Genocide is always and everywhere a political occurrence.

– Irving Louis Horowitz, Genocide

As you’re reading this I’m sure your eyes are beginning to roll, indicating how peeved you’re probably getting over yet another tirade on the subject of health-care-overhaul. Fear not. To prevent this article from joining the all-embracing tautology of other recent health care polemics, a juxtaposition of statistics will suffice: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20 percent of the general population under the age of sixty-five is without health care coverage; one out of three, if not more, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, under the age of sixty-five, is either uninsured or dependent on the deficient services provided through the IHS (Indian Health Service).

As claimed by the Office of Minority Health, an adjunct of the Department of Health and Human Services, as of 2008 there were an estimated 4.9 million people who classified as American Indian and Alaskan Native alone or American Indian and Alaskan Native integrated with one or more other races [sic]: comprising only 1.6 percent of the U.S. population. The IHS, according to the Office of Minority Health, provides services to only 39 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives — that is approximately 1.9 million individuals out of 4.9 million who qualify for IHS services. This laggard expanse of services comes at a time when American Indians and Alaskan Natives are plighted by appalling conditions and afflictions such as:

• infant death rates 40 percent higher than the rates that exist for whites;
• death rates from alcoholism and tuberculosis approximately 650 percent higher than overall U.S. rates;
• a male population twice as likely as white men to have liver and IBD cancers;
• a male population 1.8 times more likely as white men to contract stomach cancer and, twice as likely to die from stomach cancer;
• a female population 2.4 times more likely as white females to contract, and die from, liver and IBD cancers;
• a female population 40 percent more prone than white females to get kidney/renal/pelvis cancers;
• 31 percent of the population will die before the age of 45; “…the overall adjusted death rate for American Indians is 35 percent greater than the U.S. rate…” (The age-adjusted death rate for those living in the Aberdeen area — a region that harbors most of the Lakota-Sioux reservations in South Dakota, has risen beyond 1,000 percent);¹
• higher rates of diabetes and obesity than the general population;
• an unemployment rate of 49 percent — approximately five times the national rate.

What no one is talking about right now is how the most blighted class of people in this country, the most marginalized group of people in the history of the U.S., will be affected by the proposed health-care-reform-bill. But perhaps that is because this bill may not actually provide any measures to ameliorate these abysmal conditions at all. And that may be the case because no one has ever really talked about the historical and ongoing destruction of this country’s native population honestly and publicly enough.

There are many bones to pick with the judicatory infrastructure of the United States of America concerning the failed restitution of history’s most victimized and terrorized peoples. For now, let us focus on bringing an ailing population back to good health through a program hatched for the absolute benefit of a class it is designed to provide services for, alongside being unequivocally structured according to how the said class determines it to be.

What I am asking, and what we should all be asking is: Why is it so difficult to provide fair and equal health care to an entire group of people that comprise less than two percent of the general American population? And: Will the administration’s health-care-reform-bill ensure fair and equal care be provided for American Indians and Alaskan Natives? And more importantly: If so, will the provisions enumerated for American Indians and Alaskan Natives, included in the health care proposal, be drafted along the former and latter parties’ terms, unescorted by any equivocal provisos and/or tendentious legislative furnishings?

Health care as a euphemism for the euphemism that is assimilation

Health care for American Indians and Alaskan Natives is essentially the extenuation of assimilation programs, sanctioned and directed by the IHS under the auspices of the Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS).

In 1921 a piece of legislation known as the Snyder Act warranted legislative authority for a federal health program designed to provide services to American Indians and Alaskan Natives. According to literature on the IHS website, the act authorized funds “for the relief of distress and conservation of health…[and]…for the employment of…physicians…for Indian Tribes throughout the United States.”

However, even prior to the ratification of the Snyder Act of 1921, the United States government was well involved with juridical “health care” measures (i.e. expedients) designated for the remaining native population. Holly T. Kuschell-Haworth wrote for DePaul Journal of Health Care Law in the summer of 1999:

The Origins of Federal Native American Health Care Attention to Native American health care began in the nineteenth century when contagious diseases, such as smallpox, threatened the once substantial populations of Native American people. The Federal government’s earliest goals were to prevent disease and to speed Native American assimilation into the general population by promoting Native American dependence on Western medicine and by decreasing the influence of traditional Indian healers. In 1849, responsibility for Native American health was transferred from the War Department to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA oversaw the use of congressional appropriations for the establishment of health programs for Native Americans. Responsibility for Native American health has since endured many organizational transfers, and now resides with the Indian Health Service (IHS), an operating division of the Department of Health and Humans Services (DHHS).²

In 1976, the United States passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. This piece of legislation detailed the U.S.’ responsibilities, citing: “Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of this Nation, in fulfillment of its special responsibilities and legal obligations to the American Indian people, to meet the national goal of providing the highest possible health status to Indians and to provide existing Indian health services with all resources necessary to effect that policy.” (I’ve added the italics to emphasize the obscene irony of these words with respect to the real, physical effects of the referenced promulgation).

Aside from the year the Ramones released their first album, 1976 also happened to be the year the U.S. government admitted to running a covert program of involuntary sterilization, affecting about 40 percent of all American Indian women of childbearing age.³ Article II of the United Nations 1948 Convention on Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide explicitly proscribes involuntary sterilization as a means of “preventing births among” a targeted population. Nonetheless, the IHS — an adjunct of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) at the time, authorized and administered the illicit sterilizations. The putative termination of the program resulted in the transfer of the IHS to the Public Health Service. There were no indictments or punishments for those reprehensibly involved.

Furthermore, it was revealed in 1990 that the IHS was inoculating Alaska Inuit children with Hepatitis-B vaccine — after the WHO placed an interdiction on this particular vaccine for having a strong correlation with HIV-Syndrome, which is, in essence, directly linked with AIDS. In 1992, a “field test” of Hepatitis-A vaccine, also HIV-correlated, was controlled on reservations in the northern Plains region.⁴

The IHS fails as it continues to expand assimilationist health care

Founded in 1955, the IHS is a federally administered health care program, accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. It was designed to provide services for North America’s members of the 546 federally recognized indigenous tribes. Those who receive IHS services reside mainly on reservations and rural communities within thirty-six states, mostly contained in the Western U.S. and Alaska.

IHS dependents are not eligible for access to the bulk of hospitals and medical practitioners ubiquitous throughout the U.S. They are restricted to services provided by the clinics and hospitals that contract with the IHS only. Moreover, the majority of IHS facilities are located within “contract health service delivery areas” comprising reservations, the counties circumscribing the reservations, and the adjacent counties. The IHS itself approximates that 43 percent of American Indians and Alaskan Natives live outside the parameters of “contract health service delivery areas.” And according to Bonnie Duran, writing for the American Journal of Public Health in 2005: “…more than 60 percent of members of US tribes reside outside their home reservations at least part of the year, but only 1 percent of the IHS budget is earmarked for urban Indian health care [urban clinics service, in toto, nearly 600,000 individuals].”⁵

In the 1950s the U.S. passed a sequence of “termination” statutes by which, in the words of American Indian scholar, author and activist Ward Churchill, “the federal government unilaterally dissolved more than a hundred indigenous nations and their reservation areas.” Furthermore, concomitant ruling was enforced to “encourage” the relocation of sizable “numbers of Indians from the remaining reservations to selected urban centers;” a colonial tactic designed to obviate any recrudescence of social solidarity within native communities.⁶ These legislative instruments were prorogued (suspended but not dissolved) in the 70s, but by the 90s the federal relocation program had succeeded in pushing more than half of all U.S. indigenous peoples out of reservations and into city ghettos, under the ostensible objective of “assimilation.” Would you care to be prodded out of your home and marshaled into an economically depressed area of one of America’s major cities? I didn’t think so.

Owing to the fact that the preponderance of IHS facilities are located not in city ghettos but on and around reservations, concurrent with the actuality that virtually half the native population resides nowhere near service areas on account of former federally mandated relocation programs, not only substantiates the concern that adequate health care is not being provided to America’s indigenous, but that these conditions are federally ignored, and met with silence and depraved indifference.

As regards financial deficiencies, IHS is bracketed for budgetary purposes as a discretionary program. In other words, there is no federal guarantee that there will ever be adequate pecuniary allocations (funding) for the IHS. On the other hand, for the general public, being predominantly Eurocentric, white-American, Medicare and Medicaid are federal prerogatives. And those who are eligible are guaranteed plenary (full) access to their programs. To adduce another excerpt from Bonnie Duran’s piece in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005: “For reservation-based populations, the level of per capita funding is less than half of what is provided to those on Medicaid and in prison.”⁷

In 2005 the General Accountability Office (GAO) controlled a study that revealed a number of IHS facilities with zero funding to contract for “non-urgent care.” The same GAO study discovered that eleven out of thirteen facilities surveyed had zero to limited ability to treat chronic pain. Seven out of thirteen facilities had zero to limited ability to perform cancer screenings.⁸ Let me remind the reader that these findings pertain to a specific group of people who are, at the very least, twice as likely as white folks to contract, and die from, preventable cancers.

As if that isn’t bad enough, despite the claim that Congress still allocates funds for the IHS (in lieu of the expiration of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 2000), the IHS only receives 50-75 percent of the requisite funding needed to operate.¹ Regardless of the increase of federal appropriations over the years, the amount of real money doled out has decreased. To put it another way, the IHS is virtually bankrupt. The amount of federal allocations may have increased, but the amount of actual capital put into the system has considerably decreased.

Meanwhile, the Pima of Arizona suffer the highest diabetes rates in the world. And in 2007 their tuberculosis rate was 5.9 compared to 1.1 for whites.⁹

The 1.8 million-acre San Carlos Apache Reservation, home to a community of 13,000, is one of the poorest reservations in the States. Writing for Congressional Quarterly, Peter Katel quotes Tribal Chairwoman, Kathleen W. Kitcheyan, lamenting: “We suffer from a poverty level of 69 percent, which must be unimaginable to many people in this country, who would equate a situation such as this to one found only in Third World countries.”⁹

Less than a tenth of the recent bonuses awarded to certain peoples by certain businesses, generated by the taxpayer bailout could have sufficiently extended IHS services and advanced aid to improve these inimical conditions greatly. It is the very least this country could have done on behalf of long overdue reparations.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which end of the political spectrum one is ensconced in — negligent and damaging policy written by U.S. lawmakers is negligent and damaging policy. If one leans further to the right, obdurate ethnocentrism (the whole “…I’ve seen one Indian, I’ve seen ‘em all…” mentality) often accompanies those at the helm. If one leans further to the left, liberal and “humanitarian” agendas often obfuscate the implications attached to policy destined for nothing short of the same old hegemonic ends. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” It does not matter whether one is right, center, or left.

The syndicated creation of disease and destitution

Would it surprise you if I told you that most of these despairing conditions could have been prevented? Well, it’s true — they could have been prevented. More than one half of the nation’s uranium deposits, one-fourth of its low-sulfur bituminous coal reserves, one-fifth of its oil and natural gas, alongside substantial deposits of copper and other ores are confined within the margins of reservations.¹⁰ These resources are lucrative, to say the least. They are also lethal once taken from out of the ground and/or processed on site. Nonetheless, it is peculiar to find the most impoverished demographic in the U.S. residing directly above a copious amount of the world’s most profitable resources. As claimed by Ward Churchill, in his essay “The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,| the natural resource base of the Navajo alone is far greater than that of Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and Monaco, combined.¹¹

Through a series of ratified acts (e.g., Indian Reorganization Act, 1934), the U.S. defined itself as the primary governing body of Indian reservations, establishing a system of tribal council governments for each reservation, whose main responsibilities (under the rubric of “economic planning”) include: minerals-lease negotiations, contracting with external corporations, long-term agricultural leasing, water-rights negotiations, land transfers, and more. History has shown that such “economic planning” is nothing but a damaging strategy for an exploitative U.S. bylaw apparatus.

After decades of uranium mining on American Indian territory, many lives have been ruined. Uranium tailings, fifty to sixty feet high litter the defunct mining sites situated on reservation lands releasing radon, actinides (responsible for long-term radioactivity), and other debris into the topsoil and groundwater of the surrounding regions. There is no such thing as “safe doses” of radiation. The debris that sullies the climes of Indian country is replete with alpha-emitting substances often resulting in cancers and other degenerative diseases. Remember that most IHS facilities cannot afford to offer cancer screenings.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, writing for Perception magazine in 1992, explained that leftover uranium tailings contain about 85 percent of the original radioactivity found in the ore. They emit at least 10,000 times the amount of radon gas (able to travel a thousand miles in just a few days) as the undisturbed ore. In the Southwestern U.S., schools were once built using uranium tailings as construction material.¹²

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) estimates radon emissions from uranium tailings in the Southwestern U.S. will result in over 3,000 cancer deaths per century over the entire North American continent. Other researchers posit that this assertion is underestimated by at least a factor of ten.¹²

By the 1950s cases of lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, pneumoconiosis, silicosis, tuberculosis, birth defects, kidney damage, and more, began to show up in populations near uranium mining sites. By 1978, the GAO had recorded 140 million tons of “on site tailings piles at twenty-two abandoned and sixteen operational mills.” There are more than 1,100 abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation alone. Continued production results in the creation of six to ten tons of tailings annually, alongside small cell carcinoma for the Navajo miners.¹³

Yucca Mountain, situated on Shoshone Nation land, is a proposed nuclear waste repository site. Left with thousands of tons of nuclear waste per annum, U.S. nuclear power facilities are desperately seeking a place to store their ever-increasing stockpiles of deadly wastes. America’s best idea thus far is to stuff it all inside a mountain, on land that does not belong to the U.S.

Backed by the Ruby Valley Treaty and the Nevada Enabling Act, Yucca Mountain and its surrounding region are not U.S. territory, therefore not for federal use. Not surprisingly, this injunction is flouted by military nuclear weapons testing on Shoshone land, during which 700-ton explosives are detonated. Moreover, nearly 70 percent of the nation’s gold mining occurs upon Shoshone Nation land, despite the fact that gold ore is commonly found throughout the U.S. What’s wrong with industrial gold mining, you may ask. Well, for one, it’s stupid.

Gold mining is a highly nocuous vocation. Not only does it threaten the health and livelihood of miners and occupants of the surrounding communities, but it is deleterious to its own and surrounding landbases, ultimately threatening the natural ecology of the region.

Tons of rock must be extracted from the earth to extricate an ounce of gold. The processing of the metal involves (depending on its metallurgical makeup) the application of a diluted cyanide solution (sodium cyanide), sulfuric acid, mercury, and other noxious and fatal substances, alongside being water intensive (drawing intensively from a diminished water-table).

There are literally thousands of other examples I could provide to illustrate how the U.S. and its corporate collaborators create poor health conditions and abject poverty among an already marginalized population for their own profitable gains and neocolonial, hegemonic aspirations. And matters are made desperately worse by the incompetence of the IHS.

Seeking solutions

Rectifying a longtime problem, one as grisly as the diminution of America’s indigenous, followed by destructive protocol delegated by U.S. decree, is indeed a difficult task at hand. As regards restoring a broken and virtually bankrupt IHS, some lawmakers are pushing for the reauthorization of the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act.

On October 14th, Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller urging “the inclusion of reauthorization of the IHCI Act as part of comprehensive health insurance reform,” nmpolitics.net reports. In the words of Heinrich, “Our country desperately needs health insurance reform — but our pursuit of reform cannot leave Native Americans behind,” he said. “I represent tens of thousands of Native Americans in central New Mexico, and my constituents have made it clear that they cannot wait any longer for health care reform in Indian country.”

According to New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone: “Less is spent on providing health care to American Indians per capita than any other sub-population. In fact, we spend more to provide health care to federal inmates than we do for American Indians.” As reported at racewire.org, Pallone is appealing for an amendment to the current health care bill that would add changes to services for American Indians to “any health care reform that happens in Congress.”

Many wonder, though, would reauthorizing the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act, with a few additional furnishings, really ameliorate the problem at hand? Obviously, U.S. legislation has not worked thus far and, moreso, it has been the driving impetus behind the historical disintegration of this country’s indigenous.

If anything is to suffice, health care services for Native Americans must be developed in accord with Native Americans’ requirements and wishes. Services must incorporate the indigenous traditions and practices of each tribe, alongside the option to access conventional methods of treatment.

More capital should be injected into the system. There are absolutely no excuses to do otherwise. The money is there — it’s just being misspent, primarily on an already-bloated defense budget. Allocations for environmental clean-up costs must be put in place, too. And clean-up projects must be enforced with full speed ahead. This would — with the adequate sanitation gear — provide a massive amount of new employment as well.

A concerted effort, from all angles, on behalf of U.S. policy-makers, must culminate in an unprecedented level of reparations that not only rectify centuries of genocidal maltreatment, but also recognize, with respect, indigenous sovereignties. This includes the withdrawal of all unwanted military and corporate activity/occupation from Indian country. In the end, the health of one’s landbase is commensurate with the health of one’s community.

