Experiment on…..CONSENSUAL DECISION MAKING EXERCISE

Posted on by
MNN. March 27, 2005. In the middle of my sleep Wednesday night, I got a call from Tiokasin of WBAI Radio, New York City. He wanted me to come on his show early the next morning. He was having a discussion on the Red Lake Reservation school shooting. Apparently I agreed to do it.When I woke up Thursday morning, I did not remember a thing about it. At 9:55 am. I received a call, “It’s WBAI Radio from New York. Are you ready to go on the air in 5 minutes”? They reminded me that I had agreed to go on. “What am I suppose to talk about”? I asked. He said, “About the Red Lake school shooting in Northern Minnesota”. I had to quickly gather my thoughts and went on the air.

The first question was who to blame for it. I answered, “George Bush!” I explained how our youth are being conditioned by video games and movies to kill people without thinking. Just like they see on TV in Iraq every day! “Isn’t that what George W. Bush and his team of megalomaniacs need so he can become king of the whole wide world and head honcho of the entire corporate-military-industrial complex? They need thoughtless killers and they’re creating them.”

My heart goes out to this child. He was slashing his wrists. So the authorities put him on Prozac. What did life have to offer him? His father had already
committed suicide and his mother is permanently hospitalized following a car accident. His culture is under constant attack. What choices did American
society offer him? He could be a vegetable or he could be a killer. I remember the last question I was asked was, “What do the Indians want?” I answered, “We want to be free like we once were before the first European put his foot on our continent”.

Then I had to head out to Concordia University in Montreal to teach my class on “History of Indigenous Women”. All the students are white, except for one
Japanese.

We were doing an exercise on how to resolve an issue using our Indigenous consensual decision making process. I divided the class into three clans, Wolf,
Turtle and Bear. I explained the basic criteria that must be followed: peace, righteousness and power. They were to be people of an Indian reservation where there had been a shooting at the school. Ten people were killed. This community was going to be besieged by the FBI, social workers, an army of media, grief counselors, helpers, curious people and authorities of all sorts. They needed time to get themselves together before the spotlight of the world was put on them.

The Wolf Clan deliberated first. After discussing the many facets of the horrendous event, they come up with three good ideas. The first was to ask neutral observers to deal with the outsiders. The second was to ask the American Indian Movement to be on the front lines to be a buffer for them. The third was for the clans to deal with the victims, families and community. They wanted peace.

Their decisions were passed over to the Turtle Clan who then discussed them. They agreed with the three ideas and expanded on the third one. Then it was passed over to the Bear Clan who had to discuss it and sanction the decisions of the other two clans.

One member of the Bear Clan was noticeably upset. She expressed how she could not put herself in the place of these native people. It was too painful. This was the first time in her life that she had heard of the oppression of Indigenous people. The other students understood her feelings.

I explained that I was teaching them another way of resolving issues, a traditional Indigenous way. It requires the full participation of each person. This way the level of knowledge of each is raised. A resolution is reached which is in the best interests of all. It is essential that they come to one mind.

Looking around the classroom, I noticed that some of the students were crying because they felt attacked and blamed. I apologized and told them this was not my intent. This structure of decision making came from our constitution, the Kaianereh’ko:wa/Great Law of Peace. We feel the whole world could benefit from
using this system. The U.S. Constitution was based on our philosophy of equality and our relationship to the natural world. However, the U.S. maintained their
hierarchical system within it. The Charter of the United Nations is based on the U.S. Constitution. From our philosophy came the Rule of Law and international law. The Kanion’ke:haka/Mohawk feel that we must save the rule of law for our People and for the world.

When the class was over, I left. Many stayed behind. I could still hear some of them crying. It greatly upset me. The decision making process had given each of
them a voice, something they are not use to having. Even though they were role playing, they had little experience in having their thoughts and feelings validated. It touched a well of pent up emotions.

One of the students sent me an email that night. She said, “I do feel attacked in class, but not by you. I feel attacked by my own ignorance. I consider myself
smart and well-educated. But then why did I have all these preconceived ideas about Indigenous people? Why did I not realize what they had been subjected to? Naturally I have never been educated in indigenous history or even in the REAL history of Canada. I feel this is no longer an excuse. As I age I realize that it really is up to me to seek the truth in issues, not hope it is provided to me. Fortunately, on rare occasions, I meet someone like yourself who can provide it. Anyway, I think when most people say they feel attacked, they mean it the way I do, not in terms of you pointing a finger saying “this is your fault”. Realizing the depths of my non-knowing is the best thing about your class. Overwhelming sometimes, but necessary and welcome.”

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

poster: Thahoketoteh

 

Red Lake school shooting is colonial insanity.

