[Marxism] Blackfoot Case Against Canadian Government (Part I) most recent to earliest

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

                Mr. Craven,

                This will acknowledge your email of November 16, 2003,
which I received on that date. Thank you for providing additional
information concerning your case. 

                I was unable to discuss this with Mr. Brooks until
today. We will not be contacting your witnesses, but we do appreciate
the invitation to do so by conference call. 

                I can also advise that I noticed your potential
challenge to Treaty 7 in your email on October 12. As this was the first
time I understood you to be challenging Treaty 7, I immediately
contacted our expert on treaty documents and was advised by him on
October 14, 2003 that he would be unavailable to testify on January 22
and 23. He will be able to testify in April, May or June however.
Therefore, I am going to write the Court and advise that if credible
evidence concerning the validity of Treaty 7 is advanced at trial, I
will need to request an adjournment. I will send you a copy of that
correspondence. 

                In the meantime, I renew my request for you to send
documents to me which you intend to file in evidence. I understand that
you are working on that. It will greatly simplify our task on January 22
and 23. 

                Thank you.

                Kurt Sandstrom

                Barrister and Solicitor

                Alberta Justice

                Constitutional and Aboriginal Law

                9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,

                10011-109 Street

                Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8

                Tel: (780) 422-4160

                Fax: (780) 427-1230

                        
                        

                 
                Dear Mr. Sandstrom,
                 
                This is to acknowledge receipt of and to respond to your
most recent email and letter to Judge Jacobson dated December 4, 2003.
                 
                This may be the first time you understood that we would
be challenging the validity and applicability of Treaty 7, but it is
most certainly not the first time we made clear our intent to advance
this dimsension of our overall argument. Attached is our whole file on
this case from the earliest letter to the Court by me onward.  For
example, from my letter of Feb. 10, 2003 to the Court and also sent to
you and others involved in this case:
                 
                a)That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot
Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its
extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a
member of that Nation; 

                b)That the existence or non-existence of any nation is
not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other
recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that
have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and
legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and
sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations); the existence,
legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of "facts
on the ground" and international law as were it not so, any nation could
summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple
non-recognition and applied power disparities;

                d)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was
actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government
of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole
system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and
other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the
"definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only
sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party
explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal
and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that
Treaty. In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is
also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into
question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which
the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected
and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which
the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected
remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of
alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;

                And from my letter of April 12, 2003 to the Court and
sent to you and other parties involved in this case:

                3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7
that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws
and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of
international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing
with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to
the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme
Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each
treating partner recognizes--or at least does not call into
question--the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining
government/leadership of the other. The cited language of Treaty 7,
dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of
Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that
Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms
and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the
authority and standing to sign--and continue--such a treaty; no nation,
especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be
illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law.
These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself,
are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not
fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to
1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen,
representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot
Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own
hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and
therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of
Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the
Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a
whole system of "private" property, interests and purported property
rights under its provisions.

                and from my letter to Mr. Lambrecht of Sept. 10, 2003
(also forwarded to you):

                Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or
never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of
Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become "loyal subjects" of the Crown and
bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international
law;

                Further, we argue that although Canada claims that
Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim
with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system
of material interests and purported property rights based upon the
assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law,
specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign,
continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a
treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government
(producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a
treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating
partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued
existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence,
self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and
mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. Thus, Bella
Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members
of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the
same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any
other motorist from another sovereign nation.

                 
                We have made it clear that although we believe that
Treaty 7 was never signed by the Blackfoot Chiefs (according to the
diary of Fr. Scullen charged with being a witness to the signatures of
the Blackfoot Chiefs), was never ratified by the Crown, was put to the
Blackfoot Chiefs with coercive and unconscionable force and has been
violated over and over by the Canadian Government, our central argument
is that Treaty 7 is self-impeaching and internally self-negating as its
central terms call for dissolution of one of the sovereign nations that
must remain in existence and sovereign to have the standing, authority
and capabilities to sign and keep the terms of  such a Treaty. We have
advanced this argument over and over clearly. 
                 
                I am therefore at a loss to understand why any further
delays  would be necessary.
                 
                I have asked Bella to quickly put together any documents
we may use to advance our case (She is in possession of some family and
other documents) to send them to you. And I reiterate that if you choose
to depose our potential witnesses, whose names, telephone numbers and
likely testimonies and arguments have been given, I would only ask that
I be allowed to stand or listen in and participate if necessary.
                 