1. Goldsmith, M.F. (1996). First Americans face their latest challenge: Indian health care meets state Medicaid reform. JAMA, 275, 1786; also see Voss, Richard W., Victor Douville, Alex Little Soldier, and Gayla Twiss, Tribal and shamanic-based social work practice: a Lakota perspective, Social Work, Vol. 44, 1999.
2. Kuschell-Haworth, Holly T., “Jumping Through Hoops: Traditional Healers and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act,” DePaul Journal of Health Care Law, 1999.
3. Dillingham, Brint, “Indian Women and HIS Sterilization Practices,” American Indian Journal, vol. 3, no. 1 (1977), pp. 27-28. For more info on this, see Churchill, Ward, “In the Matter of Julius Streicher: Applying Nuremberg Precedents in the United States,” From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996).
4. Andrea Smith, “The HIV-Correlation to Hepatitis-A and B Vaccines,” WARN Newsletter (Chicago: Women of All Red Nations, summer 1992).
5. Duran, Bonnie M., American Journal of Public Health, May2005, Vol. 95 Issue 5, pp. 758-758.
6. Churchill, Ward, “Since Predator Came: A Survey of Native North America Since 1492, From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996), p. 26. Also, see House Concurrent Resolution 108 of August 1953, which promulgated a policy of “unilaterally dissolving specific native nations.” This resulted in the “suspension of federal services to and recognition of the existence of”: the Menominee on June 17, 1954 (ch. 303, 68 Stat. 250); the Klamath on Aug. 13, 1954 (ch. 732, 68 Stat. 718, codified at 25 U.S.C. § 564 et seq.); the “Tribes of Western Oregon” on Aug. 13, 1954 (ch. 733, 68 Stat. 724, codified at 25 U.S.C. § 691 et seq.); and more. In total, 109 nations were statutorily “terminated” in the 1950s. Some were restored and federally recognized in the 1970s. Also, see the Relocation Act (PL 959) of 1956; for more info on the latter “Act,” see Fixico, Donald L., Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).
7. Duran, Bonnie M., op. cit.
8. James, Cara, Karyn Schwartz, and Julia Berndt, “A Profile of American Indians and Alaska Natives and Their Health Coverage, Race, Ethnicity and Health Care,” Kaiser Family Foundation, September 2009, p. 6.
9. Katel, Peter, (2006, April 28), “American Indians,” CQ Researcher, 16, 361-384.
10. Churchill, Ward, “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” From A Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996), p. 147; also see Garrity, Michael, “The U.S. Colonial Empireis as Close as the Nearest Reservation,” Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, ed. Holly Sklar (Boston: South End Press, 1980), pp. 238-68.
11. Churchill, Ward, “Native North America…,” From A Native Son…, p. 150; also see U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, The Navajo Nation: An American Colony (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).
12. Edwards, Dr. Gordon, President of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, “Uranium: The Deadliest Metal,” Perception Magazine, v. 10 n. 2, 1992.
13. Quartaroli, MaryLynn, “Leetso,” the Yellow Monster: Uranium Mining on the Colorado.

A South African woman who said Botswana’s president ‘looks like a Bushman’ was arrested, detained for two days and fined for ‘insulting Botswana’.

Dorsey Dube was arrested after commenting on a portrait of President Khama at a control post on the Botswana-South Africa border. She said the President looked like her friend’s father, who has Bushman features.

The deeply-entrenched racist attitudes of many people in authority in Botswana towards the Bushmen were starkly revealed, however, when the authorities assumed it was meant as an insult. Survival International is sending a report on the incident to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Ms Dube says she was held at the police station and not allowed to call anyone in South Africa for assistance, though her friends did eventually reach help. She was released after spending a night in a prison cell and a further full day in custody.

President Khama (who is himself half-British) has referred to the Bushmen’s way of life as an ‘archaic fantasy’. The government has banned them from hunting for food or accessing water on their land, in a bid to force the Bushmen to abandon their land and lifestyle.

A tourist lodge built on the Bushmen’s land is allowed to use all the water it needs, on condition that it does not provide the Bushmen with any.

President Ian Khama, who was returned to office after elections in October, is a board member of Conservation International.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘You couldn’t have clearer evidence of the racism towards Bushmen in Botswana than this incident. A South African person thought resembling a Bushman was complimentary, but Botswana officials took it as an insult. It’s doubly tragic when you consider that President Khama’s father, the country’s first President, himself endured a great deal of racist abuse from the colonial authorities for marrying a British woman, and that he promised the country’s Bushmen that their rights would always be protected.’

Over the past few years a growing number of white people have joined the longstanding indigenous people’s critique of the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving holiday. In two recent essays, I have examined the disturbing nature of a holiday rooted in a celebration of the European conquest of the Americas, which means the celebration of the Europeans’ genocidal campaign against Indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

Many similar pieces have been published in predominantly white left/progressive media, while indigenous people continue to mark the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning.”

In recent years I have refused to participate in Thanksgiving Day meals, even with friends and family who share this critical analysis and reject the national mythology around manifest destiny. In bowing out of those gatherings, I would often tell folks that I hated Thanksgiving. I realize now that “hate” is the wrong word to describe my emotional reaction to the holiday. I am afraid of Thanksgiving. More accurately, I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture.

Here’s what I think it tells us: As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability. Though it’s painful to consider, it’s possible that such a society is beyond redemption. Such a consideration becomes frightening when we recognize that all this goes on in the most affluent and militarily powerful country in the history of the world, but a country that is falling apart — an empire in decline.

Thanksgiving should teach us all to be afraid.

Although it’s well known to anyone who wants to know, let me summarize the argument against Thanksgiving: European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians. When confronted with this, most people in the United States (outside of indigenous communities) ignore the history or attack those who make the argument. This is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

I press these points with no sense of moral superiority. For many years I didn’t give these questions a thought, and for some years after that I sat sullenly at Thanksgiving dinners, unwilling to raise my voice. For the past few years I’ve spent the day alone, which was less stressful for me personally (and, probably, less stressful for people around me) but had no political effect. This year I’ve avoided the issue by accepting a speaking invitation in Canada, taking myself out of the country on that day. But that feels like a cheap resolution, again with no political effect in the United States.

The next step for me is to seek creative ways to use the tension around this holiday for political purposes, to highlight the white-supremacist and predatory nature of the dominant culture, then and now. Is it possible to find a way to bring people together in public to contest the values of the dominant culture? How can those of us who want to reject that dominant culture meet our intellectual, political, and moral obligations? How can we act righteously without slipping into self-righteousness? What strategies create the most expansive space possible for honest engagement with others?

Along with allies in Austin, I’ve struggled with the question of how to create an alternative public event that could contribute to a more honest accounting of the American holocausts in the past (not only the indigenous genocide, but African slavery) and present (the murderous U.S. assault on the developing world, especially in the past six decades, in places such as Vietnam and Iraq).

Some have suggested an educational event, bringing in speakers to talk about those holocausts. Others have suggested a gathering focused on atonement. Should the event be more political or more spiritual? Perhaps some combination of methods and goals is possible.

However we decide to proceed, we can’t ignore the ugly ideological realities of the holiday. My fear of those realities is appropriate but facing reality need not leave us paralyzed by fear; instead it can help us understand the contours of the multiple crises — economic and ecological, political and cultural — that we face. The challenge is to channel our fear into action. I hope that next year I will find a way to take another step toward a more meaningful honoring of our intellectual, political, and moral obligations.

As we approach Thanksgiving Day, I’m eager to hear about the successful strategies of others. For such advice, I would be thankful.

Ururú was the oldest member of this close-knit, tiny group and an integral part of it.

Altair Algayer, head of FUNAI’s (Brazilian government Indian affairs department) team which protects the Akuntsu’s land said, ‘She was a fighter, strong, and resisted until the last moment.’ In addition, the oldest-surviving Akuntsu, Ururú’s brother Konibú, is seriously ill.

Ururú witnessed the genocide of her people and the destruction of their rainforest home, as cattle ranchers and their gunmen moved on to indigenous lands in Rondônia state. Rondônia was opened up by government colonisation projects and the infamous BR 364 highway in the 1960s and 70s.

With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people. While we shall perhaps never know the full horrors inflicted on the Akuntsu in the last half century, today’s survivors say their family members were killed when ranchers bulldozed their houses and opened fire on them. The two surviving men, Konibú and Pupak, have marks on their bodies where bullets entered as they fled.

FUNAI found the remains of houses which had been destroyed by ranchers who were clearing the forest for cattle pasture. The ranchers attempted to hide evidence of the crime, but wooden poles, arrows, axes and broken pottery were discovered.

When the Akuntsu were contacted by FUNAI in 1995 they numbered seven. The youngest, Konibú’s daughter, died in January 2000 when a tree fell on her house.

Today they live in a territory officially recognised by the Brazilian government, where FUNAI protects their land from invasion by surrounding ranchers.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘With Ururú’s death we are seeing the final stages of a 21st century genocide. Unlike mass killings in Nazi Germany or Rwanda, the genocides of indigenous people are played out in hidden corners of the world, and escape public scrutiny and condemnation. Although their numbers are small, the result is just as final. Only when this persecution is seen as akin to slavery or apartheid will tribal peoples begin to be safe.’

The story of the Akuntsu, their neighbours the Kanoê, and the elusive ‘Man of the Hole’ is graphically told in a new film, Corumbiara. The Akuntsu also feature in Survival’s short film, Uncontacted Tribes.

The Home Ministry has been planning a major offensive, due to start in November 2009, against Naxals, particularly in two Indian states – Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. A plan to deploy more than 70,000 paramilitary personnel has been chalked out. In order to combat Naxals, Chidambaram “favored the Indian Air Force firing on Naxals.” India has also “sought input from American security officials on how to best root out the leftist rebels.”¹ In September 2009 Chidambaram paid a four day visit to US that focused on India-US anti-terror cooperation, assistance in technology, assessment of security situation in South Asia and studying counter-terrorism institutions and structures.

Probably, US with its experience in “war on terror” after 9/11 is considered valuable, particularly its use of corporate media to create momentum for the occupation of Iraq by programming the public mind to go along with the state agenda, and highlight of the “evil of the other” not only to justify its genocidal violence, but also to conceal “real intentions” behind the occupation of Iraq.

Taking the fight against Naxals to a new level, the Home Ministry of India has sought to actively involve the mainstream media directly by issuing advertisements depicting “cold-blooded killings” of innocent citizens by Naxals. “Naxals are nothing but coldblooded murderers” the advertisement screamed across the corporate media. The visual showed a series of men, women and children brutally killed by Naxals. Upping the ante, media has been screaming all along that Naxals have been waging “a guerrilla war on the Indian state.”

The combined voice of the government and corporate media has heightened the threat posed by Naxals in order to rally public support with gripping fear about their own existence. It has drowned dissenting voices, and been trying to program the public mind to go along with the state agenda against Naxals. The corporate media is playing as the chief instrument of state propaganda. It is creating the momentum for the onslaught on Naxals. Josef Goebbels had this dictum: “If you say something often enough, the people will believe it.”²) Herman Goering, a Nazi, said, “People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”³

Naxals’ portrayal as enemies of the state and democracy breaks social link between these enemies and the society. Their status as enemies of the society would not only unite people against them, but also legitimize the “good” violence that exterminates them.

However, the collective violence of “all against one” requires concealment of entire truth. Any act or even any thought of making a victim of another casts a veil over truth. The power of the “scapegoat mechanism” lies in its deception and concealment.

Who Are Naxals?

Naxals belong to varied milieu – disempowered Dalits, destitute Tribals, middle class intellectuals, and privileged rich. They do not believe in parliamentary democracy, as they see power being still concentrated in the hands of the rich, upper class. So the objective of their four decade old struggle is to liberate disempowered and destitute masses from the exploitative and oppressive political system through armed struggle. In their long struggle, Naxals have used brutal tactics to further their cause.⁴ In 2008 there were 1591 Naxal-related violent incidents in which 721 were killed. By August 2009, in 1405 incidents 580 persons have been killed. Recently, on October 8, 2009 they are alleged to have killed seventeen police men in Maharashtra.

Naxals’ struggle has, naturally, drawn mixed reactions from the government and elites, and the marginalized Indian masses. Because of their armed struggle and brutal tactics, they are considered to be security threat to the sovereignty of the state. On the other hand, Naxals enjoy wide support among the marginalized people, who have been ignored by the successive governments for the past sixty years. The October 2008 report of an expert committee, appointed by the Planning Commission, acknowledged that “the main support for the Naxalite movement comes from dalits and adivasi tribals.”⁵ The report identifies “structural violence implicit in our social and economic system” as the main reason for Naxalite violence. Dalits and Tribals comprise one fourth of India’s population.

Condition of the Tribals

In the huge region of mineral rich forest in eastern and central India spreading from West Bengal through the states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh live indigenous people. These Tribals are the poorest of the poor in India. The mainstream media and the political pundits have not acknowledged that the cause of these people is not served in the largest democracy. The Tribals have no schools, no hospitals, no water, none of the amenities the state is supposed to provide. Successive governments have failed to address the basic needs of people in the poverty-stricken, but mineral rich, region. These places are epitome of neglect, deprivation and government corruption.

The Tribals are ruthlessly exploited by local landlords, traders, officials, mafia and contractors. Local police allegedly supports local mafia, landlords and traders. On January 8, 2009 seventeen Tribals were killed by the police in a fake “encounter”, according to Ramesh Varlyani, Chhattisgarh state Congress general secretary. In its scathing 118 page report “Broken System: Dysfunction, Abuse and Impunity in the Indian Police”, the Human Rights Watch pointed out “a range of human rights violations committed by police, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial killings.” It notes, “Several police officers admitted to Human Rights Watch that they routinely committed abuses. One officer said that he had been ordered to commit an “encounter killing,” as the practice of taking into custody and extra-judicially executing an individual commonly known. “I am looking for my target,” the officer said. “I will eliminate him…I fear being put in jail, but if I don’t do it, I’ll lose my position.””

The report also documents “the particular vulnerability to police abuse of traditionally marginalized groups in India. They include the poor, women, Dalits (so-called “untouchables”) and religious and sexual minorities. Police often fail to investigate crimes against them because of discrimination, the victims’ inability to pay bribes, or their lack of social status or political connections. Members of these groups are also more vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and torture, especially meted out by police as punishment for alleged crimes.”

Thus, the state has not only ignored to address basic concerns of tribal people, but also tried to destroy the voice and language of their victims by aligning with the exploiters. E.A.S. Sarma, former Commissioner of Tribal Welfare and former secretary, Expenditure and Economic Affairs, says, “Left extremism is a secondary issue. How many Tribals even know there is a government? Their only experience of the State is the police, contractors, and real estate goons. Besides, the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution grants Tribals complete rights over their traditional land and forests and prohibits private companies from mining on their land. This constitutional schedule was upheld by the Samatha judgement of the Supreme Court (1997). If successive governments lived by the spirit of the Constitution and this judgment, tribal discontent would automatically recede.”⁵

By violating their human dignity, value and rights, the state has committed violence against the Tribals. The tribal dissent, as Shoma Chaudhury says, “is a dissent out of desperation for human dignity, value and rights.”⁵ Among these poor, disempowered, and oppressed and exploited Tribals Naxals have wide support due to latter’s struggle for their cause. Prime minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged that “Left wing extremism requires a nuanced strategy, a holistic approach – it cannot be treated simply as a law and order problem. Despite its sanguinary nature, the movement manages to retain the support of a section of the tribal communities and the poorest of the poor in many affected areas. It has influence among certain sections of civil society, the intelligentsia and the youth.”

Criminalization of Politics

What has been missing in the dominant narrative of the government and corporate media is the necessity, in the light of Mumbai terrorist attacks, to have leaders with high level of personal integrity to provide effective leadership to India. It is well known that corruption and criminalization of politics in India are the two biggest hurdles for inclusive development. Shashi Tharoor in his book India: From Midnight to the Millennium sees “bureaucratic corruption and criminalization of politics as two of the most widespread problems facing India.” Bureaucratic corruption is largely a result of “the permit-license-quota Raj”. Tharoor cites as “the most dangerous phenomenon of independent India’s political life, the criminalization of politics, for many a lawbreaker has found it useful to become a lawmaker.”⁶

The controversy in 2004 over granting membership in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a top mafia don D.P. Yadav highlights the extent to which India’s political parties have become criminalized. According to police records D.P. Yadav is a “hardened professional criminal”. He was named in nine murder cases, three attempted murders, two dacoitees, and several cases of kidnapping for extortion. He has been charged under a number of acts, including the Excise Act, Gangsters’ Act, and Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act. His economic and muscle power has been welcomed with open arms by political parties. He entered into politics and was elected in 1989. He even held a ministerial position in the Utter Pradesh state assembly.

