Would someone please ask our illustrious candidates about this? Warning lengthy, but issues of law and history bear on present issues being discussed on Middle East and elsewhere.
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Blackfoot Indictment of the United States of America
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INDICTMENT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA, DESIGNATED AGENCIES OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND CANADA, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE BRITISH CROWN AND NAMED CHURCHES RESIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND CANADA*
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FOR THE COMMISSION OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST BLACKFOOT LAW AND PETITION FOR ORDERS MANDATING THE PROSCRIPTION AND DISSOLUTION OF NAMED INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACIES AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS
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By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi
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Member and Named Prosecutor, Sovereign Blackfoot Nation
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INTRODUCTION
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I. EXISTENCE, STATUS AND SOVEREIGNTY OF THE BLACKFOOT NATION
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Long before there were recognized nations called The United States of America and Canada, and for many years since the genesis and recognition of those nations, Blackfoot People lived as and formed a Whole People and Nation. By any and all criteria under international law that legitimate and mandate recognition of The United States of America and Canada as sovereign nations, that have the unalienable rights: recognition, security and self-determination as nations. Blackfoot People have collectively constituted a “People” and Nation. Specifically, Blackfoot People, historically have possessed, and in the present-day possess:
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1) Recognized and Commonly-shared Territory;
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2) Recognized and Commonly-shared History, Culture, Spirituality and Language;
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3) Recognized and Commonly-shared Legal and Political Institutions, Processes and
Traditions;
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4) Recognized and Commonly-shared Economic Institutions, Processes and Traditions;
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5) Recognized and Commonly-shared Mechanisms and Institutions for Determination of
Membership in and Leadership/Composition of the Nation;
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6) Recognized and Commonly-shared Ancestors and Ties of Blood--Family, Clan and
Tribe;
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7) Recognized Capacity to Enter Into Relations With Other Nations;
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8) Recognized and Expressed Common Will of Blackfoot Individuals to Live Together in
Collectives Forming Whole Societies Greater Than the Sums of the Parts;
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9) Close Attachment to Ancestral Lands and their Resources;
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10) Self-identification and Identification by Others as Members of a Distinct Nation or Cultural Group;
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11) a Recognized and Expressed Desire to Remain Distinct as Blackfoot and Not to be
Assimilated;
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As in the case of any Nation, the status and legitimacy of the Blackfoot Nation and the unalienable rights of the Blackfoot Nation and its members to security, peace, prosperity and self-determination do not depend upon any degree or kind of recognition or nonrecognition by any other Nation or entity. The objective reality and status (under international law and as a defacto reality) of Blackfoot People as a Nation, and the derivative rights of the Blackfoot Nation to security, peace, prosperity and self-determination demand--rather than depend upon--recognition by all those Nations seeking or asserting similar recognition ( often with less authority) for themselves.
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Further, it is established and customary practice, and explicitly codified in international law,that no members of one nation can be summarily declared to be members or citizens of another nation without their consent. Blackfoot Peoples and members of the Blackfoot Nation were summarily declared to be “citizens” of the United States of America in 1924 without their consent and were summarily declared to be “citizens” of Canada in 1963 without their consent.Further, it is established and customary practice, and explicitly codified in International law, that no nation or representative government of any nation makes “treaties” with its own citizens; treaties are instruments and agreements between and among sovereign nations. Further, it is established and customary practice, and explicitly codified in international law, that nations have the right to seek, expose and indict those who commit crimes in the name of/against members of a nation and/or against international law, and to prosecute, on their soil, or in recognized international venues, those alleged to have committed such crimes.
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Prior to the precedents set at the Nuremberg and other International Tribunals, it was thought that “established and customary” practice of international law, and the whole of international law itself, applied only between nations. It was the “customary and established practice” in international law that what governments or parties of nations did or didn’t do to their “own citizens” or their “own national minorities” that caused harm to these “citizens” or “national minorities” was not a matter for or concern of international law. Documents of and research on, the periods during which the U.S. and Canadian Governments summarily declared Blackfoot Peoples to be “citizens” of the United States and Canada without their consent, reveal that one of the clear and stated motives and intent of summary declaration of citizenship was to summarily declare removed--and to remove--certain “national minorities” of the United States and Canada (including Blackfoot People) from any protection, coverage or application of international law or conventions or treaties to which the U.S. and Canada were signatories and were bound by summarily changing their status to that of “citizens” and thus making their status and treatment an “internal matter” and supposedly not subject to international law; this is in violation of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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Any extent to which any of the core elements of the Blackfoot Nation have been diminished or extinguished as a result of conquest, occupation,and ethnocidal or genocidal policies and practices, does not, and should not, in any way call into question the existence, legitimacy, or fundamental rights to sovereignty and self- determination of the Blackfoot Nation and its members. Were it so, those who sought to eliminate Indigenous Peoples in general and Blackfoot in particular, would be rewarded for and assisted in the commission of the very genocidal crimes against Blackfoot Peoples and International Law for which they are being legitimately brought to a Tribunal of Blackfoot Justice.
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Indigenous Nations in general and Peoples of the Blackfoot Nation in particular have recognized, established and codified rights to national recognition, national sovereignty, national preservation and protection of lands and resources, national self-determination and the national right to take any and all measures necessary to preserve and protect the Nation against genocide, wars of aggression, crimes against humanity, war crimes or any other kinds of crimes or threats against the existence and survival of the Nation as a whole or its members.
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Legal support for and/or codification of these fundamental rights are to be found in:
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• The Nuremberg Charter; The 1948 UN Convention on Genocide;
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• Convention on the Rights and Duties of States adopted by the Seventh International Conference of American States Dec. 26, 1933 (to which Canada was not a signatory);
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• Charter of the United Nations, Article I (2) and Article 55
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• United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Articles I and 27
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• The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Article I
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• UN General Assembly Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance With the Charter of the United Nations
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• UN General Assembly’s Declaration on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations
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• Supreme Court of Canada Decisions (e.g. “the right of colonial peoples to exercise their right to self-determination by breaking away from the ‘imperial power’ is ‘now undisputed’.”)
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• UN General Assembly Resolution on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources
(GA Res. 1803, XVII, 17 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 17 at 15 U.N. Doc. A/5217, 1962)
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• Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 15 and 17
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• UN General Assembly Resolutions 1514, XV (Declaration on the Granting of Independence of Colonial Countries and Peoples of 14.12.1960) and 1541
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• UN GA Res. 2625 (XXV) of 24.10.1970, Annex, “Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations
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• Basket I, Final Act, Article VIII of the Helsinki Conference on Cooperation and Security in Europe
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• Article 38 no. 1 b of ICJ Statute ( two elements needed to create valid customary law in international law: general customary practice and opinio juris)
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• Article 38 para. 1 d) of the ICJ Statute (judicial decisions can be used as “subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law”)
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• The ICJ Advisory Opinion on Namibia in 1971 (“Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia)
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• ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Western Sahara (Order of 22 May 1975, ICJ Rep. 1975)
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• ICJ Judgment on U.S. Military and Paramilitary Activities Against Nicaragua, ICJ Rep. 1986
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• ICJ Judgment on East Timor (Portugal v Australia), ICJ Rep. 1995
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• Permanent ICJ Ruling in the Case of Greco-Bulgarian Communities, P.C.I.J. [1930], Series B, No. 17,21
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• International Commission of Jurists, East Pakistan Staff Study, 1972 (“a people begins to exist only [and] when it becomes conscious of its own identity and asserts its will to exist”, p. 47)
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• International Labor Organization Convention 107
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• The draft “Inter-American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” by the Organization of American States
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• Declaration of President Richard Nixon, 1973(“self-determination as the key concept that would govern relations between Indian tribes [sic] and the government of the U.S.”)
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• Declaration of President Ronald Reagan in 1983 (“…the government-to-government relationship between the U.S. and Indian tribes had endured…consistently recognized a unique political relationship between Indian Tribes and the U.S. which this Administration pledges to uphold”)
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• Declaration of President William Clinton in 1994 (“This is our first principle: respecting your values, your religions, your identity, and your sovereignty…[We want to]…become full partners with the tribal nations.”)
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• Memorandum of the U.S. Department of Justice (opinio juris) ([Clinton’s position] “builds on the firmly established federal policy of self-determination for Indian tribes.”)
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• Helsinki Final Act
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• “Fulfilling Our Promises: The United States and the Helsinki Final Act” by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in the U.S., 1979
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• “Compact of Self-governance Between the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and the United States of America”
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• Article I, Section 10 and Article VI Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States
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From the fundamental right of the Blackfoot Nation to survival and self determination, other facts and conclusions flow inexorably. For example, Canada’s Indian Act, and the Indian Reorganization Act of the U.S., strip recognized Indigenous sovereign nations, such as the Blackfoot Nation, with its recognized right to self-determination, of the power to govern the internal affairs of the Nation and transfer that power to entities of a foreign power (DIA , Minister of Indian Affairs and their “Tribal Council” creations in Canada and the BIA, Department of the Interior and their “Tribal Council” creations of the U.S. Government) thus summarily eliminating the right of self-determination as a prelude to and instrument of elimination of the Nation itself. The paternalistic policies of the Canadian and U.S. Governments purporting to “protect” Indigenous Peoples through a “trustee relationship”, have demonstrably created, and inexorably create, not “protecting powers”, but rather, powers, exploitative relationships and indeed genocidal policies from which Indigenous Peoples need protection through the exercise of the right of selfdetermination and through international law.
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For the above-mentioned and other clear reasons, agencies such as the BIA and DIA, and their creations the “Tribal Councils”, whose policies and actions are all subject to final approval and ratification by the BIA and DIA, can never be recognized as the legitimate leadership and political authority of the Blackfoot Nation. The mechanisms through which the Blackfoot Tribal Councils are selected are non-Blackfoot in nature and in terms of the “final authority” conducting and sanctioning them.
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Indeed historically and in the present, corrupt Tribal Councils (not an indictment of every person serving or who has served on a Tribal Council) have been selected, used and run by the Canadian and U.S. governments as key instruments of genocide. It would be absurd and inherently illogical to suppose that only those same Tribal Councils could have the authority standing to bring charges against those who have committed crimes against the Blackfoot Nation— crimes in which they were often intimately involved as co-conspirators and key instruments of genocide.
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II. PRECEDENTS, STANDING AND LEGAL AUTHORITY OF THE TRIBUNAL
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It was clearly established and accepted, by the parties participating in prosecution and judgment at the Nuremberg and later International Tribunals (which included the U.S. and Canada), that their findings would constitute binding precedents adding to the corpus of evolving international law to which the parties prosecuting and sitting in judgment themselves also would be bound. Specifically, in his opening argument at Nuremberg, the U.S. Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson noted:
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Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events... Unfortunately, the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgment must be by victor nations over vanquished foes [but] we must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice. (Nuremberg transcript)
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The findings, arguments and judgments of the Nuremberg and later International Tribunals and Conventions clearly established, and incorporated into the corpus of evolving international law that:
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1) universal jurisdiction exists with respect to crimes against humanity and genocide (no nation can claim immunity from international law or a “sovereign right” to conduct crimes against humanity and genocide against persons living under the control of that nation);
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2) no nation may legally arrogate the “sovereign right” to selectively and conveniently meet or not meet the terms of legitimate treaties or international conventions it has ratified and accepted; nor may any nation summarily assert primacy of national law over international law, treaties or conventions in the event of conflicts between national laws and policies and international laws;
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3) even when certain crimes against humanity and genocidal acts against persons and groups have been traditionally practiced and accepted by members of dominant exploiting groups, and even in the absence of certain explicit laws prohibiting such crimes, established principles against retroactivity or ex-post-facto prosecution and punishment (punishing someone for violating laws that did not exist when the crime was committed on the basis the person (s) had no warning that they were culpable for their conduct) may not preclude prosecution and punishments in present circumstances when it can be shown, that alleged perpetrators violated established and customary practices, sensibilities, laws and principles that natios commonly recognized, asserted and obeyed for themselves for their own protection;
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4) individuals and organizations may be held to be criminal and culpable and prosecuted and punished even when acting as agents of broader governmental entities and policies, and, the argument of “only following orders” would no longer be acceptable;
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5) mens rea, intentions, motives and interests may be inferred and considered “proved” on the basis of the highly probable, clearly foreseeable (by an average and reasonable prudent person) or inexorable consequences of given actions or policies even in the absence of witnesses to or recordings of specific utterances or documents explicitly detailing mens rea, intentions, motives and interests;
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6) common plans to wage aggressive wars (crimes against peace), war crimes or crimes against humanity constitute criminal conspiracies and are in violation of international law and established treaties to which the U.S. and Canada were bound even before Nuremberg;
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7) waging aggressive wars and barbaric practices against other nations or groups within a nation constitute “Crimes Against Peace” and “Crimes Against Humanity” in violation of international law and treaties existing even before Nuremberg and to which the U.S. and Canada were bound;
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8) even in all-out war there are limits in terms of outlawed barbaric practices and outlawed targets of those practices that constitute “War Crimes” and “Crimes Against Humanity”;
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9) any “designated authorities”, collaborators or “contrived institutions” placed in control by occupiers over the occupied victims of crimes and aid in the commission of crimes (--e.g. Vichy Government in France during World War II) by those being prosecuted, are also criminal and can never be held to be or recognized as the legitimate and representative authorities and institutions of those seeking prosecution of and punishment for any crimes or violations of international law;
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10) citizens of a given nation are also citizens of a World Community, and since reckless, genocidal and aggressive crimes, policies and actions by parties of one nation have spillover effects on the World Community, and since no one is free and all are threatened when anyone is oppressed, all human beings of the World Community have both the unalienable right and sacred duty to sit in judgment of (and attempt to stop) genocidal and other criminal acts and policies by or against any members of that World Community;
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11)racial stereotyping and caricatures, racial policies objectively create environments that make genocide and crimes against humanity more likely and easier to conduct and accept, and are themselves crimes, even without a specific nexus between a specific policy or polemics on the one hand and the death of specific persons on the other hand;
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The governments of Canada (represented by the British government) and the United States were both participants (as prosecutors and sitting in judgment) at the Nuremberg Tribunals. In his opening address, the U.S. Prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson noted:
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The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs, which we seek to condemn and punish, have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captives to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has even paid to reason.
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There was more than grotesque irony and hypocrisy in this statement.The architect(Hitler) of many of the very crimes and policies committed by the nazis and their collaborators for which they were being tried at Nuremberg,had been directly“inspired” by aspects of U.S. and Canadian histories, policies and actions related to Indigenous Peoples. According to James Pool in his “Hitler and His Secret Partners”:
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Hitler drew another example of mass murder from American history. Since his youth he had been obsessed with the Wild West stories of Karl May. He viewed the fighting between cowboys and Indians in racial terms. In many of his speeches he referred with admiration to the victory of the white race in settling the American continent and driving out the inferior peoples, the Indians. With great fascination he listened to stories, which some of his associates who had been in America told him about the massacres of the Indians by the U.S. Calvary.
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He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government’s forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations his hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large ‘reservation’ in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease. (p. 273-274).
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And:
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The next morning Hitler’s ‘plan’ was put in writing and sent out to the German occupation authorities as ‘The Fuehrer’s Guidelines for the Government of the Eastern Territories: ‘ the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives and practice abortion, the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is sufficient… if they can count up to a hundred. At best an education is admissible which produces useful servants for us. Every educated person is a future enemy.
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Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As to food, they are not to get more than necessary. We are the masters, we come first.’
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Always contemptuous of the Russians, Hitler said:‘For them the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash only on feast-days. If we arrive bringing soft soap, we’ll obtain no sympathy…There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.’ Having been a devoted reader of Karl May’s books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as ‘Redskins’. He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of the Indians or ‘Redskins’. ‘I don’t see why’, he said, ‘a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat from Canada, we don’t think about the despoiled Indians.” (James
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Pool, Ibid, pp. 254-255)
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And from a speech by Heinrich Himmler (date not given):
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I consider that in dealing with members of a foreign country, especially some Slav nationality…in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types. Therefore I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary, by robbing or stealing them… (Telford Taylor “Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials”, Alfred A Knopf, N.Y. 1992, p. 203)
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And from John Toland, preeminent biographer of Adolf Hitler:
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Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the ‘Red Savages’ who could not be tamed by captivity. (John Toland, “Adolf Hitler” Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)
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Scholars such as Charles Higham, Christopher Simpson, John Loftus, Mark Aarons and others have thoroughly documented that the U.S. and British Governments that prosecuted and sat in judgment at Nuremberg and at other war crimes trials of Japanese war criminals, and certain companies of the U.S. and Britain, were actively complicit in some of the crimes of the nazi and Japanese fascists through various economic and political relationships that continued throughout the war between U.S. and British Governments and companies and German and Japanese Governments and companies.
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These scholars have also documented that many of the wanted war criminals of Germany and Japan were sheltered, employed, placed in post-war political positions and aided in escape by the U.S. and British Governments that prosecuted and sat in judgment of other Japanese and German war criminals. Despite the myriad and naked forms of hypocrisy and duplicity on the part of the U.S. and British Governments at Nuremberg and at other war crimes trials, the precedents and judgments they set were nonetheless valid and incorporated into international law.
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We have and will present, solid evidence that many of the genocidal practices and policies for which German and Japanese fascists were put on trial and punished at Nuremberg and other International Military Tribunals, were inspired by and directly paralleled, U.S. and Canadian histories, policies and practices (past and present) with respect to Indigenous Peoples in general and Blackfoot People in particular.
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Specifically, and not limited to:
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1) forced relocations and transfers of Indigenous children and adults;
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2) coerced/deceptive sterilizations of Indigenous children and adults;
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3) coerced and deceptive uses of Indigenous children and adults for medical experimentation;
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4) coerced and deceptive uses of “blood-quantum” criteria and categories to establish categories of “status” (versus non-recognized and “non-status”) Indians specifically designed and intended to define Indigenous Peoples (and eliminate the ‘persistent Indian problem’) out of existence;
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5) arrogating to summarily eliminate traditional Indigenous institutions and ways of determining Indigenous leadership (Chiefs) and membership/composition of Indigenous Nations and replacing those traditional Indigenous institutions and ways with non-Indigenous organizations, entities, mechanisms and criteria designed to impose compliant and collaborationist/sell-out agents of the non-Indigenous forces intent on policies and practices defined as “genocide” under Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide;
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6) outright thefts and takings of traditional Indigenous lands and resources and making and summarily breaking treaties constructed and imposed through unconscionable relationships, threats, fraud, deception etc;
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7) designating and using Indigenous Reserves/Reservations as dump sites for highly toxic wastes and causing a wide range of diseases and disease trends that served as instruments of genocide;
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8) calculated uses of various instruments of chemical and biological warfare designed to exterminate large populations of Indigenous Peoples;
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9) practicing and/or knowing about and/or tolerating and/or covering-up and/or being willfully blind to: routine murder, sexual and physical abuse, mind control, torture, illegal confinement, starvation, unsanitary conditions, deleterious non-Indigenous diets, abductions, illegal “adoptions”, forced assimilation into non-Indigenous cultures, denial of basic due process, coerced abortions and forced religious conversions in Residential and Boarding Schools and other institutions;
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10) establishing and/or knowing about and/or tolerating and/or covering-up and/or being willfully blind to corrupt Government-sanctioned “Tribal” authorities, institutions, policies and practices that resulted in losses/misappropriations of billions of dollars of desperately-needed and owed Nation/Tribal resources
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11) systematic refusal to ratify and apply various precedents, Conventions and principles of international law as they relate to Indigenous Peoples.
