Robbie Thorpe on Indigenous Freedom fighters Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner

Gunnai elder, Robbie Thorpe spoke at the 2009 commemoration for indigenous freedom fighters Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, giving the welcome to country address and smoking ceremony to show respect to the spirits. His address highlighted in a very personal fashion that aboriginal people have never ceeded sovereignity over their land and even today a treaty is needed to advance the reconciliation process and resolve the many injustices of the invasion and dispossession of the aboriginal people from their land, culture and life.

60 people attended the commemoration on the anniversary of the execution on January 20, 1842. They were the first judicial executions in Victoria, which were public and attended by 5000 people, a quarter of the population of Melbourne at the time.

Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were part of a group of five Tasmanian aborigines brought to the mainland by Chief Protector George Robinson to 'civilise' the mainland indigenous people. After a brief time, they were left to fend for themselves. And so the five launched a guerilla style campaign of harassing settlers around Western Port and South Gippsland to leave their stations. Their capture took a number of months and three military expeditions.

Upon capture, they were brought back to Melbourne where the two men were put on trial for murder and sentenced to be executed. They were not allowed to present statements or evidence in court on their own behalf as they were seen as heathens and prohibited from giving evidence in their own defence.

Visit the website at

http://www.tunnerminnerwaitandmaulboyheennercommemorationcommittee.com/

2008 and 2009 Photographs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/takver/sets/72157603761110484/

2007 Commemoration Report

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/137796.php

2006 Commemoration Report

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/01/104827.php

WHITE LIES II

You hypocritical colonial swine,
who the fuck are you,
to brand anyone,
a terrorist.
Centuries of systematic murder
of Indigenous Peoples globally
for land and wealth,
is the legacy you leave.
You fucked up moronic monster.

With sheer terror,
lustful greed
and killing in your heart,
you plundered the Earth.
You fucking murderous beasts,
raped our Mother
massacred her Children.
All in the name
of your perverted
colonial empire.

Your methods defy
any form of humanity.
Attempted genocide
on a worldwide scale.
Such evil ways
could only be from
the mind of a demon
bent on an orgy
of degradation and terror.

You built your histories
on WHITE LIES.
You are disgusting,
branding our Peoples
terrorists.
Yet another means
to continue the torture
of innocent People
fighting for a right
to be heard.

Despite your feeble attempts
we will overcome
your treachery
your dollar driven deceit
and we will emerge
strengthened by your weakness.
We are proud.
We are Black.
We are dignity
We are victorious.

by C. Burraga Gutya

To Serve Who? To Protect What?

The colonial world is a world cut in two. The dividing line, the frontiers are shown by barracks and police stations. In the colonies it is the policeman and the soldier who are the official, instituted go-betweens, the spokesmen of the settler and his rule of oppression.... (Fanon)

An Historic Non-Apology, Completely and Utterly Not Accepted

thanks to the Angryindian

The Maze of Rhetoric

We hope our title is sufficiently unequivocal to convey our reaction to the events of Wednesday June 11, 2008. Maybe by example we can show how one must approach issues which require the utmost clarity. On the other hand, this probably won’t work, especially when it’s clear the predominant intention behind a communication is to obscure. Whatever… in any event, for us, sitting on a spiky metal fence is uncomfortable posture.

We listened with attention to what Stephen Harper had to say yesterday, and we did not hear what we needed to hear. Instead, again we watched and heard one more opportunity being thrown away, this one with more ceremony than those preceding it. We watched and heard the studious avoidance of truth, in what we can only regard as the hope that the repetition of a lie will somehow substitute for reality, a concept now reduced to another mantra (as is nowadays the case for, for example, “truth” or “reconciliation”).

To those surprised or appalled by our reaction, or to people who simply have no idea that there’s an issue here at all, let us begin by pointing to at least a few of the facts we had to keep in mind when listening to the statement of the current head of a political process that has, since it origin (Confederation in 1867), had the elimination of aboriginal peoples as its consistent policy:

(1) the “settler” population of Canada has had, from the point of its inception, a qualitatively different relation with indigenous peoples than the remote colonial bureaucracy that preceded it: for England, the Indian Nations were allies (who, arguably, saved Canada on more than one occasion); for the newly-formed Dominion of Canada, they were impediments to expansion, like swamps and vermin. However, in the transfer of authority, the Dominion was honor-bound to respect them, their rights, and their historical status.

(2) with legal and ethical limits placed upon their treatment of indigenous nations (so that, for example, the Dominion couldn’t just set out to slaughter them all, as became the policy in the United States), tactics had to be adopted that had the effect of extermination without giving its appearance (and the British empire had many models to emulate, particularly Tasmania). A simple but accurate characterization of the array of government programs, policies, and laws aimed at indigenous peoples and nations, then, is that they were a range of “carrots” and “sticks” deployed to turn those of us (if any) who survived these artifices from “Indians” into “Canadians” (or, after the era of multiculturalism began, “Indian-Canadians”). Residential school was only one of those programs, one that was heavy on the “stick” and light on the “carrot.”

(3) church officials and government officials have, from time to time since the mid-1980’s, offered what they (and others) have characterized as “apologies.” These have not been apologies. An apology is not made an apology by the person offering it saying it is an apology; it is only an apology when those who have been offered it accept it as an apology. The fact that the rhetoric of pseudo-apologies has become more twisted as time has gone on should make all of us vigilant against immediately accepting what sounds like an apology without careful examination of exactly what was said, how it was said, and what was not said. And repetition is not an argument.

So, what happened Wednesday afternoon? Stephen Harper described the history of actions undertaken by the government of Canada against the children of indigenous peoples, specifically, their forcible removal from their families and communities and their placement under the unsupervised control of four major Canadian churches. Various aspects of these actions, characterized as “abuse” (including physical, mental, and sexual abuse), were enumerated, followed by variations on the refrain of “for this, we apologize” (or “we are sorry”) and “we were wrong” (or “this should never have happened”). That it happened was attributed to bad, arrogant attitudes of superiority. Finally, when mention was made concerning where “we” go from here, the upcoming work of the so-called “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was proffered as the most appropriate forum. Afterwards, this performance was, by-and-large, repeated by the leaders of the other political parties.

The presentation was offered with every indication of honesty and sincerity. We do not doubt the honesty of what was said, for reasons we will give below. But for those who take honesty as evidence of truth, it would be good to remember what Marx once said: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Groucho Marx, that is.

So what’s our problem? Actually, we have several: we did not hear an apology, we dispute characterizations that were made, and we do not believe the putative mechanism of resolution (the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”) will resolve anything useful.

An apology has at least three characteristics (some people will say there are more, some will list more specific traits… this doesn’t matter for present purposes). The absence of any of these three characteristics immediately disqualifies a statement as an apology: a sincere expression of remorse for the behavior, the promise never to repeat the behavior, and the undertaking to undo, as far as possible, the damage done by the behavior.

“Well,” we hear some say, “the first conditions was obviously met… we all heard Mr. Harper recount a comprehensive list of offenses, halting at each one and saying ‘Canada apologizes’ and ‘it was wrong,’ didn’t we?”