In the previous Manmohan Singh government, the Union Coal minister Sibu Soren was forced to step down when he was convicted of murder (though he was later acquitted on appeal). Surprisingly, Singh, who could identify “criminals” among common people, needed a law to define “criminal” in the case of politicians. He suggested that “the country needed a law to define the meaning of “criminal”, and who should and who should not be a minister.”⁷

Criminals enter into politics with their money and muscle power in order to gain influence and political power. This, in turn, ensures that the criminal cases against them may either be dropped or not proceeded with. The Times of India points out, “Indeed, today, far from shrinking at the thought of harboring criminal elements, parties seek them out, judging the muscle and money combination they represent to be emotive value. Rough estimates suggest that in any state election 20 percent of candidates are drawn from criminal backgrounds. For the parties, it means overflowing coffers and unlimited funds to fight elections and for the criminals it means protection from the law and respectability in the eyes of society.” Asia Human Rights Commission also observes that the nexus between criminals and political party benefits both: “Criminals protect the illegitimate interests of politicians and in turn obtain protection from them and their parties.” It further says that this mutually beneficial relationship works against the establishment of the rule of law.

This promising nexus between criminal-political party prompted India’s parliamentarians across party lines to join hands to refrain from passing legislation that would rid politics of criminal and corrupt elements. However, under 2003 Supreme Court ruling, the Election Commission has made it mandatory for candidates to disclose at the time of filing their nominations for election details including their criminal background (if any), and assets. However, the Court order does not disqualify criminal elements.

The disclosure law seemed to have little impact. Asia Human Rights Commission deplores, “Criminalization of politics in India is a growing problem, despite legal attempts to address it.” According to the National Election Watch, in 2004, out of 535 elected members of parliament (MPs), 128 MPs were with criminal records and 55 with serious criminal records. Most experts’ opinion is that the situation is deteriorating. As Himanshu Jha of the National Social Watch Coalition says, “The general opinion is that the influence of criminals in politics is steadily increasing.” This is confirmed by 2009 elections: out of 535 elected MPs 153 MPs were with criminal records and 74 with serious criminal records. That means, there is an increase of 19.5% in MPs with criminal records, and 34.5% in MPs with serious criminal records.

The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution pointed out that criminalization has become a worrying characteristic of India’s politics and electoral system. This tears into the moral fabric of the country and has an impact on governance.

Politicians are aware of “the impunity that is built into the very edifice of Indian politics and law.” The 1984 anti-Sikh riots confirm the impunity enjoyed by law-makers-cum-law-breakers. On April 7, 2009 a Sikh reporter Jarnail Singh hurled a shoe at the home minister Chidambaram in protest against the clean chit given by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to the two Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, prime accused of the riots. Even before they received clean chit, the Congress party gave them tickets to contest in 2009 elections. The gesture of the reporter was sparked by the deep, traumatic pain caused not only by the three day massacre of more than 3000 Sikhs (some were burned alive) during the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, but also the impunity enjoyed by the politicians.

The massacre of Sikhs took place in the full public view. But there has been absolutely no accountability for those heinous crimes, because the system has collaborated with politicians to protect the guilty. Commenting on the involvement of the then Congress government in the riots, eminent journalist and writer Khushwant Singh said that probably the government of the day had a hand in it as it was organized violence.⁸ The violent mobs were provided with voters’ lists to identify the homes and business establishments of Sikhs.⁹

“The ’84 killings… were mercilessly planned and executed by the state, with a breathtaking disregard for governance and constitutional rights. After this bloodbath, the state and its partners-in-crime preferred to forget the bloody drama they had enacted.” Patwant Singh wonders, “Are the lives of innocent men, women and children of so little consequence to politicians and men in public office that they can be brutally murdered en masse in the country’s capital for over four days before an effort is made to stop the killings? Does it then have to take over 22 years and 10 inquiry commissions to book the guilty for the chilling inhumanity against the Sikhs.”

One may recall the speech of Rajiv Gandhi, who was immediately sworn in as the prime minister after his mother’s death, justifying the pogrom: “Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.”¹⁰ A Sikh wondered, “That’s okay. But were there only Sikhs sitting under that big tree?”

“Development” in Tribal Region

There has been a proposal for “development” in the tribal areas. Recently Chidambaram talked about “development” in this region. But he wanted Maoist-controlled areas to be liberated before any development programs could be launched there. Critics argue that it is the lack of development in the tribal inhabited region for the past sixty years that is the cause for their dissent and wide support to Naxals. So there is growing concern about the intentions of the government in taking security-centric strategy without disclosing the development plan for the mineral rich, but poverty stricken region.

In an interview, Chidambaram said that minerals were not meant to be kept buried under Mother Earth, and they have to be put to use. The land inhabited by the Tribals is the mineral heart land. There are huge deposits of iron ore, tin, bauxite, corundum and limestone, which multinational companies want to get their hands on. Government officials and private companies want the Union government to acquire the tribal lands for private investors in order to expedite the development of the states. So, development means displacement of the owners of the land, and mining. “Industrialization is a must for the state’s development since agriculture alone cannot support Jharkhand’s economy. If we stop acquiring land for private investors in Naxal-hit areas, the state will head for a major disaster,” said a state official.

Therefore, security-centric strategy serves the above purpose where major offensive against Naxals not only decimates Naxal control in the tribal region, but also displaces the Tribals from their lands. If Tribals no longer live on that land, the inconvenient Fifth Schedule of the Constitution will not apply.

Conclusion

Weapons and violence will lead us nowhere. Violence begets violence. Therefore, all the forces concerned should give peace a chance and begin dialogue to sort out genuine problems prevailing in Tribal areas. Instead of running democracy only on the strength of weapons and violence against its own citizens, government should aim at inclusive democracy and development.

1. Siddharth Srivastava, “India Plans All-Out Attack on Maoists,” in Asia Times (September 29, 2009).
2. John Pilger, “Lies and More Lies,” ZNet Commentary (September 23, 2003
3. Arundhati Roy, “Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy: Buy One, Get One Free,” www.countercurrents.org (May 18, 2003).
4. Shoma Chaudhury, “Weapons of Mass Desperation,” in Tehelka Magazine 6:39, 3 October 2009.
5. Chaudhury, “Weapons of Mass Desperation,” Tehelka.
6. Shashi Tharoor, India: From Midnight to the Millennium (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997), reviewed by C.J.S. Wallia, IndiaStar Review of Books.
7. Seema Chishti, “India’s Love Affair with ‘Tainted’ Politicians,” in BBC News (August 2, 2004).
8. Basharat Peer, “Anti-Sikh Riots a Pogrom: Khushwant.”
9. “1984 Anti-Sikh Riots” in Wikipedia.
10. In 1998 Sonia Gandhi, wife of Rajiv Gandhi, officially apologized for the insensitive remarks.

The devastation wreaked by the bulldozers has been caught on satellite photographs. They have been hired by a Brazilian company, Yaguarete Pora S.A., to clear the land to make way for cattle-ranching in northern Paraguay. They are alleged to be hired from Jacobo Kauenhowen, owner of a large bulldozer business in the nearby Mennonite colony of Loma Plata.

The bulldozers’ entry onto the tribe’s land is completely illegal after Yaguarete had its licence to work in the area suspended by the government.

The tribe, the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, is the only uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon. Thousands of hectares of their land, in an area called the Chaco in northern Paraguay, were destroyed by Yaguarete and another company, River Plate SA, last year.

Some Totobiegosode have already been contacted and have relatives among those who are still uncontacted in the forest.

According to a local organisation supporting the Totobiegosode, Yaguarete has made it clear to them that ‘it does not respect indigenous rights nor Paraguay’s laws.’

Uncontacted tribes are exceedingly vulnerable to any kind of contact because of their lack of immunity to outsiders’ diseases. In an emergency report to the UN last year, Survival described the threat to the Totobiegosode as ‘the most serious threat to tribal peoples anywhere in the world.’

Survival director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The bulldozers must be stopped and withdrawn from the Totobiegosode’s territory. What kind of government would stand by while this continues?’

Now imagine this novel being written by a collective of Italian fiction writers. Sound far-fetched? Impossible to pull off? Just plain impossible?

Let me introduce Manituana. It is a story set in the Mohawk nation in the 1770s. Joseph Brant, Mohawk war chief and his family, friends and enemies are the primary characters. The Royal Court of England and a group of London ruffians who “dress up” as Indians play supporting roles. Brant, facing threats from aggressive Indian-hating settlers intent on carving up the land of the Mohawks and other member tribes of the Iroquois Confederation and the defection of member tribes and individual members to the side of the American rebels against the Crown of England, undertakes a journey to negotiate the crown’s support for his people in return for their support against the rebels. Included in his entourage is the great warrior Philip Lacroix or Ronaterihonte, the son of Englishman William Johnson and Mohawk shaman Molly Brant, Peter Johnson, and the captured Ethan Allen, one of the first of the American rebels to attack the Confederation’s lands. After gaining the Crown’s support and witnessing the meaningless and corrupt antics of the Court, the entourage heads back to America to engage the rebels in battle on the side of London. From thereon, this is a story of war, flight, and the death and misery that accompany these phenomena.

Manituana is a true fourth world novel. It pits the original peoples of a nation against those who come to colonize it. It is the story of the multiple indigenous nations that existed on the American continent before the Europeans came and destroyed them. It is the story of India and the British Raj and it is the tale of the Algerian people and the French Republic’s colonization of that land. it is also the story of Israel and its ethnic transformation of Palestine into a Western settler state. In short, it is the tale of every people that has seen its land taken over by a European people as intent on making it their own as its original inhabitant are on preventing such an occurrence. This is also the story of America’s indigenous people being manipulated by the European colonists for the Europeans’ own ends. We see a mirror of this situation in today’s manipulations of the indigenous peoples in the lands the west wants as its own today: the Shia vs. Sunni conflict in Iraq and the manipulation of tribal conflicts in Afghanistan are but two examples that come immediately to mind. Manituana evokes the dangerous conceit of men who believe it is their destiny to rule the world.

When one considers that this novel was composed by a collective, they might hesitate. The project sounds unworkable, after all. This group of five Italian writers in Bologna who call themselves Wu Ming has written two previous novels as a collective and produced individual works, as well. Both previous novels by Wu Ming received critical acclaim and one, titled Q, reached the bestseller lists. Manituana also reached into the top ten on Italian bestseller lists. As interesting as their works, the collective currently consists of Roberto Bui (Wu Ming 1), Giovanni Cattabriga (Wu Ming 2), Federico Guglielmi (Wu Ming 4), and Riccardo Pedrini (Wu Ming 5). They consider themselves part of the New Italian Epic movement in Italian literature and come out of the politically-inclined prankster traditions of the avant-garde Luther Blisset phenomenon. Named after the first black Italian footballer, the Luther Blisset movement (if that’s what it was) ran from the mid-1990s until 1999, when its members around the world committed symbolic seppuku.

Although Wu Ming do frequent public appearances and have collaborated on films and with the Italian rock band Yo Yo Mundi on an album, they refuse to be photographed and consider the cult of the author to detract from the written word. “Once the writer becomes a face… it’s a cannibalistic jumble… A photo is witness to my absence…” they stated in a 2007 interview. “On the other hand my voice — with its grain, with its accents, with its imprecise diction, its tonalities, rhythms, pauses and vacillations — is witness to a presence even when I’m not there…”

The first novel of a trilogy that Wu Ming is calling the Atlantic Triptych, Manituana is virtually seamless and the translation is impeccable. It defines what the booksellers mean when they list something as literary fiction. It is a quality story that includes characters of depth, a good deal of action, a consistently thoughtful context and thought-provoking concepts — all presented in a fictional form.

A report launched today by human rights group Survival International shows that tribal peoples across the world are at greatest risk from swine flu, as many have poor immunity and suffer chronic underlying illnesses.

The Matsigenka tribe has already been struck by swine flu. © J Mazower/Survival

The report comes just days after supplies of body bags were delivered to First Nations communities in Manitoba, Canada, along with hand sanitizers and face masks.

First Nations communities in the province have seen infection rates of 130 per 100,000 compared with just 24 per 100,000 among the general population. However, although many households do not have access to clean water, the Canadian government delayed sending hand sanitizers to reserve communities, where alcoholism is rife, for fear that people would attempt to ingest the alcohol in them.

Grand Chief David Harper told CBC, ‘I make a plea to the people of Canada to work with us to ensure the lowest fatalities from this monster virus. Don’t send us body bags. Help us organize; send us medicine.’

Armand MacKenzie of the Innu Nation of eastern Canada, said today, ‘In Canada, I hope that the words “highest attainable standards of health” mean more than sending body bags to Indigenous First Nations communities. We need a real pandemic plan in partnership with Indigenous First Nations. Not body bags!’

The report also raises concern for isolated tribes who have no immunity to outside diseases and for whom even the common cold can prove fatal. Members of the Matsigenka tribe in the Peruvian Amazon have already been struck by swine flu, leading to fears for the health of neighbouring uncontacted tribes. Any contact with outsiders carrying the virus could devastate entire communities.

Stephen Corry, Director of Survival, said, ‘That tribal peoples are worst affected by swine flu comes as no surprise. Years of colonialism and forced assimilation policies have left them in destitution with chronic health problems. This report makes for sober reading but it should also serve as a wake up call to those governments that have ignored the health needs of their most vulnerable populations for too long.’

Journalists covering at the blockades were intercepted by police with machineguns and taken away for questioning.

Hundreds of Penan have blocked roads at three new locations in the interior of Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. The protestors are demanding an end to logging and plantations on their land without their consent, and recognition of their land ownership rights.

BBC TV presenter Bruce Parry visited the Penan for his hit series, Tribe. One Penan told him, “It’s not true that we Penan do not want progress. Not the ‘progress’ where logging companies move on to the land. What we want is real progress. What we need is land rights first of all.”

The new protests come only weeks after blockades by two nearby Penan villages. The destruction of their forest robs the hunter-gatherer Penan of the animals and plants they eat and pollutes the rivers they fish in. Without the forest, many Penan have difficulty feeding their families.

The Penan have been struggling for more than twenty years against the logging companies that operate on their land with full government backing. In areas where the valuable trees have been cut down, the companies are clearing the forest completely to make way for oil palm plantations.

The blockades are aimed at forcing the Malaysian timber companies Samling, Interhill, Rimbunan Hijau and KTS to end their activities on the Penan’s land without the tribe’s consent. One of the earlier blockades, mounted in June at the settlement of Ba Marong, resulted in the withdrawal of a KTS subsidiary from the area – but the Penan fear that the loggers may return.

In another Penan area, the notorious company Samling is advancing on an area of the tribe’s forest that has never been logged before. Observers say that the road built by the company is likely to reach the remote Ba Jawi area within weeks.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, “The logging and plantation companies are preventing the Penan from being able to feed their children. It’s no wonder they’re taking to the barricades. Penan in some areas are currently receiving food aid – before the loggers arrived, they would never have needed such hand-outs. The Malaysian government must recognize that this land is theirs and stops sanctioning its destruction.”

Though there is laughter there’s also poverty, for one sees only the tip of the iceberg in the Zócalo. No one has any money or, as a scruffy looking artist with a loud voice and thatched gray hair proclaimed: “No one that is, except the governor! And he’s so corrupt the Devil won’t have him in Hell!” How close in contact the artist is with the Devil, I don’t know, but one doesn’t have to have lived a long time in Oaxaca to know that cell phones, women’s slacks and Internet are merely twentieth century window dressing on a colonial cacique system of hacendero and impoverished, dependent sharecroppers.

Oaxaca’s government is one of most corrupt in a country noted for corrupt state governments. All the power is concentrated in the hands of a privileged few and very little money trickles down to the unprivileged. Oaxaca journalist Pedro Matias ruefully explains that Oaxaca does not require that a governor give an exact accounting of the billions of dollars available to him. Oaxaca’s ex-governors are among the wealthiest landholders in the state.

But the state is one of Mexico’s poorest. The central valley, where nearly half of the inhabitants live and where its capital, the city of Oaxaca, is located, is ringed by a series of mountains intersected by deep canyons that isolate many rural communities. Nearly 45 percent of the state’s more than three million 500 thousand residents are indigena; 40 percent of them speak one or more of the fifteen different native languages and 76 percent of them earn less than seventy pesos—a little more than $6 U.S. dollars—a day. The main source of revenue for the majority of rural families is money sent to them from relatives working in the United States.

“At first only the men went and they returned every winter. Then they started staying longer,” rural schoolteacher Thelma Leger explained to me. “Now the women are migrating too. Often a twelve- or thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl is left to take care of the younger children. Instead of going to school they work. It is sad. It is very, very sad.”

So great is the expectancy that young people will go to the United States to seek work that another teacher told me that parents of some of her indigena students asked that she teach them English instead of Spanish “so they would do better when they got to the ‘Other Side.’”