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These are but some of the issues and particulars that we propose to charge and prove in this Tribunal.
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The U.S. Government and the Canadian Government (represented by the British Government) were major forces initiating and conducting the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and those Tribunals were a major force in the origination and content of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. Yet the U.S. Government did not ratify the UN Convention on Genocide until 1988, forty years after the original UN Convention on Genocide. Further, the U.S. government summarily placed a “restriction” on its ratification of the UN Convention on Genocide known as the “Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package” which stated in Article I (2):
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Nothing in the Convention requires or authorizes legislation or other action by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States.
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This is a clear violation of Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as the definitive international law on treaties) as it is in violation of Article VI, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution itself:
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[treaties are] the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
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Documents of the U.S. Government reveal clearly consciousness of guilt on the part of the Government and its agencies. Debates in the U.S. Senate reveal that there was a general awareness of and fear that the U.S. Government could/would be charged with genocide and related acts for historical and present-day policies and actions related to African-Americans and American Indians.
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The Government of Canada was even more ingenuous in its duplicity and attempts to appear to ratify the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide while effectively obstructing its recognition and application. The government of Canada put the crime of genocide in the criminal code of Canada as a crime. However, of the five specific acts mentioned as constituting genocide in Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide,three were deleted from the definition of genocide in the Canadian criminal code. So from Article II of the Genocide Convention, b) “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, and d)“Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, and e)“Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” were deliberately not included in the Canadian criminal code definition of the crime of genocide. Only a) [deliberate] killing members of the group, and part of c) an intentional plan to “bring about the physical destruction the group in whole or in part” were retained. The clear intent was to make the definition of “intent” very narrow and the proving of mens rea or intent next to impossible--and therefore prosecution next to impossible to pursue. Indeed there has been only one case of anyone being charged with the Canadian Criminal Code’s “genocide” and that resulted in an acquittal.
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For these and other clearly calculated, duplicitous and obstructionist machinations on the part of the Canadian and U.S. Governments and some of their agencies, they are also in violation of the following articles of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
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Article I:
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The contracting parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law for which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
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Article III
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The following acts shall be punishable:
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Genocide;
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Conspiracy to commit genocide;
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Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
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Attempt to commit genocide;
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Complicity in genocide;
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Article IV
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Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
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Article V
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The Contracting parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III
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Article VI
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Persons charged with genocide or any other acts enumerated in Article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.
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Article VII
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Genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition. The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition In accordance with their laws and treaties in force.
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Article VIII
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Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression Of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III.
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Article IX
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Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfillment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in
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Article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.
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The calculated, systematic and ongoing violations of Articles I to IX of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, by the Governments of the United States of America and Canada, along with Articles I to IX themselves, and all authority under international law recognizing/supporting the sovereignty and self-determination of the Blackfoot Nation and People, legitimate and give “standing” and authority to this Tribunal of the Blackfoot Nation. The Governments of the United States of America and Canada have refused to recognize, and have sought to exterminate, the traditional elements, authorities and institutions of the Blackfoot Nation and replace them with collaborationist elements and institutions that would or could never charge those Governments of crimes against international law or with crimes against their own laws even if they were so inclined and the evidence mandated such charges. The Governments of the United States and Canada have refused to allow their own genocidal policies and actions to be submitted to the ICJ and have refused to recognize traditional Blackfoot authorities or institutions as having “standing” or authority to bring charges at the ICJ and have been refused/obstructed in any real exercises in Blackfoot self-determination that would result in the Blackfoot Nation and its traditional authorities and institutions having standing and becoming/being recognized as a “Contracting Party” able to bring charges at the ICJ.
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The U.S. Government has refused to accept the authority of the ICJ on any matters other than those related to “commercial affairs”. The narrow language of the UN Convention on Genocide has been selectively interpreted by the Governments of the United States of America and Canada in such ways as to allow those who practice genocide and other crimes against international law to either physically eliminate and/or summarily non-recognize any victims, evidence or traditional institutions that might bring charges against them. This is like the nazis recognizing only their puppet/collaborationist regimes in the occupied territories as being “Contracting Parties” or “competent authorities” with the “standing” to charge them with various crimes, and, recognizing only nazi courts as the legitimate venues in which any charges could be brought.
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The long history of barbaric, criminal and genocidal activities committed by the Governments of the United States and Canada and their accomplices, against Indigenous Peoples in general and Blackfoot People in particular, continues today. Every attempt to expose, stop and obtain redress for various criminal activities through the institutions of the perpetrators has been met with more denial, cover-up and repression.
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Attempts to establish a World Court or International Criminal Court free of the biases and influences of the perpetrators of crimes against Indigenous Peoples, have been obstructed by those very perpetrators. We therefore assert this constituted Tribunal and its constituted authorities and procedures to be legitimate(in traditional Blackfoot Law and in International Law) in composition, location and standing.Any final decisions of this Blackfoot Tribunal will qualify as binding “judicial decisions” within the meaning of Article 38 (1) (d) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice and will therefore constitute a “Subsidiary Means For The Determination of Rules of Law” for international law and practice.
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As the “Statute of the International Court of Justice” is an “integral part” of the United Nations’ Charter under Article 92 and to which both the U.S. and Canada are signatories, this Tribunal’s decision may be relied upon by some future International Criminal Court or Tribunal or by any People or State of the World Community. Were this not so, the nazis of World War II, for example, could never have been brought to justice for crimes in “occupied territories” as the “designated representatives” and “recognized authorities” of the occupied nations and victims, supposedly charging and judging those nazis, would have been the very collaborators and accomplices of the nazis against whom also charges were also properly made and later proved. Indeed, not one of those “governments” or “governmental agencies” recognized by the nazis as “legitimate”, sat as judges and prosecutors at Nuremberg; they all sat as defendants.
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As to the standing, fairness and legitimacy of this Blackfoot Tribunal, composed of potential victims judging alleged victimizers, A. L. Goodheart in his “The Legality of the Nuremberg Trials”, “Juridicial Review”, April 1946 took on this argument succinctly:
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It has been argued that the Tribunal cannot be regarded as a court in the true sense because, as its members represent the victorious Allied Nations, they must lack that impartiality which is an essential in all judicial procedure. According to this view only a court consisting of neutrals, or, at least, containing Some neutral judges, could be considered to be a proper tribunal. As no man can be a judge in his own case, so no allied tribunal can be a judge in a case in which members of the enemy government or forces are on trial. Attractive as this argument may sound in theory, it ignores the fact that it runs counter to the administration of law in every country. If it were true then no spy could be given a legal trial, because his case is always heard by judges representing the enemy country. Yet no one has ever argued that in such cases it was necessary to call on neutral judges. The prisoner has a right to demand that his judges shall be fair, but not that they shall be neutral. As Lord Writ has pointed out, the same principle is applicable to ordinary criminal law because ‘ a burglar cannot complain that he is being tried by a jury of honest citizens.
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III. SPECIFIC CRIMES AND VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
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The traditionally recognized and responsible authorities of the Blackfoot Nation, present at this Tribunal and acting on behalf of the Blackfoot Nation and whole People, specifically charge that the Government of the United States of America and its agencies, the Government of Canada and its agencies, the British Crown authority in Canada and named Church or religious organizations resident on Blackfoot lands and/or in which Blackfoot were placed (Catholic Church, United Church, Anglican Church, LDS or Mormon Church, Presbyterian Church) directly committed, and/or conspired to commit, and/or sanctioned and tolerated, and/or facilitated, and/or covered-up, and/or refused to prosecute and/or obstructed the prosecution of and/or were willfully blind to the following crimes specified further in the following:
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1) Article I of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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2) Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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a) Killing Blackfoot persons as Blackfoot;
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b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to Blackfoot persons as Blackfoot;
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c) Deliberately inflicting on Blackfoot persons and the Blackfoot Nation conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Blackfoot People and Nation in whole or in part;
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d) Imposing measures intended to prevent biological reproduction of the Blackfoot People and Nation;
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e) Forcibly transferring Blackfoot children to other (non-Blackfoot) groups, lands and cultures;
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3) Article III of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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4) Article IV of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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5) Article V of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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6) Article VI of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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7) Article VII of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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8) Article VIII of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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9) Article IX of the UN Convention on Genocide;
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10) Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions of 1949;
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11) Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg:
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A) Article 6
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a) Crimes Against Peace
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b) War Crimes
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c) Crimes Against Humanity
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B) Article 7
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C) Article 8
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12) Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal as adopted by the International Law Commission of the United Nations 1950 and UN General Assembly Resolution 177
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a) Principle I
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b) Principle II
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c) Principle III
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d) Principle IV
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e) Principle V
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f) Principle VI
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g) Principle VII
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13) Articles of the Statute of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia
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Specifying the Acts Within the Court’s Jurisdiction
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a) Article 2
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b) Article 3
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c) Article 4
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d) Article 5
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14) Articles of the Statute of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda
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Specifying the Acts Within the Court’s Jurisdiction:
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a) Article 2 (2,3)
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b) Article 3
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c) Article 4
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CONCLUSION
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The Blackfoot Nation and People are on the verge of extinction. Victims of and witnesses to the various charged crimes are dying. Blackfoot People individually and collectively cannot wait for the formation of an International Criminal Court (blocked by the U.S. Government) to hear Blackfoot charges against the Governments of the U.S and Canada and other named parties. The Blackfoot and People cannot wait for the U.S. and Canadian Governments to allow charges to be heard by the ICJ at the Hague. The Blackfoot Nation and People Blackfoot cannot wait for the traditional authorities, institutions and self-determination of the Blackfoot Nation to be recognized and respected by the very Governments of the U.S. and Canada intent on elimination of the Blackfoot Nation and People and their self-determination. The Blackfoot Nation and People cannot wait for the U.S. and Canadian Governments to “decertify” and derecognize their puppet and complicit entities (Tribal Councils, BIA and DIA) and to recognize the traditional authorities and institutions of the Blackfoot Nation that are certified and legitimated by the recognized right of and international law governing self-determination of the Blackfoot Nation and People.
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For all of the above-mentioned reasons, and under all of the above-mentioned legal authority (and more to be specified later) this Tribunal, structured and conducted by the competent and traditionally recognized authorities and institutions of the Blackfoot Nation, has standing and authority under international law and any decisions or findings of this Tribunal can be considered binding judicial decisions under Blackfoot Law and International Law.
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The competent, legal and traditional authorities of the Blackfoot Nation propose that ultimate authority and power is truth, reason, law and evidence. Power pays no real ‘tribute to reason’ when the conquerors put on trial—rather than summarily executing or jailing without due process—the conquered. Power pays only a ‘tribute to reason’ and law when the powerful submit to the very laws, standards, precedents and morality to which they purport to hold others and to which the powerful purport to be bound--by their own words and deeds. We will hold these named Governments and agencies or entities to their own laws, words, precedents, deeds and professed values in addition to specific Blackfoot laws and values that they have violated and for which the Blackfoot Nation and People have sovereign rights to protect.
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Finally, on the question of the amount of time that has lapsed since some or many of these alleged crimes have been committed (and we allege that many of the crimes continue in various forms today), we note that it is widely recognized in international law that there is no "statute of limitations" on gross violations of human rights (Article 1,
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"Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity", Nov. 26, 1968 see "A Comprehensive Handbook of the United Nations", Vol. II, 1979) Also, under the U.S. Document "The Third Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Section 702):
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Blackfoot Indictment of the United States of America
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Thursday, October 18, 2007
I Don't Get It!
Look, I have nothing to do with the Government of Iran or some radical forms of "Islam" for sure. As a Blackfoot Indian, who practices Blackfoot Spirituality, not a Christian or Jew, and thus not from a "People of the Book", I am considered an Infidel by them. But what exactly makes anyone, not with ulterior motives, assert that the Government of Iran is a source of State-sponsored Terrorism and a threat to the national security of the U.S. What real EVIDENCE is there for that proposition?
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First of all they do know all about terrorism. One-sided, generic and illegal embargos, that can only hit non-combatants are a form of terrorism per se; if you define terrorism not by who does it, but by what it is: calculated or highly likely violence and force against non-combatants. The overthrow of the democratically-elected regime of Mossadegh in 1953, and the installation and maintenance of the brutal Shah was terrorism per se. The U.S. instigation of Saddam Hussein to launch the 7 1/2 year Iraq-Iran War against Iran, which resulted in over 1 1/2 million casualties, during which the U.S. gave Iraq weapons and satellite intelligence they do not even give the Israelis when Iran was gaining the upper hand, and gave Iran weapons and intelligence when Iraq was gaining the upper hand, was terrorism per se. The giving of Saddam Hussein a "green light" to attack Kuwait by U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie in order to set him up for Regime Change destabilkized the whole region and was terrorism against Iran and others per se.
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The Iranians are not stupid for sure. So why would they want: more regional instability on their borders, refugees, Sunni (anti-Shiite) terrorists, an excuse for preemptive attacks by Israel and the U.S.; an excuse for more covert operations aimed at Regime change; an excuse for even wider embargos by more nations knowing that is exactly what the U.S. and Israel are looking for? Why would they want to give the U.S. the means to divert world attention from the U.S. as the main source of state-sponsored terrorism in the world today? It simply does not add up and I hope that General Clark and others will take a cold and sober look at what is the real "evidence", along with real sources and intentions, as he was trained to do, not just blind jingoism and summary assertions, by those who lied the U.S. into the present illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Iran is some kind of threat to the national security of the U.S. along with the real implications of blindly, like lemmings, following the polemics of those who make such assertions with nothing more than blind polemics and assertions to back them up.
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And I'm sorry but I just do not get it. What gives the U.S. the right or authority under anything other than Imperial hubris to dictate what kinds of systems other nations may have or not have and do summary "Regime Change"; it is up to the citizens of each nation to handle their own "Regime Changes" if they feel the imperative. What gives the U.S. the right to designate that only itself and allies like some nations like Israel, or those it cannot threaten with impunity like China--anymore--may have nuclear weapons while other nations may not? What gives the U.S. Government and its various Administrations, continual sources of outright and provable lies on so many issues, the right to summarily accuse other governments of lying, with no evidence whatsoever, when they assert they have no intention (and clearly would have no interest) in doing so? What gives the U.S. Governments the right to summarily invoke international law, the U.N. and U.N. mandates when convenient and to simply ignore them and even obstruct them when it is not convenient? What gives the U.S. Governments the right to unilaterally and summarily "define" and label what is terrorism and which nations are "terrorists" and which not?
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What does it mean when people say "I'm proud to be an American?" What are you "proud" of? Pride is usually for an accomplishment one had something to do with not just a basic fact one had no influence on. So one is supposed to be "proud" that his or her parents did not practice birth control while on American soil and/or with the result of your being born on American soil? Because that is what it is for many of the idiots and morons that inhabit this country getting all teary-eyed when hearing that song by ultra-rightist hypocrite Lee Greenwood "Proud to be an American". And having been born on American soil, that is supposed to dictate how I feel on any given issue and who my enemies and friends are--as designated by an Administration that was installed through electoral coup d'etat, that is illegal, and continually planning and doing stuff they hanged Nazis for at Nuremberg?
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I just don't get it. We told the Germans at Nuremberg that what was considered treason and aid to the enemy in Nazi Germany, was actually heroism, and what was considered "heroism" under Nazi Germany, was actually treason against Germany, humanity and international law.
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First of all they do know all about terrorism. One-sided, generic and illegal embargos, that can only hit non-combatants are a form of terrorism per se; if you define terrorism not by who does it, but by what it is: calculated or highly likely violence and force against non-combatants. The overthrow of the democratically-elected regime of Mossadegh in 1953, and the installation and maintenance of the brutal Shah was terrorism per se. The U.S. instigation of Saddam Hussein to launch the 7 1/2 year Iraq-Iran War against Iran, which resulted in over 1 1/2 million casualties, during which the U.S. gave Iraq weapons and satellite intelligence they do not even give the Israelis when Iran was gaining the upper hand, and gave Iran weapons and intelligence when Iraq was gaining the upper hand, was terrorism per se. The giving of Saddam Hussein a "green light" to attack Kuwait by U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie in order to set him up for Regime Change destabilkized the whole region and was terrorism against Iran and others per se.
-
The Iranians are not stupid for sure. So why would they want: more regional instability on their borders, refugees, Sunni (anti-Shiite) terrorists, an excuse for preemptive attacks by Israel and the U.S.; an excuse for more covert operations aimed at Regime change; an excuse for even wider embargos by more nations knowing that is exactly what the U.S. and Israel are looking for? Why would they want to give the U.S. the means to divert world attention from the U.S. as the main source of state-sponsored terrorism in the world today? It simply does not add up and I hope that General Clark and others will take a cold and sober look at what is the real "evidence", along with real sources and intentions, as he was trained to do, not just blind jingoism and summary assertions, by those who lied the U.S. into the present illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Iran is some kind of threat to the national security of the U.S. along with the real implications of blindly, like lemmings, following the polemics of those who make such assertions with nothing more than blind polemics and assertions to back them up.
-
And I'm sorry but I just do not get it. What gives the U.S. the right or authority under anything other than Imperial hubris to dictate what kinds of systems other nations may have or not have and do summary "Regime Change"; it is up to the citizens of each nation to handle their own "Regime Changes" if they feel the imperative. What gives the U.S. the right to designate that only itself and allies like some nations like Israel, or those it cannot threaten with impunity like China--anymore--may have nuclear weapons while other nations may not? What gives the U.S. Government and its various Administrations, continual sources of outright and provable lies on so many issues, the right to summarily accuse other governments of lying, with no evidence whatsoever, when they assert they have no intention (and clearly would have no interest) in doing so? What gives the U.S. Governments the right to summarily invoke international law, the U.N. and U.N. mandates when convenient and to simply ignore them and even obstruct them when it is not convenient? What gives the U.S. Governments the right to unilaterally and summarily "define" and label what is terrorism and which nations are "terrorists" and which not?
-
What does it mean when people say "I'm proud to be an American?" What are you "proud" of? Pride is usually for an accomplishment one had something to do with not just a basic fact one had no influence on. So one is supposed to be "proud" that his or her parents did not practice birth control while on American soil and/or with the result of your being born on American soil? Because that is what it is for many of the idiots and morons that inhabit this country getting all teary-eyed when hearing that song by ultra-rightist hypocrite Lee Greenwood "Proud to be an American". And having been born on American soil, that is supposed to dictate how I feel on any given issue and who my enemies and friends are--as designated by an Administration that was installed through electoral coup d'etat, that is illegal, and continually planning and doing stuff they hanged Nazis for at Nuremberg?
-
I just don't get it. We told the Germans at Nuremberg that what was considered treason and aid to the enemy in Nazi Germany, was actually heroism, and what was considered "heroism" under Nazi Germany, was actually treason against Germany, humanity and international law.
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Questions For General Clark et al
What authority, in law--U.S. or international--gives the U.S., or any nation, the right to possess (and actually threaten to use) WMD (that could obliterate the whole planet and all nations on it even if used in a dispute between two nations) and also summarily dictate which nations may or may not have WMD?
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What specific evidence, and how current is that evidence, do you have that the present Iranian Revolutionary Guards are actively involved in terrorism and thus are constituted as a "terrorist organization"?
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What specific evidence to you have, and how current, that the Government of Iran is consciously "lying" when they say they have no desire or need to develop nuclear weapons? What specific evidence do you have that the Government of Iran is lying when they say that the development and use of nuclear weapons is fundamentally in contradiction with their understanding of the fundamental precepts of Islam?
