Category Archives: Colonialism

SELF-SUPPORT TERMED INDIAN GOAL

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Feb 1, 2023.

 

 

Recently the Kahnistenseras of Kahnawake were invited to Hart House of University of Toronto to speak about current indigenous issues. 

 Globe & Mail 1964 republication  of Feb. 11, 1965. ProQuest Historical Newspapers : “Self-Support Indian Goal“

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kahentinetha Horn, a lissum Indian, forecast an Indian in the future of every University of Toronto student who jammed Hart House art gallery yesterday to hear her talk on the arts and culture of contemporary Indians.                                       Miss Horn prophesied that in 35 years, Canada’s Indian population would be 1,800,000 – or roughly one out of every 25 persons. would be an Indian, she said.          “You are the privileged of the privileged”, she told the students. “You are the 82 per cent of the  future leaders of Canada” – I represent the despairing 1 per cent who are multiplying rapidly in Canada. Now is the time you must learn about Indians to help us achieve our main goal.”                                                                        The first goal of Indians is to be able to support themselves, she said.                       On each Wall of Hart House gallery hung paintings by Norval Morrisseau, Ojibway Indian from Beardmore, Ont.  “They conveyed a message of the past”, Miss Horn said.  “Such art flows through the blood of my brothers and sisters – but most of the benefits reaches the white man’s salons?”                                                        While Indian culture certainly encompasses significant art form, the arts of Indians have leaned more to warfare and politics, Miss Horn said.                                “For 20,000 years, the Indians have had a struggle to survive the forces of nature.  The cultural arts come only with leisure –  after survival.” The greats of her ancestors, the Iroquois, were related to politics and warfare. The United Nations concepts are modelled on the Iroquois Confederacy, for example. Their arts of warfare are the reasons the students speak English today instead of French, she said. That’s why you have Prime Minister Pearson as leader instead of President de Gaulle”.                                                                                                        Most Indians, Miss Horn said, are unemployable. “I’m afraid technical sciences will keep Indians unemployable. We haven’t time to think about our arts. We have to keep our people alive. How to keep our women alive, for example, past the age of 45. Why does one out of 10 of our babies die before the age of 4? Don’t ask me why; nobody has ever researched the reason. It’s just a statistic. We need housing, medical care, community planning, training and education. We need an interest in welfare –  there’ll be one of us in thec future for every one of you. 

     Note to readers: The population of indigenous people in Canada today is 1.800,000.  

KAHNWAKE MOHAWK MOTHERS BLAZING A TRAIL

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MNN. Nov. 8, 2022. So glad this came out in the Eastern Door of Kahnawake. This is what is known as ‘balanced’ writing. 

Mohawk Mothers blazing a trail

JOHNNY CASH explains the kahnistensera’s situation pretty well in his song when the mother keeps telling the son not to take their guns to town. They don’t listen to their mother and end up dead. 

[Verse 1]
A young cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm
A boy filled with wonderlust who really meant no harm
He changed his clothes and shined his boots
And combed his dark hair down
And his mother cried as he walked out

[Chorus]
Don’t take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don’t take your guns to town

[Verse 2]
He laughed and kissed his mom
And said your Billy Joe’s a man
I can shoot as quick and straight as anybody can
But I wouldn’t shoot without a cause
I’d gun nobody down
But she cried again as he rode away [chorus]

[Verse 3]
He sang a song as on he rode
His guns hung at his hips
He rode into a cattle town
A smile upon his lips
He stopped and walked into a bar
And laid his money down
But his mother’s words echoed again [chorus]

[Verse 4]
He drank his first strong liquor then to calm his shaking hand
And tried to tell himself at last he had become a man
A dusty cowpoke at his side began to laugh him down
And he heard again his mothers words [chorus]

[Verse 5]
Filled with rage then
Billy Joe reached for his gun to draw
But the stranger drew his gun and fired
Before he even saw
As Billy Joe fell to the floor
The crowd all gathered around
And wondered at his final words 

[Chorus]
Don’t take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don’t take your guns to town

kahnistensera@riseup.net

HAIL MARY PASS

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She:kon everyone. We are bracing for the hearing tomorrow at the Quebec Superior Court while the excavators and backhoe are already digging up our land at the Royal Victoria Hospital. We want to thank everyone that supported us in our struggle to protect our land and children. We will post updates shortly. Stay tuned.

