probate
proceedings to begin, and occasionally saw the Petitioner moving
through the
hall, or in various offices of the Tribal Courts building. Another
witness
heard the Petitioner slandering Clara NiiSka in the back room, stating
that she
was "delusional" and trying to discredit in advance, anything that
she might say. That witness also heard the Petitioner ask that a
warrant for
Clara's arrest be issued, on the purported grounds that she had "stolen
a
fifty dollar microphone" which the Petitioner claimed was her property.
Although this was a back room conversation, it may have had a bearing
on the
demeanor of the Court, and attached to the "Notice of Special
Appearance,
Continuation" which Clara filed with the court in conjunction with the
continuance of the hearing to May 26, 1998, was her statement. "The
only
microphone which to my knowledge, fits the description is one which
was,
approximately two weeks before Wub-e-ke-niew's death, sitting on top of
the
filing cabinets in Wub-e-ke-niew's and my house. ... I left it where it
was ...
Other witnesses have indicated that, under the management of the
Petitioner and
the one to whom she has apparently assigned responsibility for the
day-to-day
watching of the house, feeding of the dogs, etc., a significant
quantity of
property has been re-arranged and/or discarded, including a `pick up
truck
full' of property which may well have included some of my personal
property,
and Wub-e-ke-niew's and my joint property, as well as perhaps some of
Wub-e-ke-niew's personal property in which I may have an interest. I
have made
no complaint to the Red Lake Indian Courts, et. at., regarding the
probable
destruction and/or discarding of said property, nor am I doing so now,
because
none of Wub-e-ke-niew's personal property, Wub-e-ke-niew's and my joint
property, my personal property, nor the property to the Bear Dodem of
the Ahnishinahbæótjibway, is under the
jurisdiction of the Red Lake Indian Courts, et. al. I mention the
discarding of
property because there is a reasonable possibility that the party to
whom the
Petitioner appears to have assigned responsibility for said property,
may have
discarded said microphone, perhaps in the belief that it was mine."
Apparently,
the Red Lake Law Enforcement decided not to arrest Clara NiiSka on
Friday, May
22, 1998, because of the jurisdictional issues which might have been
raised.
The Red Lake Court convened the probate hearing, somewhat informally,
at about
four o'clock in the afternoon. Judge Wanda Lyons told those in the
courtroom
that she was continuing the case until Tuesday, May 26, 1998, and,
subsequent
to inquiry, said that she thought it would beat around 9:00 in the
morning.
Judge Lyons also stated that she had helped the Petitioner prepare some
of the
court documents, and so she was removing herself from the case to avoid
potential conflict of interest. She stated that she would assign Judge
Bruce
Graves to the case.
On
May 22, 1998, Clara NiiSka and a witness arrived at the Red Lake Courts
shortly
before nine in the morning, and Clara filed a "Notice of Special
Appearance, Continuation." The continuation notice included a
twenty-two
page summary, and attached documents relating to the broader issues of
jurisdiction, as per the request which Judge Wanda Lyons had made after
continuing the case on Friday. Then, Clara and the witness waited for
nearly
two and a half hours. After forty-five minutes, the witness wrote. "The
judge (Bruce Graves) entered the courtroom at 9:45 to go through the
box of
evidence. (Note: apparently Valerie has been here for some time - we
haven't
seen her yet.)"
At
about 10:20, the Petitioner appeared, Judge Graves opened the hearing,
and a
Red Lake police officer served Clara with an order for her removal from
"Red Lake Indian Reservation," which stated that, "The Red Lake
Indian Reservation belongs to the members of the Red Lake Band of
Chippewa
Indians for all purposes, and that no other Indians or persons have
rights
thereon ..." The word, "belong" in Bureauspeak and the related
Cants of the "Indian" establishment is, like many of the other words
of what Wub-e-ke-niew referred to as "Crocked English," a
"unique" word in its own special BIA way. Among the documents which
Clara had brought with her but not yet filed with the Indian Court was
a
photocopy of PL 85-794, which deletes the clause, enacted two years
previously,
requiring the "consent of the tribal council" to forest-management
decisions made under the administration of the Secretary of the
Interior. She
had previously attached a copy of a Beltrami County plat book listing
the
"owner" of some Red Lake "reservation" land as the United
States Government.