While officially Oaxaca governor Ulisés Ruiz and his predecessors in office voiced consternation over the massive migration out of Oaxaca they quietly shifted government funding away from social programs. Oaxacans receive over $1 billion dollars a year in remittances of $50 to $500 sent from the United States, over 95 percent of which goes for food, housing, clothing and medical expenses that the state government no longer funds. Instead it has invested in marinas, new administrative offices, airplanes, helicopters and around-the-world visits by Ruiz and select Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI for its initials in Spanish) members.

Attempts to break what many Oaxacans call “the tyrannical power” of the privileged elite have driven governors out of office and triggered a century-long push-pull of violence, protest and repression but the elite not only controls most of the material wealth but has had the backing of the federal government—also a power elite of a select privileged few—who since they came to power through revolution early in the twentieth century fear popular uprisings and act immediately and often brutally to detain them.

How brutal and how violent was evident in October and November of 2006 when a force of nearly 5,000 federal police and military and that many or more state and municipal police swept through the city of Oaxaca, arresting, beating and torturing innocents and protesters without consideration of their ages, occupations or political affiliations. For nearly five months the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, led by the 70,000-strong Oaxaca branch of the national teachers union striking for better salaries and working conditions, had taken over the governing palaces of the city of Oaxaca and several other cities throwing the state into convulsions that forced the closing of thousands of small businesses. Tourism sank to its lowest level in sixty years nightly barricades throughout the state impeded the passing of police and paramilitary death squadrons and airlines and surface transportation severely cut back their services.

The Popular Assembly burst into being after Ruiz ordered state police backed by helicopters spewing tear gas to break up a sit-in by the teachers’ union in May 2006. Women’s committees, priests, students, indigena organizations and human rights groups rallied to support the mauled strikers. Within two weeks the Popular Assembly not only had active spokespersons and a plan of action but tens of thousands of supporters.

“That day was the parting of waters for Oaxaca,” Pedro Matias told a Rights Action emergency human rights delegation. “There was only going forward, no going back.”

Although the Popular Assembly seemed to have come together by magic, Miguel Vázquez, co-founder of Oaxaca’s Services for Alternative Education, insists that the attack on the teachers encampment provided a catalyst for uniting groups that had been organizing for over twenty years. Once organized, and with a center of control in the capital city’s historical district, the Assembly voted to restore the traditional “usos y costumbres” (uses and customs) participatory way of community government and social responsibility that had been the Oaxacan way of life before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors.

“Under usos y costumbres,” Miguel Vázquez explains, “every community member participates in every aspect of government. There are no caciques, no leaders or chiefs. Everything is decided by assembly. Whether the community is tiny — a few dozen members — or huge, with thousands of members, those within the community assemble and make their decisions. Whatever the majority decides, that is what the community does.”

Not only are policy decisions made during the assemblies but those involved also decide what cargo (charge, or office) each community member will hold. Under usos y costumbres each male member of the community serves in a designated capacity for a predetermined length of time, usually a year. To fulfill these communal obligations an individual may serve as a policeman one year, be responsible for arranging traditional fiestas the next, be the street sweeper the year after that. (Migration has so decimated most rural communities adhering to usos y costumbres that many women now serve in their husbands’ places.)

In addition to the assigned cargos all community members practice tequio — unremunerated community service. Much like in early U.S. pioneer communities, tequio involves everything from house and fence building to road construction and childcare services. Like all other community matters projects are determined by assembly vote.

The third salient aspect of usos y costumbres is the guelaguetza: “giving.” To those whom God has been generous, and who have profited financially during the year, guelaguetza becomes a way of returning to the community some of the individual’s good fortune. The giver may build a community cistern, sponsor a fiesta or provide scholarships for high school students. And he does not expect anything but sharing in return.

Over the past 450 years most Oaxacan communities have become Roman Catholic although evangelical Protestant congregations have multiplied throughout the state. Padre Manuel Arias, the spokesperson for Oaxaca’s Catholic presbytery, sees no contradiction between either branch of Christianity and usos y costumbres.

“Usos y costumbres,” he explains, “is a way of social organization. It is horizontal, rather than vertical. It is very similar to social conformations established by the early Christians. Many priests are, in fact, usos y costumbres advocates.”

Oaxaca law currently authorizes community self-government by means of usos y costumbres. By vote communities elect either usos y costumbres or the partido (political party) system. But no matter which they choose their independence is very constricted.

“Ruiz controls the finances. He controls the police. Communities can organize their tequios and have their fiestas but they really have very little authority,” Pedro Matias sighed.

Although the teachers union abided by Popular Assembly decisions (many of which they instigated) both the leadership and the majority of members regarded the Popular Assembly as a support organization built around the union. Whereas the Popular Assembly advocated a “horizontal” governing structure (which in many cases resulted in no structure at all), the union maintained its traditional “vertical” organization with elected leaders who directed activities and assigned teachers to schools throughout the state. The union continued to act on its own apart from the Popular Assembly, coordinating with other sections of the National Workers in Education Union (SNTE) to protest the privatization of Mexican social security and to urge the deposing of federal education czar Elba Gordillo. The various regional indigena organizations also focused on their own activities while vocally supporting the Popular Assembly and sending participants to the assemblies and protest marches. The same was true for the smaller NGOs.

The Popular Assembly’s primary goal was getting rid of Governor Ruiz. Elevated into office in 2004 after elections widely criticized as fraudulent, Ruiz controlled not only executive functions but also the legislature, law enforcement and the judiciary. Past governors, including Ruiz’ predecessor José Murat, successfully quashed potential uprisings but none had to deal with a force as large or as organized as the APPO.

For five months the teachers’ encampments covered over fifty square blocks in the center of the city. They barricaded hundreds of streets and highways to prevent Ruiz-paid death squads from circulating at night. Even so, snipers gunned down José Jiménez while he was participating in a Popular Assembly march. Others waylaid and killed eighteen protesters before non-uniformed police stormed a barricade in Santa María del Camino, a city of Oaxaca suburb, and shot U.S. video photographer Bradley Will.

The news of Will’s murder flashing around the world prompted Mexico’s federal government to demonstrate that it wouldn’t tolerate non-conformance. Outgoing president Vicente Fox sent over 4,000 soldiers and federal preventive police (PFP), along with dozens of armored vehicles and helicopters, to Oaxaca. Two days after their arrival they launched an all-out assault, destroying the barricades and occupying the center of the city. Four weeks later they caught the fleeing remnants of a protest march in a pincer movement and indiscriminately beat and apprehended everyone they could lay hands on, including many men and women who had not participated in the march. As Governor Ruiz proclaimed, “Oaxaca is again safe for tourists,” federal and state police and paramilitaries continued to intimidate and jail Popular Assembly leaders and participants. Others went into hiding. Thanks to brutal federal support Ruiz, the cacique, was in charge again.

But despite the arrests, imprisonments and media control of reporting the events, the Popular Assembly remained a symbol throughout Mexico of the possibility for political change. Julio Hernández of the Mexico City daily La Jornada told a March 2008 Día de Mujer forum in the city of Oaxaca, “What happened here is an example, an example of action… that gave hope to the entire pueblo of Mexico.” He affirmed that the Popular Assembly awakened “a sleeping giant.”

Like the student rebellions of 1968 in Mexico City and the anti-Vietnam and integration movements during the same period in the United States, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca ruptured traditional mores, which is a grand precursor for permanent change. Women throughout Oaxaca began challenging the old order, even in indigena strongholds of machismo. The successes of the barricades, if temporary, convinced people who never had participated in any kinds of political act that they have rights and can exercise those rights. They exposed the PRI’s weaknesses and corruption and the teacher’s union, reorganized under new aggressive leadership in 2009, is challenging federalization of teacher placement and many indigena communities are expelling corrupt caciques and forcing multi-national corporations to curtail hydroelectric and mining projects.

Marcos Leyva, one of the Popular Assembly founders, explained the movement’s sudden formation as “combustive” — Oaxaca had been a dry brush land waiting for a spark to ignite it and Ulisés Ruiz provided that spark when he ordered state and municipal police to break up the protesting teachers’ sit-in and drive them out of the city center. For nearly six months the conflagration raged and abated only when federal militarized police and army tanketas and troops overpowered the pacifist protesters by brute force.

They crushed the outward manifestations — the symptoms — but they didn’t stamp out the disease. Oaxaca continues to be a crackling dry tinderland. When will the next spark set off a conflagration? And what will the consequences be?

They will burn more than just Oaxaca. The entire country will feel the flames.

A new documentary by filmmaker Damien Gillis shows how current practices used by Norwegian-owned companies operating in Canadian waters continue to threaten wild salmon and the iconic species that feed on them, including grizzly bears, bald eagles and killer whales. The film, Dear Norway: Help Save Canada’s Wild Salmon, also features testimonies from local scientists, fishermen and First Nations chiefs detailing the dangers posed by open-net fish farms to British Columbia’s biologically diverse ecosystems.

More than 50 Pure Salmon Campaign partners and global allies sent a letter to King Harald of Norway asking him to help protect wild fish populations from Norwegian-owned salmon farms. The campaign also invited King Harald to a screening of Dear Norway at Aqua Nor. Norway’s king officially opens this year’s trade show and will be joined by Norway’s fisheries minister, Helga Pedersen as well as the Canadian fisheries minister, Gail Shea. Aqua Nor runs from August 18-21 (The Pure Salmon Campaign’s booth is # B-111C).

“The weight of scientific evidence my colleagues and I have published in peer-reviewed journals shows that sea lice from Norwegian-owned salmon farms are pushing wild pink salmon toward extinction,” said Alexandra Morton, director of the Salmon Coast Field Station. “I personally invite the King of Norway, together with fellow passionate angler John Fredriksen, to come out to the Broughton Archipelago to bear witness themselves to the poor practices of Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg.”

Despite repeated calls for reform, the Norwegian government – a major shareholder in the aquaculture industry – has yet to take responsibility for its management practices in Canada.

“Norwegian salmon farming companies continue to disregard our peoples’ directives to alter their business practice, to respect our territories and natural resources,” said Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Musgamagw Tsawataineuk Tribal Council. “This is in direct conflict with the Norwegian Government’s support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is a real shame that such behaviour from Norwegian companies is acceptable and in conflict with international positions made on behalf of all Norwegian Citizens”

Norwegian-owned companies control more than 90% of British Columbia’s salmon farming production.

“It is ironic that the King of Norway is opening the world’s largest farmed salmon trade show in one of only two fjords where wild salmon are fully protected from salmon farms,” said Geir Kjensmo, chairman of the Norwegian Salmon Association. “In view of the declines in wild salmon and sea trout stocks and rise in sea lice infestation here in Norway, the Laksfjord protection in the Trondheimsfjord and the Tanafjord must be extended to completely cover other fjords. And the message coming loud and clear from Canada is that wild Pacific salmon must be afforded protection from Norwegian-owned open net cages misplaced on migration corridors.”

“Norwegian authorities must look to British Columbia and learn from the severe, documented effects that sea lice from the fish farms are having on the migrating wild smolts,” said Vegard Heggem, a river owner on the River Orkla near Trondheim. “Norway should take a leading role to quickly develop and implement the use of closed containment systems like Preline. This looks like a potential way that salmon can be farmed without destroying the stocks of wild, migrating fish both in BC, Norway and other areas where salmon is farmed”.

Other countries also feel the effects of open-net salmon farms.

“In Scotland and Ireland, many of our most iconic stocks of wild sea trout and salmon have been very hard-hit within those areas where Norwegian companies own the majority of the salmon farms,” said Fiona Cameron of the Sea Trout Group in Scotland. “All of the organizations that have an interest in wild salmonids agree that something must be done urgently to reduce the impact of commercial salmon farming.”

To watch Dear Norway: Help Save Canada’s Wild Salmon. To read the letter sent to King Harald. To read more about Aqua Nor.

What the plaque fails to mention is that the site where Cornwallis directed the colonists/settlers to erect Halifax was on the Mi’kmaq settlement of Jipugtug (anglicized to Chebucto).² The Mi’kmaq, considered themselves the sovereign power in Mi’kma’ki (the present day Maritimes),³ but Cornwallis did not recognize this sovereignty, and he did not consult the Mi’kmaq about his plans.

Halifax historians Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, and David Sutherland wrote of Cornwallis’s attitude toward the Mi’kmaq: “That arrogance set in motion the train of events that led to tragic violence, the memories of which would long complicate race relations in colonial Nova Scotia.”⁴

What it did set in motion was the murder and dispossession of the Original Peoples of Mi’kma’ki, and one outcome was the eponymous honoring of the Cornwallis. Cornwallis has streets, schools, etc. named after him in the province.

Naming places and buildings after a person is common practice, but usually not when that person is an inciter of genocide. Principle 8 of Canadian Permanent Committee of Geographical Names states, “Personal names should not be used unless it is in the public interest to honor a person by applying such a name to the geographical feature. Names should be derived from persons who have significantly contributed to the features selected.”⁵

Author Daniel Paul wrote that Cornwallis and his council raised a “company of Volunteers” by offering a bounty on Mi’kmaq (women, children, infirm; it didn’t matter).⁶

The British had “unwavering resolve to dispossess the Mi’kmaq of everything and to subjugate them absolutely.”⁷ The Mi’kmaq were forced on to reserves too small to provide an adequate means of subsistence. This reduced the Mi’kmaq to a state of dependency, subordination, and internal colonization.⁸

Credentials of a Genocidaire

That Cornwallis is a genocidaire is apparent from the proclamation Cornwallis and his council issued on 1 October 1759. The proclamation set a bounty on the scalps of Mi’kmaq. One can read from the proclamation:

That, in order to secure the Province from further statements of the Indians, some effectual methods should be taken to pursue them to their haunts, and show them because of such actions, they shall not be secure within the Province…

That a reward of ten guineas be granted for every Micmac taken, or killed.⁹

In 1750, the bounty was raised from 10 to 50 guineas. Paul said this bounty is still in effect, having never been repealed by the federal government.

To reclaim this sordid history, the Rename Cornwallis Initiative is underway, drafted by school teacher Cheryl Leblanc-Weldon and Paul, to redesignate these landmarks named after a genocidaire. The petition reads, in part:

To: To the Governments of Canada, Great Britain, the province of Nova Scotia, and all its municipalities and school boards

… Professor Geoffrey Plank of the University of Cincinnati comments about their rational [sic] for approving such a barbarous course of action:

“If the Micmac chose to resist his expropriation of land, the governor intended to conduct a war unlike any that had been fought in Nova Scotia before. He outlined his thinking in an unambiguous letter to the Board of Trade. If there was to be a war, he did not want the war to end with a peace agreement. ‘It would be better to root the Micmac out of the peninsula decisively and forever.’ The war began soon after the governor made this statement.”

Therefore, we the undersigned, because we firmly believe that no person who attempted genocide should, under any circumstances, receive public honors, express support for changing the name of all public entities such as schools, streets, parks, etc. which currently honor the name of Edward Cornwallis, founder of the British colonial city of Halifax which is currently the capital city of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada.

We ask this be done as a move towards restoring justice to the Mi’kmaq First Nation People of Nova Scotia. Governor Cornwallis, as part of the machinery of colonization, attempting to destroy them completely, oversaw the infliction of terrible suffering and indignities on men, women and children of the Mi’kmaq Nation. Morally, no Nation that self-describes itself as civilized, can justify honoring such a man. His action demands that he be condemned by honorable caring citizens, not honored!

Opposition has arisen to the Rename Cornwallis Initiative. Joseph Bogle calls accusations of genocide against Cornwallis “a blatant lie.” He has started a counter petition to preserve the name of Cornwallis that has garnered 12 signatures (as of 12 August 2009).

LeBlanc-Weldon said, “I am pleased with the progress of our petition as it continues to grow on a daily basis. I think the fact that the counter petition only has 12 signatures pretty much shows that there is not a vocal opposition to our desire for change.”

Bogle’s accusation is counter to the colonial records.¹⁰

Governmental Inaction

The former Nova Scotia heritage minister Bill Dooks argued against the redesignation. Dooks said, “Changing a name does not change what happened. I cannot change the past.” No one asked Dooks to change past events. The designations are current, and that is the change being sought.

The new social democratic government in Nova Scotia also seems uninterested in the redesignation. David Denny, advisor to Heritage Minister Percy Paris, communicated in a statement: “This is not a matter under consideration or review by the new government at this time.”

Changing Names

Redesignation has been the historical practice in Canada; witness the renaming of Mt. Stalin in British Columbia to Mt. Peck and renaming the Ontario town of New Berlin to Kitchener (who is held by many to be a war criminal himself¹¹ ). Furthermore, many place names are reverting to their Indigenous names; for example, the Queen Charlotte Islands are now usually called Haida Gwaii, the Mackenzie River is Deh Cho, etc.

