MNN. June 21, 2005. 

RDT answered, ?Are you out of your mind? America has been in a downward spiral since you whites got here! I refuse to promote this stupid film. Yep! This period piece has got to be the bottom of the barrel. Steven Spielberg had no passion, no imagination. The production of these lies about Indigenous people
cost $100 million. It is meant to attract an audience at the expense of our dignity?.

This is the most ever spent on a television episode. Whose fault is it? ?It?s
our fault for not making our own films, for not stopping this kind of skank, as a
?dirty film? is called. The average American gets off looking at those sick
little Indians. They have to portray us in a glass display case. We have to be
seen as having been whipped into submission, as degenerates. There is never a
portrayal of the fact that we developed the whole idea of democracy and equality.
They refuse to see us as doctors, lawyers, professors, professional and skilled
hard working people. That?s because they think there?s no ?savagery? involved in
these endeavors?.

The Blacks have Spike Lee who made the great film, ?Malcolm X?; John Singleton who
made ?Boys in the Hood?; Edward James Olmos who made ?American Me?; and the Maoris
have Lee Tamahoori who made ?Once were Warriors?. Indigenous people have good
directors. ?We?re worried that the next one about us by white interests will be
even worse than this one!?

?There isn?t one brilliant moment, not one redeeming gem in any frame of the film.
It has nothing to do with art, vision, historical accuracy or representing
Indigenous people in a positive light?.

Pierre George of Stoney Point agrees. He has been fighting against the releasing
of the film ?One Dead Indian?. This is another ritualistic sacrifice of ?Indians?
on the alter of the North American ego. It exploits the murder of his brother,
Dudley George, in 1995 in what is known as the ?Ipperwash? event. He is trying to
find a way to shut down the Commission of Inquiry into Dudley?s murder that?s
going on right now in Forest Ontario. He has good reasons for doing so.

The commission is an excuse to avoid the rule of law. It?s an old tactic, tried
and true. The Saskatchewan Commission on First Nations and Metis People and
Justice Reform was initiated to look into the murder of 17-year old Neil
Stonechild and other native youth by the Saskatoon Police. When the report was
released, the press conference focused on ?aboriginal crime?. Neil Stonechild had
not even been charged with a crime. So why did they murder him? No mention was
made of the serious problem of police committing crimes and murdering people.

?It?s all a big lie. The Ipperwash Inquiry is set up to look only into ?abuse? by
the police of the Ontario Police Act. The police had no right to be on the
territory in the first place! There was no surrender of our land. We are still
sovereign. There was no agreement with the Stony Point people to allow the police
of a foreign nation to operate here?. They were supposed to give the land back
after the war. Instead the Ontario government turned it into a park.

Pierre says, ?Both the film, ?One Dead Indian? and the inquiry are bought and paid
for by the criminals who are committing genocide and who stole our land and our
jurisdiction. It is illegal and obscene?.

Every time we try to bring up the constitutional question, they bring on inquiries
and make movies that revise history and the law. Answering the law involves
pointing the finger of genocide, the arch crime against humanity. It?s just
disgusting!?

?Into the West?, ?One Dead Indian? and now the ?Mohawk Oka Crisis of 1990? are all
part of the same crime. To date there have been no widely circulated accounts of
any of these events from an Indigenous point of view. Our experience and our
sensibilities are left completely out of an equation now thoroughly discredited
that European invaders were somehow more civilized than the people they invaded.

The Canadian and United States governments are spending big bucks to buy and
manufacture excuses in two coordinated moves. One is to bury the law, the
constitutional question. The second is to rewrite the factual history with these
movies. Why is our point of view left out? It?s meant to continue to advance the
big colonial lie. What really happened cannot be properly portrayed in movies
until the underlying constitutional question is acknowledged and addressed in
Canada and the United States.

As RDT said, ?They do it all the time. The colonists hope that if they drag
around a falsehood long enough, everybody will forget the real facts. They want
to divert attention away from their crimes and brutality by starting fires all
over the place. Eventually the truth disappears into the air like a mustard fart!
They wait it out like a bunch of buzzards flying around their predators?.

The movies and public inquiries are all part of the brainwashing procedure. This
is not a question of whites versus ?injuns?. The real issue is do all people have
a right to be treated equally? Does everyone have to obey the law, including the
constitutional law? Is it okay to keep trashing us? The only possible aim of
these films is to mislead the public and bury the question.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News