MNN. Oct. 9, 2006.
WHY IS “GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY” BEING AIMED AT THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE COLONIAL STATES OF CANADA , THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO ?
Because most conflicts have to do with land and resources which belong to the Indigenous people.
What is not being realized is that the “ Kyoto Accord” stands in the way of certain goals being achieved by the corporations that control the governments of Canada and the United States . Did anyone ever wonder why Canada and the U.S. don’t want to cut greenhouse gases and save the environment?
The rest of the world wants the greenhouse effect to be stopped. The Kyoto Accord would slow down this greenhouse effect. The ice would not melt and the northern icecap would gradually reform. Kyoto is meant to stop the depletion of the ozone layer in the north by the gases that congregate there. The sunlight now goes through and melts the ice resulting in the break down and melting of the ice cap over the North Pole, which is the northern part of Turtle Island .
There lies the scheme. Under the ice cap are unlimited minerals, industrial gas and oil. The U.S. and Canada want year round use of the Northwest Passage to get these resources into tankers and onto ships to take to Los Angeles and New York City . The only way this can be achieved is through an ecological disaster by encouraging more industrial pollution and bigger gas guzzler cars.
The Inuit surround the North Pole in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, Siberia and Alaska, who speak different dialects of the same language. Canada and the U.S. are making policies for the north which don’t respect their existence and their aboriginal rights to their land, waters and resources. In fact they created “Nunavik” to take these territories out of federal protection. They have semi-provincial status. Now the new territory can be exploited by corporations as they are no longer protected by federal legislation that deal with “Indians and aboriginal title to lands and resources”. The provinces pretend they have control over Indigenous resources.
The U.S. gave up the Panama Canal because they know there is going to be a Northwest Passage . They don’t want to go through the Canadian landmass because of the resistance that Indigenous people are putting up against the multinational corporations and the governments they control. For example, the U.S. wants the offshore resources to go through the McKenzie Valley but is getting resistance there by the Indigenous people. The U.S. would rather dock a ship, load up and take our resources south.
There is ongoing paranoia being created against Indians because of recent court decisions that support us, such as the Western Shoshonie decision in the U.S. and the Noongar case in Western Australia. Canada and the United States refused to follow international law that makes clear that colonialism is dead! This is despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lara v. USA when Justice Clarence Thomas said that, as far as he could see, there is no evidence that the Indigenous people ever gave up their sovereignty or any of their land. Federal Indian law [and the Indian Act] is schizophrenic and, as long as this is not dealt with, there will be chaos.
The U.S. wants to justify making the Indigenous people into the “bogey man”. Creating the “Mohawk menace” is one of their ongoing tactics. This strategy revealed itself in the planted article that appeared in the New York Times in April 2006 condemning the Mohawks to the rest of the world. Is this a diversion? Our resistance and their difficulties in taking us down could be their excuse to justify going further. They want to demonstrate to other Indigenous people what they have in store for those who resist them. The bottom line is they want what’s ours!
The Conservative government in Canada appears unalarmed that the ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] of the U.S. are working in Ontario and the FBI come and go into Canada as they please. They’ve been working diligently to soften Canada to not resist the loss of their “sovereignty” over the Northwest Passage and the resources there. They want Canada to rubber stamp anything they do.
Canada has also been made impotent by what seems like the infiltration of the army, police forces, government and corporations. For example, in neutering the Canadian military, the Airborne Regiment was disbanded. One of their jobs was to defend northern sovereignty. Two native soldiers, Brown and Matchee, were used to bring about an inquiry over violence in Somalia that lead to the disbandment of the regiment.
Gunboat diplomacy is being aimed at the Indigenous people. To create visible enemies for the North American public, they constantly emphasize Indigenous people as being smugglers, organized criminals or terrorists. We Indigenous people should be suspicious of the many unexplained deaths of our people across the country. Making 500 Indigenous women disappear without any police investigation, taking our young boys and leaving them to freeze to death on the prairies, killing our Indian leaders like J.J. Harper, shooting unarmed Indians on an abandoned military base at Ipperwash and setting up the uncalled for violence and attacks on the Six Nations who have reclaimed our stolen land are just a few of the recent questionable events. Why was the ATF doing surveillance on Six Nations anyways?