Clara
NiiSka examined the "Order of Removal," and observed that the order
was being served in a way which would remove her from a court
proceeding in
which she had a legitimate interest.
When
Press/ON called Judge Bruce foreknowledge of the Order of
Removal.
On
the morning of May 26, it was not totally clear whether the Court
intended to
give a fair and reasonable hearing to the underlying issues, or whether
the
probate hearing had been accepted by the Red Lake Courts merely to give
a
rubber-stamp of legitimacy to the taking of all of Wub-e-ke-niew's (and
Clara's)
property and other assets - an agenda expressed by the Petitioner's
mother
shortly after Wub-e-ke-niew's death in a statement she made to Clara,
"we
intend to leave you with nothing but memories." In either event, being
in
attendance at one's husband's probate hearing does not seem
unreasonable,
particularly in an instance where there is more than a million dollars
worth of
property at stake, and where other parties have evinced hostile intents.
Judge
Bruce Graves requested that the police officer provide him with a copy
of the
order of removal, and opened the hearing, directing his questioning
toward the
Petitioner. Clara requested permission to tape-record the proceedings,
which
was granted. The Judge asked the Petitioner about "Francis Blake's"
name, age at death, and birthday, and inquired about the whereabouts of
the
three of the Petitioner's brothers who were listed on the Petition for
Probate.
The Petitioner responded with the geographical location two of them,
and that
he was "at his house" for the third, then the Petitioner requested
that Clara be removed from the courtroom, based on her statement that
she was
not "related by blood," and that the Petitioner did not want to hear
anything which Clara might have to say. The Judge asked the Petitioner
about
the issues, and the Petitioner responded by listing the capital credits
accrued
from Wub-e-ke-niew and Clara's household accounts, which had been
listed in
Wub-e-ke-niew's name at the electric and telephone co-ops. The
Petitioner then
vehemently protested Clara's presence in the courtroom.
Judge
Graves ordered a five-minute recess, during which time the police
officer
returned to the courtroom with the paperwork for the "Order of
Removal" which had been previously served on Clara NiiSka. The Order
was
entered into the Court records by Judge Graves, and upon being informed
that
the order was effective immediately, Clara shrugged her shoulders and
walked
out of the building and into the parking lot, escorted by the police
officer.
The police officer asked Clara if she had property on the reservation,
and
Clara responded that she did, and that she had a list with her, but
that there
were unresolved jurisdictional problems entangling that property.
The
Judge then asked the name and business of the witness, who had remained
in the
courtroom. She responded with her name and that she was a friend of
Wub-e-ke-niew and Clara NiiSka. Judge Graves stated that it was a
"closed
hearing," and requested that the witness leave, which she did at 10:30
a.m. The witness and Clara got into the witness' vehicle, and drove
south on
Highway 89. The police officer followed them, until they crossed the
Reservation line.
What
kind of political system bars property-owners from attending court
proceedings
in which the disposal of their property is being adjudicated? What kind
of
political system serves draconian writs of removal, in the midst of a
court
proceeding, on a widow attending her husband's probate hearing - a
probate
hearing in which even the legitimacy of her marriage of nearly fourteen
years
is being challenged by the overtly hostile daughter of her husband's
ex-wife?
What kind of political system sanctions the eviction of widows from
their own
homes, and then seals vengeful taking of property with order of
removal, not only
from the premises but from the entire geographical area? The signature
on the
Order of Removal reads, "Bobby Whitefeather."
Clara
NiiSka is not the only widow who has been summarily and without due
process
evicted from her long-time home at Red Lake, and NAP/ON has reported
other
peoples' stories. For a number of years, there has also been a kind of
hostility toward "outsiders" which isolates the people at Red Lake,
and could even be seen as a Machiavellian strategy of "divide and
conquer"
promoted by those in power. But, Clara NiiSka was Wub-e-ke-niew's
working
partner and research collaborator as well as his wife, and, in the
month
immediately after her husband's death, made the decision that standing
up for
his honor as well as her own, was important. "He stood up and defended
me," she explains to the Native American Press/Ojibwe News.
