Reflections from the Ah­nish­i­nah­bæó^t­jib­way (We, the People)

Dear Noam Chomsky,

Thank you for your book, which we enjoyed reading ... [personal correspondence] ... We hope that you are fully recovered from your illness—the world needs you awhile longer!

We have been digging through historical documents as a part of the book that I’m writing.  What you’ve so carefully documented with the media, applies to almost everything that’s written, particularly history.

We’ve been looking at the cycles of war, the cycles of economic systems, and the general structure of European-derived society.  We also read the language that the rules of war, Nuremberg Principles, etc., are written in; if you read it really critically it’s obvious that Indigenous peoples are excluded from the protection of International law.  Whatever rules of peace they have, are included in the rules of war—how can you have peace this way?  There has to be dialogue, a drawing up of rules of peace.  An example of the way the present “peace process” works is what’s happened recently in Panama.

International Law must include and protect Indigenous peoples; they way it is now, it’s only drawn up for European peoples, because they wrote it.  In the B.I.A. Commissioner’s report, it states that the U.S. was going to bring in churches to teach us honesty and morality.  But, how can you even pretend to teach morality when they themselves are on stolen Indian land?  They have to come to terms with why they are stealing our property.  The United States has written up volumes and volumes of laws “for Indians,” and the only appropriate thing to do with these laws is to throw them all away: they are all crooked, written with the intent to steal and to destroy our society.  The Churches aren’t any better—it doesn’t make any sense to build a church inside of our Church, on stolen Indian property, and then preach, “thou shalt not steal.”

We are enclosing a letter that we wrote to the United Nations.  We see it as urgent that the United Nations include the Indigenous peoples of the world.  There are enormous numbers of people whose talent is being wasted—Indigenous peoples see the world from a different perspective and the world urgently needs what Traditional Indigenous peoples can contribute.  If you compare how it was in Europe in 1492 to how it was here, and also look at what has been done to our continents in the past few hundred years, that is the proof.  We had a peaceful society, all the way across both continents, that’s why everything was kept the way it was, beautiful and in harmony.  We were Civilized peoples; one of the things that the Europeans need to learn is that “civilization” is not plundering, polluting, exploiting and enslaving.  William Buckley says that we had “a lousy culture,” but he’s sure enjoying our land, all of the resources that we kept.  In a truly civilized world, there is no rationale for stealing.  Whether you call it “discovery” or bring in hordes of missionaries, there is no excuse.  The European elite operates in a state of anarchy; there have to be International Laws written to hold them accountable, to govern them—and not written by the elite, either, you can see where they’ve gotten us.  You can’t even drink the water now, and the Europeans call that “civilization.”

All the best.

Sincerely,
Francis Blake, Jr.
(Sho-ne-ah-wub)