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What specific argumetns and evidence do you advance against those many Peoples in the world today who consider the U.S. a, or even the, principal source of State-sponsored terrorism(when defining terrorism by methods employed and/or calculated and/or likely targets--non-combatants--instead of sources such as it is not terrorism when WE do it)?
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How is the present War in Iraq, founded on lies and contrived pretexts, planned before Bush stole his first election, any different, in nature or law, than those preemptive attacks against various nations by the Nazis (also justified on the basis of contrived pretexts) for which 11 Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg setting precedents that we said at Nuremberg would also bind us in the future as well?
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If, as President Carter argued, "credibility" is a key national security asset, and if imperial hubris, hypocrisy and situational ethics undermine our credibility and thus national security, how is any of this American triumphalism, situational ignoring of the UN and its Resolutions, unilateralism, etc possibly good for or consistent with long-term U.S. national security?
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What kind of patriotism is it that says basically I support a given nation, its socioeconomic system, its Government, its policies, its definitions, and even its Government's notions of who is or is not an enemy because, really, that is where I, ME, through no actions on my part, was born?
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What gives any nation the right to do regime change of another? Why was President Eisenhower not correct in his April 13, 1953 speech that all nations have a right to their own systems and it is up to their own citizens to change their own regimes? Why does the U.S. asserting some kind of "right" to do regime change not give the same precedent and authority to do the same to the U.S.?
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Given that impeachment is an investigatory process as a prelude to a judicial process, and given that it may well yield important information to prevent future wars, carnage and even fascism in America, and given solid probable cause to believe that Bush has committed and is planning more clearly impeachable offenses, what right does any politician have to summarily and precipitously rule out impeachment as an option or even as some kind of "diversion" when so much is at stake?
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Why has no one mentioned that the first use of the play on the name of General Petraeus was Rush Limbaugh who referred to "General Petraeus versus "Senator Betray-us" in reference to Hagel? Why would highly respected Admiral Fallon, who has had more recent contact with General Petraeus, and his his superior, take the highly risky step of calling, in front of witnesses, General Petraeus "that ass-kissing little chickenshit"?
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Why does General Petraeus, in his Introduction to the most recent U.S. Army/USMC Counterinsurgency Manual (first in some 25 years and written by a team of academics and operators at a conference in December 2005, well after U.S. Forces entered a predictable insurgency that would not be a "cakewalk") list, as "inevitable" features of any COIN situation, the basic very costly errors and forms of outright incompetence in Vietnam and in the present situations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is this not a cover-up and toadying to Bush?
-
Right now, in Iraq there are some 2 million internal refugees; in Jordan some 1.6 million; in Syria, some 1.8 million; in Lebanon, some 800,000 refugees most of whom are refugees as a result of working with Amercians and now fearing for their lives. Yet the U.S. has taken in less than 1000; why? What has Hillary or any of the Democratic candidates had to say about any of this? Why would any Iraqi want to work with Americans and risk his whole family especially when they are used up and thrown away even more than the Vietnamese who worked with Americans?
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Why do people keep referring to the Iraq War as a "mistake" instead of what it is: a monstrous crime? How do you "fix" a crime without immediately and unconditionally stopping it? Do you "fix" a crime the same ways you "fix" a mistake?
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Why are the Iranians, who suffered horribly under the Shaw that we illegally installed and maintained, along with a 7 1/2 year war, involving massive destruction on their soil and over 1 million casualties, that we institgated Saddam Hussein to start, and gave him weapons and intelligence we do not even give the Israelis to prosecute, being summarily labeled terrorists when they are victims of our own state-sponsored terrorism? What interests could they possibly have to fuel the flames of war and massive refugee movements right on their own borders? And why would they, hard-core Shiites, be arming and supporting Sunni insurgents or Al Qaeda, bent on war against them as well, and when they actually worked with the U.S. against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?
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Since the Arab nations bordering Iraq as well as others have a vested interest in the war ending, Why is the UN and a coalition of all-Arab and all-Muslim forces not being put together to replace US forces? Is it because this will reveal another weak force/nation defeating the U.S. imperium as in Vietnam? Is it because it will reveal and highlight the hubris of the US in ignoring international law, the UN, multilateralism and the accurate predictions by many nations, including US allies, of a quagmire that has come to pass?
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Given the comments of Bush family insider and biographer Mickey Moskowitz, that Bush planned to get himself a war even before being selected by the Supremes, so that he would become "a war president", and thus get the political capital to get himself a successful presidency, good image in the history books and a permanent Republican Reich, then, on what basis can any one assert that this prolonging of this war is really about anything other than Bush's ego and narcissism/psychopathy, saving face, passing on a huge debt and burden on a likely Democratic administration that will be doomed to fail and thus set the stage for an eventual Republican Reich?
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Hillary has said that WHEN she is elected (that sure takes a whole lot for granted) Bill will be sent as an Ambassador to tell the world that the U.S. is "back in business". That would require Bill Clinton to have a very high security clearance. Since national security and keeping secrets, and avoiding blackmail potential is ultimately about rectitude and the character of the one with access to secrets, as no amount of checks-and-balances can stop an Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, do you really think, after his looking into the camera and bald-face lying (no mater about what), as Marion Jones recently did, and even still equivocating during his deposition and to this day, that Bill Clinton should ever hold any kind of security clearance again? If so, why?
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If this U.S. can attack Iran based on a summary and unproved assertion that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, why can Iran not make the same case and preemptively attack Israel known to have nuclear weapons? Why does not ANY nation having nuclear weapons give precedent and license to any other nation having the same?
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Was the overthrow of the democratically-elected regime of Mossadegh in 1953, and the installation and maintenance of the brutal Shah not terrorism per se? Was the U.S. instigation of Saddam Hussein to launch the 7 1/2 year Iraq-Iran War against Iran, which resulted in over 1 1/2 million casualties, during which the U.S. gave Iraq weapons and satellite intelligence they do not even give the Israelis when Iran was gaining the upper hand, and gave Iran weapons and intelligence when Iraq was gaining the upper hand, not terrorism per se? Was the giving of Saddam Hussein a "green light" to attack Kuwait by U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie in order to set him up for Regime Change and that destabilized the whole region not terrorism per se?
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Do you have inteligence sources other than those who lied us into the present Wars that shows Iran as a terrorist state and The Revolutioanry Guards as a terrorist organization?
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When you give an endorsement of any candidate, especially given the worth of your name and endorsement, before even the first primary, in a process involving many candidates some with resumes far more impressive than Hillary's, are you not helping to short-circuit, and even diminish, the scope and depth of the whole process and debate necessary not only to pick the best candidate but also to bring out and explore issues for the whole electorate to ponder? And what sir, if you are wrong? What if you do not "know"--in the sound epistemological sense--Hillary as well as you think?
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What specific evidence, and how current is that evidence, do you have that the present Iranian Revolutionary Guards are actively involved in terrorism and thus are constituted as a "terrorist organization"?
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What specific evidence to you have, and how current, that the Government of Iran is consciously "lying" when they say they have no desire or need to develop nuclear weapons? What specific evidence do you have that the Government of Iran is lying when they say that the development and use of nuclear weapons is fundamentally in contradiction with their understanding of the fundamental precepts of Islam?
-
What specific argumetns and evidence do you advance against those many Peoples in the world today who consider the U.S. a, or even the, principal source of State-sponsored terrorism(when defining terrorism by methods employed and/or calculated and/or likely targets--non-combatants--instead of sources such as it is not terrorism when WE do it)?
-
How is the present War in Iraq, founded on lies and contrived pretexts, planned before Bush stole his first election, any different, in nature or law, than those preemptive attacks against various nations by the Nazis (also justified on the basis of contrived pretexts) for which 11 Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg setting precedents that we said at Nuremberg would also bind us in the future as well?
-
If, as President Carter argued, "credibility" is a key national security asset, and if imperial hubris, hypocrisy and situational ethics undermine our credibility and thus national security, how is any of this American triumphalism, situational ignoring of the UN and its Resolutions, unilateralism, etc possibly good for or consistent with long-term U.S. national security?
-
What kind of patriotism is it that says basically I support a given nation, its socioeconomic system, its Government, its policies, its definitions, and even its Government's notions of who is or is not an enemy because, really, that is where I, ME, through no actions on my part, was born?
-
What gives any nation the right to do regime change of another? Why was President Eisenhower not correct in his April 13, 1953 speech that all nations have a right to their own systems and it is up to their own citizens to change their own regimes? Why does the U.S. asserting some kind of "right" to do regime change not give the same precedent and authority to do the same to the U.S.?
-
Given that impeachment is an investigatory process as a prelude to a judicial process, and given that it may well yield important information to prevent future wars, carnage and even fascism in America, and given solid probable cause to believe that Bush has committed and is planning more clearly impeachable offenses, what right does any politician have to summarily and precipitously rule out impeachment as an option or even as some kind of "diversion" when so much is at stake?
-
Why has no one mentioned that the first use of the play on the name of General Petraeus was Rush Limbaugh who referred to "General Petraeus versus "Senator Betray-us" in reference to Hagel? Why would highly respected Admiral Fallon, who has had more recent contact with General Petraeus, and his his superior, take the highly risky step of calling, in front of witnesses, General Petraeus "that ass-kissing little chickenshit"?
-
Why does General Petraeus, in his Introduction to the most recent U.S. Army/USMC Counterinsurgency Manual (first in some 25 years and written by a team of academics and operators at a conference in December 2005, well after U.S. Forces entered a predictable insurgency that would not be a "cakewalk") list, as "inevitable" features of any COIN situation, the basic very costly errors and forms of outright incompetence in Vietnam and in the present situations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is this not a cover-up and toadying to Bush?
-
Right now, in Iraq there are some 2 million internal refugees; in Jordan some 1.6 million; in Syria, some 1.8 million; in Lebanon, some 800,000 refugees most of whom are refugees as a result of working with Amercians and now fearing for their lives. Yet the U.S. has taken in less than 1000; why? What has Hillary or any of the Democratic candidates had to say about any of this? Why would any Iraqi want to work with Americans and risk his whole family especially when they are used up and thrown away even more than the Vietnamese who worked with Americans?
-
Why do people keep referring to the Iraq War as a "mistake" instead of what it is: a monstrous crime? How do you "fix" a crime without immediately and unconditionally stopping it? Do you "fix" a crime the same ways you "fix" a mistake?
-
Why are the Iranians, who suffered horribly under the Shaw that we illegally installed and maintained, along with a 7 1/2 year war, involving massive destruction on their soil and over 1 million casualties, that we institgated Saddam Hussein to start, and gave him weapons and intelligence we do not even give the Israelis to prosecute, being summarily labeled terrorists when they are victims of our own state-sponsored terrorism? What interests could they possibly have to fuel the flames of war and massive refugee movements right on their own borders? And why would they, hard-core Shiites, be arming and supporting Sunni insurgents or Al Qaeda, bent on war against them as well, and when they actually worked with the U.S. against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan?
-
Since the Arab nations bordering Iraq as well as others have a vested interest in the war ending, Why is the UN and a coalition of all-Arab and all-Muslim forces not being put together to replace US forces? Is it because this will reveal another weak force/nation defeating the U.S. imperium as in Vietnam? Is it because it will reveal and highlight the hubris of the US in ignoring international law, the UN, multilateralism and the accurate predictions by many nations, including US allies, of a quagmire that has come to pass?
-
Given the comments of Bush family insider and biographer Mickey Moskowitz, that Bush planned to get himself a war even before being selected by the Supremes, so that he would become "a war president", and thus get the political capital to get himself a successful presidency, good image in the history books and a permanent Republican Reich, then, on what basis can any one assert that this prolonging of this war is really about anything other than Bush's ego and narcissism/psychopathy, saving face, passing on a huge debt and burden on a likely Democratic administration that will be doomed to fail and thus set the stage for an eventual Republican Reich?
-
Hillary has said that WHEN she is elected (that sure takes a whole lot for granted) Bill will be sent as an Ambassador to tell the world that the U.S. is "back in business". That would require Bill Clinton to have a very high security clearance. Since national security and keeping secrets, and avoiding blackmail potential is ultimately about rectitude and the character of the one with access to secrets, as no amount of checks-and-balances can stop an Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, do you really think, after his looking into the camera and bald-face lying (no mater about what), as Marion Jones recently did, and even still equivocating during his deposition and to this day, that Bill Clinton should ever hold any kind of security clearance again? If so, why?
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If this U.S. can attack Iran based on a summary and unproved assertion that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, why can Iran not make the same case and preemptively attack Israel known to have nuclear weapons? Why does not ANY nation having nuclear weapons give precedent and license to any other nation having the same?
-
Was the overthrow of the democratically-elected regime of Mossadegh in 1953, and the installation and maintenance of the brutal Shah not terrorism per se? Was the U.S. instigation of Saddam Hussein to launch the 7 1/2 year Iraq-Iran War against Iran, which resulted in over 1 1/2 million casualties, during which the U.S. gave Iraq weapons and satellite intelligence they do not even give the Israelis when Iran was gaining the upper hand, and gave Iran weapons and intelligence when Iraq was gaining the upper hand, not terrorism per se? Was the giving of Saddam Hussein a "green light" to attack Kuwait by U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie in order to set him up for Regime Change and that destabilized the whole region not terrorism per se?
-
Do you have inteligence sources other than those who lied us into the present Wars that shows Iran as a terrorist state and The Revolutioanry Guards as a terrorist organization?
-
When you give an endorsement of any candidate, especially given the worth of your name and endorsement, before even the first primary, in a process involving many candidates some with resumes far more impressive than Hillary's, are you not helping to short-circuit, and even diminish, the scope and depth of the whole process and debate necessary not only to pick the best candidate but also to bring out and explore issues for the whole electorate to ponder? And what sir, if you are wrong? What if you do not "know"--in the sound epistemological sense--Hillary as well as you think?
-
What If the Turkish Government Says Fuck You America?
National Security has to be seen holistically and in non-linear ways. What do I mean by that? I mean that contrary to how we have been taught throughout U.S. history, that "National Security" is about defense against foreign and domestic enemies with their own "Regime Change" ideas, and thus a strong military and police apparatus is the central key to national security, it is about a lot more than that.
-
For example, even with the best and most sophisticated military and police hardware available, what good is it if you do not have personnel educated well enough to read technical manuals to figure out how to use it most effectively and fix it? Thus high quality and accessible education is vital to national security. What good is state-of-the-art hardware if your personnel are not physically healthy enough to use it and/or emotionally healthy enough to be trusted with it? Or what good is all of it if your personnel do not have stable homes and families to come home to? Or what good is all that military and police hardware and doctrine if you have a society and system not worth protecting (in which "Regime Change" is necessary for rather than a threat to "national security") and not likely to induce a whole lot of people to want to protect it?
-
In an increasingly interdependent and potentially dangerous world, one in which the U.S. cannot go it alone, we need allies and we will not get and keep them, and we will have no moral or legal authority to lecture anyone about anything, if we do not walk our talk. Credibility is a national security asset; it is key to multilateralizing defenses etc.
-
So just imagine if the Turkish Government just says Fuck You! You talk to us about Genocide, yet you, the U.S., the major force at the Nuremberg Trials, that spawned the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, that same Convention it took you 40 years to get around signing, and then even now, 9 of your closest allies do not consider you a full signatory to it. And the transcripts from the 84th and 85th U.S. Congresses show that you were concerned about signing the UN Convention on Genocide as you would be the first to be charged under it because of historical treatment of Indians and Blacks under Jim Crow laws: To quote from the Blackfoot Indictment:
-
The U.S. Government and the Canadian Government (represented by the British Government) were major forces initiating and conducting the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and those Tribunals were a major force in the origination and content of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. Yet the U.S. Government did not ratify the UN Convention on Genocide until 1988, forty years after the original UN Convention on Genocide. Further, the U.S. government summarily placed a “restriction” on its ratification of the UN Convention on Genocide known as the “Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package” which stated in Article I (2):
-
Nothing in the Convention requires or authorizes legislation or other action by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States.
-
This is a clear violation of Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as the definitive international law on treaties) as it is in violation of Article VI, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution itself:
-
[treaties are] the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
-
Documents of the U.S. Government reveal clearly consciousness of guilt on the part of the Government and its agencies. Debates in the U.S. Senate reveal that there was a general awareness of and fear that the U.S. Government could/would be charged with genocide and related acts for historical and present-day policies and actions related to African-Americans and American Indians.
-
The Government of Canada was even more ingenuous in its duplicity and attempts to appear to ratify the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide while effectively obstructing its recognition and application. The government of Canada put the crime of genocide in the criminal code of Canada as a crime. However, of the five specific acts mentioned as constituting genocide in Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide,three were deleted from the definition of genocide in the Canadian criminal code. So from Article II of the Genocide Convention, b) “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, and d)“Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, and e)“Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” were deliberately not included in the Canadian criminal code definition of the crime of genocide. Only a) [deliberate] killing members of the group, and part of c) an intentional plan to “bring about the physical destruction the group in whole or in part” were retained. The clear intent was to make the definition of “intent” very narrow and the proving of mens rea or intent next to impossible--and therefore prosecution next to impossible to pursue. Indeed there has been only one case of anyone being charged with the Canadian Criminal Code’s “genocide” and that resulted in an acquittal.
-
Or, it is absolutely true that Hitler drew some of his "inspiration" for genocide (possible methods, scopes, depths, methods of cover-ups, methods of getting masses of non-targeted populations to buy into it and accept it and not oppose it) from the Armenian Genocide. He even openly said "Who remembers or cares about the Armenians?" But, in addition to the British treatment of the Boers in South Africa, Hitlere's main inspiration, from his own mouth:
-
According to James Pool in his “Hitler and His Secret Partners”:
-
Hitler drew another example of mass murder from American history. Since his youth he had been obsessed with the Wild West stories of Karl May. He viewed the fighting between cowboys and Indians in racial terms. In many of his speeches he referred with admiration to the victory of the white race in settling the American continent and driving out the inferior peoples, the Indians. With great fascination he listened to stories, which some of his associates who had been in America told him about the massacres of the Indians by the U.S. Calvary.
-
He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government’s forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations his hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large ‘reservation’ in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease. (p. 273-274).
-
And:
-
The next morning Hitler’s ‘plan’ was put in writing and sent out to the German occupation authorities as ‘The Fuehrer’s Guidelines for the Government of the Eastern Territories: ‘ the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives and practice abortion, the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is sufficient… if they can count up to a hundred. At best an education is admissible which produces useful servants for us. Every educated person is a future enemy.
-
Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As to food, they are not to get more than necessary. We are the masters, we come first.’
-
Always contemptuous of the Russians, Hitler said:‘For them the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash only on feast-days. If we arrive bringing soft soap, we’ll obtain no sympathy…There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.’ Having been a devoted reader of Karl May’s books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as ‘Redskins’. He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of the Indians or ‘Redskins’. ‘I don’t see why’, he said, ‘a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat from Canada, we don’t think about the despoiled Indians.” (James
-
Pool, Ibid, pp. 254-255)
-
And from a speech by Heinrich Himmler (date not given):
-
I consider that in dealing with members of a foreign country, especially some Slav nationality…in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types. Therefore I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary, by robbing or stealing them… (Telford Taylor “Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials”, Alfred A Knopf, N.Y. 1992, p. 203)
-
And from John Toland, preeminent biographer of Adolf Hitler:
-
Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the ‘Red Savages’ who could not be tamed by captivity. (John Toland, “Adolf Hitler” Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)
-
Then what happens when the Turkish Government says and by the way, Fuck You again because what did or did not happen with the Armenians was some 90 years ago, whereas what you and your buddies the Canadians are doing, the stuff that directly inspired Hitler, you are doing right now, as we speak, while you dare to lecture the world about human rights.