The renaming of landmarks, buildings, and institutions that honor the genocidaire Cornwallis should only be a beginning. The city of Amherst, “Nova Scotia” is named after British army officer Jeffery Amherst notorious for advocating biological warfare against Original Peoples.¹²

In front of the Halifax Public Library is a statue of the bulky mass of Winston Churchill — the man who advocated “spread[ing] a lively terror” with poison gas. His words reveal his racism: “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas… I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes… ”¹³

Racism, and indifference, by Nova Scotians also affect the Rename Cornwallis campaign. “In some cases it’s a racist thing. They say ‘[the Mi’kmaq] lost, too bad’… or ‘lots of people did things wrong, it was war, don’t judge it by today’s standards.’ Others say ‘it doesn’t affect my life,’ but when they find out about it they say ‘yeah, it should change,’” said Leblanc-Weldon.¹⁴

1. Jipugtug is the original designation by the indigenous Mi’kmaq people. Halifax is the colonial designation.
2. Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, & David Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years (Halifax: Formac Publishing, 1999): 8.
3. See map.
4. Fingard et al.: 13.
5. William B. Hamilton, The Macmillan Book of Canadian Place Names (Macmillan, 1978).
6. Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not the Savages: A Mi’kmaq Perspective on the Collision between European and Native American Civilizations (Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Press, 2000): 109-113.
7. Paul: 115.
8. Harald E.L. Prins, The Mi’kmaq: Resistance, Accommodation, and Cultural Survival (Harcourt Brace, 1996): 7.
9. ”A Monstrous crime, a day to remember in Canadian history,” Shunpiking: People of the Dawn (First Nations Supplement), 13 (49), Fall 2007: 14. See also Daniel N. Paul, “British Scalp Proclamations: 1749 and 1750,” www.danielnpaul.com.
10. “It is ironic Europeans who were responsible for diminishing Mi’kmaq life documented much of what they were destroying – in explorer’s logs, trade letters, missionary letters, colonial records, and so forth.” Prins: 4.
11. See “The crimes,” AngloBoer.com.
12. ”Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets,” Native Web.
13. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (Noonday Press, 1992).
14. Ben Sichel, “Renaming Cornwallis,” The Dominion, 17 July 2009.

In early 2000, I was walking through Manhattan with three friends on our way to meet a fourth member of our party. This was well before cell phones had become so completely pervasive but still, I was the only one in our group without one. I sarcastically commented on this and was prompted mocked as a Luddite. Then it was on to the essential business of figuring out how to meet up with friend #4.

Out came a cell phone. A call was placed to another cell phone. A meeting place was agreed upon and we were on our way. Friend #1 hung up his phone and turned to me, declaring that this was “one of those times” when a cell phone was indispensable. To which I replied:

“If we didn’t have access to your cell phone or any cell phones at all, we would’ve been simply been more creative in order to come up with a plan that would’ve gotten all of us together without a major hassle. Instead, the phone made us lazy because we knew we could just wing it. Instead of problem-solving, we opted for reliance on consumer electronics.”

A similar rant, of course, could realistically be applied to calculators. Not to mention, the spell-check function on your computer, most software programs in general, and yeah…the computer itself. We no longer have to learn how to spell or remember phone numbers or do math in our heads or memorize directions or even walk up a single flight of stairs. Thanks to the marvels of industrial civilization, we happily delegate such tedious tasks to technology so we can have time to focus on the truly important stuff, like…um…well…uh…removing 90% of the large fish from the ocean, perhaps?

Harmony: Agreement in feeling or opinion

We each possess a physiology that evolved to negotiate the Stone Age. Unfortunately, we live in the Space Age. There’s the rub. We are urban cavemen — overmatched in our daily battle to navigate an artificial reality because we have lost contact with our instincts.

“Pediatricians nowadays see fewer kids with broken bones from climbing trees and more children with longer-lasting repetitive-stress injuries, which are related to playing video games and typing at keyboards,” writes Sally Deneen at The Daily Green. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls this “nature deficit disorder.” As a fourth-grader quoted in Louv’s book explains: “I like to play indoors better, because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Nature deficit disorder is obviously not a medical term; it’s more of a social trend, a trend that plays in factoids like this: American children between the ages of 8 to 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day indoors using computers, video games, television, and MP3 players.

The payoff for all this spectatorship is a lifestyle based on imitation, competition, materialism, and self-delusion. The dominant culture keeps us inactive while our biology desires movement. The dominant culture sells us junk food while our bodies crave nutrients. The dominant culture trains us to be obedient while our minds yearn for freedom. The dominant culture teaches conformity while our souls demand individuality. The dominant culture denies our biology and puts us out of balance with nature.

Among many others things, it can be posited that we did not evolve to experience artificial light after sundown, live inside four walls under that artificial light, eat processed and refined food products, ingest chemicals and pharmaceuticals, sleep during the day and stay up all night, drive cars, travel in an airplane across time zones with such rapidity, become obese, remain sedentary, consume animal flesh or mammary secretions, usurp our immune system with toxic vaccines, exist on a man-made time schedule, be surrounded by copious human-induced electromagnetic radiation, climb giant mountains, travel to space or underwater, wear shoes or eyeglasses, lift weights and develop hypertrophied muscles, exist without community, give birth lying down, live in a world devoid of top soil and nutrient-rich food, smoke cigarettes, be hyper-exposed to toxic pesticides, endure global warming and the greenhouse effect, use cosmetics, or manage the high level of stress and noise that is synonymous with our so-called progress.

Koyaanisqatsi…this is what the Kogi Indians of Colombia call “life out of balance” and this is what we have created as our culture. When I say “culture,” I am referring to what Jason Miller calls “the pitiless, soulless, murderous machine of capitalism and industrial civilization inculcates, indoctrinates, entices, bribes, and coerces nearly everyone to participate in its bloody, rapacious, and relentless assault on the Earth and its sentient inhabitants.” This culture has quickly fucked up the entire planet. So much so that the elusive Kogi have issued a warning to us, their Younger Brothers.

Equilibrium: A condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system

Even the eyes of veteran activists glaze over when I talk about 80% of the world’s forest being gone. They want to debate the latest political minutia while all life on this planet is under relentless assault. It’s cliché to declare that our problems cannot be solved by the same type of thinking that created them. Cliché but accurate. Elections, legislation, protests, petitions, and so on will not stop the flow of pesticides or the use of nuclear power or the glorification of war and its volunteer soldiers or our culture’s relentless march toward total destruction.

Life on Earth is out of balance. Corporations, politicians, judges, cops, and soldiers can’t fix this. In fact, most of them can’t even perceive the imbalance. The change has to come from somewhere else. The change will come from somewhere else, of that we can be sure. The details of outcome, however, are far less certain.

Symbiosis: A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence

One final note, on the medium by which I have shared these thoughts: The aforementioned Kogi have no written language. In part, this is to assure they remember. They talk, they pass down stories, and they remember. “The Kogi attach great importance to memory,” explain the editors of Ode Magazine. “The memory of events with which the community has been confronted, the memory of social regulations within the group and so forth. ‘Memory,’ they say, ‘is like eyes which were made to see. If they close, everything becomes darkness.’ For them, this memory cannot be written down, it must be spoken, passed down by members of the group. In writing, memories are separated from the people and lose their effectiveness.”

So, I ask: what memories are we creating and what are we doing to ensure there will be someone left to appreciate and remember them?

Synergy: Cooperative interaction among groups

Mother Earth Circling Grandmothers: Women’s relationship roles, revolving around motherhood, are the key to understanding Indigenius Socialism. Photo: Stewart Steinhauer

Ready?

By the the beginning of the 21st century—after the imagined end of history, and much to Euro-origin intellectuals’ surprise—a call for socialism in the 21st century arose in Latin America, first among Mayan Zapatistas and then spreading southwards across the remainder of Turtle Island.

Socialism for the 21st century became Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s electoral battle cry, where, in spite of the complete and absolute opposition of the privately owned public media, he won election after election on the promise to redistribute oil revenues to the 60 per cent of the Venezuelan population that was desperately poor. Following Chavez’s program of Catholic liberation theology mixed with a smattering of Marx and topped off with hefty doses of pragmatic state capitalism, nation states across the southern continent tilted Left, with the notable exception of Colombia—after Israel, the largest recipient of US military aid in the world.

Like Evo Morales and the Bolivian Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Indigenous-led social movements throughout Latin America are openly anti-capitalist, because capitalism as a system of political economy means ongoing genocide for Indigenous Peoples and perpetual ecocide for the non-human portion of the Mother Earth Super-Being, of which humans are a part. (See CIBC and Me, Part IV for details.) Coming from a deep history of harmonious relations with Mother Earth, and having already spent millennia in systems of political economy based on simple egalitarian sharing, Indigenous Peoples have something to say about what a potential future steady state global system of political economy could look like.

The first thing I have to point to is the European model of industrial development. It doesn’t work for a multiplicity of reasons, and negates Marx’s theoretical explanation of how capitalism would automatically create a human society filled with workers who will, some day, transform capitalism into a socialist society. From an Indigenous perspective, the Euro-origin industrial model arises from a psychological pitting of human against nature, manufacturing an ideological division that does not exist in Indigenous reality. Further, it posits that something called “scarcity” exists, and that technological development is necessary to better this supposedly natural state of scarcity. Within this imagined dichotomy, nature is wild and humans are civilized; humans living in a state of nature are wild, and therefore not real humans. The real humans live in a state of technologically ameliorated scarcity, assembling vehicles for Ford, GM and Chrysler, with two mortgages and four credit cards. So much for Marx.

From the Indigenous-to-Turtle Island point of view, there is no dichotomy between wild and civilized. There is no such thing as wilderness. When Europeans arrived on Turtle Island they saw wilderness, while Indigenous Peoples saw the space as fully inhabited by culturally developed humans who were living in an active relationship with Mother Earth. Land that was fully, ethically, sustainably inhabited by Indigenous Peoples was seen by Europeans as undeveloped. John Locke’s labour theory of value claims that an Indian’s land is not worth one-thousandth of what the same acre of land would be worth were it located in England. Several hundred years after Locke’s writings, agricultural researchers are suggesting that, if all factors from the global industrial base are included, free-ranging a 60,000,000-head herd of buffalo is most likely the best agricultural use of the High Plains region of North America—exactly the use it was being put to prior to the introduction of Europe’s industrial development model.

From an Indigenous point of view, a logical recommendation for socialism for the 21st century is a complete redesign of humanity’s global industrial base. The redesigned industrial base has to abandon both the myth of scarcity and the myth of wilderness, while embracing the reality that humans actually are an integral part of an enormous Super-Being, whom Indigenous folks have long known as Mother Earth.

A quick dash back to reality for a moment: we humans aren’t going to voluntarily undertake a task of that magnitude while we are in our current antisocial state of mind. It’s easy to point to the global problems facing humanity and say that our self-induced trauma has shaped us to be the species we are now. The challenging part is imagining the way forward from here.

This brings my imagination to the crucial place: the crux of the matter; the originating point. The human vagina. Not being personally endowed with one, and certainly subject to the same forces noted by psychological studies concluding that a man’s imagination goes there at least once every 10 seconds, I realize I’m fair game for criticism.

However, as a once-popular song might have said had it been penned by an Indigenous lyricist, the vagina bone is connected to the stomach bone, and the stomach bone is connected to the heart bone. In an odd way, that just about sums up gender relationships while being anatomically correct, energetically speaking. Indigenous socialism arises from the relationship between mother and child, the first social relationship we humans experience. Looking into the structure of the social institution of Indigenous motherhood, prior to the cataclysmic assault staged by Christian missionaries hell-bent on their civilizing mission, I see some noteworthy features.

Connecting the heart bone to the head bone, I see the common thread of Indigenius Socialism expressed through a particular aspect of human sexuality. Modern medical researchers call it oxytocin, but you don’t have to name it to know it. Human females experience an inter-human bonding, or a primary socialism, during sexual arousal, sexual activity, sexual orgasm(s!), child birth, breast feeding, communal food preparation, communal feasting, and communal socializing in general, when the mood is non-violent. From the very specific Indigenous point of view found on the High Plains, where all those buffalos were roaming among the playful deer and antelope, pre-Christianized human societies practised a non-hierarchical matrifocal social form, where women’s relationships established the social norms. Men had roles, too, and I’ll get to that in time, but women’s relationship roles, revolving around motherhood, are the key to understanding Indigenius Socialism and the foundation of what I am proposing here as Syncretic Indigenius Socialismo.

In the human brain, there is a formation medical researchers call the limbic node; it is croissant-shaped, with one end arching around to almost touch the other. Almost, but not quite. Electricity-based human nerve impulses can jump the gap; stimulation on either end causes excitation on the other end. Oral receptors are at one end of the limbic node and genital receptors are at the other end of the limbic node.

Those crazy medical researchers! Their studies show that in societies with higher emphasis on general brain development, there is a corresponding higher level of oral-genital sexual activity. French and Cree societies both fit into the higher-brain development category and I’ll gamble a wager on the origin of the Metis Nation from the shared preference for oral sex. Is the Metis infinity symbol really just a clever play on a sideways 69?

The head bone is connected to the vagina bone, as many intelligent people know, and you don’t have to be able to articulate the mechanics of it all to get it. In pre-Christian Cree society, adventures in sexuality were separated from pregnancy by well understood and widely practised plant-based and practice-based birth control. You could have your cake and eat it, too. Women were free to choose when, where, and with whom they would conceive a child. Women chose to have children spaced about four years apart—two or three at most—in a lifetime and had children in age cohorts within their own circle of age cohort sister-cousins. Children grew up with an age cohort of cousins, without the burden of having immediate older or younger siblings and with the benefit of being born into a circle of similarly aged playmate relatives.

Women often chose to have a first child around the age of 16, when their mothers were about 32, their grandmothers were about 48, their great-grandmothers were about 64, and their great-great grandmothers were about 80. It was not uncommon for women to live to 100 years, so up to six generations of mothers could be present in an extended family, with the newborn infant representing the seventh generation. This meant that every new mother was surrounded by a depth of experience in the fine arts of Indigenous Socialism. She was certainly never on her own, without support, trying to care for several, or even a dozen or more children, all her own, often on her own, as was the European standard at that same time in history.

Out of this foundational matrix arose the basic form of Indigenous Socialism. By choosing fathers from across the bio-region, extended family villages were cross-linked with many other extended family villages, in an intricate web that formed the regional and national governance systems. It was literally all in the family. The genius of Indigenous Socialism was that it did not extend from an avant-garde of intellectuals as a theory imposed imperfectly, top down, on a mass population, but instead was an organic product of a matrifocal society. When Fredrick Engels travelled to upper New York State to see for himself Haudenosaunee society in action, he marvelled at how a territorially large and heavily populated region could self-manage without elected officials, judges, police or prisons.

Like technological development, the organization of daily affairs in human society was founded on a completely different paradigm. Men did have roles, but women’s expectations of men were adjusted to account for men’s inherent weaknesses, most notably a propensity towards violence and a severe shortage of oxytocin. The poor dears could only get a blast of the primal socialist juice during orgasm; all the more reason to assist them in attaining as many as possible during a lifetime. Along with frequent orgasms, ceremonial activities also played an important part in reducing the potential stressor on a socialist system caused by an overabundance of testosterone—for instance, the sweatlodge. This wasn’t just an Indigenous introduction; Scandanavian societies, too, recognized the social benefits of immersing men in energy-sapping hot steamy environments for prolonged periods of time.

The Indigenius twist was an emphasis on the latent altruistic nature possibly underlying male humans’ obvious violent nature, as a remedy to the anti-social behaviours otherwise all too dominant. Protocol rituals in a simple sweatlodge ceremony remind and reinforce the necessary immersion of humans in the natural world; many times I’ve heard Elders leading sweatlodge ceremonies ritually comment on how we humans must humble ourselves and crawl on our hands and knees into the lodge, re-entering the womb of Mother Earth. During normal sweatlodge proceedings, water, earth, wind and fire are acknowledged with gratitude, from the perspective of the human family, while reminding us of our survival-based obligations to the circle of natural forces we have emerged from. The combination of intense heat, complete darkness and an extraordinary soundscape often moves participants out of day-to-day mundane realities and into the immediacy of relationship with Mother Earth. Everyone simultaneously has a unique experience and a deeply bonding common experience. Real socialism.

The genius of Indigenous ceremony is that it intentionally creates a psychological space where Indigenius Socialism can come to life, rewarding co-operation, voluntary sharing and spontaneous acts of kindness, while penalizing greed, selfishness and violence. These actions are easy for women, but hard for men—that damn testosterone! Within the ceremonial space, Indigenous women have figured out a method, over millennia, for engaging men, by using the same tactics used with young children. Useful roles are identified and social prestige is offered, while steady, firm Elder female hands quietly steer the ceremonial proceedings from a discreet position in the background.

I realize that we seem to be a long way away from the way of life that Rosa Luxemburg called primitive communism; she was just looking at what Marxists call the mode of production and she didn’t mean the mode of reproduction of the reserve army of labour. A syncretic Indigenius Socialism for the 21st century has to account, in practice, for both the mode of production and the mode of reproduction and does so by putting the mode of reproduction where it belongs: first. You can’t build a socialist future among antisocial human beings; the 20th century is a fine illustration of that point.