Suppose, after beating his wife to the point of hospitalizing her, a man attempted to make amends in the following manner: “I’m sorry I gave you a black eye… it was wrong; I’m sorry I chipped your teeth… it never should have happened; I apologize for breaking your arm… it never should have happened; I apologize for bruising your ribs… it was wrong;” and so on.

Does this sound odd to you? It does to us. Why would anyone choose to express his remorse in such a fashion? In “apologizing” to his wife, has the man adopted this manner of speaking, perhaps, to be more thorough (the list could go on and on…)? We think not. In this instance, the specificity of the list helps him avoid saying something, something more comprehensive, something more general, but in this case, something much more accurate: “I’m sorry I physically assaulted you. It was a criminal action on my part.”

We don’t believe Prime Minister Harper adopted this obscurantist form of address to be more comprehensive; we believe he did so to avoid saying I’m sorry the Canadian government committed genocide against you. It was a criminal action on our part.

(Of course, Mr. Harper was unauthorized to avoid saying something similar on behalf of the churches; they’ve been doing their own artful dodging for years.)

Consequently, if we’re right the sincerity of what was said evaporates as an apology for residential schooling. Thus it was no apology at all, but bluff and continued evasion. We believe he said what he said honestly; that is, that he sincerely believed in what he was saying, but only because, for the governments and individuals he was representing (past and present), he had to craft an evasive statement that he could, in all sincerity, endorse. Did Mr. Harper, all on his own, come up with this muddied, tortured declaration right off the cuff, or perhaps just a few minutes before he came down the stairs with his escorts in tow? Well, since Indian Affairs Minister Strahl has been telling us for weeks now what Harper was going to say, we doubt it. We also doubt that the Conservative party didn’t have a team of lawyers, rhetoricians, and spin doctors, if not writing the statement, at least agonizing over every phrase, every word, every revelation in the evolving document, considering in detail every implication and weighing each possible consequence. Someone was even counting the number of words. No, what we saw was carefully considered, and when such a carefully prepared and comprehensively vetted document does some things (and not others) it is no accident.

So then, is our “belief” about what Mr. Harper was evading correct? We had no trouble seeing through the Prime Minister’s tortured prose because we’re well aware of related issues (such as the ones we began this essay with) that are no part of what the average Canadian is supposed to know and what government and church officials know all too well: the United Nations Genocide Convention and Canada’s role in it.

Take a moment and judge for yourself: go online (if you’re not online already) and find the text of the UN Genocide Convention. If you know anything about the internet you’ll have no trouble finding it; we give the text of Article II below:
Art. 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Many of you will be reading this for the first time. You aren’t supposed to be reading it at all. We call attention to sections (b) and, especially, (e), which we call the “Slam Dunk.” If pressed we’d be willing to argue the entire list, but we don’t have to: the Article says any, not all. Even Mr. Harper in his statement comes perilously close to the Slam Dunk a couple of times:

“…very young children were often forcibly removed from their homes…”

and

“…it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.”

Was he, in subconscious guilt, aping a phrase he had read a million times before with the understanding he must avoid it at all costs? … or, perhaps, intentionally teetering along the edge of a precipice, in order to mock the dozen or so of us who were waiting to see if he used the correct word? We don’t know. He creeps into another neighborhood (b) once again when he mentions:

“…emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children…”

but that’s as close as he gets to any of the other categories of acts constituting genocide in international law. It isn’t crucial, however; we already have the Slam Dunk.

Well, isn’t there some way around this… this… embarrassing fact? No. One of the contributors to the current document wrote a book 14 years ago that established the genocide that was Indian residential schooling, and the absence of ways around it was thoroughly dealt with there. However, no one read it then and no one is going to read it now (although it’s still available in print form, and free on the internet at www.nativestudies.org), particularly when we’ve gone and spoiled the ending for everyone.

But then, is there no “responsible” authority (not just a dozen or so Indians, and worse, Indian-lovers, who can read and add and reason) who can tell you, our present readership, whether our “interpretation” is right or wrong? (Over the years, time and again, work on this issue has been slighted by phrases like “X believes that the residential schools were genocide,” or “In X’s opinion, Canada and the churches are guilty of genocide,” like it was some disputable quirk on X’s part that is at issue. Well, it’s the United Nations “opinion,” as expressed in the black-and-white of the Convention, that Canada and the churches committed genocide, and the UN is the body that in 1948 got to say what genocide was.) Okay. In support of our “interpretation,” we call what all must agree is a “responsible” authority… the government of Canada.

Also available on the above web site is a paper that provides more detail and references concerning Canada’s disreputable collusion with the United States in gutting a form of the genocide convention that would have been much more explicit with respect to the point we’re making. The current convention is a watered-down version of the proposals of Raphael Lemkin (the man who coined the term “genocide” in 1944), but even watered down it is sufficient. So sufficient that, when it came time to implement the Genocide Convention in Canada’s criminal code (which was what each nation of the United Nations was supposed to do), Canada omitted entire subsections of the UN Convention (by 1970, (b), (d), and (e) were gone, Canada telling anyone who asked that the laws against murder and manslaughter already banned genocide – reducing genocide, as they discussed in the early 50’s, to outright killing). No less an authority than eventual Prime Minister Lester Pearson had suggested that surgery had to be performed on the UN Genocide Convention, or otherwise Canada and its churches would be in violation of it… and, for heavens’ sake, Indians might someday learn to read!

It’s true that even the Convention as articulated provided sufficient wiggle room to allow countries to adopt modified versions of it. But, as remarked by a commentator who first encountered the Convention last Wednesday, Canada’s excisions and elisions betoken a guilty conscience about what it had been up to. After all, this is what the US, with Canada’s aid, had forced through the conference dealing with this particular issue, and if it was good enough in principle for everyone else in the world, why was it inappropriate for Canada?

Finally, sometime in the late 1990’s, Canada quietly, surreptitiously, and without ceremony removed genocide as a chargeable offense from its criminal code, leaving mention of it now solely in the provisions against hate crimes.

We find it interesting how closely the vaporization of genocide in Canadian law coincided with rising consciousness in Native America on the distance between what international law said and what governments had done, and with a government-commissioned secret study that warned the Chrétien government that Canada was liable with respect to the “genocide issue” and recommended it bite the bullet and ‘fess up. As always, Canada provided itself with some explanatory “wiggle room” about why they did what they did, but we would certainly like to ask some direct questions of the officials involved, as well as examine documents and internal correspondence on these subjects (but see below). But, to summarize in a fashion both short and blunt, the history of Canada’s involvement in the creation and implementation of genocide law, nationally and internationally, betokens an overriding concern with its culpability and liability with respect to its treatment of indigenous peoples in general, and its operation of Indian residential schools in particular.

So, Canada itself agrees that our reading of the UN Genocide Convention is correct, and that it accurately characterizes its behavior towards Native Peoples.

Okay, you might say, Canada’s behavior is at variance with international genocide law… but didn’t implementing what they did, however maimed and deformed, into Canadian law remove all future problems? After all, aren’t their actions simply a version of what the United States, also worried about the possibility of being charged with genocide, undertook… adopting a limited version of the Convention, finally, at the end of the Regan administration, and then subjecting it to interpretation by American courts?