-
THAT, dear friends, is my main reason for raising the issue of Indigenous Peoples and what is happening to them in the Americas. I have never been, nor will I ever be, into "Identity Politics". Why? Because Identity Politics, is really about selfishness, myopia and I, I, I, ME ,ME,ME and MY groups and how much WE have suffered and this leads to the rank-ordering of humanity and the rank-ordering of Holocausts and Genocides into worthy and non-worthy of being remembered or who suffered "the most".
-
And that is what Nazis Do.
-
I raise these issues because until and unless we walk our talk, not only do we have no business lecturing anyone about anything, or waxing poetic about supposed "American Values and Ideals", but we compromise our ability to raise multilateral defenses and alliances against real threats to U.S. national and indeed planetary security.
-
NI KSO KO WA (We are all related in Blackfoot language)
-
-
For example, even with the best and most sophisticated military and police hardware available, what good is it if you do not have personnel educated well enough to read technical manuals to figure out how to use it most effectively and fix it? Thus high quality and accessible education is vital to national security. What good is state-of-the-art hardware if your personnel are not physically healthy enough to use it and/or emotionally healthy enough to be trusted with it? Or what good is all of it if your personnel do not have stable homes and families to come home to? Or what good is all that military and police hardware and doctrine if you have a society and system not worth protecting (in which "Regime Change" is necessary for rather than a threat to "national security") and not likely to induce a whole lot of people to want to protect it?
-
In an increasingly interdependent and potentially dangerous world, one in which the U.S. cannot go it alone, we need allies and we will not get and keep them, and we will have no moral or legal authority to lecture anyone about anything, if we do not walk our talk. Credibility is a national security asset; it is key to multilateralizing defenses etc.
-
So just imagine if the Turkish Government just says Fuck You! You talk to us about Genocide, yet you, the U.S., the major force at the Nuremberg Trials, that spawned the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, that same Convention it took you 40 years to get around signing, and then even now, 9 of your closest allies do not consider you a full signatory to it. And the transcripts from the 84th and 85th U.S. Congresses show that you were concerned about signing the UN Convention on Genocide as you would be the first to be charged under it because of historical treatment of Indians and Blacks under Jim Crow laws: To quote from the Blackfoot Indictment:
-
The U.S. Government and the Canadian Government (represented by the British Government) were major forces initiating and conducting the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and those Tribunals were a major force in the origination and content of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. Yet the U.S. Government did not ratify the UN Convention on Genocide until 1988, forty years after the original UN Convention on Genocide. Further, the U.S. government summarily placed a “restriction” on its ratification of the UN Convention on Genocide known as the “Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package” which stated in Article I (2):
-
Nothing in the Convention requires or authorizes legislation or other action by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States.
-
This is a clear violation of Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as the definitive international law on treaties) as it is in violation of Article VI, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution itself:
-
[treaties are] the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
-
Documents of the U.S. Government reveal clearly consciousness of guilt on the part of the Government and its agencies. Debates in the U.S. Senate reveal that there was a general awareness of and fear that the U.S. Government could/would be charged with genocide and related acts for historical and present-day policies and actions related to African-Americans and American Indians.
-
The Government of Canada was even more ingenuous in its duplicity and attempts to appear to ratify the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide while effectively obstructing its recognition and application. The government of Canada put the crime of genocide in the criminal code of Canada as a crime. However, of the five specific acts mentioned as constituting genocide in Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide,three were deleted from the definition of genocide in the Canadian criminal code. So from Article II of the Genocide Convention, b) “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, and d)“Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, and e)“Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” were deliberately not included in the Canadian criminal code definition of the crime of genocide. Only a) [deliberate] killing members of the group, and part of c) an intentional plan to “bring about the physical destruction the group in whole or in part” were retained. The clear intent was to make the definition of “intent” very narrow and the proving of mens rea or intent next to impossible--and therefore prosecution next to impossible to pursue. Indeed there has been only one case of anyone being charged with the Canadian Criminal Code’s “genocide” and that resulted in an acquittal.
-
Or, it is absolutely true that Hitler drew some of his "inspiration" for genocide (possible methods, scopes, depths, methods of cover-ups, methods of getting masses of non-targeted populations to buy into it and accept it and not oppose it) from the Armenian Genocide. He even openly said "Who remembers or cares about the Armenians?" But, in addition to the British treatment of the Boers in South Africa, Hitlere's main inspiration, from his own mouth:
-
According to James Pool in his “Hitler and His Secret Partners”:
-
Hitler drew another example of mass murder from American history. Since his youth he had been obsessed with the Wild West stories of Karl May. He viewed the fighting between cowboys and Indians in racial terms. In many of his speeches he referred with admiration to the victory of the white race in settling the American continent and driving out the inferior peoples, the Indians. With great fascination he listened to stories, which some of his associates who had been in America told him about the massacres of the Indians by the U.S. Calvary.
-
He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government’s forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations his hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large ‘reservation’ in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease. (p. 273-274).
-
And:
-
The next morning Hitler’s ‘plan’ was put in writing and sent out to the German occupation authorities as ‘The Fuehrer’s Guidelines for the Government of the Eastern Territories: ‘ the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives and practice abortion, the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is sufficient… if they can count up to a hundred. At best an education is admissible which produces useful servants for us. Every educated person is a future enemy.
-
Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As to food, they are not to get more than necessary. We are the masters, we come first.’
-
Always contemptuous of the Russians, Hitler said:‘For them the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash only on feast-days. If we arrive bringing soft soap, we’ll obtain no sympathy…There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.’ Having been a devoted reader of Karl May’s books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as ‘Redskins’. He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of the Indians or ‘Redskins’. ‘I don’t see why’, he said, ‘a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat from Canada, we don’t think about the despoiled Indians.” (James
-
Pool, Ibid, pp. 254-255)
-
And from a speech by Heinrich Himmler (date not given):
-
I consider that in dealing with members of a foreign country, especially some Slav nationality…in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types. Therefore I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary, by robbing or stealing them… (Telford Taylor “Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials”, Alfred A Knopf, N.Y. 1992, p. 203)
-
And from John Toland, preeminent biographer of Adolf Hitler:
-
Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the ‘Red Savages’ who could not be tamed by captivity. (John Toland, “Adolf Hitler” Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)
-
Then what happens when the Turkish Government says and by the way, Fuck You again because what did or did not happen with the Armenians was some 90 years ago, whereas what you and your buddies the Canadians are doing, the stuff that directly inspired Hitler, you are doing right now, as we speak, while you dare to lecture the world about human rights.
-
THAT, dear friends, is my main reason for raising the issue of Indigenous Peoples and what is happening to them in the Americas. I have never been, nor will I ever be, into "Identity Politics". Why? Because Identity Politics, is really about selfishness, myopia and I, I, I, ME ,ME,ME and MY groups and how much WE have suffered and this leads to the rank-ordering of humanity and the rank-ordering of Holocausts and Genocides into worthy and non-worthy of being remembered or who suffered "the most".
-
And that is what Nazis Do.
-
I raise these issues because until and unless we walk our talk, not only do we have no business lecturing anyone about anything, or waxing poetic about supposed "American Values and Ideals", but we compromise our ability to raise multilateral defenses and alliances against real threats to U.S. national and indeed planetary security.
-
NI KSO KO WA (We are all related in Blackfoot language)
-
I Learned About Flying From That
The Following is posted at Stan Goff's Bog at http://insurgentamerican.net
-
Learned About Flying From That…
By Jim Craven Omahkohkiaayo
-
Flying magazine, which has been around a long time, has a feature called “I Learned About Flying From That”. Each article deals with a flight situation (hanger stories) from which lessons were learned and what those lessons were. In my own case, as a pilot over 40 years, I am here and able to write this partly because of what I learned in some of those articles I read; lessons that helped to get me out of some tight and potentially fatal situations.
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Well the same applies in struggle, There are lessons to be learned that may help reduce costs, avoid mistakes and even losses of lives. That is what Stan Goff is trying to do at his Insurgent American. Practical tips and lessons, principles, sources, data, heads-ups, pithy quotes, legal principles and tactics–weapons for effective struggle–that increase scope, depth and effectiveness of outreach and debate, and thus overall resistance, to that which literally threatens the survival of this planet and all lifeforms.
-
In my classes I have many veterans as well as active-duty military. The first moments of all my classes they all get “the treatment” so that they are all fully informed as to what to expect in terms of diversity of thought allowed and encouraged so they can make an informed choice to stay or leave.
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I do this by posing a question: “If someone hands you say a textbook, with no title or author on it, how would you go about figuring out the ideological biases and rhetorical (persuasion) intentions of the author without reading any of the MAIN content of the book? “. Most answer going to the preface and others argue that is still part of the main content of the book.
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Then I get to the index. What is the purpose of an index? It is to give a quick reference to pages where different concepts, names, terms etc are to be found? Yes. But an index is even more revealing in other ways. An index also reveals what is NOT in the main content of the book and that is quite revealing of the paradigm and likely rhetorical intent of the author and publishers.
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So I ask: “Please give me page references for the following concepts” and I have a long list: Commodification, Imperialism, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Colonialism, Karl Marx, Monopoly Capitalism, Unconscionability, Primitive Accumulation of Capital, Feudalism, Slavery, Communalism, Social Structures of Accumulation, Social Darwinism, Eugenics Movement, Skull and Bones, Power, Enron, Council on Foreign Relations, Genocide, Fascism, Indigenous Peoples…
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I ask: “Does anyone disagree with the proposition that all of these things mentioned, or at least the ones that you already know something about, have something to do with economics and economics has something to do with them? No one disagrees–not publicly at least.
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Then I lay it out that some may well have for them, as they define it, a better experience somewhere else. If anyone does not like hearing, or hearing about, ideas, opinions, paradigms, data etc that are different from, and perhaps even challenge, their own sacreds, then my class may not be for them. All ideas are welcome, but, all “thought experiments” will be, like any experiments, tested by attempts to refute (nullify) them with counter evidence, counter reasoning, counter sources and counter anecdotes etc. I tell them if you hear something you disagree with, then don’t just sit there in the passive-aggressive-pissed-off position simmering, because you just heard something you didn’t like or agree with but perhaps you lack the courage and/or preparation and/or dedication to your own particular sacreds to take it on. If you are worried about your grade suffering because of your expressed opinions, now you are making an assumption about my character and integrity, and then this is definitely not the place for you. This is all also spelled out in my syllabus so that no one can claim they were not fully warned that my class is not Capitalist Triumphalism 101 or America Uber Alles 101 or Homo Oeconomicus 101 as is commonly the case in “mainstream economics”.
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Now imagine after all that one of my students was an active duty (working with a Reserve unit) Sergeant Major in the U.S. Marine Corps whose medals showed heavy duty combat and sacrifice. A very quiet man, very studious, made few comments but took diligent notes. Now what, in some people’s mind, what would the common stereotype be? A Jarhead? A Redneck? Southern “White Trash” grateful for the “home” the USMC gave him; not much “formal education”? All wrong except for his being from the South and White.
-
Well this Sergeant Major approached me after the class had been going for about 8 weeks. It was an Intro to Economics 101 at night. For me I love teaching the basic courses where people are getting their first taste of economics. He said to me: “Could I ask you a big favor?” So I said “Well if I can, and it does not violate my principles.” He laughed. He said “I work with a Marine Reserve Unit across the river and we have to put on, as a requirement, some kind of cross-cultural sensitivity training for a certain amount of hours per year. Could you do two hours on Native American ways of thinking and customs and perhaps something about famous Native Americans in the USMC?”
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I said “Well there is no such thing as “Native American” whatever; we are different Nations with different languages, etc But yet there are some common denominators.” I also noted, with a smile: “If your purpose is for me to give you information on how best to get potential recruits from Indigenous Peoples, then… ” He laughed and said "no". “We just want you to to expand our knowledge and horizons.” I then said to him: “You have been in this class eight weeks, are you sure you want me speaking to your unit with your Commanding Officer present? This might do for your career what JAWS I,II,III did for ocean bathing.” I told him I would have to discuss the proposition that genocide was committed, and is being committed, against Indigenous Peoples and he said whatever you want to say..
-
Well of I went to give my talk to this Marine Corps unit with a bunch of officers, and a full-bird Colonel present. The first hour I talked about “holistic thinking” versus linear thinking and how what may appear to be a strong point in linear thinking terms, turns out to be a major weak point when viewed “holistically” and strategically. I talked about famous Indigenous Marines like Ira Hamilton Hayes who was one of those who raised the flag at Iwo Jima and wound up after the war back on the Rez were he died in a ditch from alcoholism and hypothermia. I noted that like so many Vets, he had been used up and thrown away and that the death certificate should have read as cause of death, ” Genocide”.
-
Now in the Marine Corps, there is one icon no one will dare try to trash: Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, twice a winner of the Medal of Honor. Every Marine learns in bootcamp about the “Marine’s Marine” General Butler. Actually they learn only some aspects of the life of General Butler. Actually General Butler won the Medal of Honor three times, but once, in 1905, it had to be rescinded because then officers could not earn it until 1914. The Marines did not know this. Then I got into the “Warrior Code”, which is like “Semper Fidelis” (Always Faithful”) and asked: “But that begs the question: Faithful to what?” And they all answered first: “Traditions of the Corps” and then,”The Constitution”. I asked “How about the Commander in Chief?” They answered: “only if he gives ‘lawful orders’; our allegiance is to The Constitution and the Laws, the chain of command and all LAWFUL orders of our superiors but not to any person as a person.” I knew I just hit a goldmine.
-
I also did ask “Since unlawful orders can be given, and should not be obeyed, in an essentially lawful (according to international law) war, can ‘lawful orders’ be given, and should they be followed in an unlawful (according to international law) war?” That one went by the wayside with the notion that they are not in a position to determine if a war is lawful or unlawful.
-
I then went into the 1934 plot to overthrow FDR. This involved a conspiracy to overthrow FDR and the Government of the U.S. and replace him with General Butler as a sort of figurehead to mobilize veterans as shock tropps and to set up and run a fascist regime over America. They wanted General Butler because he was charismatic and beloved by rank-and-file troops, whereas the alternative, Douglas MacArthur, was hated because of his arrogance and slaughter (against orders of Herbert Hoover the Commander in Chief)of “Bonus March” WWI veterans in 1932. I showed how General Butler pretended to join the conspiracy and sucked the plotters in only to blow the whistle on them publicly and stop the fascist plot from being completed. I also passed along the History Channel’s program on it Called “The Plot to Overthrow FDR to show that this is covered even in the “mainstream”.
-
Of course none of them had ever heard about this. I noted that you can see General Butler was a greater hero than most people know because when it came time for “Semper Fi”, he stood up against a plot to overthrow the government and set up full-blown fascism in America. I also pointed out that among the plotters, many tied-in with the “America First” isolationists and the German-American [Nazi] Bund, all were let go and not prosecuted because if this were known, it would have ripped the nation wide open. Among the plotters were: General Douglas MacArthur, the Duponts, JP Morgan Co, Committee for a Sound Dollar, American Liberty League (with Bushes in it), Skull and Bones, John Davis, Al Smith, etc.
-
Here are some of the points and sources I raised:
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1934 Attempted Overthrow of FDR Government and Replacement with a Fascist Dictatorship (Foiled By Maj. General Smedley Butler). Note, in addition to the Duponts and various other industrialists in the American Liberty League, George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush and other Skull and Bones members were intimately involved in the plot.
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[At about the same time the Du Ponts were serving the Nazi cause in Germany, they were involved in a Fascist plot to overthrow the United States government. ]
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“Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors,” in early 1934, writes Higham, “certain Du Pont backers financed a coup d’etat that would overthrow the President with the aid of a $3 million-funded army of terrorists . ” The object was to force Roosevelt “to take orders from businessmen as part of a fascist government or face the alternative of imprisonment and execution. . .”
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Higham reports that “Du Pont men allegedly held an urgent series of meetings with the Morgans,” to choose who would lead this “bizarre conspiracy.” “They finally settled on one of the most popular soldiers in America, General Smedly Butler of Pennsylvania.” Butler was approached by “fascist attorney” Gerald MacGuire (an official of the American Legion), who attempted to recruit Butler into the role of an American Hitler.–R. William Davis, “The Elkhorn Manifesto,”July 4, 1996] [Butler exposed the plot in a famous press conference to the public.]
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[If one were to look closely at the past 58 years, one would be hard pressed to find a single U.S. military or C.I.A. intervention that has brought us one iota of safety, or, for that matter, that has actually been done for national defense purposes.] As Butler illustrated in 1933, and it is even truer now than then, the U.S. engages in interventions meant to protect the interests of the powerful and wealthy of our nation and our allies, and rarely, if ever, in order to actually protect its citizens.
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Chris White, “Is War Still a Racket?” CounterPunch, January 9, 2003
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Charlie Liteky, “An Open Letter to the U.S. Military: Congressional Medal of Honor recipient addresses U.S. forces in Iraq,” Veterans Against the Iraq War, May 7, 2003
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John S.D. Eisenhower, “War Turned Eisenhower Into a Pacifist,” International Herald Tribune, June 6, 2004
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Then I closed with this excerpt of speech from General Butler in 1933:
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"War is just a racket. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service.
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My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
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I had a great time with these Marines and they had a lot of guts just to sit and listen to what was presented to them. They all got the message I believe, that when push comes to shove, The Constitution to which they swore allegiance, does not sanction fascism or anyone trying to use them to bring it about. I noted that The U.S. Constitution can be nefariously used, under various pretexts, as was the case with the Weimar Constitution in Germany, to bring about Fascism and its own negation; that, General Butler understood well, was part of what “Semper Fi” is all about.
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Learned About Flying From That…
By Jim Craven Omahkohkiaayo
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Flying magazine, which has been around a long time, has a feature called “I Learned About Flying From That”. Each article deals with a flight situation (hanger stories) from which lessons were learned and what those lessons were. In my own case, as a pilot over 40 years, I am here and able to write this partly because of what I learned in some of those articles I read; lessons that helped to get me out of some tight and potentially fatal situations.
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Well the same applies in struggle, There are lessons to be learned that may help reduce costs, avoid mistakes and even losses of lives. That is what Stan Goff is trying to do at his Insurgent American. Practical tips and lessons, principles, sources, data, heads-ups, pithy quotes, legal principles and tactics–weapons for effective struggle–that increase scope, depth and effectiveness of outreach and debate, and thus overall resistance, to that which literally threatens the survival of this planet and all lifeforms.
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In my classes I have many veterans as well as active-duty military. The first moments of all my classes they all get “the treatment” so that they are all fully informed as to what to expect in terms of diversity of thought allowed and encouraged so they can make an informed choice to stay or leave.
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I do this by posing a question: “If someone hands you say a textbook, with no title or author on it, how would you go about figuring out the ideological biases and rhetorical (persuasion) intentions of the author without reading any of the MAIN content of the book? “. Most answer going to the preface and others argue that is still part of the main content of the book.
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Then I get to the index. What is the purpose of an index? It is to give a quick reference to pages where different concepts, names, terms etc are to be found? Yes. But an index is even more revealing in other ways. An index also reveals what is NOT in the main content of the book and that is quite revealing of the paradigm and likely rhetorical intent of the author and publishers.