Kahentinetha

p.s.: I have been notified that I have made a factual mistake at a recent speech at Concordia by stating that the minister of Crown Indigenous Relations Mark Miller had served in the Canadian military in the Oka crisis. While Miller was effectively an infantry commander in the Canadian Army Primary Reserve, he was not present in Oka as he was 17 years old and his military duty was allegedly peeling potatoes. I was misinformed, and if the Prime Minister and the Pope can apologize, so can I. kahentinetha

As Late Kurt Cobain apologized for leaving this world, 

What else should I be?
All apologies
What else could I say?
Everyone is gay
What else could I write?
I don’t have the right
What else should I be?
All apologies

MOHAWKNATIONNEWS.COM 

kahentinetha2@protonmail. com

MOHAWK WARRIOR SOCIETY BOOK LAUNCH

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MNN. Oct. 20, 2022.

We are due in quebec superior court at 9.00 a.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 for our attempt to get an injunction to stop the excavation of McGill’s Allen Memorial Institute and other areas of tionni tiotialkon and tekanontak, now called Mount Royal, where there are serious suspicions of unmarked graves of our indigenous children. 

This is a book about Louis Karonhiaktajeh Hall of Kahnawake and other areas of kanienkehaka’onwe. Niawen’kowa.  

 

The Mohawk Warrior Society: Round Table and Book Launch

 

kahnistensera@@riseup.net

MOHAWK WARRIOR SOCIETY BOOK LAUNCH

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mohawk-warrior-book-launchImage by Kanien’kehá:a artist, author, and activist, Louis Karoniaktajeh Hall, 1918-1993

https://www.facebook.com/events/839055253794046 https://www.concordia.ca/cuevents/offices/provost/fourth-space/programming/2022/10/18/mohawk-warrior-society-publication-launch.html

The Mohawk Warrior Society Book Launch and Screenings on Indigenous Sovereignty and Survival Tuesday, October 18, 2022 – Wednesday, October 19, 2022 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. 4TH SPACE J.W. McConnell Building, Concordia University 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal The Mohawk Warrior Society: Book Launch and Screenings on Indigenous Sovereignty and Survival

Join us for the launch of an unprecedented book, a public roundtable with members of the Kanien’keha:ka Rotiskenrakete of the Men’s Fire and Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera, an activist group of Mohawk women from Kahnawake, and film screenings in celebration of Indigenous culture and resilience.

THE MOHAWK WARRIOR SOCIETY: A HANDBOOK ON SOVEREIGNTY AND SURVIVAL, is the centrepiece of our events. Containing new oral history by key figures of the Rotisken’rhakéhte revival in the 1970s, this compilation tells the story of the Warriors’ famous flag and other art, their armed occupation of Ganienkeh in 1974, and the role of their constitution, the Great Peace. This book launch is part of a two-day series of events and film screenings that foreground Kanien’kehá:ka activism, culture, and current issues within the broader rubric of Indigenous sovereignty.

See below for the full schedule:

October 18 11:00am – 4:00pm Round Table and Book Launch

October 19 1:00pm – 1:15pm

Welcome and Introduction 1:15pm – 2:00pm Film Screening: “Mohawk Nation” (1978) 2:00pm – 2:15pm

Short Break 2:15pm – 2:40pm Film Screening: “Rose” (2022) 2:45pm – 4:00pm

Open Discussion How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

HOLOCAUST [RON-WANA-SETON] MEMORIAL DAY OCT. 25/22 Audio

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MNN. Sept. 24, 2022. RON-WANA-SETON [they make the people disappear in mass graves] MEMORIAL DAY.

RON-WANA-SETON MEMORIAL DAY IS GETTING CLOSER 

OCTOBER 25, 1924 IS THE NINETY-EIGHTH ANNIVERSARY of the implementation by Canada of the holocaust laws known as the “Indian Lands Act” of each province. Canada gave indigenous resources to the provinces. The indigenous people were forced onto fenced in concentration camps called “reservations”. The Indian Lands Act is a 100 years business plan to rid Canada of indigenous people so the invaders can take onowarekeh, turtle island, for free and to be rid of the original people.

