MNN. Jan. 3, 2008.

The illness that pervades colonial society and all of its agencies and institutions is plain to us, the Indigenous Peoples. We’ve been waiting for the rest of the world to wake up.

Legault seems to criticize Le Devoir for saying “the founding of Quebec City was an historical mistake”. Right on! What’s to celebrate? Theft of our land? Vandalism? Plagues? Genocide?Complete denial of our existence? Establishment of twisted and diseased European social customs on our land? Pollution and destruction of our environment? We would have all been better off if the French and English had stayed home and cured their sicknesses instead of contaminating the rest of the world?

When Jacques Cartier arrived at the modern site of Quebec City in 1534, he found a beautiful stand of nut trees. The new arrivals behaved strangely. Cartier kidnapped Donnacona’s sons! He must have known this was wrong. When he came back, they chopped down our nut trees to build a fort where they barricaded themselves. Weird!

Legault complains that the founder of Quebec City, Samuel de Champlain, “was all but ignored” in the celebrations. Let’s take a look at this guy. He was a shameless promoter of colonialism, and a dangerous psychopath.

When he first saw the Mohawks he opened fire on them with his new toy, the ‘Arquebuse’. He then declared a campaign of genocide to wipe every last one of us out. From 1608 to 1635 he wreaked havoc on every part of Turtle Island that he could reach. In one of his campaigns he wiped out 30 of our villages. This was meant to support the French lie that our territory was “empty”.

Did Legault expect a re-enactment of this carnage? If so, she’s a blood-thirsty vampire!

According to Legault ignoring Champlain is “like the United States celebrating the by-centennial of the American Revolution without uttering the name of George Washington”. She’s right! George Washington is known to our people as the “Ranatakarias” – “destroyer of villages”.

He ordered General Sullivan into our territory to destroy everything. They torched our longhouses, our barns, our agricultural equipment, thousands of fruit trees, bushels of grain, our corn, our beans and our squash. When the people ran out, they were shot. They brought down over 100,000 of our people to almost nothing. The survivors fled to Fort Niagara.

The British were no better!!! They sent General Amherst to finish the genocide with gifts of small pox infested blankets. Let’s not kid ourselves, the aim of the American Revolution was to grab our land. The French allied with the Americans.

The British made illegal agreements in Paris giving free reign to the “rebel” rabble to escalate the colonial land grab. Let’s have truth before reconciliation.

Admission and acknowledgement are required before there can be healing! The arrival of the European “found’l’ings” at Quebec City marks the beginning of an era of an apocolypse. An apology is not enough. Colonial society has to admit the devastation to us and our environment that has now been destroyed to the point where survival of the human race is in question.

A few days ago the Montreal Gazette complained that the head honcho, Queen Elizabeth II, can’t make the Quebec City bash. Are she and her handlers showing some good sense? This mindless nonsense is meant to stoke the colonial delirium and keep the public in a trance so they can keep being manipulated.

All it produces on ‘St. Jean Baptiste Day’ is a bunch of drunken yahoos, driving around with their radios at full blast, their stinking feet hanging out the windows and ‘fleur de lis’ flags stuck in their gas tank. Who needs that?

The 400th anniversary of the colonial disorder should be recognized. We need a full confession, an exorcism, whatever it takes to cure and wake people from this crazy fantasy.

Quebecers and Canadians both need to stop being proud of genocidal maniacs. They need to stop celebrating the holocaust that plunked their ancestors on our land while killing most of us. They need to get the “pure laine” cobwebs out of their minds. Then we can examine the real character of our historical relationship.

Legault seems to think that “It’s a pretty sorry statement that this anniversary cannot be seen and presented for what it is”. We agree! She doesn’t know our history. It’s not Quebec versus Canada or Canada versus Quebec. It’s about theft, killing and lies. It’s about colonial delusions.

The Quebec City celebration committee shouldn’t listen to Legault. If they do, they might be temped to bring in a bunch of cabaret “Indians” from some “Indian” village wearing vinyl buckskins dancing to “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. That goes for the “Willy Two Willies” and the “plastic medicine men” too. We’ve seen this kind of nonsense before. Now we have a smart new generation of indigenous youth who would never demean themselves this way.

Quebecers, Canadians and all residents of Turtle Island, it is possible to develop immunity to the colonial disease, to see history for what it was. 40 of the 50 U.S. states have indigenous names. So do Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut and Nunavik.

To promote healing, an appropriate first move would be to restore the Indigenous names to every place on Turtle Island. Quebec already bears an Algonquin name. If you look at the word in French, it sounds like “kiss my ass” [cue, bec]. It’s time to take the lies and profanity out of history. In other words, let’s kill the ill[ness]!

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News