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So I ask: “Please give me page references for the following concepts” and I have a long list: Commodification, Imperialism, Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Colonialism, Karl Marx, Monopoly Capitalism, Unconscionability, Primitive Accumulation of Capital, Feudalism, Slavery, Communalism, Social Structures of Accumulation, Social Darwinism, Eugenics Movement, Skull and Bones, Power, Enron, Council on Foreign Relations, Genocide, Fascism, Indigenous Peoples…
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I ask: “Does anyone disagree with the proposition that all of these things mentioned, or at least the ones that you already know something about, have something to do with economics and economics has something to do with them? No one disagrees–not publicly at least.
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Then I lay it out that some may well have for them, as they define it, a better experience somewhere else. If anyone does not like hearing, or hearing about, ideas, opinions, paradigms, data etc that are different from, and perhaps even challenge, their own sacreds, then my class may not be for them. All ideas are welcome, but, all “thought experiments” will be, like any experiments, tested by attempts to refute (nullify) them with counter evidence, counter reasoning, counter sources and counter anecdotes etc. I tell them if you hear something you disagree with, then don’t just sit there in the passive-aggressive-pissed-off position simmering, because you just heard something you didn’t like or agree with but perhaps you lack the courage and/or preparation and/or dedication to your own particular sacreds to take it on. If you are worried about your grade suffering because of your expressed opinions, now you are making an assumption about my character and integrity, and then this is definitely not the place for you. This is all also spelled out in my syllabus so that no one can claim they were not fully warned that my class is not Capitalist Triumphalism 101 or America Uber Alles 101 or Homo Oeconomicus 101 as is commonly the case in “mainstream economics”.
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Now imagine after all that one of my students was an active duty (working with a Reserve unit) Sergeant Major in the U.S. Marine Corps whose medals showed heavy duty combat and sacrifice. A very quiet man, very studious, made few comments but took diligent notes. Now what, in some people’s mind, what would the common stereotype be? A Jarhead? A Redneck? Southern “White Trash” grateful for the “home” the USMC gave him; not much “formal education”? All wrong except for his being from the South and White.
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Well this Sergeant Major approached me after the class had been going for about 8 weeks. It was an Intro to Economics 101 at night. For me I love teaching the basic courses where people are getting their first taste of economics. He said to me: “Could I ask you a big favor?” So I said “Well if I can, and it does not violate my principles.” He laughed. He said “I work with a Marine Reserve Unit across the river and we have to put on, as a requirement, some kind of cross-cultural sensitivity training for a certain amount of hours per year. Could you do two hours on Native American ways of thinking and customs and perhaps something about famous Native Americans in the USMC?”
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I said “Well there is no such thing as “Native American” whatever; we are different Nations with different languages, etc But yet there are some common denominators.” I also noted, with a smile: “If your purpose is for me to give you information on how best to get potential recruits from Indigenous Peoples, then… ” He laughed and said "no". “We just want you to to expand our knowledge and horizons.” I then said to him: “You have been in this class eight weeks, are you sure you want me speaking to your unit with your Commanding Officer present? This might do for your career what JAWS I,II,III did for ocean bathing.” I told him I would have to discuss the proposition that genocide was committed, and is being committed, against Indigenous Peoples and he said whatever you want to say..
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Well of I went to give my talk to this Marine Corps unit with a bunch of officers, and a full-bird Colonel present. The first hour I talked about “holistic thinking” versus linear thinking and how what may appear to be a strong point in linear thinking terms, turns out to be a major weak point when viewed “holistically” and strategically. I talked about famous Indigenous Marines like Ira Hamilton Hayes who was one of those who raised the flag at Iwo Jima and wound up after the war back on the Rez were he died in a ditch from alcoholism and hypothermia. I noted that like so many Vets, he had been used up and thrown away and that the death certificate should have read as cause of death, ” Genocide”.
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Now in the Marine Corps, there is one icon no one will dare try to trash: Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, twice a winner of the Medal of Honor. Every Marine learns in bootcamp about the “Marine’s Marine” General Butler. Actually they learn only some aspects of the life of General Butler. Actually General Butler won the Medal of Honor three times, but once, in 1905, it had to be rescinded because then officers could not earn it until 1914. The Marines did not know this. Then I got into the “Warrior Code”, which is like “Semper Fidelis” (Always Faithful”) and asked: “But that begs the question: Faithful to what?” And they all answered first: “Traditions of the Corps” and then,”The Constitution”. I asked “How about the Commander in Chief?” They answered: “only if he gives ‘lawful orders’; our allegiance is to The Constitution and the Laws, the chain of command and all LAWFUL orders of our superiors but not to any person as a person.” I knew I just hit a goldmine.
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I also did ask “Since unlawful orders can be given, and should not be obeyed, in an essentially lawful (according to international law) war, can ‘lawful orders’ be given, and should they be followed in an unlawful (according to international law) war?” That one went by the wayside with the notion that they are not in a position to determine if a war is lawful or unlawful.
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I then went into the 1934 plot to overthrow FDR. This involved a conspiracy to overthrow FDR and the Government of the U.S. and replace him with General Butler as a sort of figurehead to mobilize veterans as shock tropps and to set up and run a fascist regime over America. They wanted General Butler because he was charismatic and beloved by rank-and-file troops, whereas the alternative, Douglas MacArthur, was hated because of his arrogance and slaughter (against orders of Herbert Hoover the Commander in Chief)of “Bonus March” WWI veterans in 1932. I showed how General Butler pretended to join the conspiracy and sucked the plotters in only to blow the whistle on them publicly and stop the fascist plot from being completed. I also passed along the History Channel’s program on it Called “The Plot to Overthrow FDR to show that this is covered even in the “mainstream”.
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Of course none of them had ever heard about this. I noted that you can see General Butler was a greater hero than most people know because when it came time for “Semper Fi”, he stood up against a plot to overthrow the government and set up full-blown fascism in America. I also pointed out that among the plotters, many tied-in with the “America First” isolationists and the German-American [Nazi] Bund, all were let go and not prosecuted because if this were known, it would have ripped the nation wide open. Among the plotters were: General Douglas MacArthur, the Duponts, JP Morgan Co, Committee for a Sound Dollar, American Liberty League (with Bushes in it), Skull and Bones, John Davis, Al Smith, etc.
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Here are some of the points and sources I raised:
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1934 Attempted Overthrow of FDR Government and Replacement with a Fascist Dictatorship (Foiled By Maj. General Smedley Butler). Note, in addition to the Duponts and various other industrialists in the American Liberty League, George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush and other Skull and Bones members were intimately involved in the plot.
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[At about the same time the Du Ponts were serving the Nazi cause in Germany, they were involved in a Fascist plot to overthrow the United States government. ]
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“Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors,” in early 1934, writes Higham, “certain Du Pont backers financed a coup d’etat that would overthrow the President with the aid of a $3 million-funded army of terrorists . ” The object was to force Roosevelt “to take orders from businessmen as part of a fascist government or face the alternative of imprisonment and execution. . .”
-
Higham reports that “Du Pont men allegedly held an urgent series of meetings with the Morgans,” to choose who would lead this “bizarre conspiracy.” “They finally settled on one of the most popular soldiers in America, General Smedly Butler of Pennsylvania.” Butler was approached by “fascist attorney” Gerald MacGuire (an official of the American Legion), who attempted to recruit Butler into the role of an American Hitler.–R. William Davis, “The Elkhorn Manifesto,”July 4, 1996] [Butler exposed the plot in a famous press conference to the public.]
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[If one were to look closely at the past 58 years, one would be hard pressed to find a single U.S. military or C.I.A. intervention that has brought us one iota of safety, or, for that matter, that has actually been done for national defense purposes.] As Butler illustrated in 1933, and it is even truer now than then, the U.S. engages in interventions meant to protect the interests of the powerful and wealthy of our nation and our allies, and rarely, if ever, in order to actually protect its citizens.
-
Chris White, “Is War Still a Racket?” CounterPunch, January 9, 2003
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Charlie Liteky, “An Open Letter to the U.S. Military: Congressional Medal of Honor recipient addresses U.S. forces in Iraq,” Veterans Against the Iraq War, May 7, 2003
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John S.D. Eisenhower, “War Turned Eisenhower Into a Pacifist,” International Herald Tribune, June 6, 2004
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Then I closed with this excerpt of speech from General Butler in 1933:
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"War is just a racket. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service.
-
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
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I had a great time with these Marines and they had a lot of guts just to sit and listen to what was presented to them. They all got the message I believe, that when push comes to shove, The Constitution to which they swore allegiance, does not sanction fascism or anyone trying to use them to bring it about. I noted that The U.S. Constitution can be nefariously used, under various pretexts, as was the case with the Weimar Constitution in Germany, to bring about Fascism and its own negation; that, General Butler understood well, was part of what “Semper Fi” is all about.
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007
GENOCIDE: JUST UP THE ROAD, RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE
Thursday, June 14, 2007
GENOCIDE: JUST UP THE ROAD, RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/02/interview-wbai-ny-11-27-03.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/02/appeal-for-assistance-and-caring.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/03/nation-building-in-indian-country.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/05/development-of-blackfoot-nation-paper.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/on-political-economy-of-genocide-case.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/draft-constitution-of-blackfoot-nation.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/marlon-brando-on-american-indian.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/marxism-and-indigenous-struggles.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/aboriginal-justice.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/bush-family-skull-and-bones-nazis-and.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/socialistrevolutionary-consciousness.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/papal-bulls-burning-chronology.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/ongoing-legal-case-in-alberta-most.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/papers-posted-at-center-for-holocaust.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/02/evolving-concept-of-social-capital.html
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LEWIS AND CLARK TRIBUTES MUST TELL THE TRUTH LEWIS & CLARK -- ON THE TRAIL: LEWIS-CLARK TRIBUTES MUST TELL THE TRUTH, SAYS ANGRY BLACKFOOT
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Friday, November 24, 2000 By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer
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The rhetoric is still red-hot, even though two months have passed since Jim Craven fired the first verbal shots in an American Indian war of words in Clark County.
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The skirmish caused Craven, a Blackfoot tribal judge, to leave a countywide committee that's planning a 200th anniversary for the Lewis and Clark expedition visit here. Now it threatens to grow into an American Indian protest in Vancouver.
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"The only thing I mind is lies and cover-ups," said Craven, 54, a Clark College economics professor and an expert and prolific writer on genocide of indigenous peoples. He either quit the committee or was fired by the mayor depending on whom you believe.
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"There will be a protest," said Craven, saying he expects 200 Indians to show up in Vancouver to protest mistreatment of the Blackfoot and other tribal people over the past 200 years. "I promise you that." He didn't say when they would come.
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Craven left the 20-member Vancouver-Clark County Lewis and Clark Commemoration Committee after using explosive words such as "genocide" in a speech to the committee Sept. 14. He graphically described for the committee the rape and murder of American Indians that followed closely on the heels of Lewis and Clark's odyssey on the Missouri and Columbia rivers in 1803-1806.
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After he spoke, Craven said Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard fired him from the committee, but Pollard said that isn't so. Pollard said he asked Craven in a private meeting to tone down his language or leave the group. It was Craven's decision, the mayor said.
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Fired or not, Craven left. He said the coming of the 31 Lewis and Clark explorers marked the beginning of a campaign against his people. That's not something the Blackfoot celebrate or describe in a polite way, he said. But it wasn't what Craven said that was offensive, Pollard said. It was the way he said it.
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"He really had two options," said Pollard, 61. "He had to modify his behavior or he had to leave the committee."
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Craven said this week he's still upset, but not simply from being fired. "If they want to throw me off the committee, that's OK," he said. "I just don't like dishonesty. No one has told me specifically what I said that was offensive. They didn't have the guts. I heard they didn't like my tone. If they don't like my tone, too bad. I don't like their tone either, or their pomposity and arrogance. This is like a cross between Joseph McCarthy and Franz Kafka."
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He said he's being accused of offenses that are unclear. Craven said he was under a directive from Blackfoot Confederacy Chief Sikapii to tell the Blackfoot story unequivocally and directly, and he did so. Sikapii (also known as White Horse, or George YellowHorn), 62, is a hereditary Blackfoot chief who lives in Fort Macleod, Alberta. He told The Columbian this week that he dispatched Craven to tell the story of the exploitation of his tribe, which followed the coming of Lewis and Clark.
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"Under the Bureau of Indian affairs, the U.S. and Canada are racist governments, white people saying we are their children, saying they are going to look after us while they steal our land and throw us scraps," he said. "The Blackfoot pushed Lewis and Clark off their land in present-day Montana", Sikapii said.
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Pollard said he respected the grievances of the Blackfoot Confederacy but couldn't abide Craven's manner of speaking. He said it was he who asked Craven to join the committee in hope that he would bring a strong native voice.
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"But he didn't help," the mayor said. "These people on the committee were volunteers and they were uncomfortable."
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The other American Indian on the committee, however, said he wasn't offended and understood both points of view. Honorary Chinook Chief Cliff Snider said he held a milder view himself and asked Craven to speak softer."I knew that he was rubbing some people wrong," said Snider, 74, who lives in Milwaukie, Ore. "He was coming on strong, and I told him afterwards, 'I think some people are taking offense to what you are saying.' I could see that in the crowd, and I told him, 'I know how you feel, and I know the outrage your tribe feels. I'm just asking you in these meetings to tone it down a little bit.'"
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Snider said he represents 52 tribes along the Lewis and Clark trail, and every one has its own way of viewing Lewis and Clark. Some will join in the commemoration while others may boycott, he said. "I know the Blackfoot still feel their tribe lost in its encounter with Lewis and Clark," he said.
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Craven said he respected Snider's point of view, but he had to speak plainly, as a Blackfoot. "We are contemptuous of phony politeness ('smiling with the front teeth while grinding with the back teeth')," wrote Craven in an e-mail to editors of The Columbian. "[We don't believe in] schmoozing and networking, and we are mandated to tell the truth as we know it or believe it, and talk straight; this is often interpreted by those adept at schmoozing and phony politeness as being 'impolite' and 'uncivil.' Indeed history records hundreds of years of whites and sell-out Indians doing some very 'impolite' and very 'uncivil' acts of genocide, while hiding behind masks and postures of 'civility' and 'politeness.'"
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One committee member, Gerard Smith, a Clark College English professor, said he heard Craven's presentation at an earlier meeting in August and wasn't offended. He said Craven "read from several historic documents which supported his assertion that 18th century U.S.policy included genocide for the American Indian." "I explained (to the mayor) his action was similar to asking a Jew not to speak about the inhumanity of the Nazis," Smith said in an e-mail to the Columbian. "Here's the crux of the matter," he added. "The crimes committed in the name of manifest destiny are no different than the crimes committed in the name of Aryan superiority. Is such language intense? Is such language harassment? The truth can be painful, but it must be spoken."
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But it also stripped the committee of the Blackfoot Confederacy's point of view.
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=====
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Friday, December 02, 2005
SKULL AND BONES AND THE SKULL OF GERONIMO Native Americans groups fight to recover lost skull of Geronimo.
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BY NOAM RUDNICK The Yale Herald October 24, 2003
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An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch] Bush entered and started to dig...Pat[riarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself...I showered and hit the hay...a happy man...''
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So recounts a document thought to be an internal record from the Skull and Bones Society. "Pat[riarch] Bush" is Prescott Bush, father of an American political dynasty. His "trophy" is the skull of Geronimo, the Native American spiritual and military leader laid to rest in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Bush and fellow Bonesmen were stationed nine years later.
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Alexandra Robbins, ES '98, has researched Bush's secret society extensively. Her recent book, Secrets of the Tomb, has heightened interest in the activities of Skull and Bones. She attests to the legitimacy of the story, "The text looks to be an authentic Bones document describing Prescott Bush and other Bonesmen robbing Geronimo's grave and cleaning the skull with carbolic acid." In interviews with Robbins, Bonesmen have admitted that there is a skull in the tomb that they call Geronimo.
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Current Members of Skull and Bones chose not to comment on the legitimacy of the allegations.
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Apache tribal leader Ned Anderson was informed of the alleged theft in 1986. As an ancestor of Geronimo, Anderson petitioned the Federal Bureau of Investigations to force the return of the skull. Noting that Apaches have a "great fear and respect for death," Anderson said that he hoped to honor Geronimo's express wish to be laid to rest in "Arizona acorn country."
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Unwilling to remove himself from the case entirely and yield all his evidence to the FBI, Anderson withdrew his request for action. Instead, he arranged to meet with George H. W. Bush's, DC '48,(Skull and Bones) brother Jonathan in New York City. Anderson recounts that Bush sounded "very encouraging" during their initial meeting. Eleven days later, Bush presented the display case. Anderson refused to accept the skull because it appeared to belong to a small child. Bush acknowledged this fact but claimed that it was the only relevant artifact in the society's possession.
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He urged Anderson to accept the display and sign a document verifying that the society was not in possession of Geronimo's skull. Anderson refused.
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Since the meeting in Manhattan, no further efforts to recover the skull have been made. Anderson puts great faith in the Bonesmen. "I believe that those who are involved need to come clean on this," he said. "I think they'll come around and do what is appropriate."
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GETTY IMAGES The skull of Geronimo, an Apache chief, is rumored to be in the possession of Skull and Bones.Jim Adams, managing editor of Indian Country Today, provides an explanation for the notable absence of recovery efforts. "Apache tribal governments seem reluctant to raise the issue because it does violate taboos about speaking about the dead. This doesn't mean they're not concerned; rather they have their own laws of secrecy."
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Native Americans are far from unconcerned. Adams' publication, the leading Native American news source, has run several articles on the secret society's alleged possession of the skull. On Oct. 6, 60 Minutes televised a segment on Skull and Bones that briefly addressed the society's posession of Geronimo's skull.
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James Craven, an economics professor at Clark College, suggests that such media exposure is leading to action. "In the near future, there will finally be large groups of Natives showing up in front of 'the tomb' to protest this ugly racism and grave robbing by the Bones, and they will not be leaving until that skull and any other Native artifacts have been returned."
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Adams expressed similar sentiments. "My sense is that American Indians in general are appalled outraged by the accusation, but not surprised," he said. "Remains of ancestors have been exploited and desecrated for centuries in the name of anthropology or simply for idle curiosity. But even by these standards, it's bizarre and embarrassing that a supposedly elite group would use the remains of any human being for its own entertainment."
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Supposing the grave-robbing allegations are true, why would the Skull and Bones be interested in the head of Geronimo? Robbins suggests that the answer lies in their name. "Bones as a society is preoccupied with death; skulls, skeletons, and artwork depicting death are prevalent in the tomb. When Bonesmen steal things they use the euphemism that they are taking 'gifts to the goddess' whom they honor within the tomb." The focus on death is not arbitrary. The society emphasizes mortality in order to illustrate the necessity of success.
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Robbins, herself a member of Scroll and Key, attests to the centrality of ritualized stealing in many of the societies at Yale. Each class attempts to outdo its predecessor in the acquisition of valuables. In addition to Geronimo's skull, the Bonesmen's tomb is rumored to contain the skull of Pancho Villa and Adolf Hitler's silverware.
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Robbins expresses outrage at Skull and Bones' behavior. "I think it's ridiculous that Bonesmen's sense of entitlement is broad enough to include items that allegedly don't belong to them. The items they supposedly steal as a prank or competition may be valuable and meaningful to the actual owners. It's appalling that proper authorities have not forced their way into the tomb to retrieve the items that don't belong in there."
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The legality of Skull and Bones' behavior is dubious. According to Adams, members of Skull and Bones have violated laws preventing the desecration of graves and should be held responsible as felons. "If it is true that Skull and Bones and its corporate parent RTA Inc., continue to hold these skulls, my belief would be that they are participating in a continuing conspiracy to be in possession of stolen property." Many are quick to cite the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act as grounds for prosecuting Skull and Bones. Ironically, it was George H. W. Bush, DC '48, a member of Skull and Bones, who signed this bill into law in 1990. However, NAGPRA only applies to organizations that receive federal funding. The University, in fact, was forced to return certain artifacts previously held by its Peabody Museum in accordance with the bill. However, secret societies are not directly affiliated with the University, exempting them from NAGPRA jurisdiction.