Becoming pregnant, being pregnant, giving birth, nurturing a new life: here’s where we can see the transcendence of the notions of wilderness and scarcity. Mother Earth is not wild, nor is She short on essential items for Her existence. The same is potentially true for every human mother; the keys are sharing and co-operation. Exactly what a global human society would look like following those two simple concepts is not for me to say, but I can predict something.

Indigenius Socialism will be built by women, for humanity, utilizing everything now in existence, to rise above the barbarism of the present moment. We men can choose to be women’s assistants in this project; it could be an ecstatic experience. Imagine global human population plummeting in a women-led movement, while orgasms per lifetime are skyrocketing. Perhaps the Metis Nation is a signpost to the future: Indigenous Peoples will be Peoples indigenous to Mother Earth—one race, diverse, living locally while thinking globally, wickedly intelligent, one more species among many worth saving from extinction. There is a window of opportunity now, but, if we humans don’t take it, we will just create another one soon. We will eventually choose socialism over barbarism; our Mother told us to.

Internal and External Correlation of Forces

The correlation of forces between capitalists and workers in the energy sector in Latin America varies greatly: In Venezuela, the Chavez government, with the backing of the oil workers union, has extended public ownership and distributed oil revenues to the popular classes through food subsidies, universal health and public education programs. At the other extreme in Colombia under President Uribe, private foreign oil companies are increasingly in control, profits are repatriated to the imperial countries or taken out of the country by the domestic elite, government revenues subsidize the oligarchy and government-backed death squads and the military to assassinate and threaten trade union and community leaders.

Between these two poles of the nationalist left and the neo-fascist right, several other variants exist: Social democrat, social liberal and neo-liberal.

Bolivia and Ecuador, under Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, represent the social democratic approach, proposing ‘partnerships’ between ‘state’ and foreign capitalist oil companies, which share the profits from exploitation of crude petroleum. The foreign companies still control most or all of the refining and trading and the social democratic government have yet to establish their own ‘marketing systems.’

The ‘social liberal’ policies are found in Brazil and Argentina where the major oil companies are ‘state’ only in name only, as they are traded on the stock markets in Latin America and Wall Street. State revenue is distributed in an unequal proportion, the bulk used to subsidize the agro-mineral sector and minority share to fund social programs – including basic anti-poverty programs.

The neo-liberal policies are found in Mexico and Peru where former publicly owned oil companies and energy resources have been handed over to foreign oil and energy companies. In Mexico only the militancy of the electrical workers union(SME) has prevented the government from privatizing this strategic industry. Under the neo-liberal regimes the oil and energy revenues have been distributed almost exclusively among the foreign and domestic ruling class and only a minimum’ trickles down’ to the workers, peasants and Indian communities in the form of subsistence “poverty programs.” Neo-liberal regimes disinvest and plunder the public enterprises, decreasing their share of production and leaving them with debts, obsolete technology and declining capacity to fulfill overseas obligations.

The Impact of the Economic Boom and Global Recession (2003-2009)

The performance and ownership of the energy sector is influenced by the internal class struggle, the condition of the world economy and the rise and decline of US imperialism. The crisis of neo-liberalism and the popular rebellions between 1999-2005 ended the principal phase of large-scale privatization in many countries of Latin America. The overthrow of the governments of de la Rua in Argentina, Sanchez de Losado in Bolivia and Noboa and Gutierrez in Ecuador, the defeat of the golpistas in Venezuela (April 2002) and the bosses lockout (December 2002-February 2003) led the radical mass movements to set a new agenda: The re-nationalization of the energy sector: petroleum, the electrical sector, mining and other strategic sectors.

The popular rebellions however, with the exception of Venezuela, did not lead to worker-peasant governments. Instead, center-left middle class-led alliances with the popular classes led to some partial reforms. In Bolivia, Evo Morales increased the role of the state in partnership with 42 foreign-owned oil and gas companies. Kirchner set up a state company but refused to re-nationalize YPF/Repsol in Argentina. In Ecuador, Correa increased taxes on petroleum companies, but the foreign multinational companies still produce 57% of the oil. In Brazil, Lula refused to re-nationalize the privatized enterprises – and the majority of shares in Petrobras have remained in the hands of private investors.

The major struggle against the energy and mining companies’ exploitation in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile were led by the Indian movements and in some cases were supported by petroleum workers and peasant organizations. The reason is clear: The energy companies were not merely exploiting labor, they were destroying their economies and living conditions through massive contamination of the environmentand seizure of their traditional.

In Brazil, Lula’s large-scale, long-term promotion of huge multi-national sugar plantations and refineries producing ethanol displaced thousands of small farmers and Indian communities and intensified the exploitation of the rural workers. The rural landless workers’ movement (MST) and other rural social movements, allied with Lula, engaged in defensive struggles. However, without urban allies, they were unable to defeat the combination of Lula and agro-business.

Urban Workers and Trade Unions

The major driving force in the popular rebellions against neo-liberalism varies in different countries and at different times.

In Ecuador, the oil, mining and factory workers joined the mass peasant movements to overthrow Noboa at the beginning of the decade. In Argentina, the unemployed workers and the middle class led the struggle to overthrow De la Rua. In Venezuela, the petroleum workers split with a minority supporting the bosses’ lockout and the majority took control and operated the wells in support of President Chavez. Throughout the decade, however, the energy sector workers have been organized and militant in defense of their economic sector, opposing privatization and protecting their living standards through mass struggle. But their presence in the popular rebellions has been scarce. In many cases the leadership of the energy trade unions has supported the center-left regimes in order to secure wage concessions and job protection. In the best of cases, the energy trade unions have engaged in solidarity demonstrations with the mass struggle of the peasants, Indians and unemployed.

Paradoxically, the strong and militant organization of the energy unions has led to economic gains and sectoral reforms, which have led to highly segregated islands of affluence among a mass of urban and rural poor. The past decade has witnessed the decline of the energy workers as a vanguard in the popular rebellions: Other classes have taken their place. This has created a strategic danger because in the course of large-scale privatizations of the energy sector, the workers will fail to secure the support of the rest of the working class and peasants.

While oil exploitation in the Amazon creates ‘jobs for oil workers,’ it destroys the livelihood of the Indigenous communities and sets off a deadly conflict between the oil companies and their workers against the mass of artisans, small farmers and Indigenous communities dependent on farming, fishing, and handicrafts in proximity to the petroleum and mining operations.

The World Recession and the Energy Sector

The world crisis cannot be resolved by strikes and protests alone. Even re-nationalization cannot, in itself, create the basis for a national recovery. The only alternative facing the energy sector workers is an internal ‘cultural-political revolution’ in which they rethink their basic strategy and move beyond sectoral struggles.

The current prolonged deep recession can only be confronted at the national-political level – by a turn to forming a broad-mass political alliance with the popular classes with a strategy for taking state power. In the face of the collapse of capitalism, the trade union struggle is no longer effective. The trade unions can only succeed by taking a decisive turn toward anti-capitalist movements – a turn toward an explicit embrace of socialism.

Today the entire capitalist class has seized control of the state, specifically the state treasury, to finance their survival and recovery at the expense of the workers, peasants, Indians and the urban poor. As the crisis deepens, mass urban and rural rebellion will once again break the bonds of bourgeois hegemony. The question will arise: Will the energy workers be part of a socialist solution or part of the capitalist problem? Will the energy workers return to become part of the vanguard or remain part of the rearguard? What is absolutely clear is that the energy workers occupy a strategic position in the world capitalist system – without petroleum nothing moves, without electricity the bankers cannot count their profits and the investors cannot read their dividend payments.

Never has the capitalist system in its entirety demonstrated today in real life that it is a failed system – neither producing goods and services, nor providing credit and finance, nor employing labor.

Karl Marx’s famous phrase comes to mind: “A specter is haunting the capitalist class: The coming of the socialist revolution.”

Alan García is no stranger to government-sponsored massacres. In June 1986, he ordered the military to bomb and shell prisons in the capital holding many hundreds of political prisoners protesting prison conditions – resulting in over 400 known victims. Later, obscure mass graves revealed dozens more. This notorious massacre took place while García was hosting a gathering of the so-called ‘Socialist’ International in Lima. His political party, APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) a member of the ‘International’, was embarrassed by the public display of its ‘national-socialist’ proclivities, before hundreds of European Social Democrat functionaries. Charged with misappropriation of government funds and leaving office with an inflation rate of almost 8,000% in 1990, he agreed to support Presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori in exchange for amnesty. When Fujimori imposed a dictatorship in 1992, García went into self-imposed exile in Colombia and later, France. He returned in 2001 when the statute of limitations on his corruption charges had expired and Fujimori was forced to resign amidst charges of running death squads and spying on his critics. García won the 2006 Presidential elections in a run-off against the pro-Indian nationalist candidate and former Army officer, Ollanta Humala, thanks to financial and media backing by Lima’s rightwing, ethnic European oligarchs and US overseas ‘AID’ agencies.

Back in power, García left no doubt about his political and economic agenda. In October 2007 he announced his strategy of placing foreign multi-national mining companies at the center of his economic ‘development’ program, while justifying the brutal displacement of small producers from communal lands and indigenous villages in the name of ‘modernization’.

García pushed through congressional legislation in line with the US-promoted ‘Free Trade Agreement of the Americas’ or ALCA. Peru was one of only three Latin American nations to support the US proposal. He opened Peru to the unprecedented plunder of its resources, labor, land and markets by the multinationals. In late 2007, García began to award huge tracts of traditional indigenous lands in the Amazon region for exploitation by foreign mining and energy multinationals. This was in violation of a 1969 International Labor Organization-brokered agreement obligating the Peruvian government to consult and negotiate with the indigenous inhabitants over exploitation of their lands and rivers. Under his ‘open door’ policy, the mining sector of the economy expanded rapidly and made huge profits from the record-high world commodity prices and the growing Asian (Chinese) demand for raw materials. The multinational corporations were attracted by Peru’s low corporate taxes and royalty payments and virtually free access to water and cheap government-subsidized electricity rates. The enforcement of environmental regulations was suspended in these ecologically fragile regions, leading to wide-spread contamination of the rivers, ground water, air and soil in the surrounding indigenous communities. Poisons from mining operations led to massive fish kills and rendered the water unfit for drinking. The operations decimated the tropical forests, undermining the livelihood of tens of thousands of villagers engaged in traditional artisan work and subsistence forest gathering and agricultural activities.

The profits of the mining bonanza go primarily to the overseas companies. The García regime distributes state revenues to his supporters among the financial and real estate speculators, luxury goods importers and political cronies in Lima’s enclosed upscale, heavily guarded neighborhoods and exclusive country-clubs. As the profit margins of the multinationals reached an incredible 50% and government revenues exceeded $1 billion US dollars, the indigenous communities lacked paved roads, safe water, basic health services and schools. Worse still, they experienced a rapid deterioration of their everyday lives as the influx of mining capital led to increased prices for basic food and medicine. Even the World Bank in its Annual Report for 2008 and the editors of the Financial Times of London urged the García regime to address the growing discontent and crisis among the indigenous communities. Delegations from the indigenous communities had traveled to Lima to try to establish a dialogue with the President in order to address the degradation of their lands and communities. The delegates were met with closed doors. García maintained that ‘progress and modernity come from the big investments by the multinationals…, (rather than) the poor peasants who haven’t a centavo to invest.’ He interpreted the appeals for peaceful dialogue as a sign of weakness among the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon and increased his grants of exploitation concessions to foreign MNCs even deeper into the Amazon. He cut off virtually all possibility for dialogue and compromise with the Indian communities.

The Amazonian Indian communities responded by forming the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP). They held public protests for over 7 weeks culminating in the blocking of two transnational highways. This enraged García, who referred to the protestors as ‘savages and barbarians‘ and sent police and military units to suppress the mass action. What García failed to consider was the fact that a significant proportion of indigenous men in these villages had served as rmy conscripts, who fought in the 1995 war against Ecuador while others had been trained in local self-defense community organizations. These combat veterans were not intimidated by state terror and their resistance to the initial police attacks resulted in both police and Indian casualties. García then declared ‘war on the savages’ sending a heavy military force with helicopters and armored troops with orders to ‘shoot to kill’. AIDESEP activists report over one hundred deaths among the indigenous protestors and their families: Indians were murdered in the streets, in their homes and workplaces. The remains of many victims are believed to have been dumped in the ravines and rivers.

Conclusion

The Obama regime has predictably not issued a single word of concern or protest in the face of one of the worst massacres of Peruvian civilians in this decade – perpetrated by one of America’s closest remaining allies in Latin America. García, taking his talking points from the US Ambassador, accused Venezuela and Bolivia of having instigated the Indian ‘uprising’, quoting a letter of support from Bolivia’s President Evo Morales sent to an intercontinental conference of Indian communities held in Lima in May as ‘proof’. Martial law was declared and the entire Amazon region of Peru is being militarized. Meetings are banned and family members are forbidden from searching for their missing relatives.

Throughout Latin America, all the major Indian organizations have expressed their solidarity with the Peruvian indigenous movements. Within Peru, mass social movements, trade unions and human rights groups have organized a general strike on June 11. Fearing the spread of mass protests, El Commercio, the conservative Lima daily, cautioned García to adopt some conciliatory measures to avoid a generalized urban uprising. A one-day truce was declared on June 10, but the Indian organizations refused to end their blockade of the highways unless the García Government rescinds its illegal land grant decrees.

In the meantime, a strange silence hangs over the White House. Our usually garrulous President Obama, so adept at reciting platitudes about diversity and tolerance and praising peace and justice, cannot find a single phrase in his prepared script condemning the massacre of scores of indigenous inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon. When egregious violations of human rights are committed in Latin America by a US backed client-President following Washington’s formula of ‘free trade’, deregulation of environmental protections and hostility toward anti-imperialist countries (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), Obama favors complicity over condemnation.

The documentary Mine: Story of a Sacred Mountain.

The occasional rustling in the tree above us revealed itself to be a giant squirrel. We’d been climbing for what felt like an eternity but was, in reality, only an hour. The 50lb backpacks stuffed with filming gear weren’t making the hike any easier.

Our journey had already taken us from a village of India’s remote Dongria Kondh tribe, up through gardens of palm trees, jackfruit and millet and into the dense forests above. Now we were nearing the plateau at the top of the mountain. Occasional glimpses through the trees revealed forested ridges rising through the wispy clouds, and stretching down into the plains below.

We were following Lodu Sikaka, a Dongria Kondh tribesman and leader of Lakhpadar, the village we had been staying in the past nights. He led the way through the trees, kicking away the red rocks that lay scattered across the path so we wouldn’t trip.

Despite the beauty of the forests, and the butterflies which now filled the air, it was these rocks we had come to see. Their colour was down to bauxite, the raw material for aluminium. It’s these riches which have attracted Vedanta Resources, a London-based mining company, to the Dongria Kondh’s Niyamgiri hills. They’ve been given the go-ahead to build a vast open-cast mine on the top of Niyamgiri, the mountain the Dongria Kondh people worship as a God. Lodu had plenty to say about that.

We found a spot on the edge of a ridge with extraordinary views over the foothills. The camera was quickly set up, and we started recording.

“They want to take these rocks from the mountain,” he said. “But this is our life. If we lose the mountains, we’ll end up in great trouble. We’ll lose our soul. Niyamgiri is our soul.”

“That is why we are ready to lay down our lives to save Niyamgiri.”

Lodu was reserved, but it’s clear he knew every inch of the mountain he had grown up on. Planning to blast millions of tons of bauxite out of it was bad enough. But Vedanta hasn’t even consulted the Dongria Kondh. At one point it claimed they don’t even live there.

Genuine anger – and fear – bubbles away just underneath the surface. But the Dongria aren’t the kind of people to accept their fate meekly.

“We’ll not allow Vedanta to take away our mountains. We’ll just not allow it,” Lodu said.

Vedanta Resources was dealt a double blow on 30 March as the OECD agreed that all the complaints made by Survival International about the company’s planned bauxite mine in Orissa merit further consideration, and Indian police investigate fraud allegations against the company’s billionaire chairman Anil Agarwal.

Ashimah suffers from a rare genetic condition that means her brain fails to tell her lungs to work. Without the assistance of an electric inhalator, she would simply stop breathing.

That nearly happened late last year when the generator broke down during the night. Her parents, Siham and Faris, woke to find the 11-month-old’s face blue from a lack of oxygen. They reconnected the inhalator to a set of car batteries and then battled to fix the generator before the two hours of stored power ran out.

The desperate plight of Ashimah’s parents is shared by thousands of other Bedouin families caring for chronically sick relatives who live in communities to which Israel refuses to supply electricity, said Wasim Abas of Physicians for Human Rights in Israel.