On October 25th 1924 the RCMP and the military put indigenous families in fenced in concentration camps. Today every reservation in Canada is still a concentration camp run by the band councils for the government. 

In the October 25, 1924 ron-wana-seton action, the indigenous people were all ages, many babies and some not even born yet. Many ran away who were disenfranchised and no longer ‘Indian’. The army snatched the children and put them into the residential schools to extinguish them. They were not allowed to leave the camps without a pass. Military permission was needed to do everything. If a child missed three days of school, they were classed as “juvenile delinquents” and removed by the truant officers. The parents were threatened with going to jail and loss of their children. The onkwehonwe indigenous houses that were taken were given to the white settlers for free.

On October 25, 2022, the people and supporters will stand for one minute of silence for the 98th anniversary of the Canadian Indian reservation ron-wana-seton system which is still upon us to this day. They tried to sever their connection to the earth. The indigenous continue to belong to their mother, the earth.  

Everyone in Canada will stand up on “The Canadian Reservation ron-wana-seton System Memorial Day” to remember the murdered indigenous people across turtle island at 11:11 A.M for one minute of silence. The dead children and murdered people who cannot stand on that day will be honored. Many died at McGill or they would have come home.

[Read Indian Lands Act]. https://caid.ca/IndLanAct1924.pdf

Grand Funk sings for these children that wanted to get home: “Everybody, listen to me and return my ship. I am your captain. I am your captain. Though I am feeling mighty sick. I have been lost now days uncounted and it’s months since I”ve been home. Can you hear me or am I all alone? If you are returning me to my home port I will kiss mother earth. Take me back now to the port of my birth. I am in my cabin dreaming or are you really scheming to take my ship away from me? You better think about it. I just can’t live without it. So please don’t take my ship from me”.

thahoketoteh MNN court reporter. Contact kahnistensera@riseup.net

Quebec Superior Court. #500-17-120-468-221  kahentinetha et al v. societe Quebecoise des infrastructure et al

 

BRING THAT BUCK-BUCK-BUCKET ROUND Audio

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This is an open letter to Parliament, the provincial legislatures and their institutions to help indigenous people’s efforts to obtain justice and for the courts to respect indigenous traditions. 

Audio

MNN. Sep. 6, 2022. The indigenous and officials of McGill knew the indigenous children were being experimented on at McGill University’s Allen Memorial Institute. It appears the bodies were hidden so they could never be found. The indigenous always wondered what happened to their children. McGill owes all indigenous people an explanation. It is time to remedy that. All graves must be found rather than more structures being built over them to hide them. Out West, the dead children were found buried in the concrete foundations. Many children are still out there somewhere. All of turtle island is soaked in the blood of the indigenous people. 

It is almost certain they are buried in the grounds of McGill University because it was known officially that these children were being experimented on and disposed of. As McGill and the Canadian government headed up those experimental projects they have to know what happened to those bodies. If they are not there, where are they? There are 88 children reported missing after being institutionalized in Quebec. Where are they? The Pope said, “Yes, it is genocide”. Hiding this is causing another crime, obstruction of justice. From the 1950s to the 1970s the indigenous were treated like outcasts and then forgotten. 

Since finding thousands of unmarked graves of indigenous children near Canadian government Indian Residential Schools, the Prime Minister has said that they all have to be found. Instead Quebec and McGill University are in the process of beginning excavation of one of the sites next to the Allan Memorial Hospital in October 2022 to start construction of the Royal Vic renovation of Mount Royal Montreal. It looks like a cover up. It is shocking that they continue to proceed. The kahnistensera Mohawk Mothers are filing for an interlocutory injunction in the Quebec Superior Court on October 26 to stop this atrocity which is the earliest date they could get. The Members of Parliament will be asked to use their authority to stop this so that there can be an investigation of this area, to force McGill and Quebec government [SQI] to look for these unmarked graves. 