It’s true it was pure evasion, but it isn’t true that it lets Canada off any hook. Apart from the “guilty conscious” their behavior evidences, putting aside any question of legal liability that might or might not be attached, and forgoing any discussion of what jurists have long ago established concerning the priority of international law (e.g., that countries and government officials can’t exempt themselves from accountability to international law); instead of all that, just ask yourself: was it merely the failure of the corrupt powers of Rwanda (or Slobodan Milosevic) to exempt themselves (or himself) from the Genocide Convention that got them (or him) into trouble? Suppose the Genocide Convention was in force during the Holocaust… would Hitler’s declaring himself and his chums “immune” have rendered it inoperative? Is that the length the average Canadian is willing to have her or his government go to avoid having to deal with its genocide of indigenous peoples?

It has taken us some time, but Mr. Harper’s statement:

“…it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.”

…must be amended to say:

“…it was wrong for the government of Canada to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this. And it was a crime.”

Bank robbers, thieves, drunk drivers… all criminals, in fact… don’t get to erase their crimes by saying “I’m sorry,” regardless of how sincerely they might say it.

Genocide on the Table

A television snippet from country-wide reaction on Wednesday featured Diane Blair crying out “It was genocide! Why not just admit it?!”

A fair question, and one well-put. As we have seen, Mr. Harper could have used the term, and it was a deliberate act not to. What motivated him? Without too much thought we can see several reasons, grounds sufficient for us to have anticipated long before Wednesday’s circus that what we weren’t going to hear would be a genuine apology. To answer the woman’s question, first, keep on reading the Convention; immediately you will find:
Art. 3. The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Art. 4. Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
So we have Reason 1: rulers, public officials, and private individuals, criminals all, prefer to avoid being punished for their actions. It is very common, we think, for criminals to not want to be punished. In most cases, however, and unlike the case under consideration (i.e., the Indian residential schools), criminals are not in charge of the political, economic, legal, and journalistic controls of a nation. Journalistic control, of course, is particularly necessary if one is going to maintain the manufactured ignorance of multiple millions of Canadians.

Reason 2: Canada has held other nations accountable to a standard of international law that it has itself evaded. That is hypocrisy. Canada wants to complain to China about its human rights abuses; it does not want its own abuses thrown back into its face.
Reason 3: Assaults, rapes, and every other form of abuse expire in national law, perhaps even in international law, according to their Statute of Limitation. Genocide has no Statute of Limitation.

Reason 4: Canada presents itself as a good world citizen, a paragon of virtue. However, a country that bears comparison with Nazi Germany is a paragon of virtue like Charles Manson is a boy scout leader.

Reason 5: Speaking like a psychologist for a moment, abusers frequently tell themselves they have good grounds for the abuses they perpetrate. Often they repeat the lie to themselves with such regularity that they come to believe it.

Reason 6: This is a reason the head of the United Church gave us in a public meeting in 2002: “genocide” is such a harsh word that the membership of his church would be upset by its use, however appropriate. Thus, it’s better to perform genocide than give it its proper name. So perhaps Canada is similarly just thinking about the tender sensibilities of its real citizens, and not those of its pseudo-citizens against whom the genocide was implemented.

Reason 7: The lengths Canada has gone (first, to limit the definition of genocide, and second, to obstruct every way there might have been for indigenous peoples to even raise it as an issue) shows the fear that, if the governments and churches show “weakness,” Indians will treat them with the same rapacity Westerners show weaknesses detected in one another. That is, that Indians will behave like Westerners (the irony that this transformation is what the residential schools were trying to institute has not escaped our notice). It is to our credit that there is no evidence at all that we would behave in such an inhuman manner. More than for any other reason, the moves that have been made toward litigation have been motivated by the government and churches closing off any other ways of seeking redress. From the beginning, all the survivors wanted was a genuine apology, along the criteria we’ve mentioned at the beginning of this commentary.

Reason 8: For us, Reason 1 and its first cousin, Reason 7 are is the overriding motivations behind avoiding the word “genocide.” But it takes not a moments reflection to appreciate that, once “genocide” is on the table, its application across the entire range of policies and programs affecting Native Peoples, historically and contemporaneously, must be considered.

Let’s briefly look at some specific cases in light of Reason 8. So; how well does “genocide” fit the various incentives manufactured over the years for Indians to enfranchise themselves or to be enfranchised? Perfectly, we think. So; how descriptive is “genocide” concerning the 60’s and 70’s Scoops, where uncounted numbers of indigenous children were adopted out, some overseas, to non-Native foster parents? Flawlessly, in our opinion. (Sterilization? Who said that?) Or, can “genocide” accurately characterize the current status of suicide in aboriginal communities? It can and it does, we would argue.

And on and on. Maybe some of you would prefer to argue the point, but that’s our point: the Indian residential schools were not isolated idiosyncrasies of a few members of a governmental department or two. Genocides involve a host of interrelated and interwoven policies and programs, the understanding of which requires sustained effort and the application of all 5 of the specific headings given under Article II. The Nazis, for goodness’ sake, made it illegal for Jews to own parrots!

Bringing genocide to the table would take the churches, but more centrally the government of Canada, into the exhaustive examination of additional regions of its policies and programs with respect to indigenous peoples, regions that, up until now, it has successfully avoided (or at least, as it is now trying to do with residential school, managed to isolate from other policies). And, what is perhaps even more important, establishing that Canada’s policies toward indigenous peoples constitute an historic and ongoing genocide rules out Mr. Harper’s statement as an apology, since such would violate the second feature of a genuine apology; someone who is still doing it can’t be promising not to do it again.

If Genocide, Why?

So far we have only dealt with why what Mr. Harper said on Wednesday was not an apology (to summarize, he meticulously avoided using the proper term “genocide” to characterize Canada’s actions, thereby impugning the sincerity with which he had worked so hard to infuse his words). But at the outset we objected to more than the non-apologetic nature of his statement; we took exception with characterizations he made of the actions of the churches and governments.

We don’t dispute his repeated assertions that “it was wrong.” For us, this was a no-brainer: genocide is wrong. Mr. Harper’s pathetic attempt to insinuate mitigating circumstances (“While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools…”), another evasion which disqualifies his statement as an apology (just try to apologize for killing someone while driving under the influence of alcohol by saying “I always do silly things when I’m drunk”), also boomerangs when we consider the irrelevance of the specifics of a genocide to decide upon its “wrongness.” After all, some Jews learned a useful trade working as slave labor in concentration camps; some made new friends; many lost weight; and some even had their metabolisms re-set, so that they were able to maintain a healthy weight for the rest of their lives! But when you make the moral decision that genocide is wrong, you don’t have to listen to sophistry that tries to turn the task of making moral judgments into an accounting of the “goods” and “bads” of a particular program.

There are numerous other places we could be picayune. Calling residential schools “educational institutions” grated on us, for example. But in at least one more point the presentation descended much too far into pure fiction for us to leave it uncommented. With genocide now revealed as the accurate term to characterize the governments’ and the churches’ actions, the question of why arises. Even Mr. Harper, in evading the issue of genocide, still felt compelled to provide his listeners with an historical vignette of the underlying cause of creation and operation of the schools:

“Two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were based on the assumption that aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal.”