Posted on by
27.03.2005 21:49:00
MNN #123: Red Lake school shooting is colonial insanity.
RED LAKE SCHOOL SHOOTING IS COLONIAL INSANITY

MNN. March 27, 2005. A 15-year old Chippewa shot his grandfather and step
mother. He then went to his school and shot five classmates, one security guard,
one teacher and then himself. Why? Internal colonization!

Red Lake is an isolated community in Northern Minnesota. All the purse strings
and laws to run the community come from far away. Administrators fly in and out
constantly. But the residents don?t have the funds to do this. They?re one of
the poorest Indigenous communities in the United States. There are 5,100
residents in Red Lake. All access to their natural resources has been restricted
or taken away. Right in their midst has been placed a prosperous casino. Their
unemployment rate remains one of the highest in the United States. There are few
Indigenous people working in the casino. Why?

What kind of message does this situation send to the kids? Traditionally when an
Indian wins or returns from a hunting trip, according to his culture, he must
share everything he brought home with everyone in his community. Today he sees
the colonial approach which contradicts his own culture. People come to the
casino to win money from other people and then keep it for themselves.

This was a young boy with no social support. His father committed suicide 4 years
ago. His mother was permanently hospitalized, a victim of an alcohol induced car
accident. He was vulnerable. He had no sense of what he could do with his life,
how he could be useful, how he could take part in society. So he decided to
follow the American way, to destroy it. He turned his anger and confusion on his
own people and himself.

They say he was intelligent but ?out of touch?. How can our Indigenous young
people be in touch with the colonial culture that surrounds them but excludes
them?

Like other American children, native kids play video games and watch movies. They
are socialized to shoot people without thinking of the moral consequences. How
many millions of children watch TV or play video games where people, fuzzy
creatures or scary monsters are chased and exploded to oblivion? They are
conditioned to carry out executions of people every day without attaching any
meaning to the act. The instinct to press buttons and pull triggers becomes a
conditioned response, performed automatically, without thinking. They see on
their TV daily pictures of killings of innocent civilians in Iraq. Most American
soldiers are only 2 or 3 years older than this boy. They?re children!

Perhaps the kind of society that is being paraded in front of our youth is
conditioning them to become thoughtless killers. Isn?t that what George W. Bush
and other megalomaniacs need in order to control the new worldwide
corporate-military-industrial complex that they?re setting up? Are they sad that
they lost a chance to hire him to be one of their killers?

Young people do not want to join the U.S. military services. They are not signing
up in the numbers that Bush would like to see. Recently, the United States
government sent army recruiters to Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Canada. They
came here to entice our young people to join them in their worldwide domination
and killing spree.

Red Lake has become a prison, with nowhere to go, and with control of the society
from outside. In such circumstances of helplessness, there is an increase of
social violence in Indigenous communities. So the authorities are putting more
and more police in such communities to look over everybody?s shoulders. This is
not the answer. Criminologists have proven that increases in state violence
?precede? increases in social violence. Increased policing disturbs the peace.
It is like putting napalm on the fire.

Think about it this way. Isn?t school where you go to practice what you are going
to do later in life? The United States recruits kids to become killers overseas.
Should it surprise us that high school students emulate their older brothers and
sisters? Isn?t this why gratuitous killing breaks out at some high school almost
every year in the United States?

The United States is a sick society. It?s governed by killers. It oppresses its
own people. It prays on that oppression to recruit adolescent soldiers who are
willing to kill innocent civilians overseas. This is all in the name of ?liberty?
and ?justice?. Can this be called anything but insanity? We know who?s doing it?
They?re pushing our young people to feel that death is the only escape.

They classed this boy as sick. Was he? Was it him, or the society that made the
conditions he lived in? How do we cure this colonial insanity?

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

poster: Thahoketoteh

 

DO YOU SUFFER FROM “POLITICAL PARANOIA”?

Posted on by

TAKE THE TEST.

MNN. Jan. 16, 2005. When the 109th Congress convened in Washington D.C. in January 2005, Senator Bill Frist, a doctor, filed a bill that would define “political paranoia” as a mental disorder. Every social disaster or political movement has its loonies: McCarthyism, John Birch Society, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Crusty the Clown, Pat Robertson, Oren Lyons, David Ahenakew, etc. What conditions have to exist before the message of the paranoid takes place. Well, here’s a test, folks, to find out where you are on the scale.

Just answer the questions and score them from 1 to 10.

1. My blood boils when I see George Bush in the news.

2. I wince when I see colonial flags like the Stars and Stripes or the Maple Leaf on Indian cars.

3. I believe that the involvement of Tribal councils in the United States and the band councils in Canada in land claims, casino high tech deals are fraudulent and that they are out for themselves.