Why doesn’t the government allow the indigenous to have the medical records on the victims and on the medical experiments carried out by MKUltra, the CIA, the Army and the Canadian and United States governments? Why are they being withheld? What is being hidden? Their refusal to release the files creates suspicion. No indigenous people gave permission for McGill University or anyone to take their children away, experiment on them, then dispose of them and secretly bury them. Why is this declared to be ‘top secret’? The people who propagated the crime are the same people that decide which information is “secret” or “top secret”. In effect their refusal proves the indigenous are right. What could be so secret? They had to meticulously know, proving the obstruction was planned, and to continue to conceal the crime. They know of the deaths of these children, and how they ordered the disposal of their bodies. Or there are no buried children, then they know that they were buried somewhere else or not! The perpetrators should be providing all the resources to help the search. No crime could be more horrific than what happened to these children. Possibly they know exactly where they are buried. Could they have and are still destroying all the evidence, like pulverizing little children’s bones?  If McGill is saying there are no children there, what facts are they relying on? Somebody knows where those children are. They have to keep extensive records. Murdering the children went to the top echelons of power as they were federal programs. MKUltra and other horrific psychiatric experiments including lobotomies were heavily funded by the Canadian government.

Has McGill dug up the grounds? Is it possible that they don’t know anything and just learning about it now? They can let the families know where these graves are and at least not interfere with indigenous efforts to seek the truth and recover their murdered family members. Millions of our people are gone. The dead children will find their way home. Every Member of Parliament can demand that nothing can be built until every child is accounted for. There are people alive today who know where they are. They say nothing because they don’t want to be implicated in the crime.  

The question is will the governments of Canada and Quebec stop the genocide by exposing all the evidence about federally funded medical experiments performed on indigenous and Canadians during the cold war. 

McGill University claims to be an expert at everything they do. Like the “Mule Skinner”, it won’t happen the way they think it will. As Jimmie Rodgers explains, the cards could start to fall.

Well, good morning, captainGood morning to you, sirHey, hey, yeah
Do you need another mule skinnerDown on your new mud run?Hey, hey, yeah
Yodel-a-ee-he-heHe-he-he-he-he-he
Well, I’m a lady mule skinnerFrom down old Tennessee wayHey, hey, I come from Tennessee

thahoketoteh@ntk.com MNN court reporter mohawknationnews.com  POBox 991, kahnawake quebec canada J0L 1B0 kahentinetha2@protonmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

TERM “YOU GUYS” NEUTRALIZES THE PEOPLE Audio – Reposted

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There were misinterpretations of this post. It has been edited to highlight that it is male supremacy that is being criticided. Male supremacy offends all genders. “You guys” must reckon with the power of the women!

MNN. Sep. 3, 2022. Calling everybody “you guys” is disrespectful, offensive and discriminatory. It invisibilizes the specific powers of the kahnistensera and flattens the spectrum of genders as only male. It is indoctrination to attack gender ideology of the natural world. Schools are now indoctrination centers that teach supremacy of males , not education centers. This destroys our culture from within. Schools are government agencies. Bad schools. Bad government. Bad education. The genocide of the original people is not being taught. The killers are not being exposed for the holocaust of indigenous people they committed. Elites say, “Bend the twig” to make the people obedient and unquestioning – no more “Why?” and  “Can you prove it?” which we are taught to ask of everything. Boredom sets in as man-made unreality goes against the natural world.

Neutralization is by those who control media to support the fascist illusion that has been imposed on us. See “Giants. Who Really Rules the World? ” by Peter Phillips.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUGh1Su7-ok The world is run by 300 billionaires who own all the banks. They bribe presidents, parliamentarians, governors, senators, congress, who have a lot to sell. 

Canada cannot exist without its foreign masters. The term “You guys” is part of gender laws to curb freedom of speech. Everybody is trained to say it. Some object, “Hey, i am a woman. Stop calling me a guy, girlie.”   

As Goebbels, Hitler’s top propagandist, said,”If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” 

The top propagandists are politicians who practically wear lapels showing who sponsors them. In the meantime women are going along with being classed as second class “guys” and have ended up by eliminating their own gender.   