                I would also ask that you forward to us the names,
telephone numbers, likely testimonies, backgrounds of any potential
witnesses along with any documents that you might plan to introduce.
Also, I must ask again that we get the name of the person who filed the
complaint with the Lethbridge Police that led to Bella Yellow Horn being
stopped and subsequently charged (as was promised) and the chain of
custody and present whereabouts of her van that was seized.
                 
                Thank you for your assistance and patience. Would you
please forward this to Judge Jacobson whose email address I do not have?
                 
                James Craven
                (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)
                 
                 
                cc. Judge Jacobson

         
        Mr. Craven:

        This will acknowledge your communication below my email of
October 12, 2003. By copy of this email, I am forwarding your
communication to Eric Brooks and Kirk Lambrecht. 

        I appreciate your advice as to your proposed witnesses. I also
understand that you are still working on which documents you wish to
produce at the trial of January 22 and 23. Unless you can provide me a
clear indication of what the substance of your proposed Elder testimony
will be, the best way to deal with this will be to have the Elders
proceed with their testimony, and then adjourn in order to have these
historical facts, and the documents relied on by you, examined by an
expert for the Crown. 

        You should forward to me the documents upon which you will be
seeking to file in evidence before the Court. I can then advise you
whether the Crown will consent to the filing of these documents, or
whether you must prove them in the normal way. This may entail getting
certified copies, or producing a witness who has knowledge about these
documents. If I know what the document is and know it is authentic, I
will in most likelihood consent to its admission and can save you these
steps. Even though you may have provided some of these documents to the
Crown and the Court, please send me a complete bundle with each document
labeled (either under a tab number, or a document number on the first
page of the document). I will then review each document and advise you
which can go into evidence by consent, and which you will have to prove.


        I will leave it to Mr. Brooks to determine whether it would be
appropriate to communicate any of your comments to the court. You are
certainly free to communicate with the Court directly, I would only ask
that you send me a copy of that communication. 

        Yours truly,

        Kurt Sandstrom

        Barrister and Solicitor

         

        Dear Mr. Sandstrom:

        Thanks for your response and helping with outlining the
procedures involved in submissions of documentary evidence and proposed
lines of argument. In this regard, below is an example of some of the
evidence on the genocidal nature of the Indian Act and the
right/survival imperative of First Nations Peoples not to recognize or
obey it. For the record, this applies specifically to Bella Yellow Horn
in particular as she was slated to be sterilized under the color of the
Indian Act and Alberta Sterilization Act and was only saved from
sterilization with some last-minute legal intervention. Had she
recognized and--complied with--her obligations under these Acts, which
were in violation of Article II (d) of the 1948 UN Convention on
Genocide to which Canada is a signatory, her present children would
simply not exist and the Blackfoot Nation would have ben deprived of
some of its citizens. Further, Bella and other members of her family
were used for medical experimentation in the Indian Residential Schools,
again under the color of "law" and supposed "obligations" under--and to
comply with--the Indian Act which were in violation of Articles II (a),
(b), (c),(d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide (see below).

        We are attempting to comply with all your discovery and other
rights prior to trial. We do not have the resources available to us that
the Crown has and therefore our responses might not be all that you are
used to. In any case, we have made good-faith attempts to comply with
all our pre-trial obligations and ask that our constraints are
understood. Those potential witnesses to be called all have specialized
and personal knowledge/experiences with the genocidal nature and
consequences of the Indian Act and/or Treaty 7 "obligations" past and
present and will show that any First Nations person recognizing/obeying
the Indian Act would be aiding and abetting their own extermination and
that of their own People, would themselves be complicit in genocide, and
in violation of several articles of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide;
and those who refuse to recognize or comply with the Indian Act are
objectively acting as agents of the higher or "supreme law" of Canada.

        Thank you for your assistance.

        James M. Craven

        (Omahkohkiaayo i' poyi) 

         

        Alberta sterilization victims also used as guinea pigs
Revelation comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement

        Marina Jimenez National Post

        10/28/98

        As many as 100 of the children at the centre of the Alberta
sterilization scandal of the late 1960s and early 1970s were also used
as guinea pigs in drug trials, the National Post has learned. The
children lived at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Some were
wards of the province and others were placed in the school by their
parents, who did not consent to the sterilization or medical
experimentation, which included the administration of powerful steroids
and anti-psychotic drugs. Experts say one of the drugs used, the
anabolic steroid norbolethone, is illegal today. The anti-psychotic
tranquilizer haloperidol was also used. Its effect on children is said
to be akin to hitting them over the head with a sledge hammer.