This gunboat diplomacy has been going on for a long time. In 1990 they had to neutralize the Mohawks of Kanehsatake because of the “niobium” underneath their community. This metal is used to strengthen and lighten industrial metals for military hardware and rockets for outer space exploration. A U.S. corporation, Boeing Aircraft, is getting $20 billion to develop the border between Canada and the U.S. The U.S. has created the idea that Canada is a hotbed of terrorists that pass into the U.S. They are creating paranoia among the U.S. public of Indigenous people in Mexico and Canada . Why do they need 20 armed policing agencies to patrol the Canada-U.S. border at the community of Akwesasne when there is virtually no crime there? Who is doing all the crime? Are we being set up?
The agreements and proclamations are supposed to be unbreakable allowing us entry into the U.S. Six Nations territories cover the U.S. and Canada. It was revealed at the September 29th 2006 Border Summit in Tucson that the U.S. is planning to break all these rights by stopping Indigenous people from traversing Turtle Island, which encompasses the colonial states of U.S., Canada and Mexico. The size of the border between the U.S. and Mexico is 3000 miles. It’s 5000 miles on the 49th Parallel between Canada and the U.S. The Alaska and Canada border is about another thousand. Along the 49th Parallel they want to put a virtual electronic wall monitor in conjunction with satellites. Without consulting us or getting our consent, they’re going to stop us, and even animals, from traveling into the U.S. This will be an environmental disaster!
The Canadian army “war room” at Indian Affairs in Ottawa has been in place since 1978 or so. The soldier who revealed it to me may not have known whom he was working for. The September 12th bombing at Indian affairs is suspicious. Have there been other mysterious fires and bombings at places that held important documents? What were they trying to destroy?
None of our waterways were ever leased. We own all the land and control so many feet on either side of all the rivers, lakes, streams and waterways.
Why is the U.S. putting guns on their U.S. Coast Guard ships on the Great Lakes ? Is there a big fight going on between Canada and the U.S. over our land, waters and resources? You bet there will be guns on those boats going through the Northwest Passage and maybe even the St. Lawrence Seaway and other waterways.
Another aspect of all this is how Indigenous people, band councils and casinos are being used. Did you ever wonder why the U.S. government has set up Indian casinos all over the U.S. ? This is one way that unmonitored money and agents can pass through the Indian reservations, which are under “federal jurisdiction”, into some of the covert operations of the U.S government.
Remember Jack Abramhoff of the lobbying and Enron scandal? There is virtually no overseeing of this casino money he took by the Bureau of Indian Affairs BIA. Billions were found to be financing illegal activities. Isn’t it strange there is so much interest in putting more of these casinos on Indian lands so there’s no surveillance by the Indigenous people? In the past Indian Affairs in Canada and the U.S. were both part of the War Departments. The BIA could be used like Indian Affairs in Canada as a military center point for its worldwide operations. Is money being laundered through Indian communities to carry out these operations all over the world? It provides an open opportunity to send people and money to finance illegal activities.
In Canada Indian Affairs works through its band councils in Indigenous communities. They declare that an Indian band council has “mismanaged” their funds. They take over and send in their people to run everything. Then the Indigenous people cannot find out anything that is going on. The people on band councils are now either court appointed politicians or compliant Indians who do what their team of Indian Affairs lawyers and advisors tell them. For them it’s a gravy train of unaccounted money. All they have to do is look the other way. A few communities that come to mind in this boat are Kanehsatake, Burnt Church , Piegan, Kashachewan and Grassy Narrows . Also, why has the Minister of Indian Affairs in Canada , Jim Prentice, suddenly announced that he plans to “privatize” all Indigenous lands? Is it because we are putting up too much resistance against land and resource thefts?
Is this why there is a deliberate attempt to stop economic development and independence in Indigenous communities? Is it to keep the native people demoralized, ignorant and dependant so that we can be victimized by these corporate conglomerates that control the politics, the police, the military and the economies of Canada and the United States ?
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
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