Category Archives: AFN / Tribal & Band Council / Indian Affairs

Prentice Power?

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“YOUR ACHY BREAKY MIND”!
IS SIX NATIONS/CALEDONIA A DIVERSION
FOR THE INDIAN AFFAIRS MINISTER?

MNN. Oct. 12, 2006. Minister of Indian Affairs, Jim Prentice, you remind me of “Barney Fife” on that old television program “Mayberry”. He was a blowhard, smug and incompetent. You pretend to be analytical and over enthusiastic about Indigenous people. But you don’t know anything about us nor do you want to. When you look at us, all you see are oil wells sticking out of our heads. Is that why the oil industry in Calgary has you by the short hairs? Are we right? Do the dots join up the way we see them, Barney?

The Conservative Party realizes that they might lose the next election. So they need you to push some big changes through as fast as you can say, “We gotta get dem Injuns out of the way so we can get their oil”. You represent “Calgary North”. What does that tell us? You’re the Minister of Indian Affairs and you’ve got a big job to do. As your riding website boasts: “He also starts the assignment with top qualifications.” As one oil industry leader put it, “There has never been a minister who has been better qualified going into a portfolio than Prentice” [National Post, Feb. 27, 2006.] Of course, what they really mean is they’ve never had their man right in the “Tower of Power” in Hull, Quebec, like this before.

Barney, you have a lot of debts to those who put you in power. Calgary is the oil capital of Canada. There are Indian communities all around Calgary, like Tsuu tina, Blood, Piegan, Blackfeet, Stoney and others. The oil industry wants oil. They want to start explorations. Indigenous people and our land regime are in the way. They don’t like it when we keep telling the industry, “It’s our land and we won’t let you ruin it”. That’s the problem. We want to clean up the environment. They can’t stand our complaints about their emissions and pollution, which are going to double in the next ten years, along with the Prime Minister’s “double talk”. By the way, Alberta is already the most polluting province in Canada.

At Six Nations/Caledonia, Captain Gary [McHale’s navy] was begging for money just a few days ago. He practically called off his 20,000 “White Man’s March” onto the reclaimed Indigenous land of Kanenhstaton. He said he might even have to go back to work to maintain his lifestyle in Richmond Hill, the ritzy suburb of Toronto, which is also on Six Nations land. Suddenly he’s back in the “riot-and-violence-against-Indigenous-people” business in a big way. His parade on October 15th is on again. Is he a gun-for-hire and “back in the saddle again?” Only with corporate money can one get so much corporate media coverage as he’s getting. Also it’s expensive to bring in those busloads of paid stooges to start the kind of vicious attacks that we’ve been experiencing in the recent past. We are unarmed and we are on our land.

Now we see that the Six Nations/Caledonia firestorm has been built up to be a diversion. This is the two-step set up. Gary McHale is going to keep the attention focused in the East. The federal and Ontario governments and police want him to create a big racist fascist attack on the Six Nations people. It would seem the bigger the better, as far as you and your oil baron backers are concerned. Right on cue, Mayor Marie Trainer of Caledonia is going to cry, “No! No! No! No! No!” If anything happens, “I want to declare a state of emergency!” In other words, “Bring in the army”. Then martial law will be declared. And this will show what will happen to other Indigenous people who resist the takeover of our resources by the oil companies and corporations.

Must be getting pretty busy in the war room, eh Barney!

In the meantime, Barney, you’re getting what your want – a big diversion so that you can put through some draconian measures like privatizing Indian lands which you have already announced. You are putting us on the fast track for genocide. And the world is watching. This is “termination” with the stroke of a pen. In 20 years over 100 Indian nations were wiped out in the US. None ever got their land back. This is absolutely illegal. We’re not letting this happen. Everybody, get off the fence.

We see that you need to make it look like you have a justification for passing certain laws to remove our rights over our land. Stirring up violence against us is one way. Canada signed in 1948 the UN Convention on the Crime and Punishment of Genocide. You can personally be tried and convicted of genocide under international law, Barney. If you work for the oil industry, then they own you lock stock and barrel! If you remove Indigenous people and Indian title to help your corporate bosses steal our resources, you will put yourself on the fast track to jail for committing the crime of genocide.

We think we know where you get your orders from. Do they come from Texas, the oil capital of the world, to Calgary, the oil capital of Canada, to Indian Affairs in Ottawa? Do they make the decision to terminate all Indigenous people and our land rights in Canada so that the oil companies can rape us and the colonial country of Canada? We always knew there was oil involved in what’s happening to our rights. We smelled it. We didn’t get oil fever. We got wise. Yep. You just may be owned by the oil companies!