        Yesterday, 40 people who were sterilized against their will
reached a settlement totalling $4-million with the government of
Alberta. This brings to 540 the number of people who have settled with
the province for being sterilized under the now-defunct Alberta
Sterilization Act, which was in effect from 1928 to 1972. The operations
were ordered by Alberta's eugenics board to prevent the mentally
disabled from passing on their defects to offspring. Lawyers say they
want more money from the government for victims who had to endure being
tested with powerful drugs in addition to being sterilized. "Invading
people's rights in the form of unauthorized research and taking
advantage of people who couldn't look after themselves is the kind of
thing that courts award punitive damages for," said Jon Faulds, an
Edmonton lawyer representing 109 sterilization victims still negotiating
settlements. 

        Allan Garber, another Edmonton lawyer acting for the former
training school residents, said they were treated like cattle. "The
experimental drug treatment only compounds the evil that was done to our
clients." Dr. Leonard J. LeVann, medical superintendent from 1949 to
1974 at the Red Deer school, published the results of his drug
experiments in scholarly journals, which were recently turned over to
lawyers for the victims. The articles show that Dr. LeVann, who is dead,
gave 100 undersized children the anabolic steroid norbolethone over a
12-month period in 1971. The drug -- now illegal in Canada -- made the
children gain weight. But it also produced some side

        effects: the genitals of two boys increased in size and one
girl's voice deepened."The treatment of retarded growth in children with
anabolic agents is controversial," he wrote in the September 1971
edition of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Therapy
and Toxicology. Nonetheless, he called the drug study "entirely
satisfactory."

        Norbolethone is illegal today because of its powerful side
effects - damage to the liver and negative psychological symptoms.
Anabolic steroids can also increase aggressive sexual behaviour in men
and cause secondary sexual characteristics, for example, facial hair in
girls. Dr. LeVann also gave 100 children haloperidol, an anti-psychotic
tranquilizer, over a period of 40 days in the late 1960s to counter
hyperactivity and excitability. Dr. Louis Pagliaro, a professor of
educational psychology and the associate director of the substance
abusology research unit at the University of Alberta, says haloperidol
"would essentially knock

        (children) out. (It) generally decreases people's ability to
learn and adversely affects memory and behaviour." Dr. LeVann's studies
are "full of half-truths, assumptions and by today's standards, lack
proper research methodology," says Dr. Pagliaro.

        About 2,800 people were sterilized in Alberta before the Sexual
Sterilization Act was finally repealed. Documents now show that many of
the people sterilized were not mentally disabled. In 1996, the Alberta
Court of Queen's Bench ordered the provincial government to pay Leilani
Muirer $740,000 for being wrongfully confined in the Red Deer school and
sterilized. Her landmark victory opened a floodgate of litigation. In
June, 1998, the government agreed to pay 500 more sterilization
claimants up to $100,000. Many continue to live in the Red Deer
facility, known today as the Michener Centre. The province has spent $54
million on settlements to date. The compensation deal for the
sterilizaiton victims announced yesterday, much the same as those
announced last June, gives claimants $75,000 now and another $25,000
after three years, if they are then living outside institutions.

         

         

        The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, April 26, 2000 Native children
deprived of care Preventive dentistry banned during study

        By Michael Valpy

        Federal-government doctors withheld specialized dental care for
children in eight aboriginal residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s
to see what the effect would be on their teeth and overall health. The
specialized dental care was withheld as part of a five-year study of
aboriginal children's nutrition. The study's director, Dr. L. B. Pett,
the retired chief of the nutrition division of the Department of
National Health and Welfare, said parental consent was not obtained for
the study. Instead, the government obtained permission from the school
principals. 

        A letter dated Oct. 3, 1949, from Dr. H. K. Brown, chief of the
department's dental health division, said: "It is important that during
the period of this study, no specialized, over-all type of dental
service should be provided, such as the use of sodium fluoride, dental
prophylaxis [professional cleaning] or even urea compounds [used in
treatment of decay].

