"Columbus Day": Letter to new president of Clark College

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

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Dear Dr. Branch:

In the spirit of "multiculturalism" and the other supposed campus-wide
abilities, this is to give you notice that for this Blackfoot Indian, and
many other Indians around the U.S., any upcoming "celebrations" of "Columbus
Day" here or anywhere else will be exactly analogous to what "Hitler Day"
would feel like for Jews and sensible non-Jews, or what "Ted Bundy Day"
would feel like to many women and sensible males, or what "Jefferson Davis
Day" would feel like to many African-Americans and sensible
non-African-Americans. And such "celebrations" will not go unnoticed or
unanswered by me. By his own words, in his diaries and ship's logs, Columbus
was a genocidal maniac, megalomaniac, narcissist, plunderer, enslaver and
opportunist who was returned in chains by his own patrons and whose
genocidal machinations were protested even at the time by the likes of
Dominican  priest Bartolome de las Casas. How do you "discover" a place with
people already there? Easy. The Indigenous Peoples already living in the
lands Columbus came to and occupied were simply not real "People" and who
never made real "improvements" to the lands in ways that  the predatory
colonizers recognize as "improvements."

In this country, and in Canada, the powers-that-be and some of the general
populace, do to Indians what they dare not do even to other oppressed
national minorities. Imagine a football team called the "New York Niggers"
or the "Boston Bitches" or the "Frisco Fags" or the "Washington White Trash"
or the "Sacramento Spics"... Yet we have the "Washington Redskins" who
recently got a court ruling from a white judge that "Indians do not find the
term 'Redskins'
to be an offensive racial slur and therefore the name can be retained."

Further, this College has been involved in upcoming "Lewis and Clark"
celebrations ,  carefully putting some favorite and perhaps compliant
Indians, or what are perceived to be Indians, on the committees for "the
Indian viewpoint". I was thrown off the committee for using the term
"Genocide" by the Mayor and others who protested my use of the word and yet
who had, by their own admission, never even read the 1948 UN Convention on
Genocide that defines genocide as a matter of law and usage. For many
Indians, celebration of Lewis and Clark, front-men for genocide, sent out by
that slave-holding rapist and hypocrite Thomas Jefferson who made his
intentions and those of Lewis and Clark clear in a confidential letter to
William Henry Harrison, Feb. 24, 1803, is exactly like celebrations of the
Dutch "Vortrekkers" would feel like for many South African Black People or
what celebrations of German settlers in Poland after the  nazi  invasion of
Poland would feel like for many Polish people.

Further, we have on this campus, some people, listed as Indians for
Affirmative Action purposes, who are not recognized by or a part of any
distinct Indian nation, have never been to the Rezes of the Nations they
claim to be a part of, who have never been painted and named, and who
summarily assert their "Indianness" (and who have been sent to conferences
in exotic locales to represent Indians) solely on the basis of their own
summarily-asserted and illusory "blood-quantums" and
self-indentification--and nothing more. Notice I did not refer to BIA/DIA
enrollment as a test of Indianness (there are four distinct criteria of the
Federal Government with formal enrollment being only one of them). In fact,
those who assert their "Indianness" on the basis of their own
summarily-asserted and perhaps mythical blood-quantums,  or BIA/DIA
"certification", in doing so, demonstrate they know nothing about what it
means to be an Indian and are aiding and abetting the genocide with such
references to blood-quantum as a test or criterion of Indianness. One BIA
document noted: "Set the blood-quantum at one quarter, hold to it as a rigid
definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed, and eventually Indians
will be defined out of existence. When that happens, the Federal Government
will be finally freed from its persistent Indian problem." It is how one
lives and community recognition that define "Indianness" and not some
"instant credibility" gained through summary-assertion of some
"blood-quantum" that defines Indianness. So what happens? We get more
disrespect as some non-Indians shop around for their favorite and compliant
"Indians" to represent Clark in various venues and these non-Indians who
summarily select/define "Indian representation" have no idea about what
makes/reveals a real Indian; they do the same with other so-called
"minorities."

And this brings me to my final point. The problem is not simply that the
campus-wide abilities were/are ill-defined and that some of those who sat on
the committees that created them, often to position themselves for more
"face time" with the powers-that-be (by their own admission) and/or add
notches to their meager resumes  had no credentials or expertise in the
areas with which they were dealing, the problem is also that we have some on
this campus, clearly and demonstrably backward, in-bred and frightened
of/resistent to  " multiculturalism " such that I hope they are NOT teaching
about the campus-wide abilities as I fear what forms and levels of patent
ignorance and racism/sexism/etc they might be "teaching" and passing on.

Thank you for your consideration of this missive.

Jim Craven
Member, Blackfoot Nation and Traditional Government of the Blackfoot Nation.

James M. Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5
<http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5>
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controls the past." (George Orwell)
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