The organization’s latest report, titled “Sentenced to Darkness,” calls the state’s denial of essential services, including running water and electricity, to 83,000 Bedouin in the southern Negev desert, “bureaucratic evil.”

Mr. Abas said the lives of Bedouin patients who need a reliable supply of electricity — to refrigerate medicines and special foods, run air-conditioning or power nebulisers and inhalators — are being put in grave danger by official intransigence.

According to the report, 45 Bedouin villages have been denied services as a way to pressure them to renounce their title to ancestral lands and their traditional pastoral way of life. Instead, it is hoped they will move into a handful of deprived and land-starved Bedouin townships specially built by the state.

Concrete homes in the so-called unrecognized villages are under permanent threat of demolition, forcing many residents to live in tin huts and tents, and the national utility companies are barred from connecting them to services.

The Bedouin languish at the bottom of the country’s social and economic indices, with 70 percent of children living in poverty. Israel has also located a chemical waste dump and a massive electricity generating station close to several of the Negev’s unrecognized villages, though it refuses to connect them to the grid.

Mr. Abas said the lack of an electricity supply in particular posed a severe threat to the Bedouin community’s health. A fifth of all residents of unrecognized villages suffer from chronic illness, particularly asthma and diabetes, and require a reliable electrical supply to their homes for their treatment. Most must travel long distances, usually over dirt tracks, to reach health clinics and hospitals.

“We found that a lack of electricity contributed to a deterioration in the condition of these patients in about 70 per cent of cases, and directly resulted in death in two percent of cases,” Mr. Abas said.

Hopes that Israel would be forced to connect the villages to the national grid were dashed in 2005 when the courts ruled against the family of a three-year-old cancer victim, Enas al Atrash, who was demanding electricity for the family home. Doctors had warned that Enas might die without reliable refrigeration of her medicines and an air-conditioned environment.

Instead, the judges criticized the family for living in an unrecognized village, though they recommended that officials contribute to the family’s large fuel bill so they could continue running a generator.

The Physicians for Human Rights report notes that the enforcement of planning laws in the case of Bedouin villages, most of which pre-date Israel’s creation in 1948, contrasts strongly with the treatment of the many Jewish communities that have been established illegally under Israeli law.

Dozens of individual ranches in the Negev and at least 100 of what are called settlement “outposts” in the West Bank have been set up without permits from the Israeli authorities but nonetheless have been connected to services by the national utility firms.

Yeela Livnat Raanan, a lecturer in research methods at Sapir College in the Negev town of Sderot who works with a Bedouin lobby group, the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages, called the situation of Bedouin families “intolerable”.

She said a joint health survey conducted by the council with Physicians for Human Rights last year showed high levels of chronic illness among Bedouin children in the unrecognized villages, with 13 per cent suffering from severe asthma.

“There are numerous reasons for the high incidence of respiratory problems,” Dr. Raanan said. “There is no trash collection, so garbage has to be burnt. The tin huts many Bedouin are forced to live in offer little protection from the extreme temperature range in the desert. The huts are heated with coal but cannot easily be ventilated, and the electricity generators themselves are polluting.”

Given the traditional large size of Bedouin families, she said, the problems associated with caring for a chronically sick relative afflicted many, if not most, of the Bedouin.

“The suffering of the Bedouin just does not register for most Jews in Israel,” Dr. Ranaan said. “They prefer to trust government officials who tell them that the Bedouin are primitive, stupid and hostile, and that they are trying to take over state land. We have to challenge this racism.”

Ashimah’s family live in the 750-strong community of El Bat, which was finally recognized a year ago as part of a plan to develop more townships for the rapidly growing Bedouin population. Nonetheless, the residents’ chances of being connected to the electricity grid are still far off.

The state is presenting endless delays in approving the planning maps we need,” said Ibrahim Abu Sbieh, Ashimah’s grandfather and the village leader.

“There are no plans to build schools, clinics or roads. We expect things to change very slowly.”

He said the family finally dared to replace their tin hut with a concrete home seven years ago, when notified that recognition was imminent. But they have still been served with a demolition notice and are paying off a series of fines to avert destruction of their house.

Ashimah’s mother, Siham, said she lived with the constant fear of the generator failing and being unable to get her baby daughter to the nearest hospital, 35 km away in Beersheva, in time.

“Israel cuts off the electricity to Gaza and the world is outraged,” Mr. Abu Sbieh said. “But we’ve been living like this for decades and no one cares.”

The self-serving belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent or what came to be known as Manifest Destiny was used by its advocates to justify territorial acquisitions as well as the genocide of the Native American populations, who were standing in the way of its believers and supporters.

As the population of the original 13 U.S. states grew with the ever-increasing inflow of immigrants from Europe, economic need and greed necessitated widespread expansion into the western frontiers. According to census data, the U.S. population grew from about 5 million in 1800 to more than 23 million by 1850. It is estimated that nearly 4 million settlers moved to western territories between 1820 and 1850 by displacing the America’s Original Peoples who were herded into designated reservations. For the colonists, appropriation of land represented potential wealth and opportunities for self-advancement.

By the 1840s, technological innovations such as steamboats and network of railroads and telegraphic lines ushered in the modern long distance transport and communication systems, which along with the aid of superior firearms had quickened the pace of conquest and occupation. Southerners anxious to enlarge the slave empire were among the most ardent champions of the crusade for more territory. New slave states were expected to enhance the South’s political power in the U.S. Congress and, equally important, serve as an opening for exploiting its growing slave population.

One of the important – but less-discussed – documents in American history is the Royal Proclamation of 1763 issued by Britain’s King George regarding the settlement line in North America. King George had divided his colonies in North American into three ethnically based enclaves: his English-speaking subjects in the thirteen colonies on lands east of the Appalachian Mountains, his French-speaking subjects in what is now part of Canada, and his American “Indian” subjects on lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Para 12 of the Proclamation, which was issued on 07 October 1763, stated that:

And whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds…. any Lands whatever, which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them.

Para 14 of the Proclamation also stated that:

And We do hereby strictly forbid, on Pain of our Displeasure, all our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved, without our especial leave and Licence for that Purpose first obtained.

In effect, the Proclamation of 1763 introduced the idea of a geographical place called “Indian territory,” to mean the lands that Indian tribes occupied and held without disturbance or trespassing from outsiders. The King’s proclamation anticipated that the British could acquire lands from Indian Country but only by an agreement directly between a tribe and the King or his representative; it was illegal for individual Englishmen to buy lands directly from Indian Country. Furthermore, the way in which new states would be created out of the western lands and then admitted into the Union was instituted through the Northwest Ordinance that was promulgated on 13 July 1787. The U.S. Congress spelt out its Indian policy in Article 3 of the Ordinance, which was as follows:

The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

Contrary to the flattering sentiments that were expressed about America’s Original Peoples in the Northwest Ordinance of 13 July 1787, the U.S. Constitution that was adopted just a month later on 17 September 1787 did not contain any such lofty notions. Instead,

the Constitution had only one direct and one oblique reference to the conduct of Indian affairs. The direct reference stated that Congress shall have the power to regulate trade with the Indian tribes. The indirect reference acknowledged that “Indians not taxed” were outside the American polity and presumably kept their own limited sovereignty within U.S. borders.¹

Therefore, it is apparent that, unlike the Northwest Ordinance, there was nothing in the U.S. Constitution to either protect the rights of the “American-Indians” or to prevent any wrongs being done to them; they were left completely at the mercy of the marauding settlers, who were intent on usurping the Indian territories.

In gross violation of the Proclamation of 1763, widespread European American population movement to the west of the Appalachian Mountains took place unabated. The advance of White settlers, with their reckless slaughter of the buffalo herds on which the Original Peoples depended for their livelihood and as well as dispossession of their traditional hunting grounds ultimately lead to the outbreak of bloody warfare between the Original Peoples and the English-speaking settlers. Wanton transgression of peace agreements by prospectors seeking valuable minerals in tribal lands was another major cause of disaffection among the Original Peoples.

The U.S. government pursued a policy of removing the indigenous population to reservations across West of the Mississippi River with such success that by 1860 the great majority of the America’s Original Peoples had been relocated. Hostilities between the U.S. Army and indigenous tribes reached its height between 1869 and 1878, when over 200 pitched battles were waged. Although the Original Peoples fought fiercely and courageously, the continuing flow of settlers to the West with advanced transport & communication systems, and sophisticated arms made their resistance ineffectual. After 1890, the vastly decimated tribes could hardly carry on the fight.

Civil War and After

As the United States expanded westward, the dispute over slavery intensified. The question of whether Missouri, which was part of the territory of Louisiana that was purchased by USA from France in 1803 and which sought statehood in 1819, would be admitted to the Union as a “slave” or “free” state set off a fierce debate between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the U.S. Congress. To end the controversy, a compromise called the “Missouri Compromise” was worked out in 1820. It was agreed that Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state while another state named Maine would be carved out of the State of Massachusetts and be admitted as a free state, thereby maintaining a balance of 12 “slave” and 12 “free” states. In addition, as per the compromise, the rest of the territory of Louisiana, which lay north of the 36 degree 30 minute north latitude, was to remain free of slavery. The balance was finally disrupted in 1850, when Southerners permitted California to enter as a free state in exchange for laws strengthening slavery such as the Fugitive Slave Law. This balance was further upset with the additions of free Minnesota (1858) and Oregon (1859).

The widening gap between “slave” and “free” states was also symbolic of the different economic systems in each region: while the South was devoted to an agrarian plantation economy, the North had embraced industrialization. Similarly, while in the South the growth in population was relatively slow, the Northern states were experiencing high birth rates and a large influx of European immigrants. This differential growth in population threatened the domination of the Southerners over the Union government and the election of a Northerner, and a potentially anti-slavery advocate, as president. In 1861, the population in the North was about 22 million (including 500,000 slaves) while in the South it was around 9 million (including more than 3.5 million slaves). Thus, the South’s white population was outnumbered by a ratio of more than four to one when compared with that of the North.

The conflict between the Northern states and the Southern states on the question of slavery was symbolic of the struggle between the pro-slavery landed gentry in the South and the pro free-labour industrial bourgeoisie from the North for political supremacy. With the growth of large-scale industry in the North, the Northern bourgeoisie were eager to clip the wings of the landed-gentry, who enjoyed power disproportionate to their real strength since under Article I, Section 2, Paragraph iii of the 1787 Constitution they had representation in proportion to the number of slaves that they owned. The opportunity came when the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted in 1850. To oppose the repugnant Law, a group of former members of the Democratic Party and some other smaller parties founded the Republican Party in Wisconsin in 1854. The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln, who was opposed to expansion of slavery into new territories, as its candidate for the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln managed to narrowly beat his pro-slavery opponent at the polls. Lincoln’s victory symbolised the ascending power of the bourgeoisie.

Within three months of the election of Lincoln, when the landed-gentry found that power was slipping from their hands, seven slave-owning Southern states – South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas – seceded from the Union and founded the Confederate States of America on 08 February 1861. While, Lincoln took a conciliatory position and stated that he did not intend to abolish slavery where it already existed and that his aim was only to maintain the unity of the Union, the Confederate leadership tried to forcibly occupy the federal forts, which were situated in areas under their control. Attempts at such forcible occupation resulted in armed conflict, which broke out on 12 April 1961. On 15 April 1861, Lincoln directed the Northern states to provide militia to put down the insurrection. However, four more slave-owning states – Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee, which were until then part of the Union, spurned Lincoln’s directions and, instead, opted to join the Confederacy. Two other slave-owning states, Kentucky and Missouri, were also unwilling to supply men for the Union Army but chose to remain neutral in the conflict. The outbreak of war provided the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of slaves to escape to Union lines.

Among the army commanders leading the Union Army there were pro-slavery as well as anti-slavery generals. Pro-slavery generals were averse to taking decisive action against the Confederate Army because of the adverse impact such action would have had on the institution of slavery. On the other hand, the anti-slavery generals were intent on freeing the slaves and enlisting them into the Union Army to fight the war. Ultimately, the compromising attitude of the pro-slavery generals towards the Confederate Army compelled an unwilling Lincoln to act decisively. Not only did Lincoln remove such generals from their posts but, on 22 September 1862, he also issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all slaves would be declared free in those states that continued the rebellion against the United States after 01 January 1863. By implication, this proclamation did not apply to those Southern states that would be under occupation of the Union Army before 01 January 1863, which was a way of mollifying Lincoln’s conservative supporters. Nevertheless, thousands of slaves were freed by the operation of the Emancipation Proclamation as Union armies marched across the South.

By January 1863, it also became clear that the Northern states could not find enough volunteers to join the Union Army and, therefore, were forced to resort to conscription. The rich people were able to avoid the draft by paying a certain sum to hire a substitute, thereby, forcing the poor Whites alone to carry on the war. This questionable practice ultimately led to outbreak of “draft riots” in the northern cities, which targeted anti-slavery activists. Under pressure from his radical supporters, Lincoln finally agreed to enlist former slaves into the Union Army. As a result, no less than 190,000 Black soldiers and sailors served in the Union forces, a decision that had far reaching implications since it provided a big impetus towards the goal of abolition of slavery.

The bill to abolish slavery throughout the United States was reintroduced in the U.S. Congress on 14 December 1863 (after the unsuccessful attempt by Representative John Quincy Adams way back in 1839). The Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery on 08 April 1864 and the House of Representatives passed the same on 31 January 1865. President Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution on 01 February 1865 and submitted the amendment to the states for ratification. Soon afterwards, on 09 April 1865, the main Confederate Army was forced to surrender. Two days after this surrender, Lincoln, while addressing a gathering outside the White House, stated that he was of the opinion that voting rights should be granted to the Blacks. Lincoln’s would-be-assassin, who was present on the occasion, was infuriated by the suggestion. Three days later on 14 April 1865, Lincoln was shot, while watching a play, and he died the next day due to serious head injuries he had suffered in the attack. Lincoln paid dearly for a cause that he was initially reluctant to uphold.² There were strong indications that the pro-slavery forces had conspired to eliminate Lincoln, however, there was no way they could stem the momentum against abolition of slavery. Emancipation as a reality came to the remaining Southern slaves after the surrender of all Confederate troops.

Slavery was formally abolished in the whole of USA only after the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by the various states on 06 December 1865. Section 1 of the amendment stated as follows: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Freedman’s Bureau

Soon after the U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Thirteenth Amendment for abolition of slavery on 31 January 1865, the U.S. Congress on 03 March 1865 established the “Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands”, popularly known as the “Freedmen’s Bureau” to assist the four million freed slaves in making the transition from slavery to freedom. The Bureau had also to take care of a large number of Whites in the South, who were uprooted and impoverished because of the devastation caused by the Civil War. The tasks of the Bureau were to provide food, medical care, support resettlement, administer justice, manage abandoned and confiscated property, regulate labour, and establish schools.

Although it was to function only for a year, the Republican controlled U.S. Congress managed to extend the term of the Bureau despite the attempted veto by the pro-slavery Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, who was elevated as the U.S. President following the assassination of Lincoln. Nonetheless, President Johnson worked actively to undermine the Bureau’s operation by appointing mainly racist White officers, although Major General Oliver Howard who headed it turned out to be a non-racist. While the Bureau was expected to play a major role in resettling the emancipated slaves, it could do little apart from its work in the field of education primarily because the U.S. Administration never provided the requisite funds for fulfilling its other missions.

The Bureau’s attempt to re-distribute the hundreds of thousands of acres of abandoned and confiscated land from the Confederates to freedmen too failed because President Johnson pardoned the Confederates and returned the land back to them. The Bureau also tried to find work for the freedmen on plantations, but it only resulted in oppressive sharecropping and tenancy arrangements. Although its operations were curtailed after 1869, the Bureau managed to remain active as an educational agency until 1872, when it was finally wound up. Since the Bureau could not satisfactorily fulfil any of the missions for which it was set up, the freedmen were left with the onerous task of fending for their needs without any resources of their own and without outside help (other than some charity) after being enslaved in the “world’s oldest democracy” for no less than ninety years.

The well-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) described the situation regarding the fate of the freedmen most poignantly. Douglass wrote that the freedman no longer had an individual master, but that he was

…the slave of society. He had neither money, property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the rains of summer and the frosts of winter. He was, in a world, literally turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.

He further added:

History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions less friendly to the emancipated class, than this American example…. When the serfs of Russia were emancipated, they were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make a living. But not so when our slaves were emancipated. They were sent away empty-handed without money, without friends, and without a foot of land upon which to stand.³

As the freedmen had attained “freedom” and “equality,” they were being treated on par with those who controlled all the resources!