There you have it; the objective was to assimilate Indians, because we were believed to have inferior cultures (spiritual beliefs are an expression of culture, and thus redundantly included in Mr. Harper’s statement). This was “wrong,” “caused great harm,” and has “no place in our country.”

We have no doubt about the “great harm” part of his statement; however, you should notice how it leaves the agents of all this misery unnamed. It was “the residential school system” that had objectives (and not people working for the churches and governments), and the “inferiority assumption” apparently just hung in mid-air during the years of operation of residential schools, unattached to anything identifiable as a human being wearing a frock or business suit.

Are things any better when we supply warm bodies to this dodge? Well, inserting human beings into all this would at least make explicit that it was people who had the objectives of (1) removing Indian children from their forms of life and (2) insinuating them into mainstream culture, and that people had the (now more obviously racist) assumption that Indians were inferior. So now, our agreeing that this was “wrong” allows us to encapsulate and restate this part of Mr. Harper’s little history lesson into “people did harmful things to Indians because those people were racists.”

But anyone who thinks we are satisfied with this rendering is much too used to bad movie scripts, where bad people do bad things because they are bad. As if the clergy and governmental officials responsible were all wearing black hats. Life is not so simple.

First, the image that in Indian residential schools an “inferior” culture was being replaced with a “superior” culture (which thinking, thanks to the P. M., we now know has “no place” in Canada) is simply wrong. Indian children were not being taught to drink tea with their pinkies extended, speak with an affected English accent, or appreciate poetry and opera; they were being taught to perform as menials (domestics, farm hands, cooks, etc.) for members of the superior culture (and even the not-so-elevated members of that culture). If they were expected to learn anything in residential schools, it was to learn their place; to perform, without question and with dispatch, the commands of their betters. If this was assimilation into “dominant culture” it was into its lowest, most wretched, most disposable stratum, where the inhabitants moiled to eke out a marginal existence. It was alright that these serfs would be Indians; after all, our “betters” have never really concerned themselves with the color of their peons.

Second, attributing this all to “the racists” (who, thank heaven, no longer have a place in Canada) erects a faceless, nameless straw man we’re all supposed to take a turn at pummeling. But this piece of misdirection insinuates that ideology determines actions, rather than actions determining ideology. This is too big a subject to go into here, but ideologies of race, race inferiority, and sub-humanity arise from the material needs to dispossess and expropriate, and not vice versa. Canada’s wealth has arisen from the willingness of the settler society to simply take what they want from indigenous populations (just ask the Lubicon, the Cree of Northern Quebec, and the Labrador Innu, for recent examples). It’s in casting about for some excuse to justify satisfying a material agenda that Canadians have had to create and then invoked the non-humanity of the real owners of Canada.

Consequently, holding anonymous racists responsible for the woes of Indians and assuring us they no longer abide here is nothing but additional falsification on a heroic level. For banishing faceless and nameless spirits to some vasty deep does no such thing as long as the material need to do away with Indian rights and claims continues to abide here. Thus Mr. Harper’s history lesson is nothing more than another kind of bribe… like the forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “Just let us insinuate a comic-book version of Canada,” it says. “We don’t have to name the ghosts in the story; we all know who they were anyway. We’ll just pretend they’re all gone now, so you can sleep better at nights. And we get to pretend there’s a clean and complete split with this admittedly reprehensible past.” But the past is present, and it seems, the future.

Resolving Anything Useful?

For a “clean break” the events of Wednesday leave an enormous number of loose ends (some thicker than the Atlantic Cable) flailing around, at least for us. Even several of the leaders of the other political parties, in their responses to Mr. Harper’s statement, noted on Wednesday that it was short on detail. That may be true; however, directly by Mr. Harper’s words and indirectly by implication the upcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been accorded the task of sorting out the remaining specifics.

Is it up to the task? Not even in the cartoon world Mr. Harper has created, much less in the real world.

As already mentioned the statement not only said things we dispute, it left unmentioned a host of issues we needed to see addressed. Let’s run through a few of the omissions:

(1) Genocide. Is the commission going to bring this up? And so what if it does? Canada has already demonstrated it will simply ignore the charge if it’s made, and has been careful to eliminate any possibility of treating the matter in a serious way. Minister Strahl, for example, stated repeatedly in the run-up to Wednesday that nothing Mr. Harper would say would prohibit an ongoing, aggressive investigation into crimes associated with the residential school. But he knew, as we did, that the central crime had already been removed from consideration. Even if Indian after Indian stands before the commission and charges genocide, nothing will happen about it. Most of all, such repetition will only dispose the “average” Canadian, who is supposed to be getting an education on these things, into the familiar stupor of “there go those damned Indians again, always complaining about something.”

(2) The Cover-Ups. Once “wrongs” are correctly identified as “crimes,” can anyone else see that Canada and its churches have been covering up the crimes of the residential schools for quite some time now? The pattern of responding to charges made by former prisoners of Indian residential schools was predictable and familiar: stonewall, then impugn the testimony and motives of the victims (“those troublemakers just like to make noise, or they’re looking for another handout”), then admit that maybe, just maybe there was a “bad apple” here and there in a gigantic barrel of nice apples (“some bad things may have happened, but it was all done with the best of intentions”), then throw a sacrifice (preferably one already dead) to a dissatisfied and growing crowd of lawyers, and then go back to stonewalling (“Hey, enough already! The issue has been settled!”).

Canada and the churches have worked long and hard to avoid admitting anything (in 1998 it was estimated that the Anglican Church, for one, had spent the overwhelming bulk of their budget for dealing with residential schooling on advice from publicity agencies), much less general and specific criminal acts. As anyone paying attention could probably guess, here the government has long ago moved to limit its own possible damages from colluding in knowingly hiding crimes and hindering investigations, so that, for example, while it’s illegal in Canada to destroy documents needed for criminal investigations the people who do the destroying can’t be charged with anything (the “Naughty-Naughty” Principle).

But the churches have long looked out for their own, with known pedophiles in their ranks given a “time out” and then transferred to a new assignment without the inconvenience of having to face a criminal charge. By the way, isn’t this what Becket and King Henry were arguing about back in the 13th century? Eventually, didn’t English law come down on Henry’s side? We have to agree with Henry on this one.

The victims of abuse at residential schools have had to endure not only the original abuse, but the vituperation and calumny of criminals and those assisting criminals in evading disclosure and prosecution. And, for parliamentarians and bureaucrats, even if they’ve removed themselves from the possibility of formal criminal charges under the existing criminal code, justice demands an accounting and acknowledgement of the cover-up as much as it demands them of the original crimes.

(3) The Secret Histories. Attention has been focused so much on church and governmental abuses that there is a clear and present danger that an additional unknown number of malefactors will slip through the cracks. It has already been acknowledged that, for example, in the 50’s the Canadian Medical Association asked for, and received, permission to study the distribution and growth of tuberculosis in “human” populations by giving unpasteurized milk to the children in residential schools. Around the same time, the Canadian Dental Association asked for, and received, permission to study the lifelong development and growth of caries (tooth decay) in “human” populations by giving “sham treatments” to Indian children in residential schools. Here, not only are the people who “authorized” these child abuses culpable, so are the people who ask for them. Both these cases, of course, took place long after the Nuremburg Protocols for ethical research with human beings had been articulated and accepted.