4. I cannot listen to reservation radio stations financed by the federal government without becoming enraged. The cherry picked opinions of the tribal and band councilors or their employees infuriates me.

5. A sign objecting to the casino has been sitting on my lawn for the past 5 years.

6. I avoid speaking my mind because I am afraid I might get called down or get an egg thrown on my car windshield or get my welfare cut off.

7. I believe that everything the chiefs say is the gospel truth. Halleluyah!

8. I believe that Homeland Security or CSIS may be listening in on my phone conversations. So I use an obscure dialect for code – like Mohawk.

9. I am opposed to the concept of an individual ownership society.

10. I use traditional herbs to treat all ailments, including my political paranoia.

11. I avoid speaking to anyone in authority, including the Wal Mart cashier.

12. I think that the chiefs and councilors of my territory are unbiased.

13. I supported these same people in the last election.

14. I have trouble admitting that I suffer from political paranoia.

If you score from 1 to 20, nothing bothers you. You probably don’t listen to the media. You may be a hermit or can’t afford cable. You are a winner because you just don’t know or care about what is going on. If you scored between 100 and 140 you are aware of what is going on and are still normal in this day and age. You don’t have to be treated by Bush’s new paranoia pills – Paxil or Prozac.

Hey, wait a minute! Here’s a new business venture for some enterprising Mohawks – manufacturing cheap generic anti-depressants. Carry on, George!

Kahentinetha Horn

MNN Mohawk Nation News

poster: Thahoketoteh

 

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

Posted on by
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

 

MOHAWK WARRIOR “LASAGNA”

Posted on by
RON CROSS DIED 5 YEARS AGO – VETERAN OF 1990 MOHAWK CRISIS AT OKAMNN. Dec. 12, 2004. At 11:00 p.m. on Nov. 1st Lasagna Ron Cross, 41 years of age, died of heart failure. He was the Mohawk Warrior made famous during the Oka Crisis of 1990. He was seen daily on the media standing up to the Quebec Provincial Police and the Canadian Army in defense of Mohawk land and sovereignty. He left an imprint in everybody’s mind: a hero to some and a villain to others.

Canada and Quebec wanted to pacify his irrepressible spirit, his bravado. But he remained true to himself. His spirit was an example to others in their own struggles. Had he caved in, it would have discouraged others. Although he did not intend it, someone always stands out in such a crisis. He was it.

It was Wednesday, September 26, 1990. The siege had lasted 78 days. Lasagna was one of 52 men, women and children and 10 journalists who marched out of the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centre at Oka Quebec. It was one of the gravest political confrontations in modern Canadian history.

The Army, the police and the media had targeted Lasagna. The Canadian soldiers were jealous of him. The police wanted his blood. Canada and Quebec wanted him to pay for the Mohawks upsetting them. For a moment he wanted to stay behind and “look after himself”, but the others talked him out of it. Together they walked out of the Centre to freedom, singing their Mohawk victory song. As soon as they crossed over the stretcher that had been placed on the razor wire, several soldiers grabbed Lasagna and began to kick, punch and beat him with their fists, army boots and guns. He was beaten several times by the SQ. Later he brought charges against four Quebec police. They had dressed up in army clothes. He won the case. Amnesty International condemned this beating worldwide. Many believe that this vicious beating caused so much internal injuries that it contributed to his early death.

Lasagna’s trial came up in St. Jerome Quebec in September 1991. It lasted almost a year. Joining him as defendants were two other warriors, Gordon ‘Noriega’ Lazore and Roger ‘20-20’ Lazore. The proceedings of the trial were published in a book “Mohawk Warriors Three” by Kahentinetha Horn. Also, he won a Supreme Court of Canada decision to have his trial in English rather than French.

It is a significant trial. The three warriors did not recognize the jurisdiction of the white man’s court and remained silent throughout. They said nothing from the beginning, throughout the trial and afterwards. They did not put in a defense. They allowed the jury to decide their fate.

In the end only Lasagna served a prison sentence. The only charge that stood was his involvement in the beating of Mohawk informant to the police, Francis Jacobs. He was released from prison two months prior to his death. At the construction site on the Champlain Bridge in Montreal, he felt ill and decided to sit in his car. His friends checked on him twice, the second time he was found dead. He is survived by his wife, Nadine, four sons and grandchildren. Since the 1990 crisis the following men who were in the compound with him have died: Thomas “the General” Paul, Leroy “Splinter” Gabriel, Todd Diabo, Joe “Stone Carver” David, and “Mad Jap”.

