RE: Canadian Indian women "are tired of what's happening"

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan Maki:
>The organization referred to does raise some- not many
>but some, arguments that have merit, however, the main
>purpose of this organization referred to is to divide
>the Native peoples of Canada and weaken their
>struggle. Many of the chiefs being attacked by this
>organization are mobilizing their communities in a way
>very similar to the civil rights movement in the USA.

Alan, what in god's name are you talking about? Jim Craven, a Blackfoot
economics professor who is currently organizing a tribunal in Alberta and
who is subbed to this list, has been telling me for some 3 years now about
the same problems that affect his nation. It is the same neocolonial
behavior that one found in Wounded Knee. Traditional chiefs use BIA
connections to overpower dissent. Taking advantage of federal funds, they
take expensive junkets all around the world while those at the grass roots
suffer. Drug dealing, prostitution, police malfeasance, thuggery against
opponents, etc. characterize the Blackfoot tribal chiefs, according to Jim,
and now we have discovered that an investigation against the Browning
reservation police has been launched.



Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Mr. Maki simply does not know what he is talking about. And please, as a
non-Indian, do not speak about what the "real" intentions of various First
Nations organizations are about. the fact that you tout AFN shows you are at
best an outsider tourist who perhaps knows a few people and a few things
about First Nations in Canada/Indians in the U.S.--but there is a whole lot
you obviously do not know.

First of all, the real Chiefs and Councils, traditional and hereditary but
subject to removal for corruption, were summarily abolished in 1924. What
they call chiefs now in Canada are those created through the DIA/Tribal
Council system designed to put sell-outs and puppets in power at the behest
of predatory monopoly capital. Secondly, the vast majority of "elections" in
Indian Country are rigged in various ways and/or hyave such small turnouts
that the Tribal Councils can claim no mandates whatsoever. Thirdly, and as
someone who has no doubt been on a whole lot more Rsserves and Reservations
that Mr. Maki ever has, I can attest that the majority of the
Reserves--compliments of the Councils/DIA that run them--are riddled with
corruption, no infrastructure, disease, murders, high crime rates,
overworked/underfunded health services, cronyism, nepotism, poor education,x
high suicide rates and the list goes on and on.

While the Liberals have run and managed the corruption and misery in Indian
country for years (hence the interest of some opportunistic Reform, NDP and
Tory interests to try to cultivate or give the appearance of supporting some
Indian activists), the fact is that all of the parties in Canada and the
U.S. have benefited from and/or been directly involved in the genocide that
has taken place and is currently taking place. Some activists, a la the
advice of Chairman Mao, to take advantage of and exacerbate the
contraditions in the enemy camp, believe in using one party against
another--e.g. Reform or Tories against the Liberals or NDP or vice
versa--they are a minority and do not represent the movement alluded to in
the Times article.

In a previous response to Mr. Maki, I noted that theory and practice are
dialectically united--or should be. Practice without the guidance of theory
is groping in the dark; theory without practice is sterile, empty and devoid
of real content or power. In this case, Mr. Maki is lashing out on matters
about which he obviously knows nothing. Please, well-meaning leftist
outsider tourists, who know a little about a little, trying to run Indian
affairs, or at least "save us" with Vanguardist rhetoric and "advanced"
understanding, are as offensive--sometimes more so--than the
bourgeois-exploiter-racist types who just want to exterminate us directly
and are open about what they intend and are aided and abetted by the types
of corrupt sell-out "Indians" mentioned in the article.

As a point of minor logic, the truth or falisty of the charges made by the
Indian women in Canada (and I know for sure that all and more are true) in
the NYT article, do not depend upon with which forces (Reform, Tories, NDP,
Liberals etc) that for their own reasons, are trying to forge and use
alliances in Indian Country and that may be used by some activists for their
own purposes.

Jim Craven
Member, and Designated Special Prosecutor,Blackfoot Nation