Barney, here’s what we think of your plan to lock up our communities:

There once was a minister they called “Dim”

Who carried out the oil industry’s whim

His mind was all dusty

His weapons were all rusty

That’s why he did what he was told

He sold his soul for black gold

We need solidarity support this weekend, October 15th, at Six Nations/Caledonia. So come stand with us or contact thebasketcase@on.aibn.com Do whatever you can to help.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

poster: Thahoketoteh

 

Indian Affairs….

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INDIAN AFFAIRS RATTLES COLONIAL SABRE AT SIX NATIONS TRADITIONAL PEOPLE – AGAIN! “WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING” MEDIATION PROPOSED

MNN. March 26, 2006. Michael Coyle, a professor at University of Western Ontario, has been duped into “undertaking” what Indian Affairs calls “a fact-finding” mission. He has plainly been hired to “bury” the facts. The current protest is against the theft of more of the Haldimand Tract belonging to the Six Nations Rotinoshon’non:we. Since mid-February the Rotionshon’non:we owners of this land have been opposing the illegal construction of homes on a large tract known as “Douglas Estates” of Caledonia Ontario.

It’s nice to know that Indian Affairs has finally decided to inform itself and dig up some facts. We hope they’ll finally start digging up some of the skeletons they’ve been burying over for over 200 years. If they do a proper job of excavation, it won’t take them long to find out that the band council they’re so keen on negotiating with is a twisted creation of their own dearly beloved Department. If they do a proper autopsy and DNA analysis, they’ll find out it ain’t “Indian”, it’s genetically “white”.

In 1924 Indian Affairs dug a mass grave for the Rotinoshon’non:we Confederacy. Even then the procedures they used would have been considered violations of international law, if anyone had known what they were up. It was pure unadulterated “might makes right”, the kind of skullduggery the League of Nations was designed to stop. To survive we all had to go “underground”. But we weren’t the dead corpses Indian Affairs wanted us to be.

In the 1920s, celebrated Canadian scoundrel, Duncan Campbell Scott, was the head mortician at Indian Affairs. Conniving with Joseph Pope in Canada’s makeshift Department of External Affairs, they managed to bribe League officials into derailing the Six Nations quest for a legal determination of their rights by a neutral tribunal. This left him free to depose their government in 1924. In its place a puppet government was set up using the Indian Act. Only 26 people voted in the election that replaced the 30 regularly participating members of the traditional council.

This illegal band council was given control of the Six Nations’ trust funds worth close to a million dollars. The coup effectively prevented the traditional Six Nations government from functioning as usual. To this day the Canadian government continues to negotiate with its puppet creation. A sober look at the “mediation” that Indian Affairs has announced reveals a number of problems.

1. The band council does not represent the Six Nations peoples according to international law.

2. The mediator, Michael Coyle, was appointed unilaterally by one party to the dispute rather than by agreement between both parties, as required according to standard mediation norms. The mediator is being paid exclusively by Indian Affairs. As such, he cannot function impartially. Because of the high stakes involved for both Canada and the Six Nations, this case requires a mediator who has no vested interest in the outcome. In order words, the mediator should come from outside of Canada. The Six Nations has been attempting to resolve this dispute on such neutral terms since the 1920’s, at the very least.

3. The mediator has been given a mandate to resolve legal issues when he has no training in either domestic Canadian law, international law, and the Kaianereh’ko:wa, the constitution of the Rotinoshon’non:we.

If Indian Affairs would like to understand why the protesters have been camping out in the mud and snow for so long, it is strongly suggested that they read their own archival files. Members of the Six Nations have expressed their concern in no uncertain terms in countless occasions in the past. Yet Canada continues to invade Six Nations jurisdiction and to hold onto stolen Six Nations assets.

The Six Nations People can see right through Indian Affairs’ bluff. They’re trying to give us purple Cool-Aid. We can see the strychnine bubbling. They’re talking in dulcet tones while they prepare jail cells, hospital beds and body bags for us. We know what this is about. This is why the Six Nations have decided to “deep six” this thinly disguised death sentence. We need properly conceived negotiations using a mutually agreed impartial mediator. In lieu of flowers, contributions to a genuine Six Nations mediator may be sent to Dick Hill.