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While the society's exemption from NAGPRA relies on financial independence from Yale, the two organizations are in fact closely intertwined. As Robbins emphasizes, the administration hasn't taken steps against the societies because administrators have historically been members. To this day, prominent figures on the Yale faculty and administration are members of Yale secret societies. There has always been a kinship between society men at the faculty, administration, and undergraduate levels. This close connection may explain Yale's failure to investigate the activity of certain students.
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In addition to being high-ranking members of the Yale administration, members of Skull and Bones work in important governmental positions. The upcoming presidential election could potentially pit Bonesman against Bonesman.
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George Bush, DC '68, and John Kerry, JE '66, both members of the society, could be hurt by their involvement in an organization that allegedly takes part illegal behavior. "I think these politicians are caught in a real conflict between their loyalty to Bones and their oaths as public servants if they don't take positive steps to return any human remains. The reports about Geronimo certainly poison relations between the Presidency and the tribes," Adams said.
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Whatever the repercussions, many see the society's behavior as wholly reprehensible, particularly among those who would run for high public office. "[The theft] is a metaphor for something much bigger and even uglier. It is the ugly racism and hubris of the in-bred power elites who seek to infiltrate positions of power," Craven said.
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===
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Discovery lends weight to ultra-secret Skull and Bones society lore -Updated: 9:52 a.m. ET May 9, 2006 HARTFORD, Conn. - A Yale University historian has uncovered a 1918 letter that seems to lend validity to the lore that Yale University's ultra-secret Skull and Bones society swiped the skull of American Indian leader Geronimo. The letter, written by one member of Skull and Bones to another, purports that the skull and some of the Indian leader's remains were spirited from his burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to a stone tomb in New Haven that serves as the club's headquarters.
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According to Skull and Bones legend, members, including President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, dug up Geronimo's grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I. Geronimo died in 1909.
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The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club ... is now safe inside the (Tomb) together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn, according to the letter, written by Winter Mead.
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Skepticism
But Mead was not at Fort Sill and researcher Marc Wortman, who found the letter last fall, said Monday he is skeptical the bones are actually those of the famed Indian fighter.
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What I think we could probably say is they removed some skull and bones and other materials from a grave at Fort Sill, he said. Historically, it may be impossible to prove it's Geronimo's. They believe it's from Geronimo.
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Harlyn Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo, said he has been looking for a lawyer to sue the U.S. Army, which runs Fort Sill. Discovery of the letter could help, he said.
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It's keeping it alive and now it makes me really want to confront the issue with my attorneys, said Geronimo, of Mescalero, N.M. If we get the remains back ... and find that, for instance, that bones are missing, you know who to blame.
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A portion of the letter and an accompanying story were posted Monday on the Yale Alumni Magazine's Web site. -Only 15 Yale seniors are asked to join Skull and Bones each year. Alumni include Sen. John Kerry, President William Howard Taft, numerous members of Congress, media leaders, Wall Street financiers, the scions of wealthy families and agents in the CIA. -Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which are said to include an initiation rite in which would-be members kiss a skull.
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===
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Whose Skull and Bones? May/June 2006 by Kathrin Day Lassila '81 and Mark Alden Branch '86
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Did Skull and Bones rob the grave of Geronimo during World War I?
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For decades, it has been the most controversial and sordid of all the mysteries surrounding Yale's best-known secret society. The story was widely rumored but, despite the efforts of reporters and historians and the public complaints of Apache leaders in the 1980s, never verified.
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An internal history of Skull and Bones, written in the 1930s and leaked to the Apache 50 years later, mentioned the theft. But Bones spokesmen have always dismissed the story as a hoax.
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"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club, is now safe inside the T --." -A former senior editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine has now discovered the only known contemporary evidence: a reference in private correspondence from one senior Bonesman to another. The letter was written on June 7, 1918, by Winter Mead '19 to F. Trubee Davison '18. It announces that the remains dug up at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, by a group that included Charles C. Haffner Jr. '19 (a new member, or "Knight"), have been deposited in the society's headquarters (the "Tomb"): "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K -- t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T -- [Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn."
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Mead was not at Fort Sill, so his letter is not proof. And if the Bonesmen did rob a grave, there's reason to think it may have been the wrong one. But the letter shows that the story was no after-the-fact rumor. Senior Bonesmen at the time believed it. "It adds to the seriousness of the belief [that the theft took place], certainly," says Judith Schiff, the chief research archivist at Sterling Memorial Library, who has written extensively on Yale history. "It has a very strong likelihood of being true, since it was written so close to the time." Members of a secret society, she points out, were required to be honest with each other about its affairs.
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Moreover, the yearbook entries for Haffner, Mead, and Davison confirm that they were all Bonesmen. (The membership of the societies was routinely published in newspapers and yearbooks until the 1970s.) Haffner's entry confirms that he was at the artillery school at Fort Sill some time between August 1917 and July 1918.
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Marc Wortman, a writer and former senior editor of this magazine, discovered the letter in the Sterling Memorial Library archives while researching Davison's war years for a book -- The Millionaires' Unit, released this month by PublicAffairs press -- about Yale's World War I aviators. The letter is preserved in a folder of 1918 correspondence in one of the 16 boxes of the F. Trubee Davison Papers. Mead's was one of many letters Davison received that year about Bones matters. With the war on, the Bonesmen were scattered around the United States and Europe, and society business like choosing new members had to be conducted by mail. "Lists of people to be tapped would come to Trubee and he would comment on them," says Wortman. Mead's letter also relays the news that Parker B. Allen '19 had been initiated as a member in Saumur, France, and Allen's yearbook entry confirms his membership in Bones and his posting to artillery school in Saumur.
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The Geronimo rumor first came to wide public attention in 1986. At the time, Ned Anderson, then chair of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, was campaigning to have Geronimo's remains moved from Fort Sill -- where he died a prisoner of war in 1909 -- to Apache land in Arizona. Anderson received an anonymous letter from someone who claimed to be a member of Skull and Bones, alleging that the society had Geronimo's skull. The writer included a photograph of a skull in a display case and a copy of what is apparently a centennial history of Skull and Bones, written by the literary critic F. O. Matthiessen '23, a Skull and Bones member.
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In Matthiessen's account, which quotes a Skull and Bones log book from 1919, the skull had been unearthed by six Bonesmen -- identified by their Bones nicknames, including "Hellbender," who apparently was Haffner. Matthiessen mentions the real names of three of the robbers, all of whom were at Fort Sill in early 1918: Ellery James '17, Henry Neil Mallon '17, and Prescott Bush '17, the father and grandfather of the U.S. presidents.
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"My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill. It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo."
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Anderson arranged a meeting with Bones alumni Jonathan Bush '53, a son of Prescott Bush; and Endicott Peabody Davison '45, a son of Trubee Davison. At the meeting, Anderson has told several journalists, the Bones representatives produced a display case like the one in the photo. But they told Anderson that the skull inside it was that of a ten-year-old boy. They offered the skull to Anderson, but he declined, as he believed it was not the same one in the photo.
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Some researchers have concluded that the Bonesmen could not have even found Geronimo's grave in 1918. David H. Miller, a history professor at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, cites historical accounts that the grave was unmarked and overgrown until a Fort Sill librarian persuaded local Apaches to identify the site for him in the 1920s. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill," says Miller. "It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo."
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Mead's letter, written from one Bonesman to another just after the incident would have occurred, suggests that society members had robbed a grave and had a skull they believed was Geronimo's. It does not speak to whether Skull and Bones may still have such a skull today. Many have speculated that they do, but there is no direct evidence. Alexandra Robbins '98, who wrote the 2002 Bones expose Secrets of the Tomb, says she persuaded a number of Bones alumni to talk to her for her book. "Many talked about a skull in a glass case by the front door that they call Geronimo," Robbins told the alumni magazine. (Representatives of Skull and Bones did not return calls from the magazine by press time.)
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Skull and Bones and other Yale societies have a reputation for stealing, often from each other or from campus buildings. Society members reportedly call the practice "crooking" and strive to outdo each other's "crooks." And the club is also thought to use human remains in its rituals. In 2001, journalist Ron Rosenbaum '68 reported capturing on videotape what appeared to be an initiation ceremony in the society's courtyard, in which Bonesmen carried skulls and "femur-sized bones."
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It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache's grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class.
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It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache's grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class. At the time, says Gaddis Smith, Larned Professor of History emeritus, who is writing a history of Yale since 1900, "there was a racial consciousness and a sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority above all others." He notes that James Rowland Angell, who became president of Yale in 1921, "would say, very explicitly, that we must preserve Yale for the 'old stock.'" Smith adds, "The slogan of the first major fund-raising campaign for Yale, in 1926, was 'Keep Yale Yale.' The alumni knew exactly what it meant."
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At the same time, many of those complicit in what was apparently the desecration of a grave cherished ideals of service and fellowship, and had lived up to them by enlisting for the war voluntarily. A striking example is chronicled in Marc Wortman's book, The Millionaires' Unit, which began as an article for this magazine about a group of Yale undergraduates who took up the new sport of aviation in order to fight for the Allies ("Flight to Glory," November/December 2003). Trubee Davison was the co-founder and moving spirit of this project. Before the United States had even entered the war, he recruited two dozen elite and wealthy young Yalies of his set -- five of them Bonesmen -- to devote themselves to flying. Out of these efforts grew the first squadron in what is today the Naval Air Reserve.
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The letter might not have been discovered if Davison hadn't founded the aviation group. It might not even have been written if he hadn't endured great personal suffering for the war effort. Davison never made it overseas; he crashed during a training flight and was disabled for the rest of his life.
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It was while he was recuperating at home that his fellow Bonesmen wrote to him about candidates for membership, initiations abroad, and other society business. The Geronimo letter, with its matter-of-fact reports of troop units and its boast about a grave robbery, speaks to the complex and contradictory mores of the privileged class in early twentieth-century America.
===
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2002 The Yale Herald The Herald is an undergraduate publication at Yale University. Book Excerpt: The Legend of Skull and Bones, An Expos of President George W. Bush's Secret Society:
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"Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every reach of American society. This tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members to the most powerful political position in the world. And its power is only increasing - the 2004 Presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been led by a Bonesman. The secret society now, as one historian admonishes, is "'an international mafia' . . . unregulated and all but unknown." In its quest to create a New World Order that restricts individual freedoms and places ultimate power solely in the hands of a small cult of wealthy, prominent families, Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for years.
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They are taught that once they get out into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they can further elevate the society.s status and help promote the standing of their fellow Bonesmen.
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===
NOT YOUR AVERAGE LICENSE PLATE... By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald Friday, January 23, 2004
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A Piikani reserve woman who believes she is not bound by Canadian law is fighting for the right to drive in the province without registering her vehicle.
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Bella Yellowhorn has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to be recognized as part of a sovereign nation.
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"I am a member of the sovereign Blackfoot Nation", said Yellowhorn. "I do not have to abide by the Canadian status laws and all they charge us for."
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Yellowhorn claims she is one of a growing number of natives who have rejected their status Indian cards from the government and are using their own Blackfoot Nation cards.
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Yellowhorn and her representation--James Craven, a professor at Clark's[sic] College in Washington--will argue their position this morning in Lethbridge provincial court. Prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law, is handling the case for the Crown.
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The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation license plate.
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"This is traditional Blackfoot Nation territory", she said. "This is my homeland and I feel I have the right to use my own license plate in my home country."
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If her case is successful, Yellowhorn wants to be able to use her own license plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.
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Craven, however, says the issue goes far beyond license plates.
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"What this is about is genocide, pure and simple," he said. "It's about the right to be a free nation, free people. We have a right to remain as a nation and not be exterminated." Craven,, who also goes by his Blackfoot name Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi, said he plans to shed light on the Indian Act's purpose of forcing assimilation of Indians into Canadian life--what he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.
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"If a (Blackfoot Indian) chooses also to be a Canadian that's fine but you can't force it on us," he said. "We're forcing Canada to look at itself and what's being done to Indians across the country."
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Craven said he'll take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada or even the International Court in Hague or United Nations if necessary.
===
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LETHBRIDGE HERALD The Lethbridge Herald Saturday A, Saturday, January 24, 2004, p.a3 [By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald
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Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] Natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping]
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By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald
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Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping a native woman fight a charge of driving a motor vehicle without insurance.
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"It's no different than a motorist from Montana driving onto Canadian lands," said James Craven, a professor at Washington's Clark College, on behalf of Bella Yellowhorn Friday at the Lethbridge provincial courthouse. "They're not required to have Canadian insurance as long as they have some kind of insurance."
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The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn, a Piikani reserve resident, was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation licence plate.
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She was later convicted of a charge of not having proper registration and the insurance charge went to trial this week.
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Yellowhorn claimed in court she had insurance but could not prove it because she was unable to obtain documents from her van when it was seized and also could not locate the Fort Macleod office she purchased the insurance from.
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Prosecutor Eric Brooks, who is handling the criminal prosecution regarding the charge, noted the onus is on the accused to provide proof of insurance and Yellowhorn was allowed several adjournments to give her time to gather the information.
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Judge Ron Jacobson will hand down his decision on Feb. 9.
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Yellowhorn said if the case is successful, she wants to be able to use her own licence plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.
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In addition to fighting the charge, Craven has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to have the Blackfoot people recognized as a sovereign nation.
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Craven told the court Friday the Blackfoot people meet all the tests for a nation under international law, including a stable population, identifiable land and their own identifiable governance.
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The Indian Act, he said, is little more than a document designed to force the assimilation of natives into Canadian culture--something he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.
"Bella believes that as a matter of her own personal survival she cannot and will not obey any of the (conditions) of the Indian Act," said Craven.
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He argued the Indian Act allows activity prohibited under international genocide laws, pointing to issues such as residential schools and the high rate of suicide on the reserve.
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However, Crown prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom argued that many of the issues raised by Craven have little to do with the matter before the court--a provincial statute requiring proper insurance to drive in Alberta.
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Alberta's provincial court is not the right place to launch arguments based on international law, said Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law handling the constitutional challenge. "This court does not have the authority to impose a remedy under the international forum."
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Reprinted under the FAIR USE Doctrine for educational purposes only and not to be used for any commercial uses.
===
Lethbridge Herald, Aug. 23, 2002 Log jam By JANINE ECKLUND PORCUPINE HILLS --
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The provincial government has ordered Merle Good Eye to quit harvesting trees from West Sharples Creek in the Porcupine Hills west of Claresholm.
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He maintains it is his right as a member of the Blackfoot Nation.
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And in spite of a stop-work order from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and notices tacked to fallen logs indicating they are being seized by government, Good Eye says he plans to continue the harvest he started about two weeks ago.
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"It is our right to take these logs," Good Eye said Thursday. "I have a permit from the proper authorities to harvest." His permission comes, he says, from the hereditary chiefs of the Blackfoot Nation and from band council.
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"I'm being told by my elders and proper authority that this is ours; we can't have foreigners coming onto Blackfoot territory and telling me what to do."
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The issue goes deeper than the argument over who can harvest timber on Crown land.It goes to the root of animosity between native people and government -- who determines land and access rights.
James Craven, an economics professor from Clark College in Washington and a Blackfoot, said plans are in place to take legal action against the Canadian and U.S. governments for the commission of international crimes and crimes against Blackfoot law under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.
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Craven maintains the federal governments and their agents in Canada and the U.S. committed genocide by killing members of the First Nations, causing serious bodily and mental harm through daily assaults and the establishment of residential schools and unlawful sterilization of native people.
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"The Blackfoot and other Treaty 7 Nations never surrendered their lands, and the governments and citizens of Canada and Alberta are currently illegally occupying Blackfoot territory," said Craven.
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"We are going to stand. We do not seek anyone's permission to exist as a people. This is Blackfoot land and these are Blackfoot ways."Details of the legal action can be found on the Internet at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ under "Documents, Narratives and Histories".
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Good Eye and his employees risk fines and arrest if they continue to harvest timber after the stop-work order was issued.
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A spokesman with Sustainable Resource Development says an investigation is underway and if they refuse to stop, police may intervene and remove them from the area.
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Susan McManus says the proper process to obtain a logging permit is outlined in the Forest Act."There is an annual timber sale," said McManus. The sale is advertised, and the department contacts directly sawmills and reserves and communities throughout the province.
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"They bid on an auction of land with a sealed tender. They also put in a damage deposit which can go up to as high as $2,000 which is returned if there is proper cleanup and reforestation." Good Eye didn't follow that process. He says he is a skilled logger and plans to clean up and collect cones from the area to grow into saplings for planting next spring
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"I've logged just about everywhere," said Good Eye."I've logged at Westcastle and Alison Creek and I've never had problems before."I don't know what the problem is. Maybe these logs are too good, maybe they're saving them for someone else."
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Good Eye said he's been logging since he was a child when he worked for his stepfather harvesting logs with horse-drawn equipment. Good Eye said he plans to sell some of the logs and use the others to construct homes on the reserve where as many as five and six families are living together because of insufficient housing.
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Lawyer challenges the legitimacy of Canadian law over First Nations Submitted by eisengrimm on Mon, 04/26/2004 - 23:18.
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Canada Indigenous Natives not bound by laws of Canada, lawyer argues
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An Ottawa lawyer is challenging the authority of Canadian governments to apply laws to native people.
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Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2004
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A judge has agreed to hear a claim that sovereignty over Canadian lands was never fairly transferred in any of the ways recognized by international law. Jake Rupert reports on Michael Swinwood's effort to change Canadian history.
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It's an issue that has been debated for years in native and legal academic circles but hasn't been answered by Canadian courts, say aboriginal law experts.But it looks like the question will have to be answered soon, after lawyer Michael Swinwood, on behalf of two natives in North Bay charged with fraud, filed a constitutional challenge to the Crown's right to apply the Criminal Code, or any other law, to aboriginal people, and a judge agreed to hear it.
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Mr. Swinwood says aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty to British or Canadian governments in accordance with recognized international standards such as conquest or purchase.
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To have jurisdiction over people who occupied land first, according to law, sovereignty must be properly handed over, Mr. Swinwood says in documents filed in court. It wasn't, so Canadian governments have no right to enforce their laws on natives, the documents say."The federal government lacks proper legislative authority in the territory it is alleged these illegal acts took place," Mr. Swinwood argues.
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"No treaty has been entered into ... therefore the federal government has no jurisdiction in the territory where these acts are alleged."
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Mr. Swinwood will ask a judge to "nullify the application" of Canadian laws against natives because, he says, according to the current state of the law, Canada's laws have "no force or effect as against these Indian persons or any other Indian person."
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Earlier this year in North Bay, Mr. Swinwood convinced Ontario Superior Court Justice J.S. O'Neill, himself an expert in native law, to hear the challenge and order the government to pay for it.Judge O'Neill found Mr. Swinwood raised "important" legal questions that need answering and ordered the provincial government to give Mr. Swinwood $35,000 in order to argue the case properly."
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The issues raised ... are of sufficient merit that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for the opportunity to pursue these questions and these issues ... to be forfeited if legal funding is not provided," the judge wrote in his reasons for granting Mr. Swinwood the money."It is to be remembered that the legal community in Canada is only beginning to come to grips with issues involving aboriginal title and rights," Judge O'Neill said.