On November 3rd, 1999, Lasagna Ron Cross was laid to rest in the graveyard of Long House 207 at Kahnawake Mohawk Territory ( Quebec Canada ).

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

To read about the trial:
“Mohawk Warriors Three, the Trial of Lasagne, Noriega and 20-20” by Kahentinetha Horn
You can purchase this book for $20 from
MNN, #991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0; or through http://www.mohawknationnews.comon the PayPal account. MNN

poster: katenies

 

“No More Leonard Peltiers”

Posted on by

WE DON’T WANT ANY MORE LEONARD PELTIERS
THIS BROTHER’S BEEN IN JAIL FOR TOO LONG

MNN. Dec. 4, 2004. On November 23rd 1999 I spoke in Washington DC in front of the White House during “Leonard Peltier Month”. There were heavily armed guards strutting around on top of the building keeping an eye on us.

What is solved by keeping Leonard Peltier in jail? Who is being protected? Is it the people who go into Indian territories and shoot at us? We get into trouble when we defend ourselves. If they stopped coming in uninvited, it would go a long way towards stopping these conflicts. North America is a history of illegal colonial encroachment onto native constitutional jurisdiction. Indigenous nations never validly gave up sovereignty or surrendered any land.

What do they want from us? Our lives! They need to subdue our sovereignty and constitutional jurisdiction. Completely wiping out Indians would validate their false claim to our land. Leonard Peltier represents the independent indigenous spirit. He is a prisoner of war.

We have the same gripes today we had back in 1975, when Leonard Peltier was put in jail. Since then, the International Court of Justice has upheld self-determination for Namibia in Africa. Yet they continue to violate the equal constitution-to-constitution relationship worked out between indigenous nations and the settlers. We could use some understanding and support from the international community. If the rule of law deems that all humans are equal, why are we being abused?

Equality is not an American idea. It’s ours.

On December 2nd 1987 the United States affirmed that the Iroquois Constitution, the Kaianereh’ko:wa/Great Law of Peace, influenced the United States Constitution. This in turn influenced modern international law and the United Nations. The whole world has benefited from our philosophy.

To improve the understanding of modern international law, the Kaianereh’ko:wa’s messages of peace should be carefully studied. It reflects reality. The opening thanksgiving that we say before any meeting or event reminds us of the interdependent system of relations of all elements of the natural world, which are equal. The people are the foundation of governance. Our law shows us how to be directed by the inner core of our knowledge system and traditions. We arrive at an understanding of our universe through our own search and experience.

Society or friendship cannot be held together by force. Certainly not when some are forced to be under the control of others. A man can’t get true love from a woman by force. There have been wonderful strong relationships when they treated each other well.

Kaianereh’ko:wa is against the use of force. How can we be a free and democratic society if we are being forced to behave in a certain way by threats of violence, such as fines, jails, confiscation of possessions or denial of rights. Keeping Leonard Peltier in prison symbolizes North American society’s use of force as a means of maintaining control. Behind the enforcement of their “democracy” is the gun.

Leonard Peltier was supposed to have killed two FBI agents. There is doubt about this. A chronic perception in North America is that native people are lawbreakers. The dominant group is imposing foreign laws on us. It’s illegal. We resist. Colonial North America is a history of genocide and encroachment on our jurisdiction. If North Americans would respect each other’s space and allow us our jurisdiction, we could form bonds of brotherhood. All would be stronger. One dominating the other is a symptom of a weak society.

Remember how the violence at Pine Ridge began in the first place. The U.S. encroached on native jurisdiction. The agents of the American government arrived on Pine Ridge carrying guns. A fundamental principle of survival is that anyone who is attacked has a right to defend themselves. Those FBI didn’t need to go there. Peltier was on his native territory. There was no reason for the deaths to occur.

Canada and the United States violated international law by refusing to recognize Leonard Peltier’s nation and jurisdiction. He was denied a hearing before an impartial third party. He was tried by one of the parties to the dispute, the United States justice system. They were the judge, jury and executioner, violating the rule of law. There was no neutrality.

Had the newcomers obeyed their agreements with us to live peacefully nation-to-nation, they would not have to waste all their time and tax money. They misspend it on keeping Peltier and other in jails, buying guns and ammunition and risking their lives to keep people under control.

As an Indigenous woman of the Rotinoshon’non:we, we want the U.S. and Canada to stop to attacking our men who are defending our families, people and possessions. The newcomers should be man enough to support their own families without making a huge industry out of hurting us? When are good decent people worldwide going to defend us from being overwhelmed by colonists? When will the international community stop the punishment and killing of our warriors?

We should be talking and working together, otherwise racism will continue. We must get Leonard Peltier out of prison.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

poster: Thahoketoteh