Reflections
from the Ahnishinahbæótjibway (We, the People)
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Dear Michael Q. Patton,
You
requested information regarding our application to the
Northwest Minnesota Initiative Fund.
You say that this information will be used to “improve the
operations of
the Initiative Fund.”
Our
request for funding was not approved; however we have
been paying attention to the types of program which have been funded by
the
NWMIF. Despite the high-sounding
rhetoric in the literature of the NWMIF, the general orientation of the
funding
granted by the NWMIF has been toward maintaining the societal
structures which
inherently generate the problems which the NWMIF professes to address
at the
root causes. In the main, the funded
programs seem to function as “band-aids,” to alleviate the symptoms of
societal
dysfunction without curing the underlying problems; as such they in
fact
perpetuate both the need for such programs and the human misery which
these
programs alleviate only on a temporary basis.
The
Red Lake Peoples Council has spent two years unsuccessfully
seeking mainstream Foundation funding for a grassroots,
Indian-community owned
economic development program on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. We conclude that although the quite openly
stated agenda of the dominant society is to assimilate Indian people
into its
structure, Traditional Indian people and organizations do not have, and
have
never had, access to the European-American money system.
Probably this is because we are supposed to
assimilate at the bottom of the social hierarchy, to quote Tony Bouza,
as a
“blasted and destroyed” people. We
realize quite well that the United States monetary system is based on
Ojibway
and other Indian peoples’ land and resources.
However, with only token exceptions which confirm the
predominant
pattern, the U.S. monetary system remains controlled by
European-Americans, and
we consider it quite doubtful that Traditional Indian people will be
able to
gain access to this system, even on the insignificant level of our
subsistence-agriculture/permaculture proposal, through Foundations
which are
funded by corporations which took our sustainable permacultural
subsistence
base and turned it into the European-American owned dollars which
underlie
their racist hierarchical social system.
From
the time of their forbearers the slave-states of Greece
and Rome, the perspectives and world-views professed by the
European-Americans
have been extremely narrow and limited—and not particularly well
connected with
reality as we see it. The reason why
the dominant European-American society cannot possibly be an honest and
fair
society is because it is founded on stolen Indian resources and remains
on
stolen Indian land. Lies and deceit are
interwoven throughout their structure, including their religion and
their
government—because the entire system is based on lies about Indian
people and
about history, as well as about reality.
The European-American-English language is almost impossible to
communicate clearly with, because of its narrow point of view, and
because of
the embedded racism, lies and forked-tongue speaking.
The entire system is distorted and bound up by the tangled mass
of lies, lies to cover up the lies, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.
One
example of the way in which the European-American
monetary system is used against Indian people is the “buying” of our
hunting
and fishing rights—our resources back up the money which is used to
“pay” us,
so we are really paying two or three times over and getting nothing
back. The same thing has happened with the
Treaties, 400 of which have been broken.
You are told in school that an economic system is supposed to be
based
on trade, but the European-American system is, from our perspective,
based on
dishonesty, exploitation, environmental destruction, and theft. Indians have never been “given” anything
worth having by the European-Americans: these two entire continents,
with what
were once their harmonious permacultural subsistence bases and pristine
and
abundant resources, are and have always been Indian peoples’ continents. For all the good the European-American
economic system has done us, we would have been better off using
Monopoly
money. Most of the European-Americans
who are in middle-level decision-making positions are too lost in
abstractions,
too misled by pervasive distortions of history, to see what’s really
happening. Standard “social programs”
merely reinforce the system which is destroying the environment as well
as the
spirit and humanity of the people caught up in it.
I
talked with Ruth Edewold of the NWMIF, and she said I was
“getting political” by briefly raising some of the underlying issues
which
operate to prevent Traditional Indian people from getting any kind of
funding
for community-owned economic development.
(The decision had already been made when I talked to her, not to
fund
our program.) What makes me
particularly angry is the European-American system of legislation to
take away
our resources and given them to the European-Americans, who “develop”
them,
“make money” by wasting, polluting, and destroying them beyond
regeneration for
generations yet to come. Indian people
are then penalized for not having any money.
Everybody is deeply concerned about Jacob Wetterling being
kidnapped,
but over the years hundreds of thousands of Indian children have been
kidnapped
away from their families because although Traditional Indian people
once had
abundant resources, we did not have paper money, and don’t have access
to the
money system. We were told because we
do not have paper dollars (how could we, it always has been a crooked
European-American system), that our children would be taken away from
us and
given to European-American people who had paper money because it was a
part of
their system. This crooked scheme still
destroys many Traditional families. We
never designed this system, we have no say in the operation of this
system—our
only input into this system is the underlying value to U.S. paper money. This has been the case ever since the
European-Americans brought heir system here.
Traditional Indian people are angry about this:
European-Americans will
be hearing a lot more about it from Indian people across our continents.
We
wrote to Robert Beech who was high in the hierarchy of
McKnight and NWMIF Foundations, expressing some of our concerns about
both the
application process and about the structural difficulties of getting
funding
for a subsistence-oriented economic development program run and owned
by
Traditional Indian people. Although Mr.
Back told us through a third party that he would respond to our
concerns and
was willing to meet with members of the Red Lake Peoples Council, he
never did
so and resigned instead. We would still
be interested in meeting with him; however avoidance of dialogue is
another one
of the standard tactics of Europeans and European-Americans.
Crime,
prisons, poverty, taxes, acculturated dishonest people
pretending to be Indian, and many of the other “social ills” which
plague the
imported European-American society (and which nourish charitable social
programs) are alien to Indian culture and Indian society.
We never had any of these problems before
the European-Americans brought them from their homelands.
These causes of human suffering are
necessary for the maintenance of the social hierarchies of the
Indo-Europeans and
their colonies including the U.S.A.
They are not indigenous to Indian Tradition, social
organization, nor
values.
I—and
many of our people—stand behind what is written
here. We speak the truth as we see it,
and are not afraid to back up our word.
Anonymity is not necessary.
Sincerely,
Sho-ne-ah-wub
Francis Blake, Jr.
Chairman, Economic Development Committee
Red Lake Peoples Council
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