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Indigenous
View Opposes
Bush's War
BY
MIKE KREBS (BLACKFOOT, CANADA)
_______________________
About a year ago, I went to an event featuring a Palestinian and an Israeli
speaking about the occupation of Palestine. They displayed a map of the
West Bank showing Palestinian land divided by Israeli highways and settlements.
Palestinian cities and towns were totally separated making travel for
Palestinians very restricted. I was reminded of the maps showing the traditional
territory of the Blackfoot carved up by white settlements into a number
of reservations.
The Israeli military checkpoints set up throughout the West Bank, where
Palestinians are routinely harassed, also reminded me of the old “pass
system,” created after the Blackfoot signed Treaty 7 with the Canadian
government. Under this system, Blackfoot people needed a permit from a
white Indian agent to leave their reservation.
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Israeli
soldier blocks passage of Palestinians without permits. |
Those who obtained a pass had to state the purpose of their trip and return
within a specified time. Those who left without a permit or did not return
before the permit expired were arrested or forced to work for the Indian
agent without pay.
The days of the Canadian “pass system” are now over, but its
use as a tool of colonization lives on in the West Bank.
When the Israeli government bulldozes Palestinian homes, it is the same
as when Native people were forced by U.S. and Canadian governments onto
reservations, hoping we would be exterminated or assimilated. Both deprive
an indigenous people of their right to control their land and resources.
In North America, this imperialist agenda involves rapidly switching from
the pen to the sword when things like treaties and international law get
in the way of colonization, as in 1995 when thousands of rounds of ammunition
were fired into a Sundance site at Gustafson Lake.
This blatant disregard for international law continues when the U.S. and
Canadian governments bomb a third world country like Afghanistan. We see
the same hypocrisy when the U.S. military drops a minuscule amount of
food packets onto ground riddled with land mines. For indigenous people
in North America this is all too reminiscent of the grossly inadequate
“rations” system the government set up after wiping out our
traditional food stocks, starving millions to death.
All U.S./Canadian attacks on a people, whether against Afghan or Apache,
Iraqi or Iroquois, are about gaining access to their resources. In North
America, it is about land and exploiting indigenous people’s resources—from
forced labor to medicinal knowledge, from minerals to animal pelts, from
fish to “West Coast” art.
On Blackfoot land, corporations extract millions of dollars in oil every
year with very little of the profits shared with the traditional inhabitants.
Much like in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, a small elite of Natives
is created to ensure a stable flow of materials out of the ground and
into the hands of multinational oil companies.
To justify the colonization and settling of Canada and the U.S., indigenous
cultures and beliefs were presented as inferior to Western Civilization.
Not too long ago Potlatch, Sundance and other traditional practices were
deemed illegal “witchcraft” and banned by the Canadian government.
The anti-Islamic media of the last few decades is the grandchild of the
“Cowboys and Indians” movies of a previous era; its effect
on the minds and actions of white North Americans is the same.
The horrible acts of Sept. 11 should not be used to fuel even more horrible
acts of imperialist aggression. It is crucial for Natives to oppose the
“war against terrorism” and ask why we should respect the
“sovereignty” of illegitimate governments that obviously don’t
respect ours.
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Mike Krebs (Blackfoot) is an anti-imperialist/anti-poverty activist
living in Vancouver, Canada.
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