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After getting the funding order in March, Mr. Swinwood hoped to make his case this spring in front of Judge O'Neill, but the Crown appealed the judge's ruling on the funding application, arguing that the judge should not have granted the money because there is no merit to Mr. Swinwood's assertions.No date has been set for the appeal, but Mr. Swinwood has decided to press ahead with the constitutional challenge, which he'll pay for out of his own pocket and with money collected from native organizations.
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In other cases involving native clients charged with crimes, Mr. Swinwood tried and failed to have judges agree to hear the constitutional challenge.Now that a judge has agreed to hear it, the matter is just too important to walk away from over money, Mr. Swinwood said."Like Justice O'Neill said, it's been a long time coming, so it feels good that we're finally getting to table some of our issues," he said."The Indians got messed over here in this part of the world pretty badly, and it's time some one should speak for them. On this issue, it just happens to be me."Those who say that Canadian laws are applicable against Indians in this country don't know their history. We're just pointing this out."
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If Mr. Swinwood's first argument fails, he has another, darker allegation that he says strips the Crown of its ability to apply its laws to natives.According to his application documents: "The legislature of Canada and Her majesty the Queen deprive themselves of legislative authority by being complicit in the crime of genocide against the Indian Nation ... and have acted and continue to act contrary to their international obligations codified in the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide."
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At the very least, he's asking the judge to find that a 1704 royal proclamation stating that any disputes between natives and government officials should be adjudicated by an agreed upon third party is still in effect.Mr. Swinwood says after exhaustive research and consultation, he has come to the conclusion that Canada simply has no jurisdiction over natives in this country.
There's no legislation saying so. There's no case law saying so. In fact, the law says the opposite, Mr. Swinwood says."It's an interesting and important question that has not been answered by Canadian courts," said Kent McNeil, a law professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto who specializes in aboriginal rights.He said there have been some cases in Canadian law, dating back as far as the 1800s, that touched on the issue, but that Mr. Swinwood is the first to take direct aim at the fundamental jurisdiction argument in court.
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Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa aboriginal law professor concurs."This really will be the first time that these issues are looked at in court, and I think it will be interesting to see what happens," Mr. Morse said.
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At the heart of Mr. Swinwood's argument is the issue of sovereignty. Under international law, sovereignty is generally gained under three conditions. A government can assume jurisdiction over unoccupied land simply by populating it. Sovereignty also can be formally handed from one government to another after a conquest. Or a government can gain the right to enforce its rules when occupiers of land sign a purchase agreement or treaty relinquishing jurisdiction to the newcomers.
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Mr. Morse said Mr. Swinwood's challenge is legitimate because the first two conditions don't apply in Canada, and in the annals of history there is very little evidence of Indians surrendering sovereignty to Great Britain. Where there is evidence of jurisdictional surrender, there is much debate over whether native leaders understood what they were doing when they "signed" treaties and purchase agreements.
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Although this is the first time Canadian courts will be asked to deal with this issue, courts in other countries already have.In a landmark case, Australia's highest court found the Crown there has sovereignty over aboriginal people and land despite not having any of the three accepted conditions for jurisdictional transfer. The court found that over time control of the land and people simply eroded away from the country's first people into the hands of the newcomers and should remain there for the betterment of all.
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Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found differently. Judges there decided that the U.S. government didn't have sovereignty over natives or native land. However, it ruled that basic human law as defined by U.S. statue applied to all people regardless of their heritage.
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Some may look at Mr. Swinwood's position as preposterous, but he says without proper government mechanisms in place to address the gross injustices committed upon natives in Canada, he is simply doing the next best thing.He said in a prefect world, government officials would come to the conclusion that they've failed the natives of Canada, and that Canadian laws aren't helping the situation.
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They would say they're sorry for messing things up as badly as they have, cede sovereignty over vast tracts of Crown land, and let natives live in accordance with traditional spiritual, moral, and legal codes that were working just fine before the white man arrived."We have the law on our side," he said. "We have history on our side. We have morality on our side. What's happened hasn't worked. It's time to try something else.""The time has come," he said. "The government has had a lot of time to do this themselves, and they haven't, so we're going to try to force them to by using the courts. I see no reason why we should fail in this.
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The Ottawa Citizen 2004
GENOCIDE: JUST UP THE ROAD, RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/02/interview-wbai-ny-11-27-03.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/02/appeal-for-assistance-and-caring.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/03/nation-building-in-indian-country.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/05/development-of-blackfoot-nation-paper.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/on-political-economy-of-genocide-case.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/draft-constitution-of-blackfoot-nation.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/marlon-brando-on-american-indian.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/marxism-and-indigenous-struggles.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/aboriginal-justice.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/bush-family-skull-and-bones-nazis-and.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/socialistrevolutionary-consciousness.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2004/11/papal-bulls-burning-chronology.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/ongoing-legal-case-in-alberta-most.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/papers-posted-at-center-for-holocaust.html
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http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/02/evolving-concept-of-social-capital.html
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LEWIS AND CLARK TRIBUTES MUST TELL THE TRUTH LEWIS & CLARK -- ON THE TRAIL: LEWIS-CLARK TRIBUTES MUST TELL THE TRUTH, SAYS ANGRY BLACKFOOT
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Friday, November 24, 2000 By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer
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The rhetoric is still red-hot, even though two months have passed since Jim Craven fired the first verbal shots in an American Indian war of words in Clark County.
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The skirmish caused Craven, a Blackfoot tribal judge, to leave a countywide committee that's planning a 200th anniversary for the Lewis and Clark expedition visit here. Now it threatens to grow into an American Indian protest in Vancouver.
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"The only thing I mind is lies and cover-ups," said Craven, 54, a Clark College economics professor and an expert and prolific writer on genocide of indigenous peoples. He either quit the committee or was fired by the mayor depending on whom you believe.
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"There will be a protest," said Craven, saying he expects 200 Indians to show up in Vancouver to protest mistreatment of the Blackfoot and other tribal people over the past 200 years. "I promise you that." He didn't say when they would come.
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Craven left the 20-member Vancouver-Clark County Lewis and Clark Commemoration Committee after using explosive words such as "genocide" in a speech to the committee Sept. 14. He graphically described for the committee the rape and murder of American Indians that followed closely on the heels of Lewis and Clark's odyssey on the Missouri and Columbia rivers in 1803-1806.
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After he spoke, Craven said Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard fired him from the committee, but Pollard said that isn't so. Pollard said he asked Craven in a private meeting to tone down his language or leave the group. It was Craven's decision, the mayor said.
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Fired or not, Craven left. He said the coming of the 31 Lewis and Clark explorers marked the beginning of a campaign against his people. That's not something the Blackfoot celebrate or describe in a polite way, he said. But it wasn't what Craven said that was offensive, Pollard said. It was the way he said it.
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"He really had two options," said Pollard, 61. "He had to modify his behavior or he had to leave the committee."
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Craven said this week he's still upset, but not simply from being fired. "If they want to throw me off the committee, that's OK," he said. "I just don't like dishonesty. No one has told me specifically what I said that was offensive. They didn't have the guts. I heard they didn't like my tone. If they don't like my tone, too bad. I don't like their tone either, or their pomposity and arrogance. This is like a cross between Joseph McCarthy and Franz Kafka."
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He said he's being accused of offenses that are unclear. Craven said he was under a directive from Blackfoot Confederacy Chief Sikapii to tell the Blackfoot story unequivocally and directly, and he did so. Sikapii (also known as White Horse, or George YellowHorn), 62, is a hereditary Blackfoot chief who lives in Fort Macleod, Alberta. He told The Columbian this week that he dispatched Craven to tell the story of the exploitation of his tribe, which followed the coming of Lewis and Clark.
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"Under the Bureau of Indian affairs, the U.S. and Canada are racist governments, white people saying we are their children, saying they are going to look after us while they steal our land and throw us scraps," he said. "The Blackfoot pushed Lewis and Clark off their land in present-day Montana", Sikapii said.
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Pollard said he respected the grievances of the Blackfoot Confederacy but couldn't abide Craven's manner of speaking. He said it was he who asked Craven to join the committee in hope that he would bring a strong native voice.
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"But he didn't help," the mayor said. "These people on the committee were volunteers and they were uncomfortable."
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The other American Indian on the committee, however, said he wasn't offended and understood both points of view. Honorary Chinook Chief Cliff Snider said he held a milder view himself and asked Craven to speak softer."I knew that he was rubbing some people wrong," said Snider, 74, who lives in Milwaukie, Ore. "He was coming on strong, and I told him afterwards, 'I think some people are taking offense to what you are saying.' I could see that in the crowd, and I told him, 'I know how you feel, and I know the outrage your tribe feels. I'm just asking you in these meetings to tone it down a little bit.'"
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Snider said he represents 52 tribes along the Lewis and Clark trail, and every one has its own way of viewing Lewis and Clark. Some will join in the commemoration while others may boycott, he said. "I know the Blackfoot still feel their tribe lost in its encounter with Lewis and Clark," he said.
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Craven said he respected Snider's point of view, but he had to speak plainly, as a Blackfoot. "We are contemptuous of phony politeness ('smiling with the front teeth while grinding with the back teeth')," wrote Craven in an e-mail to editors of The Columbian. "[We don't believe in] schmoozing and networking, and we are mandated to tell the truth as we know it or believe it, and talk straight; this is often interpreted by those adept at schmoozing and phony politeness as being 'impolite' and 'uncivil.' Indeed history records hundreds of years of whites and sell-out Indians doing some very 'impolite' and very 'uncivil' acts of genocide, while hiding behind masks and postures of 'civility' and 'politeness.'"
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One committee member, Gerard Smith, a Clark College English professor, said he heard Craven's presentation at an earlier meeting in August and wasn't offended. He said Craven "read from several historic documents which supported his assertion that 18th century U.S.policy included genocide for the American Indian." "I explained (to the mayor) his action was similar to asking a Jew not to speak about the inhumanity of the Nazis," Smith said in an e-mail to the Columbian. "Here's the crux of the matter," he added. "The crimes committed in the name of manifest destiny are no different than the crimes committed in the name of Aryan superiority. Is such language intense? Is such language harassment? The truth can be painful, but it must be spoken."
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But it also stripped the committee of the Blackfoot Confederacy's point of view.
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=====
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Friday, December 02, 2005
SKULL AND BONES AND THE SKULL OF GERONIMO Native Americans groups fight to recover lost skull of Geronimo.
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BY NOAM RUDNICK The Yale Herald October 24, 2003
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An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch] Bush entered and started to dig...Pat[riarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself...I showered and hit the hay...a happy man...''
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So recounts a document thought to be an internal record from the Skull and Bones Society. "Pat[riarch] Bush" is Prescott Bush, father of an American political dynasty. His "trophy" is the skull of Geronimo, the Native American spiritual and military leader laid to rest in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Bush and fellow Bonesmen were stationed nine years later.
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Alexandra Robbins, ES '98, has researched Bush's secret society extensively. Her recent book, Secrets of the Tomb, has heightened interest in the activities of Skull and Bones. She attests to the legitimacy of the story, "The text looks to be an authentic Bones document describing Prescott Bush and other Bonesmen robbing Geronimo's grave and cleaning the skull with carbolic acid." In interviews with Robbins, Bonesmen have admitted that there is a skull in the tomb that they call Geronimo.
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Current Members of Skull and Bones chose not to comment on the legitimacy of the allegations.
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Apache tribal leader Ned Anderson was informed of the alleged theft in 1986. As an ancestor of Geronimo, Anderson petitioned the Federal Bureau of Investigations to force the return of the skull. Noting that Apaches have a "great fear and respect for death," Anderson said that he hoped to honor Geronimo's express wish to be laid to rest in "Arizona acorn country."
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Unwilling to remove himself from the case entirely and yield all his evidence to the FBI, Anderson withdrew his request for action. Instead, he arranged to meet with George H. W. Bush's, DC '48,(Skull and Bones) brother Jonathan in New York City. Anderson recounts that Bush sounded "very encouraging" during their initial meeting. Eleven days later, Bush presented the display case. Anderson refused to accept the skull because it appeared to belong to a small child. Bush acknowledged this fact but claimed that it was the only relevant artifact in the society's possession.
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He urged Anderson to accept the display and sign a document verifying that the society was not in possession of Geronimo's skull. Anderson refused.
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Since the meeting in Manhattan, no further efforts to recover the skull have been made. Anderson puts great faith in the Bonesmen. "I believe that those who are involved need to come clean on this," he said. "I think they'll come around and do what is appropriate."
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GETTY IMAGES The skull of Geronimo, an Apache chief, is rumored to be in the possession of Skull and Bones.Jim Adams, managing editor of Indian Country Today, provides an explanation for the notable absence of recovery efforts. "Apache tribal governments seem reluctant to raise the issue because it does violate taboos about speaking about the dead. This doesn't mean they're not concerned; rather they have their own laws of secrecy."
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Native Americans are far from unconcerned. Adams' publication, the leading Native American news source, has run several articles on the secret society's alleged possession of the skull. On Oct. 6, 60 Minutes televised a segment on Skull and Bones that briefly addressed the society's posession of Geronimo's skull.
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James Craven, an economics professor at Clark College, suggests that such media exposure is leading to action. "In the near future, there will finally be large groups of Natives showing up in front of 'the tomb' to protest this ugly racism and grave robbing by the Bones, and they will not be leaving until that skull and any other Native artifacts have been returned."
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Adams expressed similar sentiments. "My sense is that American Indians in general are appalled outraged by the accusation, but not surprised," he said. "Remains of ancestors have been exploited and desecrated for centuries in the name of anthropology or simply for idle curiosity. But even by these standards, it's bizarre and embarrassing that a supposedly elite group would use the remains of any human being for its own entertainment."
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Supposing the grave-robbing allegations are true, why would the Skull and Bones be interested in the head of Geronimo? Robbins suggests that the answer lies in their name. "Bones as a society is preoccupied with death; skulls, skeletons, and artwork depicting death are prevalent in the tomb. When Bonesmen steal things they use the euphemism that they are taking 'gifts to the goddess' whom they honor within the tomb." The focus on death is not arbitrary. The society emphasizes mortality in order to illustrate the necessity of success.
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Robbins, herself a member of Scroll and Key, attests to the centrality of ritualized stealing in many of the societies at Yale. Each class attempts to outdo its predecessor in the acquisition of valuables. In addition to Geronimo's skull, the Bonesmen's tomb is rumored to contain the skull of Pancho Villa and Adolf Hitler's silverware.
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Robbins expresses outrage at Skull and Bones' behavior. "I think it's ridiculous that Bonesmen's sense of entitlement is broad enough to include items that allegedly don't belong to them. The items they supposedly steal as a prank or competition may be valuable and meaningful to the actual owners. It's appalling that proper authorities have not forced their way into the tomb to retrieve the items that don't belong in there."
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The legality of Skull and Bones' behavior is dubious. According to Adams, members of Skull and Bones have violated laws preventing the desecration of graves and should be held responsible as felons. "If it is true that Skull and Bones and its corporate parent RTA Inc., continue to hold these skulls, my belief would be that they are participating in a continuing conspiracy to be in possession of stolen property." Many are quick to cite the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act as grounds for prosecuting Skull and Bones. Ironically, it was George H. W. Bush, DC '48, a member of Skull and Bones, who signed this bill into law in 1990. However, NAGPRA only applies to organizations that receive federal funding. The University, in fact, was forced to return certain artifacts previously held by its Peabody Museum in accordance with the bill. However, secret societies are not directly affiliated with the University, exempting them from NAGPRA jurisdiction.
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While the society's exemption from NAGPRA relies on financial independence from Yale, the two organizations are in fact closely intertwined. As Robbins emphasizes, the administration hasn't taken steps against the societies because administrators have historically been members. To this day, prominent figures on the Yale faculty and administration are members of Yale secret societies. There has always been a kinship between society men at the faculty, administration, and undergraduate levels. This close connection may explain Yale's failure to investigate the activity of certain students.
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In addition to being high-ranking members of the Yale administration, members of Skull and Bones work in important governmental positions. The upcoming presidential election could potentially pit Bonesman against Bonesman.
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George Bush, DC '68, and John Kerry, JE '66, both members of the society, could be hurt by their involvement in an organization that allegedly takes part illegal behavior. "I think these politicians are caught in a real conflict between their loyalty to Bones and their oaths as public servants if they don't take positive steps to return any human remains. The reports about Geronimo certainly poison relations between the Presidency and the tribes," Adams said.
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Whatever the repercussions, many see the society's behavior as wholly reprehensible, particularly among those who would run for high public office. "[The theft] is a metaphor for something much bigger and even uglier. It is the ugly racism and hubris of the in-bred power elites who seek to infiltrate positions of power," Craven said.
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===
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Discovery lends weight to ultra-secret Skull and Bones society lore -Updated: 9:52 a.m. ET May 9, 2006 HARTFORD, Conn. - A Yale University historian has uncovered a 1918 letter that seems to lend validity to the lore that Yale University's ultra-secret Skull and Bones society swiped the skull of American Indian leader Geronimo. The letter, written by one member of Skull and Bones to another, purports that the skull and some of the Indian leader's remains were spirited from his burial plot in Fort Sill, Okla., to a stone tomb in New Haven that serves as the club's headquarters.
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According to Skull and Bones legend, members, including President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, dug up Geronimo's grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I. Geronimo died in 1909.
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The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club ... is now safe inside the (Tomb) together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn, according to the letter, written by Winter Mead.
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Skepticism
But Mead was not at Fort Sill and researcher Marc Wortman, who found the letter last fall, said Monday he is skeptical the bones are actually those of the famed Indian fighter.
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What I think we could probably say is they removed some skull and bones and other materials from a grave at Fort Sill, he said. Historically, it may be impossible to prove it's Geronimo's. They believe it's from Geronimo.
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Harlyn Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo, said he has been looking for a lawyer to sue the U.S. Army, which runs Fort Sill. Discovery of the letter could help, he said.
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It's keeping it alive and now it makes me really want to confront the issue with my attorneys, said Geronimo, of Mescalero, N.M. If we get the remains back ... and find that, for instance, that bones are missing, you know who to blame.
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A portion of the letter and an accompanying story were posted Monday on the Yale Alumni Magazine's Web site. -Only 15 Yale seniors are asked to join Skull and Bones each year. Alumni include Sen. John Kerry, President William Howard Taft, numerous members of Congress, media leaders, Wall Street financiers, the scions of wealthy families and agents in the CIA. -Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which are said to include an initiation rite in which would-be members kiss a skull.
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===
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Whose Skull and Bones? May/June 2006 by Kathrin Day Lassila '81 and Mark Alden Branch '86
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Did Skull and Bones rob the grave of Geronimo during World War I?
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For decades, it has been the most controversial and sordid of all the mysteries surrounding Yale's best-known secret society. The story was widely rumored but, despite the efforts of reporters and historians and the public complaints of Apache leaders in the 1980s, never verified.
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An internal history of Skull and Bones, written in the 1930s and leaked to the Apache 50 years later, mentioned the theft. But Bones spokesmen have always dismissed the story as a hoax.
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"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club, is now safe inside the T --." -A former senior editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine has now discovered the only known contemporary evidence: a reference in private correspondence from one senior Bonesman to another. The letter was written on June 7, 1918, by Winter Mead '19 to F. Trubee Davison '18. It announces that the remains dug up at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, by a group that included Charles C. Haffner Jr. '19 (a new member, or "Knight"), have been deposited in the society's headquarters (the "Tomb"): "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K -- t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T -- [Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn."
