MNN. Nov. 2, 2005. The land of Indigenous nations is “occupied territory”. The Delgamuuklw ruling has exposed the fact that most of Canada is unsurrendered Indigenous territory. Our claim to ownership, control and use of land has been strengthened. We now have more bargaining power with governments and private interests.
The settlers have to establish a new relationship with us. However, these settlers are themselves occupied by their global corporate masters, who control their government, who in turn run Canada for their own benefit.
A few years back we met Charley Coffee, the Vice President of Aboriginal Banking at the Royal Bank, in his Toronto office. When we told him about CASNP (Canadian Alliance in Solidarity with Native Peoples), he immediately wanted to speak at our forthcoming Annual General Meeting. He offered some money towards it. He then showed us pictures of himself wearing a huge Lakota war bonnet and told us that he had been given an Indian name.
We didn’t hear from him until one of his Indigenous internees called to say that Mr. Coffee could not come because we were “too political”. Remember, there is a Charley Coffee’s in every corporate structure. They’re available to wear feathers, receive moccasins, attend banquets and become honorary chiefs. But they disappear in a whiff of smoke the moment they find out you know what your legal rights are.
Time for a resistance strategy.
We have to reclaim our land from the global masters. They have contempt for those whose territory they exploit. They act as if the natives are some sort of parasite, when they should be looking at themselves in the mirror. We must analyze these occupation forces in order to build resistance. Then we have to find ways to slow down and frustrate the occupation.
We should do well-researched critiques, as well as creatively use the electronic media to bypass the occupation force’s control of information. All governments for the past two centuries have been committed to the corporate agenda, even though the façade of democracy has been maintained. As Ed Finn in “Charge of the Left Brigade” said, “All governments are taking their votes from Mainstreet and their orders from Bay [and Wall] Street”.
What is the corporate strategy?
1. Blow smoke in the public's eyes.
2. Get organized. Everytime you turn around you will run into the “World Council of this or that”. They’ll tell what you have to do. They answer to no one. They are the strategists who tell the politicians what to do.
3. Set up “think tanks”. Then get academics to spout their “expert” opinions and publicize them until they become the truth.
4. Select spokespeople. Have high profile media people and academics promote them.
5. Create right wing terminology, such as “big government”, “the debt/deficit crisis”, “welfare cheats”, “special interest groups”, “globalization”, “competitiveness”, “economic structuring” and “downsizing”. Stereotype Indians as lazy, confused, abused and useless as never being able to take charge of their lives. Give them money to sit in healing/pacifist circles instead of resisting. Look for Indians academics to be latter day ‘Uncle Toms”. Setup courses on how to become a shaman. (“You too can get your “Certificate to Heal" from a government agency to baffle the Indians. You can hang your diploma right next to your “7 Day Phd. from an unaccredited internet university).
6. Control the media so that news and views support the corporate agenda. Don’t give time or attention to dissenting voices.
7. Control all political parties - Republican, Democratic, Liberal, Tory, Reform and New Democratic. Who cares, they’re are all advancing the corporate agenda.
8. Make sure corporations have complete mobility by having their politicians push through such agreements as Homeland Security, MAI, Smart Cards and Anti-Terrorism. They can go anywhere in the world to exploit the cheapest labor, lowest taxes and get rid of North American workers.
9. Do away with legal restrictions that get in the way of total corporate freedom, such as environmental safety standards, social programs and consumer protection.
10. Dismantle the public sector by cutting the unions off at their knees. Make everyone into term employees. Demonize the debt/deficit crisis so that the corporations and their tame politicians can slash social programs.
11. Weaken their opposition. Ridicule and discredit anyone who opposes them by calling them cranks, troublemakers, special interest groups, too political, welfare state parasites, terrorists and old ladies. Get honest professionals kicked out. Keep unemployment very high and unemployment insurance and welfare very low.
12. Curb the rights of organized labor by wage freezes and other threats.
13. Protect the wealthy and make them wealthier. Keeping interest rates high and inflation low. Impose little or no taxes on wealth. Give them riot squad protection from their resentful victims.
14. Finally, preserve the illusion of democracy. Take totalitarian dictatorial control in the name of democracy. It doesnt matter what you do, make sure you give it a nice name.
The corporations can now do anything they want.
A few years ago the government and their band council wanted to bring in Archer Daniels Midland into Kahnawake Mohawk Territory. ADM is one of the largest sleaziest food cartels in the world. The Mohawk fought them off successfully. Then the band council decided to sign a Canada-Mexico agreement to set up an Indigenous trade and commerce commission to control all trade that true Indigenous nations may want to do. The band council wanted to make Iroquois arts and crafts in Mexico using cheap Indigenous labor. This agreement would regulate Mohawk and other Indigenous nations’ political, social and cultural sovereignty. They wanted to bring us all under the Canadian government and other colonial nation states like Mexico. This would have been a dangerous precedent.
Don’t forget that corporations depend on control of the people for their power. Every now and then they collapse under the weight of their own greed. No structure, no matter how powerful it may seem is invincible. It can be brought down. Every opposing action, every skirmish, every critique helps to bring closer the time when the occupying army will be thrown out. No one can predict exactly when that time will come and what form it will take. What we do know for sure is that social justice does not come from being passive or not caring. Life is about striving for justice. We have to struggle not only as individuals, but as members of larger communities.
Our acts of defiance, of resistance, are the building blocks of solidarity. We will have lots of work to do, strong alliances to build if the struggle to reform our communities is to succeed.
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