Some of us are confused about the effort to control nature. All we have to do is follow the kaianerekowa, the great peace. Frank Zappa understands that everybody has the ability to reason. The male lament: Hey there, people, I’m Bobby Brown
They say I’m the cutest boy in town
My car is fast, my teeth is shiney
I tell all the girls they can kiss my heinie
Here I am at a famous school
I’m dressin’ sharp and I’m actin’ cool
I got a cheerleader here wants to help with my paper
Let her do all the work and maybe later I’ll rape her

[Chorus 1]
Oh God I am the American dream
I do not think I’m too extreme
An’ I’m a handsome son of a bitch
I’m gonna get a good job and be real rich
(Get a good, get a good, get a good, get a good job)

mohawknationnews.com 

Kahnistensera Secretaqriat kahnistensera@riseup.net. POBox 991, kahnawake Quebec Canada J0L 1B0

Press Release MOHAWK MOTHERS WILL REPRESENT THEMSELVES Audio

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Press release, August 31, 2022 *********************************

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE******************************

MNN. 31 August 2022. The kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) were in Montreal court on August 31, 2022, and continue to represent themselves. The defendants want them to have a lawyer to stop them from seeking an interlocutory injunction to halt upcoming excavation and construction work on the sites of the ex-Royal Victoria Hospital and Allan Memorial Institute projects of the Société Québécoise des infrastructures (Quebec government SQI) and McGill University, McGill University Health Center, City of Montreal, Attorney General of Canada and the impleaded Attorney General of Quebec. Phew!

LIST OF INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS IN CANADA – http://www.iap-pei.ca/schools-eng.php

LIST OF INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS IN U.S.A. – https://boardingschoolhealing.org/list/

On August 26th, 2022, the kahnistensera filed three sworn statements supported by 141 exhibits, suggesting that there is a high possibility that the site contains unmarked graves of Indigenous children used as test subjects for psychiatric experiments funded by the CIA, the Canadian and American armies and governments, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The affidavits containing the evidence are available at the link https://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2022/08/27/mohawk-mothers-file-case-aug-25- 22/

The hearing for the interlocutory injunction to stop the excavation is set for October 26th, 2022. In the meantime McGill University and the SQI announced that they would be going ahead with excavation beforehand, to the south of the Hersey pavilion of the ex-Royal Victoria Hospital. The kahnistensera are very concerned that human remains, forensic evidence and archeological artifacts of their ancestors being destroyed by this excavation work. In effect, the Royal Victoria Hospital Archaeological study conducted in November 2016 by the Arkéos Inc. , commissioned by McGill University, determined that this excavation zone had archeological potential. Arkeos recommended an archeological inventory before disturbing the land. So far no precautions will be taken to respect Arkéos’s non-binding recommendation to protect Indigenous heritage.

The kahnistensera requested an out of court meeting with McGill University and the SQI, to allow this non-invasive and non-damaging work, with no response. During the August 31 hearing the kahnistensera filed a letter informing all parties of their proposal to investigate the grounds in September. There will be a search using Ground Penetrant Radar in the threatened area.

 

Given Arkeos contention of potential findings in the zone, they recommend that an archeological inventory be done by experts selected, directed, and monitored by the kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera before any excavation work, and at the cost of the corporations responsible for the excavation. Archeologists and international experts have offered to help and guide in the use of technologies to assess the presence of graves without breaking the ground.

The kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera refuse to allow the desecration of the remains of their ancestors and relatives who were victims of medical experiments. The Mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, McGill University and the SQI have all publicly announced that they would collaborate with an investigation if there was a possibility that the grounds contain human remains.

The testimonies and evidence filed by the Mohawk Mothers corroborate their grimmest suspicions. 

The court is reminded that there is no surrender of turtle island from the kanienkehaka [Mohawk] ever. So That makes this whole court act moot. But the kahnistensera keep on shuffling their moccasins to the drum beat of “World on Fire” sung by Sarah McLaughlan and Robbie Robertson:

Hearts are worn in these dark agesYou’re not alone in this story’s pagesThe light has fallen amongst the living and the dyingAnd I’ll try to hold it in, yeah I’ll try to hold it inThe world is on fire, it’s more than I can handleI’ll tap into the water, try to bring my shareI’ll try to bring more, more than I can handleBring it to the table, bring what I am ableI watch the heavens but I find no callingSomething I can do to change what’s comin’Stay close to me while the sky is fallingI don’t wanna be left alone, don’t wanna be alone

For more information, contact kahnistensera@riseup.net with your contact information. Kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers), Kahnawake Quebec Canada J0L 1B0

IS MONTREAL ASHAMED OF MOUNT ROYAL CROSS? Audio

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MNN. Aug 13, 2022. Here are two articles on “Mohawk Mothers” who asked for the removal of the Mount Royal Cross, translated from French. First, from Quebec reactionary  Mathieu Bock-Coté, followed by a response published on Aug. 11, 2022 in The Metro Journal By Philippe Blouin, Phd. candidate McGill, and Guillaume G. Poirier,  doctorate candidate, U. of Ottawa. 