Nor does it end here. The notorious Dr. Cameron, who, while in the pay of the Central Intelligence Agency, used electroshock and mind-altering drugs to experiment on innocent Canadians (a chapter in Canadian history immortalized, so to speak, in a CBC movie), also had some kind of involvement with Indian residential schools, mainly in the Prairie provinces. Rumors abound (since at least the early 90’s), but there has never been enough hard evidence to sustain charges. Doesn’t this bear investigation?

In fact, with a captive population and a supervening authority at best indifferent to their well-being and without any mechanism of complaint or due process available to the victims, what could not have happened? On this subject our imaginations have already been far outstripped by what everyone admits actually did happen; what a broadly-thrown finely-gauged net might dredge up is, in our opinion, anybody’s guess. The (now, finally, at last) movement to start digging in church graveyards and remote, unmarked locations is merely the tip of an iceberg, one that could well nail, even for those Canadians at the utmost levels of denial, the concept of genocide to Canada’s treatment of indigenous peoples.

There’s more (Sterilization? Who said that?), but this is enough for now. These three loose ends, rather than “details” that can be dealt with summarily, are, we predict, Hydra’s Heads that will sprout hundreds or even thousands of additional inquiries if pursued with due diligence. We have a number of problems with the upstart commission, but our question here is: Is the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” equal to this task?

This commission can (1) subpoena no witnesses, (2) compel no testimony, (3) requisition no document. It cannot find, charge, fine, or imprison. Thus far, the only ones lining up to testify are members of groups who have already testified (the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples generated thousands of pages of testimony from school survivors, a corpus, we must add, that has not in the slightest way entered into the consciousness of the average Canadian in the 12 years since its publication) and those who still maintain sufficient plausible deniability to publicly defend its inactions (the RCMP, for example). Those most obviously culpable have already stated their intentions not to bother showing up.

Will, somehow, the victims of residential schooling show up dragging bales of documents proving abusive actions, abusive policies, collusion, cover-ups, etc. on the part of ministers, bureaucrats, clergy, professors, bag-men, pedophiles, and the full host of assorted miscreants? They’d better, for the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” won’t have them.

Or maybe we just need to pray for our own version of a governmental or ecclesiastical “Valachi,” who will show up and rat out the Dons, all the way up to and including the Capo de Tutti Capi. However, not only is this an extremely thin thread upon which to hang our hopes for truth (and more importantly, JUSTICE); what “witness protection program” is going to protect him or her?

“Truth” is an odd name for a body that can trade not at all in that particular commodity. “Reconciliation,” too, is an odd word for five years of allegations that can be either scorned or ignored, according to the tastes of those who are its subject. It invokes the same fantasy world Mr. Harper constructed, where Canadian and indigenous peoples are returned to that happy state of mutual respect and cooperation that existed before the bad old residential schools came along and ruined everything. In “truth,” however, there never has been any “conciliation” to “re.”

Conclusions

We don’t know about you, but we’ve been unable to swing a dead cat since Wednesday without whacking someone telling us about how the “apology” has “closed a painful chapter” and signals “a new beginning in relations” between “Canadians and Indian-Canadians” (sic). Like someone tearing apart a picture of a former boyfriend or girlfriend, spitting on it, and walking away from the pieces tossed over the shoulder, however, we’ve been witnessing a made-up ceremony, one where the participants, for various reasons, are trying more to convince themselves they’ve dealt with all the serious issues rather than actually putting an end to them.

Canada has, once again, missed a truly historic opportunity, putting paste on display rather than an authentic diamond, because the diamond, in someone’s estimation, would have been far too expensive. Already, after the patina of ceremony has worn off, there have been some rumblings, primarily around the fact the Mr. Harper’s statement was long on being sorry and short on being active. And as we pointed out at the start, a real apology promises to undo, as far as possible, the damage done. But now that the statement is revealed as just another evasion, we must caution against whatever action the governments of Canada would propose; as we’ve tried to make clear, the “action” Mr. Harper’s statement endorses, the “Truth” and “Reconciliation” Commission, is no action at all. And someone who steals your car, wrecks it, and is unrepentant about his/her actions is most definitely not the person you’d choose to repair it or replace it.

But that person most certainly at the very least would be responsible to pay the costs of repair or replacement. If this be genocide, the role of Canada’s government (and churches) is to make it possible for us to once again make ourselves whole, nothing more and nothing less. How should we do this, how long it will take us, where do we start… these questions and more crowd in on us all. But they are questions we must identify, discuss, and answer ourselves.

Those of you who saw clearly and immediately the farce that was being played out; those of you who felt in your heart of hearts that the whole orchestration was out of tune but couldn’t identify the offending instruments until now; and those of you who were misled until you brought the powers of your own intellect to the examination of this exercise in rhetorical excess; whatever your history is that led you to complete this overlong commentary; we invite you to join in the task of building what ultimately must replace this charade, some kind of response authentically committed to truth in this history and justice in its resolution.

Roland Chrisjohn
Andrea Bear Nicholas
Karen Stote
James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)
Tanya Wasacase
Pierre Loiselle
Andrea O. Smith

1876

To celebrate and remember the Lakotah victory over Custer at the battle of the Greasy Grass, June 25th 1876. And to honor all the warriors who took part in that battle.

Thanks to LakotaRepublic

How much do Maori love justice?

Thanks to Papa Tuanuku for this commentry

If you divide the forest money among the members of the iwi involved, it comes to $4000 each for the loss of their lands in the 1800s and 1900s. Compare that to Alan Titford who got well over $1m for compensation for a farm in the 1990s.

Ironically, the plane money some iwi are spending to get to the signing will eat into each person's entitlement. Imagine getting $4000 compo and spending a grand of it flying to a hotel to perform at the compo ceremony in Wgtn!

Where is all the justice money going?

The Maori news this week is all about crime in South Auckland and forest claims. Ironically, the roots of the South Auckland 'crime wave' are in the land grabs of the last 200 years.

But will the mokopuna of the lands grab lands get social and economic equality now that their $4000 compo is being given to a new corporate iwi structure? Are they even represented in the tribal mandating processes?

Meanwhile, the mokopuna of the 1800s land grabbers are spending $2 building new prisons for every $1 they spend on 'land' justice. Well, we have 4 brand new prisons and a zillion dollars maintaining and staffing them, and paying for the cops to gather up the mokopuna of the lands in question.

So who is (still) getting rich off Maori misery?

Speed

Two arms of justice have sped up in the last 10 years. Prisons have been fast tracked, who would have thought ten years ago that Ngawha, Manurewa and Meremere would have their own prisons?

The other 'sped up' justice is in the lands. It coincides with the rise of the Maori Party. Suddenly, Micheal Cullen wants to settle 30 year old land claims. Hence the forest stuff going on. Don't believe the hype about this whole thing being sped up, like he's doing a favour returning a portion of the stolen goods.

We've waited a long time for these crumbs, and they government has spent $30 million on negotiations thus far. In my book, spending $30 million on discussions when our people are hungry is immoral. What do you think?