Wub-e-ke-niew's
name, his identity as Ahnishinahbæótjibway
of the Bear Dodem, and his deeply connected relationship to the land
where, as
he said, "every handful of Grandmother Earth is the bones of my
ancestors," were extremely important to him. As Ahnishinahbæótjibway
of the Bear Dodem, and his deeply connected
relationship to the land where, as he said, "every handful of
Grandmother
Earth is the bones of my ancestors," were extremely important to him.
As
Wub-e-ke-niew explained in interviews taped a few months before his
death, he
was born into his Grandfather, Bah-wah-we-nind's Ahnishinahbæótjibway
context, and he spent his formative years with
his grandfather. "They tried to make me into an `Indian' in the Mission
School," Wub-e-ke-niew said. "The nuns used to tell us, `you are the
Vanishing American,' and you will go," and at the same time they
violently
took away Wub-e-ke-niew's native language. "For years, I didn't have
any
language - they beat my native language out of me, and I didn't speak
more than
a few words of English." Wub-e-ke-niew explained that the name,
"Francis Blake," and the "identity of Indian never felt right to
me," but that it took him many years of studying the English language
to
figure out exactly what was wrong.
Wub-e-ke-niew
spent many years trying to fit his own Aboriginal Indigenous way of
being, into
the definitions of "Indian," which he said was an "identity
created by the White man, in order to steal our land and hide the
genocide." Wub-e-ke-niew put a great deal of energy and thought into
trying to be an "Indian," and was one of the founders of the American
Indian Movement, as well as working with Red Lake Indian community
groups along
with Clara and a professional grant writer from the Twin Cities who
donated
thousands of hours of his time: to start community-owned economic
development
on Red Lake Indian Reservation. "You can never get the Indians together
in
solidarity about anything," he said of his efforts.
In
the mid-1980's, Wub-e-ke-niew started compiling a short family history
for his
children. He knew the names of his ancestors, but he did not know their
birth
dates, and when he went to the BIA to ask them for this information,
the BIA
told him, "those records burned up in fire - and anyway they're
confidential." Wub-e-ke-niew asked Clara if she would go to the
National
Archives in Washington, D.C., to get copies of those and other records.
When he
read those Government documents, "it all started to make sense," as
Wub-e-ke-niew said later. The Government records dovetailed with his
own oral
history, and Wub-e-ke-niew began to realize the implications of his
Peoples'
oral history, and to find documentation for what, as he said, "I always
knew but couldn't prove." There was a season during the years that he
and
Clara worked on compiling a genealogy of Red Lake, when Wub-e-ke-niew
mourned,
with an inconsolable grief, the genocide committed against his Ahnishinahbæótjibway people, and came
face-to-face with the reality that he was one of only a handful of
survivors of
a near-total holocaust. Finally, he said, "we have to make this a
better
world for all people," and wrote as the last sentences in We Have The
Right To Exist...., "If there is to be hope for anybody in the future,
we
have to work together to recreate a network of harmonious societies
which
provide for all people. ... The Western Europeans and other civilized
peoples
are standing where two very different paths are before them. Their
decision is
no longer up to them, because the consequences affect everybody. We
must all
find a way to work harmoniously together, to create a balanced world
for the
generations yet to come." This is, as accurately as it can be written
in
the English language, a part of what it meant to be Ahnishinahbæótjibway
for Wub-e-ke-niew.
Wub-e-ke-niew
and Clara lived in a rare place in the world: one where the land had
never been
ceded, where the ecosystem still bore traces of the interconnected
harmonious
permaculture of the Ahnishinahbæótjibway,
where an Aboriginal Indigenous man could still hold the bones of his
own
ancestors in every handful of Grandmother Earth.
The
"Indian" political-legal system is apparently seeking to discredit
Wub-e-ke-niew by re-defining him as an "Indian" after his death and
when he can no longer speak for himself. It is being used to discredit
his wife
and give a semblance of "legitimacy" to depriving her of the material
aspects of the work that she and Wub-e-ke-niew did together. It is, as
Wub-e-ke-niew wrote, "specifically designed to destroy Aboriginal
Indigenous ... culture, traditions and people, using the facade of U.S.
subject
Indian people to unjustifiably presume jurisdiction." He continues, in
Chapter XIII, INDIAN TRIBAL COURTS of We Have The Right To Exist...,
"the
legal structure set up by the United States [uses] the quasi
Sovereignty
attributed to the I.R.A. councils as a front behind which the U.S.
