I have just received word by a member of the Klamath Tribe that one of their members had been murdered in what is being dubbed by family and friends as a hate crime.

Kevin Weiser was beaten to death at a party by white partiers, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, Sunday night. The story was covered by the local Herald and News today in print, but it has not been posted on the webpage. Local Klamath Falls Police have failed to bring hate crime charges against the murderers.

The Klamath Tribe and other area Natives are being blamed for the recent water shortage. They have increasingly been bullied and intimidated by local whites. Weiser’s murder is seen by friends and family as a part of this pattern.

This pattern of violence against Native people in southern Oregon manifests an a national scale. The majority of violent crimes committed against Native peoples in the USA are committed by whites. This is at variance with the usual pattern of violent crimes being mostly perpetrated against victims of the same ethnicity as the perpetrator. Everywhere Natives attempt to exercise their rights to resources which they have utilized for thousands of years and which were in most cases promised to them by treaty, whites have reacted with hostility and often violence.

The continuing violence and resource deprivation perpetrated against Native peoples in the United States must be publicized and opposed. These two issues are intimately linked, as anti-Native violence increases where resources are in dispute. This has occurred from upstate New York to the salmon rivers of the Pacific Northwest. It is part of an embarassing continuum of genocide against Native peoples in this country which cannot be tolerated by a decent society.

Friends and supporters of the family of Kevin Weiser want this murder to be seen for what it is, a hate crime. The public must be made aware of the violence and intimidation endured by Native people in Klamath County, Oregon and elsewhere. It is time that the national arguments over resource allocation be addressed in an informed and intelligent manner rather than by the essentially mob action of local mis-informed and bigotted citizens.

Please do what you can within your organization to spread awareness of this crime and of this issue of anti-Native violence and resource theft which is ongoing in the USA. If you desire further information, EMAIL me to that effect and I will pass along what information I receive regarding the movement which is now forming to demand justice and national awareness.

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