If the government successfully uses this forest deal as a means to undermine the Maori Party, and by extension an independent Maori voice, then we have been complicit in the demise of our ability to advocate staunchly for the mokopuna who do not yet have a voice.

Where does Tane fit into this?

We are the mokopuna of Tane Mahuta. Who the hell came up with the name Treelords, turning the relationship with the tree god back to front? It's this sort of thinking that has got the world on an environmental edge, thinking that we have domain over the lands. The name is offensive, so we need to challenge those that use it.

What shall we do?

We need to stand on issues this:

- discuss and think honestly about what is on offer here? What is the motivation for the 'leadership' to be coming on masse to Wgtn? Whose agendas is this? How cheap ARE the Maori seats?

- Help in the contribution to honest, forthright, staunch nation building korero.

- Tautoko the Maori that challenge this whole thing. If there are Maori opposed to this, at least someone is being staunch to the legacy of the tupuna.Think about the opportunity costs - if it means that our 'leaders' should spend their time undermining other Maori like Shane Jones and Api Mahuika have been doing, what is the psychological cost of these deals?

-

Well, kua takoto te manuka.

Press blacks out Aboriginal protest over Northern Territory intervention

thanks to http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/nter-f15.shtml

By our reporters
15 February 2008

Over the past week the local media has bombarded Australians with gushing praise for the Rudd government’s apology to members of the “stolen generations”—the Aboriginal and “half-caste” children who were forcibly removed from their parents by government authorities from 1900 to the early 1970s. Lofty editorials, endless commentaries and extensive radio and television broadcasts have hailed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for allegedly “healing past wounds” and “bringing the nation together”.

The real attitude of the media and political establishment toward the desperate conditions facing indigenous Australians, however, was on display less than 24 hours before Rudd delivered his formal apology.

The day before the nationally televised “sorry” events, nearly 2,000 Aborigines from across the country gathered in Canberra to protest the federal government’s Northern Territory (NT) police-military intervention.

Demonstrators came from all Australian states—some visiting the national capital for the first time in their lives. Many arrived not to hear Rudd’s apology, but to protest the Labor government’s ongoing support for the takeover of Aboriginal communities in the NT.

Yet, virtually all coverage of the February 12 protest was suppressed. Apart from brief reports by some news networks on Tuesday night and a perfunctory article in the local Canberra Times, the demonstration—a significant national event—went largely unreported.

The reason for this silence is not difficult to fathom. Labor’s ongoing support for the NT intervention—launched by the previous Howard government just over six months ago—refutes all pretensions that Rudd’s apology represents a departure from past crimes and a fresh beginning for the Aboriginal people.

Any objective reporting of Tuesday’s protest would have exposed the ugly face of the NT intervention and cast an unacceptable pall across the national image being projected by the media and political elite.

Tuesday’s demonstrators, led by about 20 Aborigines from the Northern Territory, marched to the lawns outside federal parliament chanting, “Stop the intervention, human rights for all”. Marchers carried placards denouncing the takeover of some 72 Aboriginal townships and missions.

Among those speaking from the platform at the rally was Barbara Shaw from Tangentyere Council, which administers the town settlements around Alice Springs. She told protestors: “I’m a fourth generation town-camper and my kids are the fifth. The old people back home they don’t want us living the same lifestyles that they had to put up with.”

Many of those who had travelled from the Northern Territory addressed the crowd. While their comments were brief, they provided a glimpse of how the intervention, mounted on the pretext of protecting Aboriginal children from abuse, has impacted on dozens of Aboriginal communities. Among the measures they denounced was the “quarantining” of welfare payments—the government’s Centrelink agency is withholding half the benefits of every resident and forcing them to obtain an identity card to purchase food and other essential items from nominated retail outlets.

Frank Djirrimbilpilwuy from Elcho Island directed his remarks to the media and its false portrayals of indigenous people. “First of all the media must put down exactly what we say. I’m a broadcaster, so don’t tell me you have your protocols. I want you to get what we say right. We came here for a reason and want to talk about the problems we’re having because of the intervention. This is a historic moment for our people and we want this intervention to stop.”

Aunty Valerie from Yuendemu, which is north-west of Alice Springs, denounced the intervention. “We know how to look after our kids,” she said. “We don’t want to be treated like animals. We want to be treated like human beings.”

Another man said. “We have come to this parliament because we want to talk to the Rudd government to stop this intervention. We call it an invasion. I’ve just rung up my mob at home and they have nothing. They have to walk miles to get to Centrelink to get a ration card or whatever they call it. They can only shop at Woolworths or Coles and then they have to walk back home again. This is a bad shame.”

Walter Shaw from Tangentyere Council was cheered when he said: “This intervention is racially vilifying and demonising our communities—that women neglect their children; that men abuse their children and that Aboriginal men and women are chronic alcoholics.

“We want to move forward but this intervention feels like the last nail in the coffin for our people. We want to maintain our cultural existence and existences as Aboriginal people but we want to move forward so we can live side by side with all Australians... This intervention was supposed to be an idealistic vision from [former Howard minister] Mal Brough. He is no longer in his seat in parliament. This intervention should have been thrown out, along with him.”

Kathleen Martin, 73, who lives 25 kilometres outside Alice Springs, said her pension was now being “managed” by the government. “I paid taxes and tried to lead a good life but now I’ve been income-managed and they couldn’t give me a reason why. This is wrong and I’ve come down here to oppose this intervention.”

Another man explained that he lived 30 kilometres from Alice Springs, and like hundreds of other Aborigines in the areas now under military management, had walk or hitchhike into town “to get the welfare shopping card, do my shopping and then, because I have no cash, walk home”. Other speakers warned that the intervention would be used against Aborigines throughout Australia.

Aaron, a welfare worker from Alice Springs, told the crowd that the government was turning the clock back to the days of ration cards. “The older generation has experienced this sort of thing before but these children here should not,” he said. “This intervention cannot go on. Why should we have to fight red tape to get access to our own money? Why should have to beg or borrow—we are not children getting pocket money; we are not animals to be told what to do?”

Not a single Labor MP spoke at the protest, underscoring the Rudd government’s firm intent to maintain the NT takeover. Nevertheless, no-one in the Aboriginal leadership was prepared to condemn the Rudd government. Greens leader and federal senator Bob Brown and Australian Democrat Andrew Bartlett each praised Rudd’s planned “apology” and fostered illusions that Labor could be pressured to adopt progressive measures.

Brown, for example, hailed the Rudd government for inviting Aborigines to open the federal parliament with a traditional welcome ceremony on February 11 and claimed the formal apology to the stolen generations was “an important first step”.

Yesterday, speaking in federal parliament, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin rebutted accusations from opposition shadow minister Tony Abbott that Labor plans to “water down” the NT legislation. Macklin assured the opposition that almost 6,000 people were currently being “income-managed” and that, along with existing military personnel, an additional 66 Australian Federal Police would be deployed to Aboriginal communities in the NT over the next two years.

* * *

World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke with some of those attending the February 12 demonstration.