UNMARKED GRAVES OF CHILDREN MURDERED BY THE INVADERS.

The Metro newspaper reported the “Mohawk mothers” as “Aboriginal peoples who see the cross the way the Jewish people see the swastika as equivalent to the symbol of Nazism!

Bock-Cote accuses the “Mohawk mothers” of Nazifying the history of New France. Bock-Cote asks how can one seriously equate European expansion from 1492 and the era of the Great Discoveries with the history of the Third Reich? 

Bock-Cote says the new scapegoat is the “big bad white man, presented as a dirty little Satan, condemned to perpetual penitence, to eternal genuflection, to repentance until the end of time. It is obligatory to hate him”… The desire to erase the cross on Mount Royal is part of this logic similar to the public prayer now recited about the supposedly unceded territories, as if we were not at home in our country!

Bock-Cote says in effect that “We are destroying the legitimacy of the countries resulting from European expansion. The Mohawk Mothers do not talk about “reconciliation”, but the most radical Amerindian militants dream of revenge. For them, we are “intruders” in America. They are influenced by the radical left, which leads its anti-Western crusade. Unmistakably the residential schools genocide represent an indelible stain on Canadian history. But redressing this injustice should not mean self-destruction though this is the temptation of our elites, who indulge in masochism”.

Bock-Cote states that for now the idea of removing the cross is rejected. The Mount Royal Cross represents for them “a major historical  emblem of Montreal recalling historical events, and represents the French Canadian population, transforming the history of the Quebec people into the history of one ethnic community among others”. 

Bock-Cote says, “We feel that the City of Montreal is ashamed of this cross. “Mohawk mothers” equating the cross to the swastika means we have already mentally lost the battle”.

Is M. Bock-Coté, MORE CATHOLIC THAN THE POPE. OPEN LETTER – BY PHILIPPE BLOUIN AND GUILLAUME G POIRIER, PHD CANDIDATES. August 10, 2022.  After spending one week in Canada, Pope Francis confessed that his visit had been a real “slap in the face”, leading him to realize that the natives there had suffered genocide. For Bock-Côté, who was born here, the slap does not seem to have come yet. In response to the Mohawk Mothers, who are asking for the removal of the Mount Royal cross, a symbol of the horrors experienced by Aboriginals in the same way that the swastika was for the Jews, Bock-Côté regrets that this request could be “taken seriously” by the City of Montreal.

Yet the Catholic Church authority has explicitly recognized the genocidal nature of its program of assimilation of  Aboriginals, and by extension, the fact that its symbol, the cross, can be associated with genocide. The question: is  Bock-Côté more Catholic than the Pope?

We return to the distorted words of the author of The Racialist Revolution. First, the notion of “genocide”. The Geneva Convention defines it as “the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”. It also defines criteria that apply unambiguously to what happened here: “Forced transfer of children from the group to another group” (boarding schools); “Measures intended to prevent births within the group” (forced sterilizations); “Intentional subjection of the group to conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (reservation system), etc.

