Re: Regarding Annett and Craven

["Jose G. Perez" <jgperez@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>Well, it is. Only the working class has the ability to transform society
and bring about the socialist revolution.

>>The little statelets that might eventually emerge out of the aboriginal
people's struggles can no more defend their own borders than Canada can.
Surely, you are not unaware of the disputes over nautical borders that are
happening on both coasts of Canada? I have several acquaintances whose
fishboats were boarded by armed members of the American Coast Guard for
the high crime of fishing in our own waters, both in the Prince Rupert
area and in the Vancouver area. During the late 1940's, American
government began disputing borders that had been ratified in no less than
three tri-lateral agreements around the turn of the 19th. C. Despite the
fact that this dispute is not recognized by any international body, the
American government began issuing maps with redrawn borders, and mandating
the Coast Guard to defend these new borders. They seize our fishboats,
confiscate gear, and destroy cargo, all at gunpoint.

>>What kind of sovereignty do you envision for the Blackfoot people?<<

This is one of the purest examples of "great" nation chauvinism to have
disgraced this list in a long, long time.

Joan Cameron identifies completely with the Canadian imperialist bourgeoisie
in defending "our own waters" ... and warns native peoples that if they dare
to secede, Canada will invade them by force. That is the meaning of a
statement like, "the little statelets that might eventually emerge out of
the aboriginal people's struggles can no more defend their own borders than
Canada can."

The answer to the implicit rhetorical question is, of course, that the
revolutionary working class will defend those borders. And the Native
peoples of Canada, of the United States, etc., have every right to set up
their own nation-state if they so desire. Why should white English people
have the right to self determination, including the right to set up their
own state, and not native peoples? What makes white people superior that
they should have privileges no other peoples are allowed to have? Isn't this
racism, pure and simple? And shouldn't it be called by its right name, and
especially on this list?

As for Canada's fishing disputes, a revolutionary working class just as
surely will NOT defend Canada's
border under an imperialist regime. Those are THEIR borders, not "ours."

Canadian imperialism's claim to the disputed areas is simply that it stole
them fair and square when it was strong enough to do so. The claim of the
American imperialists is just as legitimate: they are stealing these
territorial waters from Canada because they can. Anyone who thinks the
Canadian imperialists have a stronger claim, and that it is somehow in the
interests of the working class to side with them, because, after all, the
Canadians stole them first, doesn't have a revolutionary bone in their body,
not even in their little finger.

Cameron thunders, "Only the working class has the ability to transform
society and bring about the socialist revolution." Never in a million years
with a program of defending "our" thieving Canadian imperialist borders
against the thieving American imperialist borders ... and against the just
and legitimate aspirations of native peoples. This is social imperialism.

For the revolutionary working class, OUR borders are the borders of Cuba,
the borders of third world countries oppressed and exploited by imperialism,
the borders of the Basque country and Ireland, and, yes, the Navajo and
Lakota and Blackfoot borders.

José



----- Original Message -----
From: <ermadog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 6:09 PM
Subject: RE: Regarding Annett and Craven




On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Craven, Jim wrote:
>
> Another issue has to do with the linking-up between First Nations peoples
> and non-First Nations people in desperately needed alliances. We do need
> alliances with progressives and they must be based upon mutual respect and
> assistance (I say mutual because as we demand sensitivity to our issues
and
> realities, so we must be sensitive to the issues and realities of those
with
> whom we are in alliance).

Mutual respect, eh? Is that what motivated your little cumshuwa-bashing
spate recently? I have seen this kind of holy man routine before, buddy,
and it is always based on a total lack of repect for the understanding of
others. I have seen professions of ecumenicism turn into rabid dog
attacks so often, I pretty much take them for routine hypocrisy in
holy men of all varieties, and I find it revolting.

BTW, are you ever going to get around to addressing the material I
presented on the reliability of oral tradition? Since posting it, I have
discovered that the Balkan study is seminal material in modern study of
oral tradition. Contrary to claims made on this list, oral tradition is
just not considered to be all that reliable in other fields.

> .... I have had so-called "Marxists" tell me that "genocide" is simply
> too extreme a word

I think this issue bears some elaboration. It is easy to identify
wholesale slaughter as being genocide, and to so identify the Holocaust
and the historical American policy toward native peoples; but, for many,
the Canadian experience is harder to classify. It can be hard to formulate
in simple terms the egregious effects resulting from destruction of social
infrastructure, which was one of the main aims of the residential school
experience, especially when those schools were ostensibly an "aid" project
of the churches involved. It is easier for school supporters to
characterize abuses as a "mistake", rather than as a deliberate policy of
genocide.

Here in Canada, you have additional obstacles provided by the wholely
artificial phenomenon of a Canadian national identity created first by the
left and then later taken up by the mainstream. It promotes the entirely
petty bourgeois notion that "small is beautifull": because we are small
(as a nation), we can't possibly do anyone any harm; therefore you must
love us. However, I think the residential school issue can be framed in
terms of another issue dear to the heart of Canadian nationalists. The
defense of public health care here in Canada is often framed in terms of
"Canadian values" vs. American-style private health care. The story of the
residential schools can be shown as a case in point as to what happens to
a people when their social networks are destroyed: real lives are
destroyed, and real people die in mass numbers.

I have seen this in a small way in the breakup of the Mennonite community
in which my mother was born. They were not deliberately targeted by any
state that I am aware of; this was just a by-product of the inexorable
march of agri-biz on the Canadian prairies. I do not know why other
Mennonite communities survive, while this one failed. However, the harm
done can be quantified in the amount of alcoholism and family break-up
that plagues the survivors of this community. The older members have given
themelves over to the most backward of peasant mentalities you can
imagine, and many of the younger people are caught up in the revival of
evangelical Christianity that plagues our country.

I can take an interest in the struggles of such people; but, I cannot in
any way support their identity politics or spiritual expression.

> or that linking-up with
> and being under the leadership of the working class and giving up this
> Indian identity shit is the only way to go..."

Well, it is. Only the working class has the ability to transform society
and bring about the socialist revolution.

The little statelets that might eventually emerge out of the aboriginal
people's struggles can no more defend their own borders than Canada can.
Surely, you are not unaware of the disputes over nautical borders that are
happening on both coasts of Canada? I have several acquaintances whose
fishboats were boarded by armed members of the American Coast Guard for
the high crime of fishing in our own waters, both in the Prince Rupert
area and in the Vancouver area. During the late 1940's, American
government began disputing borders that had been ratified in no less than
three tri-lateral agreements around the turn of the 19th. C. Despite the
fact that this dispute is not recognized by any international body, the
American government began issuing maps with redrawn borders, and mandating
the Coast Guard to defend these new borders. They seize our fishboats,
confiscate gear, and destroy cargo, all at gunpoint.

What kind of sovereignty do you envision for the Blackfoot people?

Joan Cameron