Eric from Titkikala near Alice Springs denounced the government’s NT intervention: “I don’t agree with this intervention at all. We call it an invasion. They say it is to help Aboriginal people, but it doesn’t help them at all. They now control half our welfare and can cut it when they feel like it. Women and kids are going to be starving and hungry.

“The police are even stopping people coming into town from the bush to get hospital care. Everybody’s money has been cut back and so some people have had to use unregistered cars to get there. The police pull them over and charge them with driving unregistered vehicles. Seven hundred and thirty people have been booked for this—some people have had to travel hundreds of miles to get to hospital. This has been going on since last year. Police have also raided some communities looking for drugs and thrown their gear outside. Nothing has been found, it’s just harassment.”

Natasha Moore, a 23-year-old social worker travelled from Perth, Western Australia to attend the demonstration. “When they first announced the military intervention policy last year I thought it was ridiculous. It is a clear attack on Aboriginal people in remote areas who live in poverty and don’t have any real services. There was the report on child abuse but the government just used this as an excuse to intervene. The intervention is racist and discriminatory—it only targets and then penalises Aboriginal people and it takes away their rights as a people. I don’t think there is any need for this.

“Aboriginal people in the remote areas have no access to health, to proper community welfare or agencies to help with alcohol and other problems. Just banning alcohol doesn’t stop the problem. You have to treat the underlying issues—the poverty, unemployment and despair. I was really shocked and angry when I found out what the intervention meant.

“I was surprised that Labor supported this. I thought they had a different agenda. The apology is a good thing in trying to establish a proper relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Australia. But how can this be properly done if they keep this military intervention? How fair is that? And there has to be compensation for the stolen generations. I’ve heard stories about how babies were taken away from their families. These were horrible crimes and had a terrible effect on people. The government had no right to do this to the original inhabitants of this land.

“What needs to be done is to allow indigenous people to have control over their own lives—to have real equality and to have proper jobs and all the facilities that are necessary for families to have a decent life. Alcoholism and drug abuse is a problem in Aboriginal communities because there are many other underlying issues and unless these are honestly recognised by the government and real help provided nothing will change.”

On February 13, the day of Rudd’s apology speech, WSWS reporters spoke to participants in the previous day’s protest.

Barbara Shaw is an executive member of Tangentyere Council. “I don’t understand why they didn’t report our march yesterday against the NT intervention. We get more international coverage than coverage here. Last year we were interviewed from France, Germany and Italy.

“I want Rudd to go to all the communities. All our camps are dirty and run down but we try and do the best we can without any resources. We need proper housing, healthy living, education and we need high schools in the remote communities. There is only one in Wave Hill.”

Harry Jagamara Nelson is the head of the Community Council at Yuendumu. “We need to be hitting the government repeatedly till they change course to stop the intervention. All the intervention has provided us is 100 rakes to clean up the place. That’s it. The welfare quarantining has not started at our community yet. You know they are even quarantining old age pensioners.

“It’s wrong what happened in the early days—children taken away from their parents—and it’s right they said sorry but it will never take away the memories. We hope this [gathering] will stop the NT intervention. Today we are talking to the Senate Committee. We want to persuade them to roll it back.”

Seventy-year-old Albert Holt from Inala, Queensland said: “Today we heard a lot of rhetoric and a lot of bulldust and I just don’t know which was worse. People have heard plenty of nice words from politicians before but not much has changed. The words might sound fine but until they bridge the gap between this rhetoric and overcome the reality that faces most Aboriginal people then it’s just hot air.

“Nobody condones the sexual mistreatment of children and similar sort of behaviour that was referred to in the government report and in the media about the situation in the Northern Territory. It’s wrong but I disagree with the military intervention because it’s just over the top.

“It must be terrifying to have the military and police going around these communities with no restraints and restrictions on what they do to people. I just wonder if there were white communities with the same problem whether the government would send in the military. Quarantining welfare is going to lead to increased numbers of Aborigines being incarcerated in prisons and that will only cost the taxpayers even more.”

See Also:
Australia: "Stolen generations" speak out in Canberra
[14 February 2008]
Australian Prime Minister apologises to "stolen generation": rhetoric versus reality
[13 February 2008]
Australian federal parliament's "sorry" resolution: the real agenda
[12 February 2008]

Stealing Children is Genocide

Reg Edwards is comforted by family members after Kevin Rudd's apology on the grounds of Federation Mall

THEY were taken from their parents more than 40 years ago, a group of frightened children from Balranald, NSW, who were bundled into the back of a police car and driven away.

Memories of the "kidnapping", as Mick Edwards refers to it, returned for his family yesterday, as seven of his brothers and sisters gathered to hear the Prime Minister's apology.

Standing on the lawns outside Parliament House clutching a black-and-white photo of her late father, Nugget Edwards, Maria Edwards bowed her head as Kevin Rudd repeated the word "sorry" from a TV screen. Her sister, Alice, held her shoulders.

" 'Bout f…in' time!" yelled Mick, a football coach who has spent his life trying to control his anger about the past and a broken childhood in boys' homes. His brother Reg Edwards, who is a dialysis patient, stood quietly in the crowd — breaking down only later as he looked at a photo of his dead son.

Singer-songwriter Kutcha Edwards said the family came to accept the apology for all their relatives damaged by the removal — including their late mother, Mary, their father and a brother, Wally, who died from alcoholism at the age of 43.

"They went to their graves without hearing it," said an emotional Kutcha, before singing with the musician John Butler.

"We could have been different if we were left alone," said Arthur, the eldest of the Edwards, who remembers the removal clearly, and being interned at Swan Hill police station before being taken to institutions.

"Phone calls were made to social welfare about Mum not looking after us well. That was totally untrue, we were all loved," he said. "We used to walk to school every day on the riverbank holding hands. All of a sudden it wasn't to be.

"They thought they were doing the right thing taking us. They destroyed us."

	The "senior" denialists of Australian history, do not see, nor do they wish to see, the causal chains that begin with the incursions of settlers, the destruction of environments, the "rough work", the genocidal impulses of the squatters, the segregation-protection era of reserves, settlements and missions, the legislation which always proclaimed itself to be for "the physical, mental and social welfare" of the people, the dismissal of Aboriginal values and their evaluation as less than human, the creation of chronic dependency, and the (continuing) practice of institutionalisation, something which even Neville, a pioneer of forced assimilation, for once correctly saw all too clearly - "that coloured races all over the world detest". It is that very premeditated institutionalisation - whether on Christian missions, cattle stations, government settlements and reserves, assimilation homes, dormitories, juvenile facilities and prisons - that helps explain the degradation, disease and premature dying over these past two hundred years. http://blackgst.revolt.org/tatz.html gotta to agree that this 'apology' is sickening white liberalism and political spin at its worse. Justice for Aboriginal First Nations Now. Check out: http://ridwanlaher.blogspot.com/2008/02/sorry-is-not-enough.html http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/74909/index.php Harawira: Saying sorry is not enough

Orpheus Day Disrupted by Anti-Colonisation Activists

thanks to:

http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/74892/index.php

The 9th February saw a disgraceful act of colonial glorification by a deep-rooted racist community of locals and backed by ignorant politicians and do-gooders of the Mangere Bridge community and wider Manukau district. Orpheus Day is an event to commemorate the shipwreck of HMS Orpheus, a military ship that was bound for land confiscation, cultural genocide, treaty breaches and the bloody and tragic invasion of the Waikato. This year anti-colonialist Māori, Pākehā and Tau Iwi activists disrupted this event.