To date, more than 2,300 children’s bodies have been found in mass graves in Canada, while three quarters of the residential schools have yet to be excavated.  Let’s imagine that we Quebecers are forced – on pain of going to jail – to send our children to study year-round in a residential school where a foreign language and religion are imposed on them. Imagine the after-effects on Quebec culture after just ten years of forced acculturation. The Aboriginals have lived more than 150 years of forced acculturation. Would Whites, Quebecers or others, be ready to undergo this experience in order to attain the status of victims that Bock-Côté has given them? By denouncing the “demonization of the white man” that we would witness today, Bock-Côté reverses reality. The Church has always associated Aboriginal spiritualities and ways of life with “Satan”, but not those of the white man. The “Lord’s Prayer”was forced to be recited in residential schools, not the “public prayer acknowledging  the unceded indigenous territories”. Gas chambers were not necessary here to find a “final solution” to the “Indian problem.” Religious indoctrination, cultural ethnocide and sexual and physical abuse were enough. Let us not forget that many whites were also victims of Catholic torturers during the Great Blackness. The Mohawk Mothers’ press conference was also attended by Duplessis Orphans, who came to demand the removal of the cross, a symbol whose authority was used by priests to abuse them in orphanages. Thanks to Decree 816, signed on March 18, 1956, Maurice Duplessis, whom Bock-Côté describes as “the defender of  Quebec,” had changed the status of a whole generation of orphans to “mentally retarded” in order to receive more federal subsidies. Many of these children, born out of wedlock, were seen as children of sin, and treated by Catholic congregations with a barbarity of which no Quebecer could be proud. In 1999, the “Soue à Cochon” [pigsty] cemetery near St. Jean de Dieu Hospital, where the Duplessis Orphans had been unceremoniously piled for years, was covered by an SAQ [alcohol] warehouse. The first shovelful of earth was given by none other than [Quebec Premier} François Legault. By jointly asking for the removal of the cross from Mount Royal, the Mohawk Mothers and the Duplessis Orphans are demanding only a minimal recognition of these crimes, in a context where the secularization of public space is being demanded from all sides. If a survey were to be  launched, it is likely that many Montrealers would agree.

THE CROSS IS THE SYMBOL OF THE  BIGGEST GENOCIDE IN HUMANITY  OF  150 MILLION INDIGENOUS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 

This brings us to the story of the word, “Québec”. Bock-Côté takes exception to the city of Montreal’s use of the term “French-Canadian population”, forgetting that the word Quebec is both an Aboriginal term and a British assignment. It was the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that established Canada as the Province of Quebec, using an Anishinabe word meaning “narrow passage”. On the other hand, the term “Canadian” was initially reserved for the French settlers, and repugnant to the British. In the Mohawk language, Kanatiéns means “squatters”. It is paradoxical, to say the least, that the demand for the removal of  colonial symbols should be labelled as “identity masochism”. Isn’t the real “morbid pleasure” that of the colonizer-colonized (Bock-Côté) who rejoices in the name that another colonizer (the British crown) has given him? How can Bock-Côté so well decry the colonial oppression of Quebecers by the British, while being unable to see that he is reproducing it against the Aboriginals?

If contemporary Quebecers want to show their solidarity with the victims of their colonial heritage, it is essential that they take seriously the testimonies and claims of the victims of the European invasion and of Catholic fundamentalism. It is even a duty to prove that we have more sensitivity than the Nazis – and that we sincerely want to repair the past. We believe that Quebec in its overwhelming majority is ready to hear and to face the terrible reality that the Pope has acknowledged about the Aboriginal people. However, everything seems to suggest that Bock-Côté has a problem of listening (not to say understanding) in this matter. We hope that he will come to his senses, as the representative of his cross. In his defense, it must be recognized that Bock-Côté has followed, in spite of himself, what many natives and non-natives sensitive to the decolonial cause would like him to do: he has returned to make his life in Europe. If France is favorable to him, let him stay there. We will take care of our colonial heritage ourselves, right here on Turtle Island.

Philippe Blouin is a PhD candidate in anthropology at McGill University, working on his dissertation on Mohawk political philosophy, and will publish in September the book “The Mohawk Warrior Society. A Handbook on Sovereignty and survival.” Guillaume G. Poirier is a doctoral candidate at the School of Political Thought of the University of Ottawa, working on a thesis on the role of the “savage” in the history of colonization and in the doctrine of the sovereign state in Thomas Hobbes.

The Beatles know that basically nothing is gonna change the world because the church and its symbols cannot kill the kaianerekowa, great peace: Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing Through my open ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns. It calls me on and on across the universe. Jai guru deva, om. Nothing’s gonna change my world.

 

MNN Note: The genocide has never ended. It continues today and tomorrow. Bock-Cote attacking the Mohawk Mothers is attacking his own mother. All women around the world are right. We onkwewonweh are here and will continue to resist.

thahoketoteh@ntk.com   mohawknationnews.com.  kahentinetha2@protonmail.com.  P.O. Box 991, kahnawake Quebec Canada J0L 1B0