        

        "In this study dental caries [decay] and gingivitis [gum
disease] are both important factors in assessing nutritional status. The
caries index could be upset by such specialized dental measures as those
referred to above. 

        The letter -- referring specifically to the United Church school
in Port Alberni, B.C. -- also said that preventive dental treatment
would make the study of "questionable value" in measuring vitamin C
deficiency.

        

        Fillings and extractions were to continue.

        Professor Gary Accursi of the University of Toronto's Faculty of
Dentistry said yesterday that a dental-ethics committee would be
unlikely to approve such a trial today. He said he did not know whether
it would have passed the ethical standards of the time.

        

        A Toronto medical expert on clinical trials, who asked not to be
identified, said the letter, on its face, implied clearly that the
Canadian government was prepared to let aboriginal children suffer the
effects of poor nutrition without intervention so long as its study was
not adulterated.

        

        Dr. Pett, in an interview yesterday, put the study, which he
said was conducted at eight schools, in a different context. It was
carried out, he said, to improve nutrition for aboriginal children and
provide information on good nutrition for their parents.

        

        Fluoride treatment, now considered one of history's greatest
public-health advances, was then in its infancy. The first fluoride
trials in Canada, in Stratford and Brantford, were being carried out at
the time of the study. The only thing that bothered Dr. Pett about the
study from an ethical point of view, he said, was the absence of
parental consent. "Parental consent was always an issue," he said. "It
was hard to contact them. So many were in the bush."

        So the study went ahead, he said, with the consent of the school
principals, who were given more-or-less legal status as in loco parentis
(in the place of a parent). 

        

        The records of the nutritional study were found in Ottawa's
National Archives by freelance writer David Napier, commissioned by the
Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada, to
inquire into aboriginal residential schools. The Journal will publish
his article, the result of eight months research, later this month.

        The schools were operated by churches in a contractual
relationship with the federal government for more than a century.

        

        Children as young as five were taken away from their families
and placed in the schools. They were ordered not to use their mother
tongue and to set aside their cultural values and practices.

        

        The Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Churches, along with the
federal government, face hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits
from nearly 6,000 former students.

        

        Copyright 2000 | The Globe and Mail

         



        
        4160

        Fax: (780) 427-1230

         

        Mr. Craven,

        I understand from the Prosecutors' Office that he continuation
date for this trial has been set for January 22 and 23, 2004 in front of
Judge Jacobson. I have been asked to ensure you are informed of this
date. We have Canada's letter dated September 23, 2003 to you indicating
they will not intervene in the trial at this stage. It would help me
prepare if you could, by the end of November, or earlier, advise me of
the following information: 1. Will you be calling witnesses, or do you
intend on just making the arguments you outline in your correspondence
to the Court, Canada, or us? 2. If you are calling witnesses, who will
they be? 3. What is the brief substance of their testimony? 4. Will you
be filing any documents (there are strict rules on how this is done for
some documents)? If you want to file documents, it would help me to know
which ones you intend to file. I can help you on the proper procedure
for filing these documents. 

        If you have any questions, please let me know.

        Kurt Sandstrom

        Barrister and Solicitor

        Alberta Justice

         

         Dear Mr. Sandstom,

        Thanks for the note and I apologize for the delay in writing
back as I am totally swamped with work and did not want to reply in a
cursory or superficial way.

        First of all, I did get notice from Mr. Lambrecht that the
Canadian Federal Government would not be intervening at this stage but
did want to be notified in the event of an appeal and perhaps would step
in at that stage. I do also need to contact Mr. Lambrecht and perhaps
this note to you will suffice for his purposes as well so please feel
free to share this with him and whomever else is concerned with this
matter including Judge Jacobson, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and any
others.

        As you know our defense involves several dimensions. I do
apologize for any delays caused by our not having had full documentation
available, but, as our resources are meager relative to those of the
Canadian Federal and Alberta Governments, and as I am forced to rely on
others to take care of some matters inside Alberta, and as I am
assisting a pro se defense without legal assistance in Alberta, such
problems are likely and unintended. For the record, we Blackfoot do not
have or practice any of the concepts and practices so typical of the
adversarial eurocentric court systems that have been routinely used to
facilitate and give legal cover to genocide and genocide cover-up in
Canada: excessive ritual and protocol; jury/judge/venue shopping;
contrived and shaped scopes/content of direct examinations in order to
limit and shape possible scopes/content of redirect examinations; not
asking questions to which we do not already have an answer; attempting
to magnify the exculpatory and minimize the inculpatory in our own case
while attempting to minimize the exculpatory and maximize the
inculpatory of the opponent's case; obstruction of discovery and use of
discovery to cause prohibitive legal costs and obstruct justice;
paid--dueling--"expert witnesses" whose formal credentials give their
opinions "probative value" and the status of "evidence"; etc.