Contact: Dick Hill, 519-865-7722, R.R. #6, Hagersville, Ontario, Canada N0A 1H0 thebasketcase@on.aibn.com JanieJamieson 905-517-7006 Attached: Objection filed by Women Title Holders; and Mohawk Manifesto.

MNN Mohawk Nation News, kahntinetha2@yahoo.com (coming soon daily news at http://mohawknationnews.com )

Send your opposition to:

Objection sent to: Henco Industries Ltd., Fax (519) 442-3461; City of Brantford: Fax (519) 759-7840 mhancock@brantford.ca; Corporation of Haldimand County: Fax (905) 772-2148 mayor@haldimandcounty.on.ca; Oxford County: info@city.woodstock.on.ca; Onondaga: Customer Service Fax (519) 758-1619; South Dumfries: Customer Service Fax (519) 448-3105; Dufferin County: Fax (519) 941-2816 warden@dufferincounty.on.ca; Kent County, Michigan: Mike Cox, Attorney General Fax: (517) 373-3042; Waterloo: sken@region.waterloo.on.ca; Innisfil: bjackson@barint.on.ca; Attorney General: Fax (416) 326-4007 Media Relations Brendan.Crawley@jus.gov.on.ca; Governor General: Michaelle Jean Fax (613) 998-1664 E-mail: info@gg.ca; Chinese Consulate in Toronto Fax: (416) 324-6468; Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace; Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty Dalton.McGuinty@premier.gov.on.ca ; Canadian Prime Minister Hon. Stephen Harper, pm@pm.gc.ca ;

poster: Thahoketoteh

 

Dave Ahenakew – “Was Canada an Inspiration to Hitler?”

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MNN. Dec. 16, 2002. Former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Chief, David Ahenakew, made comments which have the Canadian press and a few politicians howling for blood.Ahenakew started his career in the army and served Canada exceptionally well. Canada gave him and Order of Canada. All his life he fought for a better life for Indigenous people. Like everyone else who fought for the First People, he hit a brick wall – time and time again. Akenakew is reported as saying, among other things, “I don’t support Hitler. But he cleaned up a hell of a lot of things, didn’t he?”Suddenly the publicity hounds are calling for application of S. 319 of the Criminal Code. Why? This must be one of the most ignored parts of Canadian Criminal Law. Indigenous people have been suffering from the willful promotion of hate crimes for years. Canada refuses to address the Canadian genocide that is ongoing. No one who calls us down has ever been charged.The British paid generous bounty money for native scalps – more for women because they didn’t want us to “breed”. Settlers took what they said was empty land and helped themselves to all our resources.

Canada was an inspiration to Hitler. Our holocaust led to the loss of thousands of nations and over 100 million of our people throughout the Western Hemisphere after the European invasion. This is the worst holocaust in all humanity.

For those of us who survived, Canada then worked along with the United States to pioneer racial segregation. We were put in barbed wired concentration camps, on reserves and left to sicknesses and starvation. Our children were kidnapped and sent to residential schools. 50% died. They were medically and socially experimented on, sexually abused and used as forced labor. Hitler used this tactic too. That’s why taking children from their parents is a crime defined in the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Hitler admired this “removal policy”. He thought it was a great way to promote racial purity and to eliminate the people he called “eugenically deficient”. We weren’t allowed to leave the reserves without passes. The Jews were forced to wear the Star of David.

Hitler used propaganda too. Anti-Indian propaganda in the media and in the schools conditioned people to accept the lies they were told about us. This conditions the dominant society to mistreat us and allow us to be abused. They labeled us as primitives. They said we were a dying race. Our versions of history are never taught in their schools. Academics who want to present our point of view find themselves in a professional dead end.

Decades after signing the convention on preventing genocide, Canada continues its genocidal habits. Nobody prosecutes the provincial governments for the lies and hate propaganda about Indigenous history taught in their education system.

Canadians are always eager to investigate genocide that happened thousands of miles away. They refuse to look at the evidence of ongoing genocide on their doorsteps. How can leaders be so shocked when 500 native women have disappeared in the last decade and have not been investigated? Don’t daughters of native people have the same right to walk around our land in safety as the daughters of the immigrants?

Canada is an enthusiastic promoter of international agreements to help other people clean up their human rights abuses. Its government officials, judiciary and legal profession don’t follow the principles of the conventions it signs.

Before sicing your bloodthirsty dogs on a heart-broken native elder, Canadians should clean up their own act. They should face the truth about their own history of promoting genocide and hatred.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

poster: Thahoketoteh