Expansion of Franchise

Through a variety of treaties, purchases, predatory wars, and Acts of the U.S. Congress, by 1867 the territory of the United States had expanded by about eighteen times from what it was in 1776 to nearly its present-day size. Since there was no legal definition of the term “citizen of the United States” in the original U.S. Constitution, the Original Peoples, who inhabited North America for several millennia and whose entire lands were usurped by the White settlers through deceit and subterfuge over the years had been denied citizenship rights.⁴ A definition of citizenship was introduced in the U.S. Constitution only on 09 July 1868 through the Fourteenth Amendment, which stated that: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

However, strange as it may seem, despite the Fourteenth Amendment, most of the Original Peoples, African-Americans and women continued to be denied the right to vote. This was partly because, while the slaves were freed after the Civil War, it was claimed that there was no legal basis to recognize them as having any rights. Therefore, yet another change had to be brought about on 03 February 1870 through the Fifteenth Amendment, which stated that: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The Fifteenth Amendment, in theory, provided succour to the adult male Black population at best; the rights of America’s Original Peoples and women were never addressed. Women, who constituted half the population in the “world’s oldest democracy,” were denied the right to vote as late as 1920. (On the other hand, in Russia, soon after the Revolution of February 1917, women were granted the right to vote.) Women in the U.S. had to wage a long and ardent struggle between 1848 and 1920 before they attained that right. Known as the Suffragette Movement, it was led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Fanny Garrison Villard, Ida Bell Wells, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others. Women were enfranchised in the U.S. through the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 26 August 1920, which stated that: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In short, for all practical purposes, fifty per cent or more of the adult population in the “world’s oldest democracy” were legally denied the right of franchise well until 1920. Later, by virtue of the Indian Citizenship Act of 02 June 1924, which included the right to vote in federal elections, all American-Indians born in their homeland theoretically became citizens of USA. (However, while many States continued to deny them voting rights, among the Original Peoples, the issues of nationality and citizenship became matters of serious debate, which has not yet been resolved.⁵ ). This was the state of affairs during the first 148 years of U.S. history.

Disfranchising Laws

With the growth of industrialization, the ranks of the working class had begun to swell with millions of immigrants arriving from Ireland, Southern & Eastern Europe and Asia to work in the expanding network of factories, mines, railroads, roads and cities. As mentioned earlier, the male White immigrants – a sizable section of whom were from the working class, had managed to acquire voting rights in the antebellum era. Granting citizenship rights and voting rights to the African-Americans in 1868 and 1870 respectively turned out to be yet another radical step when African-Americans in some of the Southern states not only began to get elected to office but also they became a significant force in many electoral contests elsewhere. While in the Northern states, labour unions were in a position to exert sufficient influence to promote pro-labour political parties and pro-labour legislations. However, this liberal atmosphere resulting from the power of enfranchisement of the working people and poor people did not last long. According to Alexander Keyssar, the growing political clout of the working class and the peasantry (including the former slaves) had:

…spawned a significant reaction against democracy and universal franchise in certain strata of American society. Southern white leaders came to believe, with good reason, that they could not control their region if the black population remained enfranchised…. The buoyant optimism about popular participation, so visible in the 1830s and 1840s, gave way to apprehension and fear by the late 1870s and 1880s…. The result was a long period, stretching into the second decade of the twentieth century, marked less by the exuberant forward march of democracy than by often mean-spirited battles and skirmishes over suffrage: while various social groups and political factions supporting them fought to broaden the franchise, others struggled, sometimes frantically, and often with success, to block the road to the polls.⁶

The broad set of strategies for denying the Blacks voting right was introduced in roughly three overlapping phases. During 1868-1888, patently illegal means were adopted as the principal techniques of disenfranchisement. The attempt to enfranchise the African-Americans was strongly resisted by various terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Knights of the White Camellia, etc., which were founded in the mid-1860s by veterans of the Confederate Army, who lamented the loss of White supremacy following the formal abolition of slavery. Through violence, intimidation and ultimately by resorting to massive fraud in the vote counting process, they were intent on preventing the Fifteenth Amendment, which was enacted in 1870 to grant voting rights to Black men, from being enforced. The enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, did help to check the menace of the KKK to some extent but not entirely. New mutations of KKK emerged in the form of White League and Red Shirts in 1874 and 1875 respectively and functioned openly as the “military arm of the Democratic Party” with the specific goal of overthrowing the Reconstruction Government headed by the Republican Party.

The next phase began in 1877, when the State of Georgia decided to pass the cumulative Poll Tax as a statutory method of disenfranchisement. Georgia, which had initiated the Poll Tax in 1871, made it cumulative in 1877 (requiring citizens to pay all back taxes before being permitted to vote). Finally, between 1889 and 1910, the Southern states, where the bulk of the African-Americans were located, amended their constitutions and enacted a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench White political supremacy. Apart from the Poll Tax, these disfranchising laws typically included “literacy test,” “property ownership” criterion, vouchers of “good character,” and disqualification for “crimes of moral turpitude.” These disfranchising laws were collectively nicknamed Jim Crow Laws after a comic character called Jim Crow, who was the butt of racist jokes in the 1850s.

The introduction of the disfranchising laws was a masterstroke of perverted ingenuity. “Poll Tax” was a special tax levied equally on every member of a community. Citizens who failed to pay were deemed ineligible to vote. Although this tax of $1-$2 per annum may seem small, it was then beyond the reach of most poor Black and White sharecroppers who rarely dealt in cash. Since the imposition of these requirements had an adverse affect on the number of poor Whites voting, Southern legislatures included a Grandfather Clause in 1895 that allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted prior to 1867 to vote without paying the tax. The amendment was solely intended to benefit the Whites who had immigrated to the U.S. before 1867 since almost all fathers and grandfathers of African-Americans were not even considered citizens of USA prior to 1868. Similarly, poor Whites who immigrated to the U.S. after 1867 also could not benefit from the Grandfather Clause. Thus, the imposition of the Poll Tax effectively prevented a sizable section of U.S citizens – especially the bulk of working people and poor people – from exercising their franchise.

In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Grandfather Clause unconstitutional because it violated equal voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment. However, it may be noted that, while the said Supreme Court ruling effectively withdrew the concession granted to the pre-1867 poor Whites, the striking down of the Grandfather Clause in no way benefited the African-Americans or the post-1867 poor Whites because they still had to pay the Poll Tax. The U.S. Congress, by adopting the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 27 August 1962, formally prohibited the States from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a Poll Tax or other types of taxes. The States ratified the amendment on 23 January 1964. However, the matter was finally settled only through a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Harper vs. Virginia Board of Elections. On 24 March 1966, the Court ruled that all state poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were unconstitutional, because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The 1960’s also witnessed abolition of another economic restriction on suffrage: the disfranchisement of paupers. The Harper decision apparently had far wider repercussions: it had also made it clear that pauper exclusion laws could no longer withstand judicial scrutiny. Consequently, necessary changes were incorporated by the various states into the legal codes and constitutions to meet this requirement. Thus, economic restrictions on voting were abolished in all general elections in the “world’s oldest democracy” almost two centuries after USA was founded.

Literacy Test

South Carolina is reportedly the first state to introduce the implicit literacy test in 1882 through the infamous “eight-box” ballot system. Voters had to cast their ballots for separate offices by inserting the ballot papers in separate boxes. A ballot for the Governor’s race inserted in the box for the senate seat would have invalidated the vote. The stratagem was to continuously shuffle the order of the boxes so that literate people could not assist illiterate voters by arranging their ballots in the proper order. Another implicit literacy test was the adoption of the secret ballot system since it prohibited anyone from assisting an illiterate voter in casting his vote for the candidate of his choice, whose name is printed on the ballot paper without (unlike, for example, in India) a symbol against the name that an illiterate voter could recognize.

Explicit literacy tests to disenfranchise potential voters began to be adopted by the Southern states in 1890. Such tests had a definite differential racial impact since at least 57% of Blacks were illiterate as compared to 30% of Whites in the Southern states as per the 1890 census. To placate poor, illiterate Whites who opposed the tests realizing that they too would be disenfranchised, Southern states adopted an Understanding Clause or a Grandfather Clause, which would potentially benefit primarily the Whites. The Understanding Clause entitled a voter who could not pass the literacy test to vote provided he could demonstrate his understanding of the meaning of a passage in the U.S. Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar. The Grandfather Clause, like in the case of the Poll Tax, entitled every illiterate voter, who had descended from someone eligible to vote in 1867 – the year before the former slaves attained the franchise, the automatic right to cast his vote. By definition, those who would benefit from this waiver were almost exclusively Whites, who were born in or had migrated to the U.S. before 1867.

Similarly, racially biased administrators would always ensure that African-Americans were never able to take advantage of the Understanding Clause. They would invariably declare that the African-American applicant, whose perception skill was being assessed, could not demonstrate his understanding of the passage in the U.S. Constitution that was read out to him by the administrator conducting the test. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the Grandfather Clause in 1915 on the grounds that it violated the Fifteenth Amendment, the State of Oklahoma quickly found a way to circumvent it by passing yet another law, which again unduly favoured the Whites. The new law required all those who had not voted in the 1914 election (when the Grandfather Clause was still in effect) to register to vote within 11 days, or forfeit the franchise forever.

This new law effectively protected all the Whites who were earlier covered by the Grandfather Clause, while ensuring that all the unregistered African-Americans applicants would be effectively prevented from registering within the stipulated time. Although in 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated this arrangement as well, it was only in 1949 that it struck down discriminatory administration of a literacy test. However, far from placing any bar on the States from conducting literacy tests, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1959 actually went to the extent of upholding the constitutionality of literacy tests despite their differential racial impact. This ruling in effect meant that while the tests would be equally applicable to illiterate Whites as well, the actual impact of the tests would be far greater on the African-American population since the level of illiteracy among them was considerably higher.

Read Part 1.

1. Jon Parmenter: “American-Indians: British Policies”, in Paul Finkelman, ed., Encyclopedia of the New American Nation (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 2007).
2. Of the first fifteen presidents of the United States until Abraham Lincoln took office, eight owned slaves during their presidency. They include well-known names such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. The rest, barring John Adams and John Quincy Adams, were supporters of slavery. It may be added that both Washington and Jefferson were, reportedly, opposed to slavery; however, they could do nothing to abolish slavery during their lifetime and had opted to remain prisoners of their circumstances. It may also be noted that while the initiative for abolishing slavery was taken during Lincoln’s presidency, Lincoln, who was known to be a moderate Republican, was initially neither a champion of racial equality nor was he averse to the idea of sending the African-Americans back to Africa. The credit for pioneering the cause of abolition of slavery in USA must primarily go to the Quakers, who began to oppose slavery as early as 1688 and who took the initiative in founding in 1775 what later became the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery with Thomas Paine as one of the founder-members. A host of others, including Benjamin Franklin – a slave owner turned abolitionist – also made significant contribution to the cause. The final phase of the movement began with the establishment of The American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833 led by William Lloyd Garrison and later joined by Frederick Douglass, Susan Anthony and others. David Walker, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and William Still are just few of the African-Americans who led the road to freedom. Other important people in U.S. history who were Abolitionists include Henry David Thoreau, Thaddeus Stevens, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown.
3. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (De Wolfe & Fiske Co, Boston, 1892) at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/dougl92/dougl92.html (pp.458-459 & p.613).
4. One of the most controversial issues regarding colonization of the Americas is about population estimates. Ronald Wright, in his well-acclaimed book “Stolen Continents”, states that: “It is impossible to say exactly how many people were living in what is now the United States and Canada in 1492. But it’s clear that the old guess of around 1 million is absurdly low-a guess cherished for so long because it reinforced the myth of the empty land and hid the enormity of Native America’s depopulation. Good modern estimates range between 7 and 18 million.” The Original Peoples of the U.S., whose population was drastically decimated by foreign diseases and conquest, were deprived of almost their entire land by the 1870s and were confined to desolate reservations totalling less than 0.4% of the continental United States. According to the 2000 census, they constituted 2.5 million (less than 1%) of the total U.S. population of 281 million: about one-fifth of them were in the reservations and the rest elsewhere in the U.S. Another 1.6 million of them are of mixed-dissent. Even the 0.4% of the land, which is theoretically in their possession, is not free of disputes.
5. See, e.g., Republic of Lakotah.
6. Alexander Keysser, The Right to Vote – The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Basic Books, New York, 2000, pp.78-79

A series of signs describe the historical significance of the landscape, as well as that of a handful of ancient buildings, in terms of their Biblical, Roman, Hellenic and Ottoman pasts. Few, if any, visitors take notice of the stone blocks that litter sections of the park.

But Eitan Bronstein, director of Zochrot (Remembering), is committed to educating Israelis and foreign visitors about the park’s hidden past — its Palestinian history.

“In fact, though you would never realise it, none of this park is even in Israel,” he told a group of 40 Italians on a guided tour this past weekend. “This is part of the West Bank captured by Israel during the 1967 war. But the presence of Palestinians here — and their expulsion — is entirely missing from the signs.”

Zochrot also seeks to remind Israelis of the Nakba, the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.

Its tours are not popular with most Israelis, suggesting, he says, how far they still are from understanding the territorial compromises needed to reach the kind of peace agreement with the Palestinians currently being promoted by the new US administration.

An impressive building a short way into the park, signposted as a Roman bathhouse, is all that is recognizably left of a Palestinian village once known as Imwas, itself built on the ruins of the biblical village of Emmaus.

There are traces of a cemetery, as well as scattered rubble from the village’s houses, a coffee shop, a church, two mosques and a school.

The 2,000 Palestinians living there, along with the 3,500 inhabitants of two other villages, Yalu and Beit Nuba, were expelled as the Israeli army captured this area of the West Bank from Jordan. Today, they and their descendants live as refugees, mostly in East Jerusalem and near Ramallah.

In place of the three villages, a park was created by an international Zionist organization, the Jewish National Fund, paid for with $15 million in charitable donations from Canadian Jews.

The park entrance is only a minute’s drive from the busiest motorway in the country, linking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Similar parks across Israel have been established on the ruins of other Palestinian villages but, in those cases, the destruction was a result of the war of 1948 that founded Israel. Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, has referred to this massive erasure of Palestinian history as state-organized “memoricide”.

But Canada Park is far more sensitive for Israel because it lies outside the country’s internationally recognized borders. The Palestinian inhabitants’ expulsion, Mr Bronstein said, was a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing of villagers who put up no resistance.

“We have photographs of the Israeli army carrying out the expulsions,” he told the group of tourists, holding up a series of laminated cards.

Yosef Hochman, a professional photographer, captured scenes that included columns of fleeing Palestinians carrying possessions on their heads, army officers arguing with an elderly woman who refuses to leave her house and bulldozers moving in to destroy the villages.

According to Mr. Bronstein, the wrecking spree can be explained by the Israeli army’s failure in the 1948 war to capture the area, which juts out into what is today Israel and was once known as the Latrun salient.

“In 1948, Israeli commanders regarded conquest of the salient as vital for widening the safe passage from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They were desperate to make amends in 1967 when they got a second chance.”

Uzi Narkiss, a leading general in the 1967 war, vowed that the Latrun salient would never be returned. Establishing Canada Park was Israel’s way of secretly annexing the territory, Zochrot says.

Since 2003, Mr Bronstein has been demanding that the Jewish National Fund post additional signs highlighting the park’s Palestinian history.

The Roman bathhouse, he notes, is visible only because the foundations were subsequently excavated. For centuries, the structure — a shrine to Obeida Ibn al Jarah, an Arab warrior who helped conquer Palestine in the seventh century — served as an important Palestinian holy place.

The Jewish National Fund and the Civil Administration, the military government in the West Bank, agreed to post two new signs, marking the centers of Imwas and Yalu, only after Zochrot petitioned the courts. The experiment in openness was short-lived, however. After a few days, black paint was used to conceal part of the sign at Imwas, and soon afterwards both signs disappeared.

“We were told that scrap-metal dealers were probably responsible for stealing the signs,” Mr. Bronstein said. “That’s a little hard to believe, since the official signs close by are there to this day.”

Zochrot is considering widening its campaign by alerting Canadian donors to the fact that their money has been used – in contravention of international law — effectively to annex a section of the West Bank to Israel. Mr Bronstein believes many are unaware of the use their donations have been put to.

He is preparing to take the Jewish National Fund back to court to demand it replaces the missing signs and erects similar signs in parks inside Israel to commemorate the Palestinian villages razed by the army after the 1948 war.

According to Zochrot, 86 Palestinian villages lie buried underneath JNF parks. A further 400 destroyed villages had their lands passed on to exclusively Jewish communities. Zochrot’s several hundred activists regularly select a destroyed village, taking Palestinian refugees with them as they place a handmade sign detailing the village’s name in Arabic and Hebrew. Within days, the signs are removed.

But Mr. Bronstein said he believes signs erected by official bodies may have a greater impact in opening Israeli minds.

“In a recent newspaper interview, a senior JNF official admitted that it would be hard to stop our campaign,” he said. “Slowly we believe Israelis can be made to appreciate that their state exists at the expense of another people. Only then are Israelis likely to be ready to think about making peace.”