[Marxism] Part 2 Response to Canadian Government Proposals

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

Response:

The proposals of the Canadian Government amount to a rapist proposing
that the rape victim be "grateful" for pulling it out part of the way.
First Nations have had their own traditional systems of governance, law
and cultural/physical survival--far advanced of those of the Wasicu--for
thousands of years and will never submit to those intent on our
extermination determining anything about our legitimate forms, scopes,
content and institutions of self-governance. Nationhood, a matter of
facts on the ground and international law, not dependent in any way upon
recognition or non-recognition by any other nations or parties, once
established, confers automatically, under international law, derivative
rights to sovereignty, independence, self-detrmination and freedom from
extermination or meddling in internal affairs covered by sovereignty. We
ask for and beg for nothing from the U.S. and Canadian Governments we
simply demand, and will continue to demand in any venue we can reach,
that the genocide stop, that reparations be paid, that our rights to
sovereignty, independence, self-determination, self-governance (as
defined by the Blackfoot collectively and in accordance with traditional
Ways) be recognized under the same authority that nations like the U.S.
and Canada assert the same for themselves.

Jim C.

 

"Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of
genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United
States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa
and for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner
circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by starvation and
uneven combat--of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by
captivity." ("Adolf Hitler" by John Toland, p. 702)

"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
finally be freed from its persistent Indian problem." (Patricia Nelson
Limerick, "The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American
West" p338)

Government paper warns of risks of apologizing for residential schools 

WENDY COX July 27, 1998 from Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA (CP) - Government officials were urged two years ago to provide a
compensation package to aboriginal people who suffered in residential
schools as an attempt to control the potentially explosive costs of
lawsuits, an internal document shows. The report, stamped Secret and
obtained by The Canadian Press, compares the pros and cons of forcing
claimants to go to court with offering financial redress to victims. It
concludes that in the long run, compensation would be cheaper. 

"The number of individual claims as well as any negative implications
for the federal government in defending such actions (lawsuits) would
likely be minimized if a government policy, including some form of
redress package, were adapted," says the 20-page report. The document
also warns against using the word "apology," preferring instead "an
acknowledgment or expression of regret." "It could be worded in such a
fashion so as to not lay blame on anyone." 

Government officials confirmed the report, which is titled simply
Residential Schools Discussion Paper, was written in late 1995 or early
1996 for Ron Irwin, then the minister of Indian Affairs. It may also
have been prepared for the Justice Department. The report never reached
current Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart and the advice in it never
formed the basis for actions she later took, officials say. Earlier this
year, Stewart issued a Statement of Reconciliation, saying the
government was "deeply sorry" for those who suffered the "tragedy" of
physical and sexual abuse at the schools. 

The statement also included a $350-million healing fund. "It was
critical that the apology meant something to us," said Shawn Tupper,
spokesman for the minister on the residential schools file. "We can
point to (the $350-million healing fund) and say we're actually doing
something substantive to back it up." The statement has been accepted by
national Chief Phil Fontaine, however other native leaders said at the
time that it wasn't good enough. But critics who have read the 1996
document say the federal government has followed the advice to the
letter. They say it's evidence the statement is not an apology at all
but merely an attempt to control costs. Ovide Mercredi, a former
national chief, said the document shows "the minister didn't follow her
heart or her sense of justice." "She followed legal advice and the
advice was to reduce legal liability at all costs and the government
measure is designed to do that." Fontaine was unavailable for comment. 

The document advises that forcing former students to take the government
to court would ensure they would have to prove their claims. As an added
advantage, it would also limit lawsuits, the report states.

"There is a general disinclination by persons who have suffered abuse to
testify on such a personal and painful matter in a public and
adversarial forum," the report says.

"A litigation approach may well keep the number of claimants down to a
minimum." 

However, going to court would cost the government dearly in money and in
bad press, the report concludes. The author, who is unnamed, recommends
a compensation package instead. Since the report was written, thousands
of former students have joined class action suits or have filed
individual lawsuits against the federal government. A landmark B.C.
court ruling last month declared for the first time that both the
federal government and the United Church are legally liable for
widespread sexual and physical abuse at a Port Alberni, B.C., school and
ordered them to compensate about 30 former students. A figure for the
compensation has not yet been decided. The mounting lawsuits are
anticipated in the 1996 report, but the document also cautions that
apologizing is dangerous territory. 

"Whatever it is called, the department will want to ensure that the
statement cannot subsequently be used to establish a cause of action
against the Crown in any particular individual cause," it states. "It
would appear that this government is committed to looking ahead and in
these tough economic times, it would not want to be involved in anything
that is too expensive or linked to the past." Tupper said the
department's thinking has evolved since the report. When asked at a news
conference last January if the statement of reconciliation was an
apology, Stewart responded yes. "In our view, the statement of
reconciliation is not an acknowledgment of guilt in a court of law,"
Tupper said. It is an acknowledgment of a historic policy and the
negative impacts of that policy and it is a commitment to do something
about it." 

However, John McKiggan, a lawyer for about 800 former students at the
Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, said the internal
document reveals the federal government's strategy. "There is an amazing
similarity between the present and suggestions made in the paper," he
said. "The statement of reconciliation does not apologize for government
actions. It recognizes the pain. It doesn't admit responsibility for
that

pain." (c) The Canadian Press, 1998

>From "Hitler and his Secret Partners: Contributions, Loot and Rewards,
1933-1945" by James Pool, Pocket Books, N.Y. 1997

"Always contemptuous of the Russians, Hitler said: 'For them the word
'liberty' means the right to wash only on feast-days. If we arrive
bringing soft soap, we'll obtain no sympathy...There's only one duty: To
Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon
the natives as Redskins.'[Hitler's Secret Conversations, p. 57]. He saw
a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia
with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the
subjugation of the Indians or 'Redskins'. 'I don't see why,' he said, 'a
German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea
that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When
we eat wheat from Canada, we don't think about the despoiled Indians.'
[Ibid. p 57] " (Pool, pp. 254-55)

"Hitler did not approach the problem of extermination of the Jews
haphazardly. He had carefully studied some of the most prominent
examples of mass murder in history. His four principal inspirations were
the slaughter of American Indians, the killing of the Armenians by the
Turks, the Red Terror during the Communist revolution in Russia, and the
Japanese butchery at Nanking in 1977." (Pool, pp 272-273) 

"Hitler drew another example of mass murder from American history. Since
his youth, he had been obsessed with the Wild West stories of Karl May.
He viewed the fighting between the cowboys and Indians in racial terms.
In many of his speeches he referred with admiration to the victory of
the white race in settling the American continent and driving out the
inferior peoples, the Indians. With great fascination he listened to
stories, which some of his associates who had been in America told him
about the massacres of the Indians by the U.S. Calvary.

He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly
declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States
government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the
American government's forced migrations of the Indians over great
distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate p[olicy of
extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of
the destruction of the Indian nations for his plans of the Holocaust is
hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time
Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large 'reservation' in the
Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and
disease." (Pool, pp. 273-274)

"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural
resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and
that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this
alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which
is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM."(Department
of Indian Affairs Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General
Major D. McKay,DIA Archives, RG 10 series). April 12, 1910 (emphasis
added)

 
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
Employer has no association with private/protected opinion
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
controls the past." (George Orwell)
"...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems
disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse")
FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!
 
 
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