Click on image for a larger version

Click on image for a larger version

Click on image for a larger version

Click on image for a larger version

Click on image for a larger version

Click on image for a larger version

Click on image for a larger version

The 9th February saw a disgraceful act of colonial glorification by a deep-rooted racist community of locals and backed by ignorant politicians and do-gooders of the Mangere Bridge community and wider Manukau district. Orpheus Day is an event to commemorate the shipwreck of HMS Orpheus, a military ship that was bound for land confiscation, cultural genocide, treaty breaches and the bloody and tragic invasion of the Waikato. This year anti-colonialist Māori, Pākehā and Tau Iwi activists disrupted this event.

The ‘festival’ had the aim of getting youth involved to celebrate and commemorate the lives lost in the shipwreck of HMS Orpheus. The ‘festival’ was dismal in turnout and offensively ignorant as expected. Like last year, there was no involvement from the local iwi who have been opposed to this event from the beginning.

Starting with a marching band of a paid bagpipe brigade, followed by a contingent of St Johns youth and the local walking club, protesters made a mockery of the event by leading the march with Tino Rangatiratanga flags and a banner with the slogan- ‘Colonisation: The REAL Tragedy’.

Notable characters such as recently appointed mayor or Manukau, Len Brown, Mayor of Waitakere, Bob Harvey and the benefactor of the cannon on whose property it sits, Wynona Stevens, made inappropriate speeches about the great loss incurred by the sinking, rebutted by hecklings and chants from Maori sovereignty activists and Radical Youth. After speeches, men dressed in colonial military regatta fired their guns and raised a New Zealand flag; people hummed along to the Maori version of the national anthem, follower by a hearty chorus of the English version. The public was then invited to proceed down to the festivities across a knoll, where a baking competition, an all female barbershop cortette and more colonial British military gunfire would barely hold the attention of the 20 or so members of the public who considered today’s event relevant or worthwhile.

Commemoration of the Orpheus also involved the firing of a cannon, situated on a Mangere Bridge resident’s front lawn. The half-scale replica of a traditional colonial cannon was due to be fired at 1:30pm after speeches, but protestors stood in front of the cannon preventing it from being let off until most people had left the ‘festival’. This cannon is a symbol colonial destruction and mass murder.

Those involved the organising of the event alleviated the community action funds of all but the remaining matter of dollars for a fizzer of an event- thousands were given to the group organising who claimed at a community board meeting that the event could not go ahead if the money was not granted- the money then went to paying St John to participate and hiring the marching bagpipe brigade as well as hiring a singing cortette.

Pitched as a youth based event to educate and involve the community, the event itself on the day could not have been further from this; the average age being round the 60 year old mark and those youth who did attend were part of a paid contingent or those protesting against the shameful event. No schools were invited to the event and most of the community did not know it was on. It is unlikely to for the event to continue next year due to the disruption from protestors and the poor turnout from the community.

People in the community were told that local iwi had approved the day and indorsed the celebrations- that was not the case and tangata whenua of the region were and still are offend by the notion of firing a cannon to commemorate the loss of what was essentially, a raiding party, here to steal, kill and destroy.

Related

• http://www.conscious.maori.nz
• http://www.radicalyouth.org.nz

Waitangi Day-Kulin Nations 08

In the Kulin Nations, Waitangi day for the whanau started with our tamariki holding our Tino Rangatiratanga flag A beautiful testament to 168 years of our Haapu and its resistance and struggle against colonial rule.

Peoples from all struggles gathered outside the NZ settler consulate on Waitangi Day.

After a welcome from our elder Nan Old (Taranaki), Cheryl (ISJA) read the Aboriginal Trent Embassy Declaration, as peoples resident in Melbourne that support Indigenous struggle we wanted publicly acknowledge and affirm the Sovereignty of Aboriginal Nations in Australia.

Sina read a statement from Te Ata Tino Toa, companera Tia Taurere, "The Tino Rangatiratanga flag symbolises the long tradition of struggle and resistance by Maori against colonisation and the Crown sponsored theft of Maori land and resources. It is a symbol used by Maori who continue to resist the pressures of colonisation and cultural and economic genocide. Such a concept embraces the spiritual link Maori have with 'Papatuanuku' (Earthmother) and is a part of the international drive by indigenous peoples for self determination."

Sina then set about shattering settler fairytales & mythology reminded the whanau gathered, that the Treaty of Waitangi still remains to be honoured 168 years after its signing. The NZ Settler Governments refused to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous peoples and the recent human rights abuses of the peoples of Tuhoe by nga poaka on behalf of the NZ settler state.

Just like the crap served up on here recently on stray alia Day, what is the nz settler state celebrating? We are definitely not celebrating our lack of, Tino Rangatiratanga, Mana Motuhake, Sovereignty or Self Determination. That’s for sure.

Rayna Fahey (Green Party, Radical Mamma, Pakeha Anarchist) then spoke about decolonisation and anti racism, affirming Indigenous rights is about human rights and respect, “ Respect for people and respect for our environment, and what it means to live up to treaty obligations as a settler.

Marisol Salinas (Mapuche, Environmentalist) gave the solidarity of the Mapuche peoples for the Maori struggle for self-determination. The Mapuche are under siege by the Chilean state as they seek to defend heir lands from the greed of multi nationals and corrupt, racist governments.

Nick Chesterfield (Kaurna Nation) a seasoned campaigner for Indigenous rights in the Pacific, notably of late Nick’s mahi with West Papua has been inspiring.

He gave an awesome korero about Aboriginal Sovereignty, Indigenous Unity in the pacific region and the challenges we face as we resist colonisation in the Pacific.

We were then honoured to have the Aboriginal Tent embassy represented by long time freedom fighter Robbie Thorpe (Krautungalung, Gunnai Nation) addressed us. “Land thieving, colonising, genocidal racists,.” This is invasion, and colonisation means for Indigenous peoples. He then reiterated how crucial it is for us to support each other’s struggles in the Pacific. . Robbie gave good serve against the four setter gubbaments and their refusal to affirm Indigenous human rights to Self Determination at an International level. Shame all right.

With a large Australian Federal Police presence Robbie reminded us that in the Pacific Australia and NZ & Amerikka are the biggest colonisers. Sina expanded on the role the AFP has in the Pacific and how the have built up over the past 10 years their presence in the pacific, they are a deployable paramilitary police group, resourced to the hilt. They are as Kevin Carmody sings, “ terrorists dressed in uniforms under the protection of their law”. The use of paramilitary police style repression & humans rights abuses in Tuhoe recently looks like part of an over all picture of state/police repression of Indigenous peoples thorough the Pacific at the movement. Are our human rights the price we have to pay in the Pacific for Settler, Trade & security agreements and arrangements?

With the Mob converging on Kkkanberra for the opening of the Gubbament, Indigenous rights are gaining momentum both here and throughout the Pacific and the world. We are standing up, we are unified; there’s a change in the wind for sure.