        As you probably noted, not only did we give notice of intent to
raise Constitutional issues (I am still exploring getting documentation
that notice was indeed sent from the Peigan Band Reserch Department on
April 22 as was represented to me to have been done) but we gave notice
of the specific content of those arguments. These are indeed the
arguments we will be raising. Further, we provided a letter of
endorsement from the National Lawyer's Guild, composed of Canadian as
well as U.S. lawyers and many of them considered experts in
international law, that was intended to show that the arguments that we
proposed to advance were not frivolous or a frivolous use of the Court's
time--in terms of available supporting evidence, reasoning and
international law. We asked the NLG only to support our contention that
our arguments were not frivolous without necessarily adopting or
endorsing them, but the NLG came back, to our surprise, actually
endorsing and adopting those arguments. 

        First, I will be calling Bella Yellow Horn back to the stand to
clear up some issues from the previous phase and to set up the next
phase of the trial. Specifically, we will be exploring her state of mind
at the time she was stopped in Lethbridge and her reasons for asserting
the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation and not being
bound by the Indian Act or any asserted obligations under Treaty 7. We
will also explore how she was supposed to document what papers she did
or didn't have in her possession at the time of being stopped, and what
insurance she did or did not have (as a matter of personal choice), when
her van was taken to a place she was not made aware of and summarily
sold without her knowledge and before her even being convicted, to a
party still unknown to her.

        Next, we will call the following witnesses: Mr. John Chief Moon
(Thunder Pipe Carrier and principal spiritual leader of the Kainai
Blackfoot); Mr. George Yellow Horn (one of the Hereditary Chiefs of the
Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot); Elizabeth Yellow horn (principle Beaver
Bundle Holder and spiritual leader of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot) and
Mr. Floyd Many Fingers (respected Elder of the Kainai Blackfoot). These
witnesses, in addition to being descendants some of the Chiefs who
allegedly signed Treaty 7 and recognized carriers of the oral histories
of the events surrounding the alleged signing of Treaty 7, are also very
"expert" on the conditions of life on the Blackfoot Reserves. We believe
that their testimonies will materially add to our arguments that: a) the
scope and content of the Indian Act and alleged obligations under Treaty
7 are genocidal per se and,in addition, have produced conditions of life
that amount to genocide as defined in Article II of the 1948 UN
Convention on Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and thus part of the
supreme law of Canada; b) these genocidal conditions flow inexorably
(and foreseeably for anyone with an IQ over that of a tomato and a
semblance of a heart and a conscience) from the content and applications
of the Indian Act and Treaty 7; c) the Canadian and Alberta Governments
have been well aware (and have been repeatedly made well aware)of these
genocidal conditions and their effects and continue to refuse to
ameliorate them and continue to attempt to cover them up; d)in the
context of extreme poverty, isolated reserves, no public transport and
meager incomes given under the Indian Act, any Blackfoot obeying the
requirement to possess highly expensive insurance as a condition of
driving is in essence aiding and abetting his/her own extermination and
that of his/her People; e) by any test or criteria under international
law that defines a nation, the same tests and criteria defining Canada
as a nation, there survives and remains a Blackfoot Nation that has, as
fundamental rights flowing from its status and reality as a nation, the
rights to independence, sovereignty, self-determination, recognition and
not to be exterminated or forcibly assimilated into another nation; f)
although we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed, and has been broken
over and over by the Canadian and Alberta governments, nevertheless, the
Canadian and Alberta governments have built up a whole system of
property and purported property rights predicated on Treaty 7 and in
doing so were bound to recognize not only the authority and standing of
the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7, but also the traditional
Blackfoot Ways and systems of government that selected these Chiefs as
well as the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation as only
sovereign nations form and sign treaties and in doing so recognize
treating partners and co-equals at least in terms of authority and
standing to form and keep treaties; g) Blackfoot may choose to become or
recognized as Canadian citizens but no Blackfoot may be forced to
assimilate or forced to take Canadian citizenship and undertake the
obligations of Canadian citizenship as this amounts to forced
assimilation, a form and tactic of genocide; h) Blackfoot are rountinely
subject to "racial targeting and profiling" by Lethbridge police and
routinely have their vehicles seized and sold without due process such
that they are deprived of mobility from--and are indeed locked
into--conditions on Reserves that can only be properly described as
genocidal.