Government
uses Indian trusties to assert P.O.W. control over those defined as
Indians,
and illegally harass Aboriginal Indigenous people."
The
legal, ethical and other issues raised by the Federal "Indian"
establishment at Red Lake, and their attempts to re-define
Wub-e-ke-niew as an
"Indian" after his death, and to thereby claim
"jurisdiction," are historically deep-rooted. The sources of the
"White-plus psychology" which Wub-e-ke-niew saw in the words and
actions of some of the "leading Indians," come from the Classical
Greeks in the formative era of Western Civilization, and perverted
ideas like
those of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who saw nothing wrong with
warring
on, dispossessing and enslaving those who were "uncivilized" and
even, Aristotle wrote, "natural slaves." The kind of thinking that the
U.S. is imposing on the Ahnishinahbæótjibway
on unceded Ahnishinahbæótjibway land,
using the "Red Lake Indian" system which was created and is
maintained under Federal law, includes Medieval Papal decrees which
define
European religious and political leaders as operating under the direct
authority of God - and define Aboriginal Indigenous people as "half-men
(homunculi), in whom you will barely find the vestiges of humanity ..."
The United States Government draws on these Roman Catholic theological
statements as the legal basis for Supreme Court decisions which deny
recognition of Aboriginal Indigenous peoples' rights to their own land,
and
create a permanent half-human legal condition of "domestic dependent
nations."
The
legal, ethical and other issues raised by the Euroamericans' "Indian"
system, and their attempts, to do to Wub-e-ke-niew after his death,
what they
dared not say to him while he was still alive, also include very
serious
questions about exactly how the United States came to claim
"jurisdiction"
over unceded Ahnishinahbæótjibway
land. What kind of thinking is it, that privileges an official
European-Euroamerican land description like that in Treaty of Ghent,
made
between the United States and England in 1818. This document of
international
"law" describes one of the boundaries used in court to justify United
States "eminent domain" as, "... a Line drawn from the most
North Western Point of the Lake of the Woods, along the forty Ninth
Parallel of
North Latitude, or, if the said Point not be in the Forty Ninth
Parallel of
North Latitude, then that a Line drawn from the said Pont due North or
South as
the Case may be..." How can a land "description" like this, have
legal precedence over the deep, intimate connections to Grandmother
Earth over
countless generations, which Wub-e-ke-niew and his people had?
The
United States is attempting to assert jurisdiction over Wub-e-ke-niew
through
the "Indian" legal system which they maintain, which they impose on
their "Indians" with a confusing mish-mash of ambiguous and
deliberately
misleading terms like "Indian Sovereignty," and which has sometimes
been the vehicle for flagrant abuses of power by those "Indians"
entrenched - and paid - by White vested interests. The issues which the
actions
of those paid to hench for the United States Government raise, also
include
genocide. Tens of thousands of pages of documents and extensive
computer
databases were seized by the Petitioner a week after Wub-e-ke-niew's
death, and
she may seek to sanction that seizure through her "use" of the Red
Lake "Indian" court system even though neither the documents nor the
databases are explicitly included on the "property list" she supplied
to the Probate court. These papers and computer data, compiled by
Wub-e-ke-niew
and Clara over the course of more than a decade, include meticulous
documentation of the genocide of the Ahnishinahbæótjibway
at Red Lake. Using an "Order of Removal" to take a widow out of her
own husband's probate hearing, and to try to create legally binding
documents
based on perjury, slander and back room deals, has absolutely nothing
to do
with Ahnishinahbæótjibway values of
respect and harmony. Most White people wouldn't want to claim these
kinds of
actions as representative of their values, either - although the "Red
Lake
Indian" agencies and persons who are engaging in and acceding to, these
and other actions are operating within a "legal" structure created by
the United States of America, and are being paid in U.S. Dollars either
directly out of the U.S. Treasury, or with "casino money" from
casinos sanctioned by the United States.
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