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Mead was not at Fort Sill, so his letter is not proof. And if the Bonesmen did rob a grave, there's reason to think it may have been the wrong one. But the letter shows that the story was no after-the-fact rumor. Senior Bonesmen at the time believed it. "It adds to the seriousness of the belief [that the theft took place], certainly," says Judith Schiff, the chief research archivist at Sterling Memorial Library, who has written extensively on Yale history. "It has a very strong likelihood of being true, since it was written so close to the time." Members of a secret society, she points out, were required to be honest with each other about its affairs.
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Moreover, the yearbook entries for Haffner, Mead, and Davison confirm that they were all Bonesmen. (The membership of the societies was routinely published in newspapers and yearbooks until the 1970s.) Haffner's entry confirms that he was at the artillery school at Fort Sill some time between August 1917 and July 1918.
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Marc Wortman, a writer and former senior editor of this magazine, discovered the letter in the Sterling Memorial Library archives while researching Davison's war years for a book -- The Millionaires' Unit, released this month by PublicAffairs press -- about Yale's World War I aviators. The letter is preserved in a folder of 1918 correspondence in one of the 16 boxes of the F. Trubee Davison Papers. Mead's was one of many letters Davison received that year about Bones matters. With the war on, the Bonesmen were scattered around the United States and Europe, and society business like choosing new members had to be conducted by mail. "Lists of people to be tapped would come to Trubee and he would comment on them," says Wortman. Mead's letter also relays the news that Parker B. Allen '19 had been initiated as a member in Saumur, France, and Allen's yearbook entry confirms his membership in Bones and his posting to artillery school in Saumur.
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The Geronimo rumor first came to wide public attention in 1986. At the time, Ned Anderson, then chair of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, was campaigning to have Geronimo's remains moved from Fort Sill -- where he died a prisoner of war in 1909 -- to Apache land in Arizona. Anderson received an anonymous letter from someone who claimed to be a member of Skull and Bones, alleging that the society had Geronimo's skull. The writer included a photograph of a skull in a display case and a copy of what is apparently a centennial history of Skull and Bones, written by the literary critic F. O. Matthiessen '23, a Skull and Bones member.
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In Matthiessen's account, which quotes a Skull and Bones log book from 1919, the skull had been unearthed by six Bonesmen -- identified by their Bones nicknames, including "Hellbender," who apparently was Haffner. Matthiessen mentions the real names of three of the robbers, all of whom were at Fort Sill in early 1918: Ellery James '17, Henry Neil Mallon '17, and Prescott Bush '17, the father and grandfather of the U.S. presidents.
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"My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill. It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo."
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Anderson arranged a meeting with Bones alumni Jonathan Bush '53, a son of Prescott Bush; and Endicott Peabody Davison '45, a son of Trubee Davison. At the meeting, Anderson has told several journalists, the Bones representatives produced a display case like the one in the photo. But they told Anderson that the skull inside it was that of a ten-year-old boy. They offered the skull to Anderson, but he declined, as he believed it was not the same one in the photo.
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Some researchers have concluded that the Bonesmen could not have even found Geronimo's grave in 1918. David H. Miller, a history professor at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, cites historical accounts that the grave was unmarked and overgrown until a Fort Sill librarian persuaded local Apaches to identify the site for him in the 1920s. "My assumption is that they did dig up somebody at Fort Sill," says Miller. "It could have been an Indian, but it probably wasn't Geronimo."
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Mead's letter, written from one Bonesman to another just after the incident would have occurred, suggests that society members had robbed a grave and had a skull they believed was Geronimo's. It does not speak to whether Skull and Bones may still have such a skull today. Many have speculated that they do, but there is no direct evidence. Alexandra Robbins '98, who wrote the 2002 Bones expose Secrets of the Tomb, says she persuaded a number of Bones alumni to talk to her for her book. "Many talked about a skull in a glass case by the front door that they call Geronimo," Robbins told the alumni magazine. (Representatives of Skull and Bones did not return calls from the magazine by press time.)
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Skull and Bones and other Yale societies have a reputation for stealing, often from each other or from campus buildings. Society members reportedly call the practice "crooking" and strive to outdo each other's "crooks." And the club is also thought to use human remains in its rituals. In 2001, journalist Ron Rosenbaum '68 reported capturing on videotape what appeared to be an initiation ceremony in the society's courtyard, in which Bonesmen carried skulls and "femur-sized bones."
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It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache's grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class.
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It may have been easier for the Bonesmen to plunder an Apache's grave if they shared the racial attitudes typical of their era and social class. At the time, says Gaddis Smith, Larned Professor of History emeritus, who is writing a history of Yale since 1900, "there was a racial consciousness and a sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority above all others." He notes that James Rowland Angell, who became president of Yale in 1921, "would say, very explicitly, that we must preserve Yale for the 'old stock.'" Smith adds, "The slogan of the first major fund-raising campaign for Yale, in 1926, was 'Keep Yale Yale.' The alumni knew exactly what it meant."
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At the same time, many of those complicit in what was apparently the desecration of a grave cherished ideals of service and fellowship, and had lived up to them by enlisting for the war voluntarily. A striking example is chronicled in Marc Wortman's book, The Millionaires' Unit, which began as an article for this magazine about a group of Yale undergraduates who took up the new sport of aviation in order to fight for the Allies ("Flight to Glory," November/December 2003). Trubee Davison was the co-founder and moving spirit of this project. Before the United States had even entered the war, he recruited two dozen elite and wealthy young Yalies of his set -- five of them Bonesmen -- to devote themselves to flying. Out of these efforts grew the first squadron in what is today the Naval Air Reserve.
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The letter might not have been discovered if Davison hadn't founded the aviation group. It might not even have been written if he hadn't endured great personal suffering for the war effort. Davison never made it overseas; he crashed during a training flight and was disabled for the rest of his life.
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It was while he was recuperating at home that his fellow Bonesmen wrote to him about candidates for membership, initiations abroad, and other society business. The Geronimo letter, with its matter-of-fact reports of troop units and its boast about a grave robbery, speaks to the complex and contradictory mores of the privileged class in early twentieth-century America.
===
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2002 The Yale Herald The Herald is an undergraduate publication at Yale University. Book Excerpt: The Legend of Skull and Bones, An Expos of President George W. Bush's Secret Society:
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"Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every reach of American society. This tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members to the most powerful political position in the world. And its power is only increasing - the 2004 Presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been led by a Bonesman. The secret society now, as one historian admonishes, is "'an international mafia' . . . unregulated and all but unknown." In its quest to create a New World Order that restricts individual freedoms and places ultimate power solely in the hands of a small cult of wealthy, prominent families, Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for years.
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They are taught that once they get out into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they can further elevate the society.s status and help promote the standing of their fellow Bonesmen.
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===
NOT YOUR AVERAGE LICENSE PLATE... By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald Friday, January 23, 2004
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A Piikani reserve woman who believes she is not bound by Canadian law is fighting for the right to drive in the province without registering her vehicle.
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Bella Yellowhorn has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to be recognized as part of a sovereign nation.
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"I am a member of the sovereign Blackfoot Nation", said Yellowhorn. "I do not have to abide by the Canadian status laws and all they charge us for."
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Yellowhorn claims she is one of a growing number of natives who have rejected their status Indian cards from the government and are using their own Blackfoot Nation cards.
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Yellowhorn and her representation--James Craven, a professor at Clark's[sic] College in Washington--will argue their position this morning in Lethbridge provincial court. Prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law, is handling the case for the Crown.
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The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation license plate.
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"This is traditional Blackfoot Nation territory", she said. "This is my homeland and I feel I have the right to use my own license plate in my home country."
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If her case is successful, Yellowhorn wants to be able to use her own license plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.
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Craven, however, says the issue goes far beyond license plates.
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"What this is about is genocide, pure and simple," he said. "It's about the right to be a free nation, free people. We have a right to remain as a nation and not be exterminated." Craven,, who also goes by his Blackfoot name Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi, said he plans to shed light on the Indian Act's purpose of forcing assimilation of Indians into Canadian life--what he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.
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"If a (Blackfoot Indian) chooses also to be a Canadian that's fine but you can't force it on us," he said. "We're forcing Canada to look at itself and what's being done to Indians across the country."
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Craven said he'll take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada or even the International Court in Hague or United Nations if necessary.
===
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LETHBRIDGE HERALD The Lethbridge Herald Saturday A, Saturday, January 24, 2004, p.a3 [By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald
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Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] Natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping]
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By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald
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Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping a native woman fight a charge of driving a motor vehicle without insurance.
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"It's no different than a motorist from Montana driving onto Canadian lands," said James Craven, a professor at Washington's Clark College, on behalf of Bella Yellowhorn Friday at the Lethbridge provincial courthouse. "They're not required to have Canadian insurance as long as they have some kind of insurance."
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The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn, a Piikani reserve resident, was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation licence plate.
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She was later convicted of a charge of not having proper registration and the insurance charge went to trial this week.
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Yellowhorn claimed in court she had insurance but could not prove it because she was unable to obtain documents from her van when it was seized and also could not locate the Fort Macleod office she purchased the insurance from.
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Prosecutor Eric Brooks, who is handling the criminal prosecution regarding the charge, noted the onus is on the accused to provide proof of insurance and Yellowhorn was allowed several adjournments to give her time to gather the information.
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Judge Ron Jacobson will hand down his decision on Feb. 9.
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Yellowhorn said if the case is successful, she wants to be able to use her own licence plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.
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In addition to fighting the charge, Craven has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to have the Blackfoot people recognized as a sovereign nation.
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Craven told the court Friday the Blackfoot people meet all the tests for a nation under international law, including a stable population, identifiable land and their own identifiable governance.
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The Indian Act, he said, is little more than a document designed to force the assimilation of natives into Canadian culture--something he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture.
"Bella believes that as a matter of her own personal survival she cannot and will not obey any of the (conditions) of the Indian Act," said Craven.
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He argued the Indian Act allows activity prohibited under international genocide laws, pointing to issues such as residential schools and the high rate of suicide on the reserve.
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However, Crown prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom argued that many of the issues raised by Craven have little to do with the matter before the court--a provincial statute requiring proper insurance to drive in Alberta.
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Alberta's provincial court is not the right place to launch arguments based on international law, said Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law handling the constitutional challenge. "This court does not have the authority to impose a remedy under the international forum."
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Reprinted under the FAIR USE Doctrine for educational purposes only and not to be used for any commercial uses.
===
Lethbridge Herald, Aug. 23, 2002 Log jam By JANINE ECKLUND PORCUPINE HILLS --
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The provincial government has ordered Merle Good Eye to quit harvesting trees from West Sharples Creek in the Porcupine Hills west of Claresholm.
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He maintains it is his right as a member of the Blackfoot Nation.
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And in spite of a stop-work order from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and notices tacked to fallen logs indicating they are being seized by government, Good Eye says he plans to continue the harvest he started about two weeks ago.
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"It is our right to take these logs," Good Eye said Thursday. "I have a permit from the proper authorities to harvest." His permission comes, he says, from the hereditary chiefs of the Blackfoot Nation and from band council.
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"I'm being told by my elders and proper authority that this is ours; we can't have foreigners coming onto Blackfoot territory and telling me what to do."
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The issue goes deeper than the argument over who can harvest timber on Crown land.It goes to the root of animosity between native people and government -- who determines land and access rights.
James Craven, an economics professor from Clark College in Washington and a Blackfoot, said plans are in place to take legal action against the Canadian and U.S. governments for the commission of international crimes and crimes against Blackfoot law under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.
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Craven maintains the federal governments and their agents in Canada and the U.S. committed genocide by killing members of the First Nations, causing serious bodily and mental harm through daily assaults and the establishment of residential schools and unlawful sterilization of native people.
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"The Blackfoot and other Treaty 7 Nations never surrendered their lands, and the governments and citizens of Canada and Alberta are currently illegally occupying Blackfoot territory," said Craven.
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"We are going to stand. We do not seek anyone's permission to exist as a people. This is Blackfoot land and these are Blackfoot ways."Details of the legal action can be found on the Internet at http://www.chgs.umn.edu/ under "Documents, Narratives and Histories".
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Good Eye and his employees risk fines and arrest if they continue to harvest timber after the stop-work order was issued.
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A spokesman with Sustainable Resource Development says an investigation is underway and if they refuse to stop, police may intervene and remove them from the area.
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Susan McManus says the proper process to obtain a logging permit is outlined in the Forest Act."There is an annual timber sale," said McManus. The sale is advertised, and the department contacts directly sawmills and reserves and communities throughout the province.
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"They bid on an auction of land with a sealed tender. They also put in a damage deposit which can go up to as high as $2,000 which is returned if there is proper cleanup and reforestation." Good Eye didn't follow that process. He says he is a skilled logger and plans to clean up and collect cones from the area to grow into saplings for planting next spring
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"I've logged just about everywhere," said Good Eye."I've logged at Westcastle and Alison Creek and I've never had problems before."I don't know what the problem is. Maybe these logs are too good, maybe they're saving them for someone else."
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Good Eye said he's been logging since he was a child when he worked for his stepfather harvesting logs with horse-drawn equipment. Good Eye said he plans to sell some of the logs and use the others to construct homes on the reserve where as many as five and six families are living together because of insufficient housing.
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Lawyer challenges the legitimacy of Canadian law over First Nations Submitted by eisengrimm on Mon, 04/26/2004 - 23:18.
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Canada Indigenous Natives not bound by laws of Canada, lawyer argues
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An Ottawa lawyer is challenging the authority of Canadian governments to apply laws to native people.
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Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2004
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A judge has agreed to hear a claim that sovereignty over Canadian lands was never fairly transferred in any of the ways recognized by international law. Jake Rupert reports on Michael Swinwood's effort to change Canadian history.
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It's an issue that has been debated for years in native and legal academic circles but hasn't been answered by Canadian courts, say aboriginal law experts.But it looks like the question will have to be answered soon, after lawyer Michael Swinwood, on behalf of two natives in North Bay charged with fraud, filed a constitutional challenge to the Crown's right to apply the Criminal Code, or any other law, to aboriginal people, and a judge agreed to hear it.
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Mr. Swinwood says aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty to British or Canadian governments in accordance with recognized international standards such as conquest or purchase.
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To have jurisdiction over people who occupied land first, according to law, sovereignty must be properly handed over, Mr. Swinwood says in documents filed in court. It wasn't, so Canadian governments have no right to enforce their laws on natives, the documents say."The federal government lacks proper legislative authority in the territory it is alleged these illegal acts took place," Mr. Swinwood argues.
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"No treaty has been entered into ... therefore the federal government has no jurisdiction in the territory where these acts are alleged."
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Mr. Swinwood will ask a judge to "nullify the application" of Canadian laws against natives because, he says, according to the current state of the law, Canada's laws have "no force or effect as against these Indian persons or any other Indian person."
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Earlier this year in North Bay, Mr. Swinwood convinced Ontario Superior Court Justice J.S. O'Neill, himself an expert in native law, to hear the challenge and order the government to pay for it.Judge O'Neill found Mr. Swinwood raised "important" legal questions that need answering and ordered the provincial government to give Mr. Swinwood $35,000 in order to argue the case properly."
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The issues raised ... are of sufficient merit that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for the opportunity to pursue these questions and these issues ... to be forfeited if legal funding is not provided," the judge wrote in his reasons for granting Mr. Swinwood the money."It is to be remembered that the legal community in Canada is only beginning to come to grips with issues involving aboriginal title and rights," Judge O'Neill said.
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After getting the funding order in March, Mr. Swinwood hoped to make his case this spring in front of Judge O'Neill, but the Crown appealed the judge's ruling on the funding application, arguing that the judge should not have granted the money because there is no merit to Mr. Swinwood's assertions.No date has been set for the appeal, but Mr. Swinwood has decided to press ahead with the constitutional challenge, which he'll pay for out of his own pocket and with money collected from native organizations.
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In other cases involving native clients charged with crimes, Mr. Swinwood tried and failed to have judges agree to hear the constitutional challenge.Now that a judge has agreed to hear it, the matter is just too important to walk away from over money, Mr. Swinwood said."Like Justice O'Neill said, it's been a long time coming, so it feels good that we're finally getting to table some of our issues," he said."The Indians got messed over here in this part of the world pretty badly, and it's time some one should speak for them. On this issue, it just happens to be me."Those who say that Canadian laws are applicable against Indians in this country don't know their history. We're just pointing this out."
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If Mr. Swinwood's first argument fails, he has another, darker allegation that he says strips the Crown of its ability to apply its laws to natives.According to his application documents: "The legislature of Canada and Her majesty the Queen deprive themselves of legislative authority by being complicit in the crime of genocide against the Indian Nation ... and have acted and continue to act contrary to their international obligations codified in the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide."
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At the very least, he's asking the judge to find that a 1704 royal proclamation stating that any disputes between natives and government officials should be adjudicated by an agreed upon third party is still in effect.Mr. Swinwood says after exhaustive research and consultation, he has come to the conclusion that Canada simply has no jurisdiction over natives in this country.
There's no legislation saying so. There's no case law saying so. In fact, the law says the opposite, Mr. Swinwood says."It's an interesting and important question that has not been answered by Canadian courts," said Kent McNeil, a law professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto who specializes in aboriginal rights.He said there have been some cases in Canadian law, dating back as far as the 1800s, that touched on the issue, but that Mr. Swinwood is the first to take direct aim at the fundamental jurisdiction argument in court.
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Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa aboriginal law professor concurs."This really will be the first time that these issues are looked at in court, and I think it will be interesting to see what happens," Mr. Morse said.
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At the heart of Mr. Swinwood's argument is the issue of sovereignty. Under international law, sovereignty is generally gained under three conditions. A government can assume jurisdiction over unoccupied land simply by populating it. Sovereignty also can be formally handed from one government to another after a conquest. Or a government can gain the right to enforce its rules when occupiers of land sign a purchase agreement or treaty relinquishing jurisdiction to the newcomers.
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Mr. Morse said Mr. Swinwood's challenge is legitimate because the first two conditions don't apply in Canada, and in the annals of history there is very little evidence of Indians surrendering sovereignty to Great Britain. Where there is evidence of jurisdictional surrender, there is much debate over whether native leaders understood what they were doing when they "signed" treaties and purchase agreements.
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Although this is the first time Canadian courts will be asked to deal with this issue, courts in other countries already have.In a landmark case, Australia's highest court found the Crown there has sovereignty over aboriginal people and land despite not having any of the three accepted conditions for jurisdictional transfer. The court found that over time control of the land and people simply eroded away from the country's first people into the hands of the newcomers and should remain there for the betterment of all.
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Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found differently. Judges there decided that the U.S. government didn't have sovereignty over natives or native land. However, it ruled that basic human law as defined by U.S. statue applied to all people regardless of their heritage.
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Some may look at Mr. Swinwood's position as preposterous, but he says without proper government mechanisms in place to address the gross injustices committed upon natives in Canada, he is simply doing the next best thing.He said in a prefect world, government officials would come to the conclusion that they've failed the natives of Canada, and that Canadian laws aren't helping the situation.
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They would say they're sorry for messing things up as badly as they have, cede sovereignty over vast tracts of Crown land, and let natives live in accordance with traditional spiritual, moral, and legal codes that were working just fine before the white man arrived."We have the law on our side," he said. "We have history on our side. We have morality on our side. What's happened hasn't worked. It's time to try something else.""The time has come," he said. "The government has had a lot of time to do this themselves, and they haven't, so we're going to try to force them to by using the courts. I see no reason why we should fail in this.
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The Ottawa Citizen 2004
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