        In addition to the paper by Tai Helton that I passed on to you,
and in addition to the documents already submitted to the Court, we will
be submitting copies of the diaries of Father Constantine Scullen,
charged by The Crown with witnessing the signatures of the Blackfoot
Chiefs who supposedly signed Treaty 7,  in which he stated that none of
the Chiefs would sign or even touch the pen used to sign; we will also
be submitting some statistics, from Canadian Government sources, that
document some of the genocidal conditions, realities and trends on the
Blackfoot Reserves today.

        That is as much as I can give you at this moment. In the next
couple of weeks I will be able to give you further elaboration on our
proposed arguments and witnesses. If you wish further elaboration on
some of our arguments, you can go to http://www.chgs.umn.edu
<http://www.chgs.umn.edu/>  and under the section "Histories, Narratives
and Documents" you will find some Blackfoot documents that will give you
some of the types of arguments and supporting evidence we plan to
introduce.

        I will also be asking about possible incomplete transcripts from
previous Court sessions. For example, at the May 20th session, at which
I was not in attendance, Bella represented to me that the Judge formally
inquired of the police officers present where her van was and asked
those police to advise her where the van was and its status. That
discussion is not on the official transcript I have of that session. I
am interested in that issue particularly in view of the testimony of the
arresting officer that he could only "guess" that her van had been sold
and that he had never explicitly told Bella that it had indeed been
sold. Further, I was promised by Mr. Brooks, in a conversation with
Bella present, when Bella asked the name of the person who had made the
phone call that led to her being stopped, Mr. Brooks said that I must
request that name and I have formally requested it previously and am now
formally requesting it again. Further, I may have to call Mr. Scott as
he was present in his office when that officer stated that the van had
indeed been sold and made no mention of "guessing" that it had been
sold.

        And yes, any assistance that you can give us in the spirit of
being an "Officer of the Court" and in the interest of justice would be
welcomed.

        I hope that this answers at least some of your questions. If you
require any further elaboration please do not hestitate to contact me.
For the record, although Blackfoot are generally poor, we are
communalists and come to the assistance of each other as a matter of our
Ways. If we could have found a lawyer to take this case we would have
put out an appeal for money and would have gotten sufficent funds to
hire a lwayer. We are not trying to do this "on the cheap." We do not
practice, as is celebrated and taught in Canadian capitalism and
society, rat-race individualism, dog-eat-dog competition, selfishness,
etc. We approached lawyers who agreed that our constitutional arguments
were compelling as a matter of evidence, reasoning and law but were
afraid to advance them in a Canadian Court out of fear of retribution in
future cases and legal practice in Alberta. Others feared they might be
labelled "radicals" for any association with this case (the word
"radical" as you know comes from the Latin root "radix" or root and we
regard a radical as someone seeking to get to the "root" of the issues
at hand).

        And finally, and please pass this on to Judge Jacobson, he can
instruct us and make rulings that we will obey, although we may make
"exceptions" for the Court record, without resorting to abusive levels
and tones of speech and continual references to supposed "incompetence"
on my part. It is out of respect to the honorable actions and rulings on
his part that I do not challenge his continuing to sit on this case for
cause of demonstrated animus and disrespect in the last session. I am
proud to be an "unpaid agent" of exposing genocide and genocide cover-up
rather than a paid--and perhaps very "competent"--agent of genocide and
its cover-up as some lawyers and judges have demonstrated themselves to
be historically and in the present in Canada [and this is not
necessarily an implied or covert reference to His Honor].

        Thanks for your consideration, patience and any assistance in
the interest of justice.

        Sincerely,

        James M. Craven

        Blackfoot name: Omahkohkiaayo i' poyi

        Acting as unpaid agent in the pro se defense of Balla Yellow
Horn

        Cc.

        Judge Jacobson

        Mr. Falconer

        Mr. Brooks

        Mr. Lambrecht

        Mr. Scott  

         

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